 California Exodus |
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Downtown San Francisco Becomes A Ghost Town As Major Retailers Fleeby Tyler Durden, 08May2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/downtown-san-francisco-becomes-ghost-town-major-retailers-flee Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com, Retailers abandon downtown San Francisco in droves. Nordstrom is the latest, signaling the death of the area…  downtown SF retail closures
That image from the Tweet below is from April 29. Since then, there have been more closures…
 San Francisco Chronicle-tweet-29April2023-biggest merchants and beloved small businesses shuttered in downtown San Francisco Nordstrom closes two stores and Saks Off 5th says goodbye as well.
 San Francisco Chronicle-tweet-03May2023-Nordstrom will close two downtown locations Walgreens and Whole Foods Leave
 Greg Gallagher-tweet-2May2023-Walgreens announces another store closure in San Francisco San Francisco’s Dying DowntownThe San Francisco Standard says Nordstrom’s Exit From San Francisco Calls Downtown Mall’s Future Into Question
Call Out the GuardZerohedge comments Gov. Newsom Activates National Guard And Highway Patrol To Combat San Francisco’s Drug Crisis
San Francisco Ghost Town
 Brian Altano-tweet-03May2023-San Francisco become a ghost town in real time “It’s been completely surreal watching a major city like San Francisco become a ghost town in real time. Tons of restaurant and business closures. Way less commuters. Empty buildings everywhere. All the tech companies bounced and people got priced out. Just a hollow city now.” Q&A on the Exodus
 MishGEA-tweet-04May2023-don’t people want to live there
Other than A through F downtown San Francisco is a great place to be. * * *
 Andrew Wong 🇺🇸-tweet-18April 2023-This is one way to defund Jeff Bezos
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“There’s Poop Everywhere”: San Francisco’s Office District Not Only A Ghost Town, It’s Also Covered In Sh*tby Tyler Durden, 25May2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/political/theres-poop-everywhere-san-franciscos-office-district-not-only-ghost-town-its-also  Urban Alchemy employees pick up trash while people gather belongings in the Tenderloin neighborhood. | Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images Everyone knows that San Francisco is the nation’s largest public toilet – requiring the city to employ six-figure ‘poop patrol’ cleanup team, however a new report from the city Controller’s Office really puts things in poo-spective.  SF Feces Query For starters, feces were found far more often in commercial sectors, covering “approximately 50% of street segments in Key Commercial Areas and 30% in the Citywide survey,” second only to broken glass as can be seen in the ‘illegal dumping’ section.  SF Feces moder If you’re wondering about the city’s fecal methodology, look no further than a footnote on page 43;
As far as where most of the poo is found, Nob Hill takes the top spot, followed by the Tenderloin and The Mission districts.  Feces Observed in SF Neighborhoods Via the San Francisco Standard “It’s terrible; this street is covered,” Tenderloin resident Joe Souza told The San Francisco Standard earlier this month. “There’s poop everywhere. You always see it along the wall and in front of the garage there.”  Percentage of Evaluation with Feces by Neighborhood Meanwhile, nearly 2/3 of key commercial routes reported moderate to severe street litter, vs. 41% of the citywide streets struggling with the same problem.  San Francisco’s Streets Are Filthy. A New Survey Shows Just How Dirty Via the San Francisco Standard As the San Francisco Standard reports; San Francisco’s commercial and residential streets are also highly tagged up, with every neighborhood except one—Visitacion Valley—reporting high levels of graffiti last year. The issue is once again worse in commercial areas, of which 71% said they had severe or moderate graffiti.  A Clean City team in the Tenderloin power washes the sidewalk on Hyde Street in San Francisco. | Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images “In terms of actual counts of graffiti observed, there were about 10 times (160,000 vs. 16,000 respectively) as many instances of graffiti reported in the Key Commercial Areas survey in comparison to the Citywide sample,” the report said.
And San Francisco’s favorite cleanliness fixation, human or animal feces, continues to be a sore spot for the city: Almost half of the surveyed commercial areas observed feces. Citywide, that figure was just 30%. * * * San Francisco’s poopocalypse comes amid a staggering commercial office vacancy rate as a combination of pandemic-era work-from-home policies, and people fleeing the city’s notorious violence and poo-covered streets have made the once-thriving city into a ghost town.
 jason-tweet-23May2023-This used to be gridlock-now it’s a ghost town-SF |
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Bob Hope Says Democrats Are Like Zombies
Democrat-run metro cities overrun with ZOMBIE DRUG “TRANQ” that’s cooked down into powder form and mixed with heroin and fentanyl – eats human flesh21May2023 by: S.D. Wells This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author (Natural News) Just take a stroll down any metropolitan street in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, or New York City, and you will feel like you just stepped onto the movie set of “World War Z.” There are actual zombies roaming the streets, sleeping standing up, and moaning from the flesh-eating disorder they have from taking a pet tranquilizer that eats human flesh (they thought they were just smoking fentanyl and crack). The zombie drug “tranq dope,” also known by veterinarians as xylazine, is now frequently used by drug dealers to “cut” other drugs (spread them out so they make more money), while further complicating the drug addiction nightmare for users. Zombie drug tranq infiltrating heroin, fentanyl, counterfeit prescription pills, and sedativesJust as one may have thought the illicit drug supply couldn’t get any more dangerous and deadly, it did. Many drug dealers use baby laxatives to cut cocaine and crack so they can make it look like there’s more to buy and use, and double or triple their profits. The side effects for drug users boiled down to a bad case of the runs, and then whatever else happens to the heart, brain, and cleansing organs from the continued drug use.
Now there is xylazine, a drug used by veterinarians and fellow surgeons for anesthesia, sedation, muscle relaxation, and analgesia. Doesn’t sound so bad for drug addicts, but the drug wasn’t made for humans, but mainly cattle, horses, and other mammals. Turns out, it’s too dangerous to use on humans because it causes dangerously low blood pressure, critically low heart rates, and wait for it… a disorder that eats away at the flesh.
Also, because xylazine is a non-opioid sedative, it’s also not a “controlled substance” in the USA, and NARCAN does not work as an anecdote to save people from overdosing, like it can with heroin or fentanyl. Xylazine cannot be purchased without a veterinary license, so how are so many drug dealers getting a hold of it to use to cut street drugs? DEA puts out safety alert about “widespread threat” of fentanyl cut with xylazine in 1/4th of all fentanyl powder sold in America‘s socialist citiesThe DEA is warning of a “widespread threat” of fentanyl cut with xylazine, the “zombie drug” that is stolen from veterinary clinics and mixed with other street drugs. Xylazine is ultra-deadly and can eat away at human flesh when consumed or smoked. Also, the fentanyl anecdote NARCAN does not work to save people from xylazine overdose.
