Tag: politicians

Political + Business Monopolies = Mismanagement Squared: California & PG&E Blackout

Fuel treatments demonstrably protect the tracts on which they are performed. This image shows how treatment protected the previously thinned acres when the Northern California Goat Fire of 2000 swept through. In addition to protecting the treated acres themselves, it is believed that strategically located thinnings can stall the overall spread of wildfires, thus protecting acres beyond those treated.

What is extremely sad is the fact that it usually takes years to see the dysfunction, many time unseen at first, that comes from decisions made by those that have little to no skin in the game. In this case, political decisions in the 1990s, some good intentions, could result in unintended consequences in 2018 and beyond. Business joined at the hip with government is a recipe for disaster. Pure Crap-italism brought California this below instead!

In the recent ‘Watts Up With That’ article on the intentional PG&E blackout for a million or more California residents away from the metro areas to prevent wild fires, Anthony Watts rightly lays blame where it needs to be laid:

To better understand how we came to this forced blackout, it is useful to look to the past. When the gold rush led to modern California, early photographers chronicled the landscape .. the wildlife biologist depicted a California countryside of grassland with isolated stands of pines and oaks. The native Americans in the region frequently used fire to shape the landscape to increase the food available for them, as not a lot of sustenance grows on a dense forest floor.

Watts outlines the natural and then outlines what the last 150 years has brought California:

But with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Americans came a thriving economy and the order of government. Trees were useful and valuable, and therefore harvested. Fire was a threat to towns and cities, and thus, suppressed.

For decades, up until the 1970s, California would harvest and replant about as much wood as could be grown through an abundance of sunshine, snow, and rain. But in the 1990s, concern over logging’s effect on the spotted owl (largely misplaced, as time would tell) led to a massive slowdown in the timber harvest, especially on the federal lands that make up about 60 percent of California’s forests.

With a decline in the harvest came a decline in the allied efforts to clear brush, build and maintain access roads and firebreaks. This led inexorably to a decades’ long build-up in the fuel load. Federal funds set aside for increasingly unpopular forest management efforts were instead shifted to fire-suppression expenses.

It must be noted, that the usual suspects have not been mentioned. This is because it has been the “answer” for every question since “experts” predicted Global Cooling in the 1970s and Global Warming in the 1990s who now fly the flag Climate Change as their mantra. Fact is, California is not hotter and drier due to man-made environmental impact, but annual precipitation totals over the past 100 years show no statistically meaningful trend.

In a stroke of some innovative thinking, there was a 2006 report by the Western Governors Association that promoted the use of technological advances to adjust for the overreaction to environmental concerns. The report noted that:

“over time the fire-prone forests that were not thinned, burn in uncharacteristically destructive wildfires… …In the long term, leaving forests overgrown and prone to unnaturally destructive wildfires means there will be significantly less biomass on the ground, and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

Their solution was to construct Biomass facilities which can provide power in the kilowatt range to farms and light industry or in the multi-megawatt
range to communities, campuses and industrial complexes. These qualities alone make biomass the most diverse, complex and strategic renewable resource in the region.

Of course, innovative thinking rarely impacts those who are content with the status quo, and so now over a decade later, when the rubber meets the road, and crisis emerges, politicians look to shift the blame:

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, supports the blackout as a preventive measure, noting that the planned power cut “shows that PG&E finally woke up to their responsibility to keep people safe.”

Ironically, it was former Gov. Jerry Brown that changed his tune in recent years as it became apparent that environmental protection turned out to be a worse Rx for the environment (kind of like the typical political wars where their prescription is worse than the “disease”, like The War on Drugs, The War on Poverty, The War on Terror, etc):

California politicians, late to realize the true nature of the wildfire danger, have finally started to play catch-up. Last year, outgoing four-term Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown reversed his longtime reluctance to active forest management when he signed two bills into law, both of which passed on the last day of the legislative session in what was to become California’s deadliest wildfire year.

SB 901 allocated $190 million a year to use prescribed burns to reduce the fuel load while improving forest health, while SB 1260 made three important policy changes to streamline the ability to conduct prescribed and controlled burns; remove air quality impediments to preventive burns; and prevent environmental quality lawsuits from slowing or stopping needed burns.