About one-fourth of all fentanyl powders sold on the streets is now laced/mixed with the zombie drug, warns the DEA.
Xylazine causes CNS depression, respiratory depression, heart rate slow down, and death. This veterinarian drug for putting animals under for surgery is being taken in pills and smoked by druggies in Democrat-run metropolitan cities and it’s eating their flesh. Drug dealers are mixing this with fentanyl and people don’t know, and NARCAN won’t save them from this. It’s like a real-life scene from the Walking Dead show. Will these zombies still be able to vote for Biden in 2024, for more free money and new crack pipes for smoking Tranq?
Tranq gives it’s users leper-looking sores and can result in amputation of limbs. When combined with fentanyl the chances of death skyrocket from just one use. Many druggies die the first try, and most don’t even know they’re getting xylazine at all. The Democrats in DC like this, because it’s part of the depopulation program, along with Covid vaccines and open borders.
Tune your internet dial to NaturalMedicine.news for more tips on how to use natural remedies for preventative medicine and for healing, instead of succumbing to Big Pharma for toxic injections that spread disease and disorder. Sources for this article include:
DEA Warns ‘Zombie Drug’ Hitting US Streets, Set To Worsen Overdose Crisisby Tyler Durden, 24March2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dea-warns-zombie-drug-hitting-us-streets-set-worsen-overdose-crisis President Biden’s efforts to end a nationwide drug crisis, which he promised to end during the 2020 election campaign, may face further challenges as the Drug Enforcement Administration issued an alert on Monday regarding a new concoction of fentanyl and a veterinary tranquilizer hitting American cities and towns.
 DEA HQ-tweet-20March2023-𝐏𝐔𝐁𝐋𝐈𝐂 𝐒𝐀𝐅𝐄𝐓𝐘 𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐑𝐓 When combined, xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer, also commonly known as “tranq,” and fentanyl make drug overdoses even deadlier because the opioid overdose antidote, naloxone, also known as Narcan, won’t reverse its effects.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses between August 2021 and August 2022. About two-thirds of the deaths involved synthetic opioids.  Overdoses are the leading cause of death among the young in the US
The grim statistics are a significant concern for the Biden administration, who promised to end the drug crisis during the 2020 election campaign. But with open borders and record amounts of migrants flooding into the US, it’s no wonder the drug crisis is worsening.
Some have warned the proliferation of fentanyl, and surging overdose-related deaths nationwide should be designated as a “weapon of mass destruction.”
The DEA’s new alert of xylazine-laced fentanyl (some have called it the “zombie drug”) should concern all Americans because it renders Narcan useless.
[EDD: Tweets to Graphic to Post.]
 HARD FACTOR-tweet-01March2023-Hot new drug Tranq is causing people’s skin to fall off
 Brandon Farley-tweet-3March2023-Today In Portland a Fentanyl Junkie Obstructs Driveway
 1r0nm41d3n-tweet-01March2023-Dude is tweaking hard and could this be a tranq sore
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California Defaults On $18.6 Billion In Debt, Saddling Employers With The Expenseby Tyler Durden, 08May2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/political/california-defaults-186-billion-debt-saddling-employers-expense California’s recent decision not to pay back some $20 billion borrowed from the federal government to cover unemployment benefits during the pandemic will fall on the shoulders of employers, according to experts.
“The state should have taken care of the loans with the COVID money it received from the government in 2021,” said Marc Joffe, policy analyst at the Cato Institute—a public policy think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., in a statement to the Epoch Times.
In the state’s proposed 2023-2024 budget, $750 million was allocated to start paying down the loans, until Governor Gavin Newsom nixed the provision in early January, leaving businesses in the state responsible for the loans, as mandated by federal regulations – so that the federal unemployment tax rate of .6 percent will increase by .3% per year starting in 2023 until the loan is extinguished.
“California is just not really an employer-friendly state,” said Joffe. “This one thing will not be a difference between a business remaining open or closing, but it’s just another burden on top of the many burdens the state puts on employers.”
In total, 22 states borrowed money for unemployment insurance from the federal government. All but four, California, Colorado, Connecticut, and New York, have paid back their debts – with California owing the most by far at $18.6 billion as of May 2, followed by New York at $8 billion, Connecticut at $187 million and Colorado at $77 million, according to data from the US Treasury.
More via the Epoch Times, Initially, the state borrowed from its reserves to pay the benefits, but after exhausting its coffers borrowed to cover expenses, analysts said.
Exacerbating the situation were unprecedented levels of fraud occurring across the state, due to limited oversight and antiquated computer systems, according to Lee Ohanian, professor of economics at the University of California–Los Angeles.
Analytics firm LexisNexis estimated the total cost of the fraud at $32.6 billion. Investigations have since uncovered that illegitimate unemployment benefits payments were paid to convicted felons, with one address receiving 60 separate fraudulent payments.
Fraud is a persistent issue historically with the program, and a $2 million federal grant in 2013 sought to address the issue with new computer software systems.
The upgrade successfully stopped instances of fraud, but further improvements stopped with the end of the grant in 2016, reportedly due to the agency’s reluctance to take on the annual expense for the third-party service. “They were penny wise and pound foolish,” Ohanian told The Epoch Times. At a cost of $2 million annual investment, the program would have cost $14 million to operate since it was terminated.
“Sadly, this is just a trifecta of bad decisions,” Ohanian said. “The [Employment Development Department] made a bad decision to not renew its lease for the fraud detection software, the state government took out a loan and chose to welch on the debt—which is outrageous—and now businesses are repaying more in taxes for the incredibly unwise decisions and mistakes of the state government.”
Reports that the state is seeking forgiveness from the federal government were met with resistance by policy experts, including Ohanian.
“We’ve made a lot of bad decisions and we expect the rest of the country to pay for it,” he said. “It also raises questions about the future: If the state is going to default on the $20 billion federal loans, how safe are municipal bonds from California?” |
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The Suffering Is Off The Chartsby Tyler Durden, 02June2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/suffering-charts Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, Things have taken a turn for the worse. In recent months, economic activity has been dropping all over the nation, and that decline appears to be accelerating. We just learned that gross domestic income has now fallen for two quarters in a row, and the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has now been plummeting for 13 consecutive months. Unfortunately, when economic conditions deteriorate it is the people at the low end of the economic pyramid that get hit the hardest.