So it looks like big business married to big government has once again brought about a worse scenario than if they had been kept out of the monopolization of power (no pun intended) for those in Northern California that have escaped the urban areas. Just think what smaller utilities companies in competition along with county governments could have done for those in these areas verses what bureaucrats did in Sacramento! Instead, look at what politicians have done:

In all likelihood, these measures will prove to be too little, too late for rural Californians, many of whom flocked to build along what is known as the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) where land was cheaper and housing costs far less than in California’s dense and heavily regulated urban centers.

The environmentalists who hold sway over much of the California political class chafe at these homes along the edge of the forest and chaparral, calling for development restrictions and special fire taxes to discourage low-cost housing in rural areas and around the suburban periphery.

And now, as the result of forest mismanagement by both the federal government and California, many homeowners living out in the WUI can no longer obtain fire insurance. No fire insurance, no mortgage. No mortgage, no house. Today, it would also appear, no electricity as well.

Like many other states, you have the urban areas that hold most of the decision-making power and then you have the rural areas that are at the mercy of big-money men hundreds of miles away.

It was not meant to be this way, for in my sequel to this post, I will explain that one of the two versions of America saw things very differently. The root of where we (as well as the rural Californians) are today is from decisions made in the late 1700s right on up to the 1860s and beyond. Once again, democracy renders a nation hostage to the majority and powerful and marginalizes those who live and act differently. Democracy is the road one takes when on the way to Socialism, Marxism and Communism.

Stay tuned.

-SF1

1868: When You Think You Have Been Taught All You Need to Know: Andrew Johnson – Impeached But Not Convicted

Impeachment proceedings in the US Senate 1868

Back in the day, when the newspaper would list all those convicted in the local courts, you (and I) probably developed a bias towards that person. Especially if you knew of the crime and all what was written in the paper you (and I) felt we knew the whole story and if we ever met that person on the street, there probably would have been no meeting of the eyes.

However, if you knew that person, the person’s character and past history and things did not seem to line up, you might have had doubts, but in the end if the courts (i.e. State) did their job, they must have been guilty as charged.

But, if you had been “there”, witnessed the “crime”, maybe that is when the court’s performance might have been suspect. We hear all the time these days, quietly, how convictions from decades ago are overturned due to DNA testing or false positives on hair samples, etc.

Also, if one has just been accused of a “crime” and has to go through the very public fight for justice, there is a blemish on their record in our eyes that their character is flawed and that they can’t be trusted.

All this to say, when you compare the reputation of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson in the State’s textbooks, it is the comparison of “good” and “bad” respectively.  Right there is a hint that something might not be right, because if the State’s narrative suggests Andrew Johnson is indeed bad, and that the State is known to lie, well then, why don’t we research Andrew Johnson himself and determine who he really might be, since we weren’t there and we don’t personally know him.

From the Abbeville Institute comes a sort but informative overview of Andrew’s life, from humble beginnings to his days as the president of the United States right as the War of Northern Aggression (Civil War) concluded and how the general government should treat the states that left (according to them) or wanted to leave (according to Lincoln and his supporters).

Andrew Johnson was born into poverty in rural North Carolina. His father died after saving some town locals from drowning and left the family to fend for themselves in a two-room shack. A young Andrew began working as a tailor’s apprentice and developed an appreciation for the laboring class early on. Johnson was poorly educated and learned how to write from his wife, while he was still working as a tailor.

Michael Martin – Abbeville Institute “Lessons in Conservatism from Andrew Johnson”

OK, so he was not like Lincoln, born in a log cabin, but he did have very humble beginnings. A self-made man whose passions led him into politics, but NOT as a politician, oh no, his idols were statesmen!

Johnson admired true statesmen, hated politicians, and was most conservative when it came to government spending. He would debate anything that required the expenditure of public funds, having introduced bills to reduce Congressional salaries and even opposed proposals like the Smithsonian Institute because he thought it would be an unjust burden on the treasury.

Michael Martin – Abbeville Institute “Lessons in Conservatism from Andrew Johnson”

Johnson also had “ownership” in how the country’s revenue was spent. Undoubtedly, his time as a politician especially during the war years showed him how easily that money could be squandered by all those bureaucrats that had no “skin in the game”.

When Johnson faced Reconstruction, he was initially welcomed by Radical Republicans that wanted to punish the South. However, Johnson’s plan differed from Lincoln’s only slightly, favored leniency, and virtually ignored the freed slaves. This put him at odds with the radical plan for the South to be run by a bayonet, carpetbag government. Most narratives portray Johnson as a Southern racist who wanted to deny equality to newly freed slaves. Johnson, however, had stated years before that he supported emancipation and was mostly opposed to the outrageous spending habits of Congress.

Michael Martin – Abbeville Institute “Lessons in Conservatism from Andrew Johnson”

We see here that in summary, Johnson’s philosophical views differed from his political opponents in the House and Senate of the US Government. That was all it took for impeachment to take place. When Johnson tried to follow the letter of the law, the Constitution, and keep from squandering the people’s money, he was brought up on trumped (no pun intended) charges.

On the issue of the Freedmen’s Bureau, for example, Johnson vetoed a bill to make it permanent and then three days later gave a speech where he charged Congress with seeking to destroy the fundamental principles of the Constitution. His exact words were that “There is an attempt to concentrate the power of the Government in the hands of a few, and thereby bring about a consolidation, which is equally dangerous and objectionable with separation.”

Michael Martin – Abbeville Institute “Lessons in Conservatism from Andrew Johnson”

In my mind, the previous president (Lincoln) paid so little attention to the US Constitution that the Congress felt that it was to be a free for all! The former president in fact, never validated the fact that the 11 states that left the union actually did so, because as a lawyer he knew he could use post-Constitution laws to justify “putting down a general rebellion / insurrection” for all his war efforts in the south. The spouse (in his mind, actually 11 spouses) that left needed to be beat back into the home. Now that the spouse was back in the home, the Congress wanted to abuse her even more and Johnson said NO!

In his veto of the Freedmen’s Bureau bill, Johnson explained that opposed it because he was against a military government of the South, against the unlimited distribution of funds to former slaves and their families, and against taking land away from Southerners. In Johnson’s mind, the defeated Southern states were part of the Union and did not need further punishing, and he broke down how virtually every part of the Freedmen’s Bureau bill was incompatible with the Constitution. His main focus was on government spending and the fact that the Constitution was not designed to guarantee any type of special privileges, just basic rights.

Michael Martin – Abbeville Institute “Lessons in Conservatism from Andrew Johnson”

The Radical Republicans indeed wanted a dependency class in the south and the newly freed blacks was to be that class and it remained that way until 1877 in the military districts that were formed to further suck the life out of this abused spouse yet again.

This is effectively what the Northern Union / US Government did to the south. Recovery in this region would take a century economically however, psychologically, it’s culture has never been the same.

Andrew Johnson can be shown as about the only Unionist who cared, and so he was targeted and marginalized in all the US History books published these days.

Four million slaves were emancipated and given an equal chance and fair start to make their own support-to work and produce; and having worked and produced, to have their own property and apply it to their own support. But the Freedmen’s Bureau comes and says we must take charge of these 4,000,000 slaves. The bureau comes along and proposes, at an expense of a fraction less than $12,000,000 a year, to take charge of these slaves. You had already expended $3,000,000,000 to set them free and give them a fair opportunity to take care of themselves -then these gentlemen, who are such great friends of the people, tell us they must be taxed $12,000,000 to sustain the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Andrew Johnson 1866 in Cleveland, OH

So the slavery of 4 million souls in 1865 transferred into the tax slavery of 350 souls in 2018 as the cancer of centralized government continues to suck the life out of all who remain, and there are no Andrew Johnsons allowed to enter politics and gain any political power again.

“Johnson, in fact, continually upheld his oath of office, making him one of the best presidents in American history.”

Brion McClanahan

-SF1

War’s Value to the Politician, Lifelong Warmonger vs. a Father

Politicians think in terms of election cycles, getting elected the next time is their highest priority. Beyond this, it is either the money the can make along the way from lobbyists, or the power they hold while in office, or the lucrative post-political job they can get to pave their way to retirement.