Thanks to our rapidly rising cost of living, we are seeing a dramatic explosion in the number of “working homeless” that are living out of their vehicles on a daily basis even though they are currently employed. In particular, the RV “communities” that are springing up from coast to coast are starting to get quite a bit of attention…
Most of these people get up and go to work in the morning. In fact, the Daily Mail spoke to one man that actually “works for a New York City hospital”…
If you work at a hospital, you should be able to afford a place to live.
But this is our country now. We are absolutely destroying the middle class, and as a result we now have a massive homelessness crisis on our hands…
No matter what you or I are facing right now, at least we aren’t sleeping in the streets.
So we should count our blessings. Hunger is also rapidly growing all over America. Right now, record numbers of people are coming for help at one food bank in the Seattle area…
And in Boston, the line for food on one recent weekend morning “stretched the length of two football fields”…
We are witnessing so much suffering all over the country right now. And there are so many more people that are living right on the edge of disaster.
According to one recent survey, approximately 38.5 percent of U.S. adults experienced “some form of difficulty in covering expenses between April 26 and May 8”…
Of course this is just the beginning. As I keep warning my readers, things will eventually get much worse.
And finally, whatever happens in Washington is not going to fundamentally alter our long-term trajectory, and that means that much more suffering is coming in the days ahead. * * * |
The Decline and Fall of the American EmpireBy Steve McCann
A cursory examination of history reveals that the United States is mired in the same process that precipitated the collapse of the great empires of the past. The foibles and failures of human nature and their impact on the rise and fall of empires is amazingly consistent and the end result always inevitable. Can this nation avoid a similar fate?
Empires are defined as great military and economic powers encompassing large occupied or controlled land areas. Although they vary greatly, they average around 250 years in duration. The United States will be celebrating its 250th anniversary in 2026.
In 1976, Sir John Glubb, a distinguished British diplomat and general, wrote an essay on the fate of empires throughout history. He enumerated, based on 3,000 years of historical data, the six various stages in the rise and fall of empires.
These stages and how they apply to the United States are as follows:
The Age of Decadence is marked by debauchery, defensiveness, pessimism, materialism, a significant weakening of religion, frivolity, a welfare state, and a massive influx of unassimilated foreigners. These symptoms of national decadence are the end product of long periods of prosperity and power, love of wealth and status, and self-obsession by the ruling elites leading to fateful government corruption and instability.
Sir John Glubb is definitive in stating that in all ancient and modern fallen empires, “there does not appear to be any doubt that money is the agent which causes the decline of strong, brave and self-confident people.”
An examination of various empires from the Persian Empire to the Roman Empire to the British Empire confirms Glubb’s hypothesis that pursuit and accumulation of money or wealth is the portal through which power over the masses is achieved. The amassing of wealth and thus power evolves into a quasi-religion that over time triggers the descent into the age of decadence and corruption that inevitably leads to the collapse and conquering of empires by their external enemies.
In the early stage of the age of decadence, materialism becomes a driving force in society, inducing many in the upper classes to indulge in excessive, often conspicuous consumption as an absurdly wealthy elite emerges. Far too many societal elites and non-elites become convinced that increased consumption and social status is the key to happiness, but in its pursuit they become demonstrably more pessimistic and less happy and fulfilled.
The search for happiness and fulfillment leads to imprudence and voyeurism becoming central to the culture. Unhappy people searching for diversion became fixated on celebrities and captive to evolving voyeurism. And voyeurism takes on a more sinister aspect as people in both ancient and modern empires become increasingly desensitized to graphic images and willing spectators or participants in violence and debauchery.
Debauchery is an oft-recurring theme in the demise of empires. Societies develop an abnormally immature obsession with sex. An obsession that requires increasing deviancy to satiate coupled with concurrent abuse of children and the marginalization and exploitation of women. Meanwhile, the use of drugs and alcohol expands exponentially. Debauchery is a symptom of the absence of meaning in people’s lives leading to the self-destruction of society and concomitantly a loss of a sense of duty and patriotism.
Other symptoms common among many empires in the last stages of decline include:
Additionally, while the decline of empires is precipitated by internal factors, the final collapse is marked by defeat at the hands of powerful external enemies. The United States is presently facing an implacable and powerful external enemy, Communist China. A foe this nation’s elites, in their self-indulgent pursuit of wealth, essentially created by willfully intertwining the American economy with a ruthless and dictatorial communist regime.
Unfortunately, the vast bulk of the American citizenry is not aware of the historically precarious situation this nation finds itself. Nor are they aware that the policies and actions of the Marxist controlled Democrat party over the past 20 years is a window into what will happen to this nation if they continue in power. Another four to eight years of Democrat Party rule will permanently embed:
As the last three years have amply proven, decadence and sexual debauchery will continue apace. All forms of deviancy, including but not limited to pedophilia, will be forcefully mainstreamed. Religious liberties will be denigrated and curtailed. Infanticide and state-sponsored euthanasia will be legalized. Materialism and voyeurism will become the new state religion. And virtually all drugs will be legalized and easily available.
As the United States descends into insolvency, societal chaos and upheaval, Communist China, with which the Democrat party is intertwined, will actively abet and promote the dissolution of this country as it will be waiting vulture-like to feast on the carcass.
The inevitable can perhaps be mitigated if a significant majority of the populace acknowledges the current plight of the nation and initiates a return to the nation’s founding Judeo-Christian principles. Additionally, it is imperative that either Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis wins in November of 2024 and for a populist Republican Party to control both the presidency and Congress for a minimum of two presidential terms.
Republican primary voters must also acknowledge reality and not be captive to cultlike sycophancy for either Trump or DeSantis. They need to ask themselves: who can win against a corrupt and devious Democrat party reliant on voter fraud and manipulation in the battleground states of Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania? Who has the coattails to assure the capture of both Houses of Congress? And can that person can either serve a second term or make certain another Republican will win in 2028?
It is not hyperbole to say the upcoming election cycle is the most determinative in American history. If the Republicans fail to win the presidency and Congress in 2024, this nation will have passed the point of no return and a new chapter in the annals of the decline and fall of great nations will be written. |
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The Burning Platform
FALL OF AMERICAN EMPIRE AND DESCENT INTO A NEW DARK AGESPosted on https://www.theburningplatform.com/2023/05/31/fall-of-american-empire-and-descent-into-a-new-dark-ages/ “The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigor of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians.” — Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 38 “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West”  Cole Thomas – The Course of Empire Destruction 1836
The moniker of my website originated from a quote by David Walker, then Comptroller General of the U.S., in 2007. I wholeheartedly endorsed Walker’s viewpoint and become politically active in trying to get Ron Paul elected as president in 2008 and 2012. It was a fruitless effort, as the uni-party in Washington DC, controlled by the dark forces of the Deep State, do not allow men and women who truly want to reduce the size and scope of government to ever get elected. His warning sixteen years ago is a perfect example of being right but being early. When talking about the decline of empires, you are really deliberating about a process, not an event. The Roman Empire did not fall on a specific day due to a specific cause. It collapsed in stages over hundreds of years due to numerous reasons, each triggering events which compounded upon each other and ultimately led to the final collapse.