Warmongers are a different breed. War offers an expediency towards things they value most, an elite status that protects them from the everyday, they dream of empire and destruction of everything in the way of that empire.

“This is the way the kind of king you’re talking about operates. He’ll take your sons and make soldiers of them—chariotry, cavalry, infantry, regimented in battalions and squadrons. He’ll put some to forced labor on his farms, plowing and harvesting, and others to making either weapons of war or chariots in which he can ride in luxury. He’ll put your daughters to work as beauticians and waitresses and cooks. He’ll conscript your best fields, vineyards, and orchards and hand them over to his special friends. He’ll tax your harvests and vintage to support his extensive bureaucracy. Your prize workers and best animals he’ll take for his own use. He’ll lay a tax on your flocks and you’ll end up no better than slaves. The day will come when you will cry in desperation because of this king you so much want for yourselves…” 1 Samuel 8 – God’s Warning via Samuel

Fathers think and act very differently as their heart is with the next generations. Fathers think on legacy, think of love and selflessness, and would rather deal with war themselves than let their kids deal with it. Fathers would be willing to look like a fool to take the focus off the object of their affection, their son or daughter. Fathers would wage war, as a very last resort, to give their ancestors and their community more freedom and liberty. With freedom their offspring are most likely to thrive in bringing innovative value to others in their community. Sharing the fruits of what they love to do to others who can trade or barter back the fruits of their own talents and gifts. This exchange is called an economy, an environment of cooperation and friendship!

Jeff Deist from the Mises Institute has a short article out today about war, where he states:

Why do seemingly endless military conflicts persist, despite lacking any constituency for their prosecution beyond the DC beltway? And why does US military strategy appear incoherent and counterproductive, when viewed through the lens of peace? Why can’t we do anything about this, no matter whom we elect and no matter how much war fatigue resides in the American public?

The answer is not found in a facile denunciation of the military industrial complex or war profiteers, though both are very serious problems. The answer lies in understanding how the DC War Party operates. Its goals are not ours. It is not democratic; the government is not “us.” It is not political; its architects are permanent fixtures who do not come and go with presidential administrations. It is not accountable; budgeting is nonexistent and gross failures only beget greater funding. It is above all not “economic” — it operates in an artificial “market,” one created and perpetuated by wars and interventions ordinary people don’t want. War socialism, or what former Congressman Barney Frank brilliantly termed “military Keynesianism,” has taken on a life of its own.

War taken to the edges of our world are accomplished by an elite who operate in a cocoon of their own making, insulated from their decisions, while in true sociopathic style, have zero empathy for those caught up in their unleashed hell on earth.

Ludwig von Mises experienced this first hand:

Ludwig von Mises saw peace as the key to any liberal economic program, and argued strenuously against the fallacy of war prosperity. Even early in his career, before his horrific experiences as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I, he recognized the critical distinction between economy and war: the former characterized by exchange and cooperation, the latter marked by the worst form of state intervention:

“Only one thing can conquer war — that liberal attitude which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation, and which can never wish to bring about a war, because it regards war as injurious even to the victors.”

The victors DO pay a cost even when they do in fact win the war. In the movie ‘The Patriot’ (2000) the fictional main actor Benjamin Martin says at the close of the movie about reflecting on what we have won and what we have lost. There is a cost to war:

.. the loss is not only economic, it is also cultural and moral. War, the ultimate rejection of reason as a means of navigating human society, reduces our capacity for compassion and makes us complacent about atrocities. Worst of all, it emboldens and strengthens the domestic state — encouraging us to accept absurdities like TSA theater and SWAT teams with leftover military vehicles operating in peaceful small towns.

The small town life of the 1950s, the 1910s or the regional societies of the 1840s and 1780s are no more. Culturally and morally the society we have today in the United States is bankrupt. With the government’s effective pacification of the church via 501C3 exemptions, even the Christian religion has next to zero influence in changing or reforming society. Only an underground non-official movement of Jesus followers could positively impact this empire like it did to the Roman Empire in the First Century.

Until then, the atrocities abroad come home to roost.

 While US troops remain mired throughout the Middle East, a subsurface political war heats up in the US. This cold civil war creates the kind of hyper-politicized society progressives once only dreamed of. Social media outlets encourage even the most ill-informed and ill-intentioned voices to spread hatred against those with differing views. Goodwill doesn’t translate, so fake bravado hidden behind anonymity or distance are the order of the day. Epithets like “racist,” fascist,” “Nazi” and worse become cheap currency in the new vocabulary of meaningless words. Dissenting voices lose jobs, reputations, and access to popular platforms. Mobs form to attack political opponents in restaurants and shops, shout down campus events, and threaten online disclosure of their perceived enemies’ personal information.

The estimate length of time the US Military expects to be in Afghanistan is the same as it has been for Germany and Japan .. OVER 50 YEARS!

Jeff Deist ends his article with a dire prediction:

The hawkishness of neoconservatives and the “democratic socialism” of progressives both lead in the same direction, toward economic destruction and war. If you think American society is polarized and prone to lashing out abroad now, what happens with a shrinking economy and 40% unemployment?

The end of the rope experience like present day Venezuela may very well come to the American Empire. Prepare yourself and your family appropriately with self defense training and skills, adjust economically, be strategic psychologically,  and most importantly, get right spiritually toward being a loving father or mother of your kids, your extended family and friends as well as others in society in the future. Be ready to be a light in the darkness.

SF1

 

Yet Another War Fought by Another Generation of Americans – For WHAT?

As a kid who grew up hearing the lyrics of “War” by Edwin Starr:

War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing ..

Oh, war, I despise
‘Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears to thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go to fight
And lose their lives ..
.. and I still volunteered to join the US Navy in 1976 after the Vietnam War, thinking this country learned from that experience that was based on the lie of “Gulf of Tonkin” incident. Only later, after Gulf War II did I learn that not only Vietnam was based on a lie, but so too was the UN Korean conflict that the US joined, as well as the “surprise” (lie) attack on Pearl Harbor that had this country join in WWII .. as well as the sinking of the “civilian” (lie) ship Lusitania prompting the US to join in WWI. I knew that the Spanish-American War was based on a lie (USS Maine blown up in Havana, Cuba was NOT accomplished by the Spanish) .. but the further I go back the more I understand that truth is the first thing sacrificed with nation’s politicians consider war. So it is past time to evaluate the 17 year war in Afghanistan, as another generation of kids continue the fight there.
As a father, I was late in advising my own boys as to the nature of war, the American Empire and the way this country has been using new generations of our kids as cannon fodder through the decades going back several centuries. I am blessed that my kids were more wise than I was especially after Gulf War II was launched. I am hopeful that my writings today help their kids critically think through these things before they consider joining OR being drafted into the American Empire’s military.
Here is a veteran’s take ( excerpt and book ) on the Afghanistan War. The Moon of Alabama led me to this resource. I will use some of their dialog to reflect on this war in the context of all the other’s this nation has initiated since Moon of Alabama actually goes BEYOND what this book does and gets to the root of the issue.

The piece includes remarkably strong words about the strategic (in)abilities of U.S. politicians, high ranking officers and pundits:

On one matter there can be no argument: The policies that sent these men and women abroad, with their emphasis on military action and their visions of reordering nations and cultures, have not succeeded. It is beyond honest dispute that the wars did not achieve what their organizers promised, no matter the party in power or the generals in command. Astonishingly expensive, strategically incoherent, sold by a shifting slate of senior officers and politicians and editorial-page hawks, the wars have continued in varied forms and under different rationales each and every year since passenger jets struck the World Trade Center in 2001. They continue today without an end in sight, reauthorized in Pentagon budgets almost as if distant war is a presumed government action.