Walker said, “The US government is on a “burning platform” of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon.” He believed we were resting on the laurels of being the sole superpower, as our empire built on debt was slowly and methodically crumbling. He cited three reasons for the fall of the Roman Republic that resonated in 2007 regarding the American Empire (formerly a republic):
It’s almost humorous Walker was issuing these dire warnings when the 2007 annual deficit was $160 billion. At our current rate of debt accumulation, it takes only one month to reach $160 billion. In 2020 and 2021 it only took 20 days to accumulate $160 billion. The national debt in 2007 was $9 trillion, up from $5.6 trillion in 2000. Today it stands at $31.8 trillion. Interest on the national debt will approach $900 billion this year, exceeding defense spending.
Walker warned about our debt ratios skyrocketing when the baby boomers retired. Well, the debt to GDP ratio has doubled from 62% in 2007 to 124% today, and most boomers can’t even afford to retire. U.S. unfunded liabilities total $188 trillion. Personal debts total $25 trillion, with $1.8 trillion of student loan debt and $1.3 trillion of credit card debt. The fiscal irresponsibility of our government and its citizens is breathtaking, unsustainable, and ultimately fatal to our empire. Walker may have been early, but he certainly was not wrong.  Federal deficits trends Over Time-FY 2001-2022
The current Kabuki theater farce regarding the raising of the debt limit is a perfect example of how spineless politicians blatantly deceive the public, with the full support of the regime media, in proclaiming spending cuts and fiscal responsibility, when the CBO projections show the national debt growing to more than $50 trillion in the next ten years, as most of the spending is on automatic pilot. And this is before the coming recession/depression provokes the usual political response of fiscal stimulus, which will drive the debt higher.
Threats of government default, hysterical articles in the regime media, and last-minute deals are nothing but a show for the ignorant masses, while the true globalist agenda of one world order, where the peasants will own nothing and be happy, is rolled out at an accelerated pace. They know the fiscal sustainability of the western world is dire, therefore they are acting in a reckless manner, which imperils the world with a potential global war.  World Economic Forum-twet-19November2016-You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy. This is how our world could change by 2023
Walker’s first point about the decline in moral values and political incivility has reached civil war instigating levels of degradation, deviancy, and treasonous political activity. Not in Walker’s wildest dreams did he envision the grooming and trafficking of children, drag queen story hour for toddlers, pushing children to be mutilated and propagandized into believing they are the opposite sex, promoting deviancy, and having this degenerate behavior jammed down our throats by the government, corporations, and the media.
Destroying our culture, promoting abnormality and sloth, tearing the fabric of our society to shreds, encouraging lawlessness, looting and murder, and persecuting normal white Americans who dissent, is actively promoted, and funded by Soros, Gates, and the rest of the Davos – WEF globalist psychopaths. The devaluation of our lives was never more evident than during the covid plandemic, where the annual flu was weaponized to lockdown the world, create havoc and chaos, institute totalitarian measures to abscond with our liberties and freedoms, destroy the lives of vaxx dissenters, and ultimately destroy the lives of millions who obeyed and were injected with the untested, gene altering, spike producing, Big Pharma enriching concoction.  Covid-19 Protests-Free_Ohio_Now_Columbus
To put a Roman Empire slant on it, what has been wrought by Clinton, Obama, Comey, Wray, Brennan, Clapper, Pelosi, and their gaggle of treasonous co-conspirators since 2016 has marked our current day crossing of the Rubicon. Politics has always been a dirty game, but the machinations to bring down a duly elected sitting president, which continue to this day under the direction of Biden’s handlers, is reminiscent of the plots, coups, and murders as the Roman empire descended into corruption, madness, and deviant behavior.
The Durham report documented the unequivocal facts regarding the relentless coup attempt against Trump, but the complete coverup by the regime media and the toothless non-existent prosecution of the criminal Deep State characters involved in this treasonous act proves there no longer is a representative government looking out for the citizens of this country. We are a corporate fascist oligarchy, ruled by the few, for the few. We are nothing more than serfs, peasants, and useless eaters to the ruling class, as they continue to pillage and plunder what remains of the Treasury.
Walker thought our military was stretched thin in 2007, as the neo-cons had us fighting a two-front war in Iraq and Afghanistan to enrich the military industrial complex, based on false WMD claims and a fruitless effort to find our CIA created global terrorist mastermind – Osama bin Laden. Little did he know that twenty years after invading Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban, we would conduct a disastrous retreat and hand the country back to the Taliban, with a gift of about $10 billion in military hardware.  Taliban’s new arsenal
The defense budget in 2007, while fighting two wars, was $700 billion. Today the budget approaches $900 billion when we are supposedly not at war with anyone. With the Deep State firmly in control of both political parties, the arms dealers will always be swimming is your tax dollars, whether they are shipping their murderous wares to Zelensky, Israel, Taiwan, or any other country fighting our current mortal enemies – Russia, China, Syria, and Iran.
Mr. Walker was naïve in his assessment about the U.S. military’s strength. Winning wars to protect America has never been the goal. War is big business and keeps the politicians on both sides of the aisle satiated with political donations (aka bribes). The ruling class had no issue using a few hundred thousand poor patriotic useless eaters as cannon fodder in Iraq and Afghanistan to further enrich themselves. But it is much easier to create chaos and war in other countries and let their poor suckers die for a forlorn false cause, while providing weapons to both sides. I wonder if Walker was blindsided by Obama’s creation of wars in both Libya and Syria in 2011.
We killed Ghaddafi and left Libya a smoking chaotic ruin, with Islamic terrorists running rampant. Obama created ISIS so we had a reason to destroy Syria and Assad. Russia obliterated ISIS and has successfully kept Assad in power, infuriating the neocons and provoking the next move on the global chessboard. All the NPC Ukrainian Flag waving dolts who believe everything the regime media regurgitates, as instructed by their masters, are clueless as to why Biden and his neocon handlers are pushing us towards a direct conflict with Russia. Obama, Clinton, Victoria Nuland, John Brennan, McCain, Graham, and a slew of other Deep State lackeys overthrew the democratically elected president of Ukraine in 2014, because he was friendly towards Russia, initiating a domino effect in the Ukraine which has left us at the doorstep of World War III.  State flag of Ukraine carried by a protester to the heart of developing clashes in Kyiv, Ukraine. Events of February 18, 2014.