That description is right but it does not touche the underlying causes…

Underlying causes? Go on sir, set the all important context to what many writers state as mean fact without doing more homework:

… The main military outpost in the valley was build on a former sawmill. Chivers writes:

On a social level, it could not have been much worse. It was an unforced error of occupation, a set of foreign military bunkers built on the grounds of a sawmill and lumber yard formerly operated by Haji Mateen, a local timber baron…

What is missing here is WHY this sawmill was abandoned:

Ten years ago a piece by Elizabeth Rubin touched on this:

As the Afghans tell the story, from the moment the Americans arrived in 2001, the Pech Valley timber lords and warlords had their ear. Early on, they led the Americans to drop bombs on the mansion of their biggest rival — Haji Matin. The air strikes killed several members of his family, according to local residents, and the Americans arrested others and sent them to the prison at Bagram Air Base. The Pech Valley fighters working alongside the Americans then pillaged the mansion. And that was that. Haji Matin, already deeply religious, became ideological and joined with Abu Ikhlas, a local Arab linked to the foreign jihadis…

S**T .. so this effort in Afghanistan is built on past military mistakes (but not in their eyes because continuous war means missions and money .. but I digress)

The U.S. special forces lacked any knowledge of the local society. But even worse was that they lacked the curiosity to research and investigate the social terrain. They simply trusted their new ‘friend’, the smooth talking Pashtun timber baron, and called in jets to destroy his competitor’s sawmill and home. This started a local war of attrition which defeated the U.S. military. In 2010 the U.S. military, having achieved nothing, retreated from Korengal..

Does this not sounds like Vietnam? Fighting for the same hill time after time while trying to “save democracy”? This is as bad as Abraham Lincoln’s “save the Union” bulls**t .. and if you still think he is “honest”, you have some research to do. The “Union” post 1865 was nothing like pre-1861 .. and this country post 1787 (Constitution replaces the Article of Confederation) is nothing like pre-1787. In fact, post Revolutionary War politics kept much of the previous pre-1776 politics with just a flag change when it was all said and done. Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion found this out the hard way.

Back to Afghanistan, as Moon of Alabama concludes:

… Back to Chivers’ otherwise well written piece. He looks at the results two recent (and ongoing) U.S. wars:

The governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, each of which the United States spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build and support, are fragile, brutal and uncertain. The nations they struggle to rule harbor large contingents of irregular fighters and terrorists who have been hardened and made savvy, trained by the experience of fighting the American military machine.
…
Billions of dollars spent creating security partners also deputized pedophiles, torturers and thieves. National police or army units that the Pentagon proclaimed essential to their countries’ futures have disbanded. The Islamic State has sponsored or encouraged terrorist attacks across much of the world — exactly the species of crime the global “war on terror” was supposed to prevent.

The wars fail because they no reasonable strategic aim or achievable purpose. They are planned by incompetent people…

Incompetent people (generals, deep state and politicians) leading ignorant people (who believe themselves to be patriots who will reserve our freedoms) to death, brokenness (PTSD, etc.) and abuse (at the hands of the VA).

.. The U.S. population and its ‘leaders’ simply know too little about the world to prevail in an international military campaign. They lack curiosity. The origin of the Korengal failure is a good example for that.

U.S. wars are rackets, run on the back of lowly soldiers and foreign civil populations. They enriche few at the cost of everyone else.

Wars should not be ‘a presumed government action’, but the last resort to defend ones country…

Amen.

SF1

Good or Evil? That is the Question

From The Burning Platform

“The greatest want of the world is the want of men — men who will not be bought or sold; men who in their inmost souls are true and honest; men who do not fear to call sin by its right name; men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole; men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.” – Ellen G. White

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an un-uprooted small corner of evil.

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

Each human is just one step, one heartbeat from going down the evil path.

Each state, country, nation does the same. For the US, we have been on the path of evil for quite sometime but it gets prettied up like a pig with lipstick to convince the sheep that we are an honorable people/nation/empire and that we are exceptional. Epic BS.

In this article the author paints the accurate reality when he says:

Until individuals in this country choose to tell the truth and insist on being told the truth by the leaders they choose, chaos and ultimate collapse will be our destiny. Our economy, our currency system, our banking system, our political system, our mass media, and our public education system are built upon nothing but deception, lies, misinformation and falsity. The entire fetid cesspool of lies cannot withstand the glare of truth, as explained by Ron Paul

Lies, damned lies. No wonder suicide is epidemic among vets (who are coming to terms with the empire’s lies and their participation in them) and among the commoners.

I’ve made it my mission in life to only follow rational thinking, honest, straightforward, fact based people who have not been bought off by a party seeking to cheat, mislead, or steal from average Americans.

Single digit percentage of Americans are honest, rational, critical thinkers IMHO. Looking at our political and corporate (these lines are indeed blurred) leaders and managers are rightly painted by the author here:

Very few corporate executives at S&P 500 sized companies meet this standard of honesty. The criteria for reaching the corner office is insatiable greed, backstabbing, lying, and a sociopathic personality. Despite the Wall Street/Fed rigged financial systems and fake news propaganda spewing mainstream corporate media, there are still independent, non-corrupt, truth tellers as the lone voices of reason in this empire of lies.

Truth does emerge in the end, but I sense this path will be very painful for so many who are used to the easy life of believing a fantasy world. You might say things are not so bad .. but consider the data:

The Wall Street cabal puppeteers have had their Federal Reserve puppets dancing to their tune for the last nine years as bailouts, QE, and free money for feckless financiers has propelled their latest bubble to epic proportions. The bubbles in the stock market, bond market and real estate market are all built upon a vaporous foundation of easy money debt. It took 219 years for the country to accumulate a $9.6 trillion national debt, but our fearless leaders have managed to add $11.6 trillion since September 2008, all geared to enrich Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the sick-care complex and mega-corporations, while leaving Main Street to fend for ourselves with stagnant wages and rising costs for necessities. With government, corporate and consumer debt levels at all-time highs, a financial collapse is inevitable. Hundreds of billions of student loan, auto loan, mortgage loans, and credit card debt are unpayable, especially in a rising rate environment.

Ya think? Tax-slaves for generations could not pay down this debt .. what was every one chasing, quick money and quick power?

Go to any 4th of July picnic and your average neighbor or relative will tell you how much their 401k and house value have soared as they have been convinced the economy is booming and on a sound footing.

They won’t tell you their credit card balance, mortgage balance, auto loan debt, or student loan debt obligations. The value of their stocks and real estate can plummet by 50% in a matter of months (as they did in 2001 and 2008), but the debt will remain, wrapped around their throats, choking them to death.

Yes, a lot of tears are on their way. But this is not all bad. Pain is inevitable … gain is optional. Think about who will be true heroes to all those in misery, could the real Jesus followers emerge in the grassroots of the empire to once again console those who lose much in this life, weeping with those who week and giving them Hope through introducing them to a Papa that is especially fond of them? This has happened before and it turned the empire upside-down.

Choice. That is what each of us is faced with.

Who is to blame for the current state of affairs? The Deep State? Shadowy oligarchs? Politicians? The Jews? The Russians? There is one commonality – human beings are the members of each group. Humans have created the problems plaguing the world. Humans choose to act in a good or evil manner. Humans decide whether to lie or tell the truth. Humans decide whether to be driven by greed, power seeking, selfishness and hubris or generosity, citizenship, sacrifice and humility. The truth is humans commit unspeakable atrocities, steal, cheat, kill and destroy. They are also capable of generosity, self- sacrifice, acting with integrity, and behaving courageously.

The author goes on to admit:

Cooperation, peace, and mutually beneficial deeds have not been the default setting for human interaction throughout history. They are the exception, not the rule. But, the mass of humanity is willfully ignorant of history and naively believe their benevolent leaders and media thought police when fear is used to keep them under control. As Jordan Peterson points out, once people wake up to the realization of their potential for evil, they can resist being led to slaughter by their Deep State controllers.

So here is the root of the article, a sensation out of Toronto, a professor who tends to be a truth-teller:

“When once-naïve people recognize in themselves the seeds of evil and monstrosity and see themselves as dangerous (at least potentially) their fear decreases. They develop more self-respect. Then, perhaps, they begin to resist oppression. They see that they have the ability to withstand, because they are terrible too. They see they can and must stand up, because they begin to understand how genuinely monstrous they will become, otherwise, feeding on their resentment, transforming it into the most destructive of wishes. To say it again: There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and strength of character. This is one of the most difficult lessons of life.” ― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Is this truth? Is the difference very small? Can you entertain this thought before believing it?