The Roman economy was basically a rapine economy. Like all slave-owning societies, Rome had no middle class, a debased currency, and no export production – it lived by conquests, slave trade, and plundering the conquered provinces. Such economies can exist only as long as they expand; when the expansion ends, downfall is inevitable. See any resemblance to the American economy? When the Fed stops printing, it all comes crashing down. By the third century their currency was worthless, and a barter economy sprung to life.
By 451 AD the empire was bankrupt, taxes were 40% to 60%, and there was nothing left in the coffers to pay the military or keep the infrastructure from crumbling. The barbarians applied the final blow with the sacking of Rome, and the Dark Ages were born. Slavery and serfdom were the fate of Roman peasants. The collapse of Mediterranean trade meant the collapse of papyrus imports, and the means of writing disappeared. Literacy dissipated. The Roman civilization was kept alive only in churches and monasteries, which could afford parchment and vellum. What will the bankruptcy of the American empire entail and how will the city dwelling welfare recipients’ fare? My guess is not very well.  Heinrich Leutemann,-Rome’s plundering by the vandals (c.1860–1880)
Just as the Romans became fat and happy, enjoying the fruits of efforts, innovation and sacrifices put forth by prior generations, Americans have grown to believe they are the richest, freest, and most powerful nation on earth. They believe it is their privilege to rule the world. Just as the Romans hired mercenary armies to fight their wars because it was beneath their citizens to defend their vast empire, the U.S. used paid mercenaries (Blackwater) in Iraq and Afghanistan to fight their wars. Now we just outsource the dying to Ukrainians, Libyans, Syrians, and Somalis, while providing them the weapons, technology, and logistics to wage endless war on our behalf.  IRAQ-LIBYA-YEMEN-SYRIA-before-after US intervention
Next up will be the Taiwanese, as we provoke China into our next war. As documented earlier, the fiscal trajectory of our empire is on a course towards Armageddon, and the tens of billions in weapons being handed to the most corrupt nation on earth – Ukraine – is simply insane. Biden acts like a Roman emperor dictator (with dementia) during the final stages of Rome’s collapse, while the feckless politicians in the House & Senate sit idly by, cheering on our descent into national bankruptcy.
The final collapse of the Western Roman Empire was mainly triggered by the weakness of its late-stage emperors, failure of its civil administrators, disease, epidemics, and the unceasing invasion of its lands by the barbarian Visigoths and Vandals. Military failure and monetary weakness were the final nails in the coffin. The parallels with the American empire’s late stages are uncanny.  Joe Biden-child sniffing fool
Can anyone conceive of a weaker emperor than Dementia Joe Biden? He is a low IQ, lying, corrupt to his core, bumbling, child sniffing fool, acting on behest of the Deep State and their globalist cabal. His administration is crawling with deviants, dopes, and those seeking the destruction of our country. The barbarian hordes are streaming across our southern border and being ushered into communities across the country by government sanctioned flights and bus rides. These mostly male Hispanics, Haitians, Somalis, Muslim terrorists, and Chinese nationals are not going to strengthen our country, but contribute greatly to its fall. But at least the ruling class will have maids and gardeners, while Big-Agra will have cheap labor to pick their crops.  The Longest Welfare line in the World
Edward Gibbon’s discernment that the number one cause for the ruin of Rome was “The injuries of time and nature”, is more profound than it might seem. Its ability to be sustained for almost one thousand years is remarkable, but as with all large entities it succumbed to entropy, currency debasement, deviancy, corruptibility of its ruling class, and apathy of its citizenry. Everything trends towards disorder, chaos, and ultimately collapse. Pleasure without pain, glory without sacrifice, indolence without work, degeneracy disguised as creativity, and treason portrayed as politics, led to a slow spiraling disintegration of their society and culture over the course of centuries.
These exact same characteristics are rearing their ugly head in the late stages of the American Empire decline. It is fascinating that Roman historian Tacitus was documenting traits of a declining nation state during the first century, while it took until the fifth century for the Western Roman Empire to finally collapse. The timing of the downfall is always in doubt, as grains of sand are added to the pile until entropy wins and all comes crashing down.  Invasions of the Roman Empire
 American Flag in Tatters
It’s as if Tacitus lived among us today. His description fits perfectly in describing the psychopaths controlling the U.S. Empire, along with most of the western world, as they rape, pillage, plunder, and desolate foreign lands in the name of freedom and call it peace keeping. The U.S. Empire is willing to fight Putin until the last Ukrainian is dead on the battlefield. How noble. Slaughter and seizing natural resources under false pretenses (WMD) are hailed as spreading democracy to third world countries.
It took the Roman Empire about 1,000 years to fall. The British Empire fell in approximately 300 years. The United States has been around for 234 as a nation, but only an empire since 1946, a mere 77 years. Has the advancement of technology, speed of communications, monetary manipulations, and level of military firepower coalesced into accelerating the demise of empires? It certainly appears so, as the American Empire is on course to fall by the end of this Fourth Turning, within the next ten years.
It is commonly believed the Dark Ages began with the fall of the Roman Empire. Of course, the definition of the Dark Ages has been debated for centuries, with the time frame sometimes set from 500 AD to 1000 AD, and sometimes until 1500 AD. They overlapped with the Middle Ages and some scholars contend they weren’t even that dark. I find it interesting as we enter a new Dark Ages, the regime media is busy writing articles contending the previous Dark Ages weren’t so bad after all.
The level of gaslighting produced on a daily basis by the propaganda peddlers doing their assigned task of keeping the masses ignorant and confused, is beyond the comprehension of average Americans trying to make a living and trusting their government. In reality, the Dark Ages coincided with the cultural decay and decadence of Rome in its late stages, as the vices of gluttony, lust and greed became the root of their civilization and functioned as chains enslaving and weighing down their culture.  The Dark Ages by JonasDeRo
During the glory days of the Roman Empire, they achieved tremendous advancements in the areas of science, literature, philosophy, government, and architecture. The fall of the empire left a vacuum in these areas for centuries. The death of a culture is not an easy event to recover from. Record keeping during the Dark Ages was minimal, leaving historians in the dark as to what happened. After the fall, feudalism emerged, and the Catholic Church gained increasing power.
The intermingling of the church and state contributed to the lack of cultural advancement. The uneducated peasants were fearful and superstitious, living lives of subsistence and want. The Renaissance Age of enlightenment, which followed the Dark Ages, provided the inverse paradigm to the Dark Ages. Italian scholar Petrarch, who lived in the 14th century referred to the time period as ”those men of intellectual prowess as living cloaked in darkness”.
I would contend we have already entered a new Dark Ages, based upon the collapse of our culture, ignorance of the masses, failure of our educational system, celebration of deviancy, lack of civility, and lawlessness in our cities. Most Americans would scoff at the notion we have already entered a new dark age. Everyone (including the desperately “poor” illegal aliens swarming across our border) has a super-computer phone in their hands 24/7. Every piece of knowledge ever conceived is available at our fingertips through the internet.
We spend tens of thousands of dollars per student per year in our public schools to educate our children. Our universities are world renowned. We are the wealthiest nation in history. We have tens of thousands of laws, regulations, and rules, to keep us safe. And supposedly, the American dream is attainable by everyone born in this country. Sounds like we should be living in a new age of enlightenment. But nothing could be further from the truth. Mistaking technological advancement and passage of laws with cultural and societal advancement is a complete fallacy, as described by Albert Einstein and Aldous Huxley almost a century ago:  “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” Albert Einstein
In case you haven’t noticed, our culture has descended into the gutter, societal norms which kept the country relatively cohesive since its inception are being attacked and obliterated by deviants and degenerates, and any semblance of a unified vision of what America stands for is actively being destroyed by the globalist Davos crowd seeking to implement their Great Reset agenda of technocratic control over the lowly peasants, while they feast, plunder and pillage the planet – the true psychopath barbarian billionaire horde.
The perversion of normalcy into glorifying pedophiles, drag queens, transgender freaks, drug addict felons, race hustlers, and organizations promoting lawlessness, looting, and killing, while persecuting and prosecuting normal, hard-working, civilized white people has left the country on the brink of chaos. Technology has done nothing but make us dumber, distracted and easily manipulated by the Bernaysian masters of manipulation.
Multiple generations have now been socially indoctrinated by government schools to obey, emote, believe, and fear whatever (Covid) and whoever (Putin) they are commanded to fear. What they are not taught is how to think critically, question everything, and make their own decisions based upon actual facts. Test scores in reading, writing and math are at all-time lows. The solution is to continually lower the standards and never hold anyone accountable for results.
We are a nation of morons led by a cadre of psychopaths. Children are encouraged by their parents and doctors to cut off their breasts and penises due to peer pressure and deviants controlling the schools and media. Groomers make toddlers watch transgender freaks perform sex acts on stage. Library books for 8-year-olds describe anal sex, masturbation, and other perverted acts.
 Matt Walsh-tweet-4October2022-I believe that gender ideology Statues portraying our history are torn down by mobs, while what passes for art and architecture today is perverted, frivolous and inconsequential. There are no masterpieces of literature created in our rotting society. The only thing that matters is monetizing content and number of eyeballs. Quality is non-existent, overridden by quantity and replaceability. Movies and television programs are created by untalented hacks, responding to focus groups, and required to insert the required racial and homosexually woke storylines into every program.
There are no Godfathers or Casablancas being produced. There are no novelists writing masterpieces on par with Steinbeck or Hemingway. But we do have Cardi B belting out her best-selling song WAP (acronym for Wet-Ass Pussy) and Sports Illustrated with transgender and obese swimsuit models. Based on TV commercials, 90% of Americans are either black, in an interracial relationship, gay, or transgender. We are an epically unserious society. Anyone observing America and most of the western world in an impartial manner would have to conclude we are already living in a new Dark Age of ignorance, superstition, and degradation, even before the final collapse of empire.  Hank Willis Thomas Sculpture Honoring Martin Luther King Jr on Boston Common
While doing research on the Dark Ages I was surprised to stumble across some climate related information which puts the current hysterical climate change narrative in perspective. The current war on CO2, cow farts, petroleum powered vehicles, farmers, and human beings living in peace, is nothing more than an agenda to depopulate the planet, make our lives miserable, and further enrich those controlling the narrative, flying on private jets, vacationing on enormous yachts, and living in 50 room mansions in the Hamptons.
The green agenda is built on taxing you more, with zero impact on climate, while virtue signaling success. Meanwhile, the sun and power within our earth’s core will dictate our climate, despite all fruitless manmade efforts to have an impact. George Carlin’s The Planet is Fine diatribe captures the hypocrisy of humans thinking they matter at all when it comes to the planet.
 Solar Cycles-Brey and Eddy Solar Cycles
As you can discern, Rome flourished during a warming period and the Dark Ages coincided with a cooling period. Neither was due to human activity, petroleum products, not recycling enough, or cow farts. It was due to solar and volcanic activity, which may have gone hand in hand in creating the dynamics that made the Dark Ages dark. The Little Ice Age coincided with the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715 when sunspots were at a minimum. Major volcanic eruptions in the 13th century, dimming sunlight across the planet also contributed to the cooling of the planet.
It seems recent studies of ice cores by real scientists confirm the period around 536 AD may have been the worst time to live on our planet in history. A cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland in 536 AD spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere, producing a mysterious fog plunging Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. Snow fell during the summer in China. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by Bubonic plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640.  Natural disasters on European society
Humans will always be at the mercy of Mother Nature, the sun, and the volcanic activity within the bowels of our planet. Taxes, recycling, and electric cars won’t have one iota of impact on the future of the planet. The impact of little or no sun over the course of years led to crop failures, famine and plague, bathing sixth-century Europe in darkness and despair. Crops cannot grow without sun. Hunger and lack of vitamin D left the populations susceptible to disease. The bubonic plague killed half the inhabitants of the Eastern Roman Empire during these dark days, hastening its collapse.
With no wheat, there was no bread, a staple of the diet in those days. The people of Europe were occupied with survival, living a brutish existence, leaving little time for cultural advancement. The trials and tribulations documented throughout history are determined by a combination of controllable human actions and uncontrollable natural causes.  Under dark skies, St Augustine brings a message of Christian hope to 6th-century King Ethelbert of Kent. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images
Our helplessness at the hands of nature happens every day across the globe, with the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami and the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami deadly reminders of our vulnerability and powerlessness. We already know Schwab, Soros, Gates, Tedros, and the rest of the Great Reset New World Order cabal are actively attempting to bring down the American Empire and replace it with a global oligarchy, where we own nothing, and they own it all. Using climate change as their cudgel, they are already conducting a war on farmers, purposely restricting the output of food for the masses.
Combined with rampant raging central bank created inflation across the world, wars being conducted in breadbasket regions of the globe, and extreme drought conditions in key agricultural regions, the landscape is already in the danger zone. With Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano showing signs of a major eruption, and hundreds of other dormant volcanoes around the world capable of eruptions on par with the 536 AD eruption, it’s only a matter of when, not if. Many scientists postulate the Sun has entered into the modern Grand Solar Minimum (2022–2053) that will lead to a significant reduction of solar magnetic field and activity like during Maunder minimum, leading to noticeable reduction of terrestrial temperature. We have zero control or influence over these events.  AMECAMECA, MEXICO – MAY 23: Popocatepetl volcano spews incandescent material as seen from Paso de Cortés on May 23, 2023 in Amecameca, Mexico. The second highest volcano in the country increased its activity while Mexican authorities raised the alert to yellow phase 3. Popocatepetl volcano caused the fall of ashes in different municipalities in Puebla, Estado de Mexico and Mexico City. Mexican army has spread forces as a preventive measure while the 3 levels of government are in coordination to observe the activity of the volcano and the situation in the surroundings. (Photo by Cristopher Rogel Blanquet/Getty Images)
Quotes from Tacitus nearly 2,000 years ago are proof human nature never changes and the cycles of history repeat themselves across empires. Biden’s illegal executive orders, disregard of the Constitution, and blatant corruption, along with the regime media suppressing legitimate dissent about Fauci’s lies, Pfizer’s falsification of trial data, and the FDA colluding with Twitter to censor doctors, fit perfectly into Tacitus’ view of the world.
 CORONAVIRUS-BIDEN-FAUCI
The traitorous acts of Obama, Biden, Clinton, Comey, Brennan and the entire FBI and CIA complex in conducting a coup against a duly elected president and then covering up their treason with the full cooperation of the regime media was and still is an audacious crime. These crimes are fully detailed in the Durham Report and on Hunter Biden’s laptop, but no one will go to jail, because half the country supports the crime the other half is apathetic and uninterested, and our elected leaders are in on it. Two thousand years and nothing changes.
 spies who lie
The American Empire is displaying all the worst attributes of Rome in its death throes, as the oligarchy grows more audacious, knowing they are illegitimate, but unconcerned with being brought to justice because they control the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government. They fear no one and dare the peasants to try and stop them. The oligarchs provoke crisis, chaos, fear, and strife. They hide in the shadows, functioning as an invisible governing power, manipulating the minds of the masses, in their psychotic belief they can control and rule the world because they are superior in intellect, integrity, and ability to envision the future.
This relatively small circle of psychopaths, who have gotten the empire into this mess, grow ever more powerful as they lead us on a path to disaster. Their hubris and an arrogant disregard for the wishes of the people, belief in their own invincibility, and not fearing any retribution for their crimes of treason, leave them at the top of a crumbling empire – so they will have the farthest to fall.
Everything about our empire is unsustainable. Ultimately it will collapse financially under the weight of its unpayable debts. With psychopaths running the show who believe they can win a two front war against Russia and China, we will be lucky if our empire isn’t just a pile of smoldering ruins when they are done with it. There is absolutely no way to vote ourselves out of this because the Deep State counts the votes.
The dissenters are not united enough to shoot our way out of this. You can run, but you can’t hide from the impact of the coming collapse. The unknown ingredient to this toxic mixture of death is nature’s influence. If a volcanic eruption, or several volcanic eruptions on par with the 536 AD occurrence, were to happen concurrently with economic collapse, the earth’s population of 8 billion would be drastically reduced in short order.  Amish Community: The Caretakers Of The Earth
At this point, the best we could hope for is a relatively non-violent collapse where the critical thinking self-reliant people would migrate to rural regions and learn to live off the land again. The simple life of thriving day to day based on your own efforts, along with the efforts of your small homogeneous community, is the likely destiny for millions. No one is coming to save us. We’ll have to save ourselves. We happened to be born at a juncture of history where a Fourth Turning crisis ended an empire. We didn’t choose our fate, but we need to prepare and make the best of our situation.
I find nothing more appropriate to visually represent our clownworld empire falling than a picture of a dwarf clown, smoking a cigarette while holding a bouquet of wilted flowers in the pouring rain in front of a defunct circus tent. If the clown shoe fits, wear it. The season is turning. A time to be born, a time to die
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Once Trust Has Been Lost, There’s No Going Backby Tyler Durden, 08May2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/once-trust-has-been-lost-theres-no-going-back Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, Now that the overlapping crises are upon us and the banquet of consequences is being served, we’ll see just who our elites and leadership really are.
The erosion of trust doesn’t require intent, it only requires the blind pursuit of self-interest above all else. Trust is fundamentally reciprocity and honesty: to build trust, we must each perform our agreed-upon responsibilities and be truthful about our performance and actions.  US Social Trust Lies, obfuscation, misdirection and the sins of omission are all Kryptonite to trust. Those who put the pursuit of self-interest above all else like to think they can finesse their greed by omitting the truth rather than presenting a fabrication / lie. But being social animals whose survival ultimately rests on trust, humans are keenly sensitive to the difference between the truth / honesty and self-serving prevarications such as the sins of omission.
America’s elites and those living large in protected fiefdoms have persuaded themselves that their relentless pursuit of self-interest has no cost or consequence. Conveniently ignoring Adam Smith’s volume on the moral foundations needed to support capitalism, they think “the invisible hand” of the market is nothing more than a feeding frenzy of self-serving greed, and so their relentless pursuit of self-interest will somehow magically transform their looting and free-riding into a stable economy and society.  Share of Total Net Worth of the Middle Class
This is why trust has been lost in America. Everyone with any hold on power uses that power solely to benefit themselves and their cronies, under the tissue-thin guise of “serving the public” (or even more egregiously, “doing God’s work”–please hand me a barf-bag…).
When everyone is issuing an endless spew of BS to cover their own self-enrichment, trust is eroded and then lost. When everyone with any shred of power is scrambling to free-ride the system to serve their private interests above all else, the system itself can no longer be trusted.
This is why institutions have lost public trust. Those happily ensconced in a politically powerful fiefdom can increase their private gains at the expense of the public interest without any worries that the public can ever make it through the complexity thickets they’ve erected to ring-fence their fiefdom.
The elites rig the system behind flimsy legal screens and declare the system one of “endless opportunity” without mentioning some are more equal than others. Markets are rigged, politics is theater and those in the know gloat as their personal fortunes expand like clockwork.  Share of Total Net Worth of the Top 1 Percent
All of this is betrayal of the public trust and the public interest, and betrayal has a cost and consequence: trust is lost. Betrayal hurts because we believed the pretenses and promises of the lying, cheating prevaricator. Once the truth seeps out, we’re done with the liar / free-rider / self-serving BSer.
This is where we are: trust has been lost and there’s no going back. As the first chart above illustrates, social trust–our willingness to trust strangers–has declined for decades. There are many threads in this decline, but one is that everyone has transmogrified into a scammer or grifter, trying to extract something from us while giving us nothing in return except empty promises, phony gratitude or the pretense of reciprocity.
What exactly is the difference between the beggar with a phony story, a politician “explaining” a new junk fee or a private-sector elite rigging the system to benefit their enterprise? There is no difference. All are masking their pursuit of self-interest behind a phony story. The beggar’s story of needing $10 for gas is obviously threadbare; so too are the stories of pickpocketing “leaders” and SillyCon Valley monopolists.
As the chart below shows, the middle class that once trusted markets, institutions and civic leaders has seen its share of the national wealth decline as the top 1%’s share increased. Wealth wasn’t “grown,” it was transferred. Eventually “investors” finally accept they’re nothing but marks for the financial elite to skim and scam and so they exit the fake 3-card-monte “market.” The skimmers and scammers, bereft of marks, whine and beg for a return to the good old days when they could exploit all the trusting marks.  Percentage household financial assets in stocks 1950 -1985
Those who have looted the public trust for their own private gain now decry the loss of trust. Their tears are as fake as all their other stories. What they mourn is the marks awakening to their endless skims and scams, and the opting out of those who’ve finally had enough.
Everything’s gone so well that those with wealth and power have been able to pretend to be fantastic. But now that the overlapping crises are upon us and the banquet of consequences is being served, we’ll see just who our elites and leadership really are.  Overlapping Crises: “Solutions” Are Now Mutually Reinforcing Problems
Pretending will no longer work, and all the self-serving prevarications in the world will no longer shield us from the consequences of a society stripped of public trust.  When things go wrong in life, that is when it shows who you are. When things go well, everyone can pretend to be fantastic.
Once trust has been destroyed, there’s no going back. * * * |
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The Extinction Event Hitting Corporate Media…by Tyler Durden, 12May2023 – https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/extinction-event-hitting-corporate-media Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com, MSM went “all-in” on a discredited COVID narrative.Since the pandemic I’ve been saying that confidence in the mainstream, corporate press has been irreparably damaged. After four years of non-stop Trump Derangement Syndrome so intense that even some liberals were wondering if the press had gone overboard on editorializing – Covid hit, and a lot of normies now see the MSM for what it really is: agitprop and brainwashing.
Cancel culture and censorship reached such absurd levels that we started to see an exodus of high profile reporters (Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, et al) exiting corporate news outlets and setting up on their own, after they committed the sin of colouring outside the lines of establishment precepts. The MSM went all-in in Covid, but every core tenet of the Covid narrative has since fallen apart:
Not good.  Russian TV test Pattern
With the tempo being set by numerous media collapses, especially by overtly “woke” ones: Buzzfeed’s bankruptcy, Vice circling the drain – and television viewership plummeting, the stage was set for a few key moments that will be remembered as defining the extinction level event rolling through corporate media: #1) The Rise of Dark CarlsonAfter Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, the number 1 pundit on television with the highest viewership today, he didn’t go to a rival network (Newsmax offered him $25 million), he decided to take his own show out on Twitter.
 Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist-tweet-9May2023-This is a defining moment in the extinction event Apparently, on his own, not part of any deal with Elon Musk, Carlson is just letting it all hang out. In one of his first installments, he called into question the 9/11 narrative (Why did Building 7 just fall into its own footprint for no reason?). It prompted one observer to coin the term “Dark Carlson” for what is transpiring via this channel. #2) The Schism of RFK Jr. coverageRFK Jr, having thrown his hat into the ring to challenge Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, immediately drew fire from the MSM, having unilaterally decided that anything RFK says is automatically “misinformation” (see the closing remarks on “rhetorical circularity”, below). RFK Jr, for his part, created an account on Nostr.
 Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist-tweet-11May2023-Nothing epitomizes the Industrial Age vs Network Era Nostr is a fast growing decentralized social media network, contrast with Twitter – which is governed by the vagaries and whims of whomever owns it – Nostr is decentralized at the server level to relays (which anybody can run) at the the account level to individual users. This protocol is spreading like wildfire and it’s beyond censorship.
The juxtoposition between a sclerotic, industrial era, mediocre network clutching their pearls over RFK’s “misinformation” and RFK showing up on Nostr tells us a lot.
While this is not seen as much of a big deal yet, this is a signal worth paying attention to. #3) CNN’s disastrous town-hall with TrumpI didn’t watch it, and when you look at the reporting on it, both left and right traditional outlets are declaring victory – but the reality is that CNN pulled the plug on it 20 minutes earlier than scheduled (ten key moments here).
Love him or hate him, Trump draws attention and viewers unlike any other personality – and the fact that CNN drew the curtain early signals one thing: it was a disaster for the network and probably didn’t hurt Trump. After deftly manipulating a hostile media and leveraging social media cunning to win the presidency in 2016, it doesn’t look like the MSM has learned much. When the media falls, so does the system it supportsWhen the Soviet Empire fell in 1989 – 1990, anybody predicting it even months earlier would have been ridiculed. When it happened it took everybody by surprise (even the CIA) and unfolded at astonishing speed (Victor Sebestyen’s Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire covers it brilliantly).
Things move even quicker today – where we are in the early innings of what will possibly be the final financial crisis of the fiat money system.
In another great book about Late Stage Communism, “Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More“, Alexey Yurchak chronicles the hyper-normality that saturated the zeitgeist during “the last Soviet Generation”. The “Dead Irony” chapter outlines the ingenious forms of unauthorized humour.
A contemporary parallel is when you come across a Twitter account that exhibits such over-the-top support for All The Latest Things™ that you can’t tell if its satire or not. That is a type of performative dissidence called “Stiob” (unless it’s real).
Yurchak’s examination of “the hegemony over meta-discourse” and it’s disintegration ring eerily familiar to those keeping score today. One example is what he called “rhetorical circularity”: in our case it means that anything the MSM refuses to cover is “misinformation”, because there are no MSM citations to support it.
As I frequently comment, we’re in Late Stage Globalism. While many view Covid as the gateway to a “Great Reset” technocracy – it looks to me like it was instead, the a-c-c-e-l-e-r-a-t-i-o-n event of the millennia.
I’m not an accelerationist and the elites are certainly still pushing hard for that WEF-style authoritarianism.
But I’m just an observer and I’m here to tell you, that is what’s happening. Given the nature of technological compounding (“Future Shock”, as Alvin Toffler called way back in 1970), accelerationism is somewhat baked in and we just have to watch the implosion of corporate media (not to mention the self-destruction of Woke capitalism) to know it is happening. * * * |
