A new dark ages of scientific sacrifices for constructivist and relativist superstitions preferred by the collectivist mob of mentally challenged safety first cultists is in full swing from the halls of universities-cum-daycare centers to the United States Congress, and soon the bench of the Supreme Court. To think they’re just getting warmed up. When this Borg hits 88 miles per hour you’re gonna see some serious shit.
Until then see you at the fly larvae eating struggle sessions Good Citizens.
Credentialed class great pretenders will lead the way in our new Dark Ages.
Rodney Dangerfield in Back To School (1986) PhD in Marine Biology
Lia Thomas tucks his penis into her swimsuit as he takes to the starting block in the NCAA women’s 500 Yard Freestyle finals which allow men to participate as long as they take some level of hormone suppressors to sufficiently pacify some body of “experts” on some committee at the NCAA assigned to arbitrate such things.
Presumably this testosterone suppression doesn’t involve reading Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post, drinking extra soy and being a moderator of a subreddit devoted to rare editions of magic cards. Though none of these things are necessary anymore as the average male testosterone levels have declined by two thirds over the past forty years without taking anything at all so we can safely assume that there’s hardly a need for such an arbitrating body to oversee this process at all.
Both the fact that such a body exists in our world, and that environmental conditions have lowered men’s testosterone levels don’t just portend our coming dark ages, they may well signal their full arrival. Men who cannot be protectors and guardians of a civilization, will soon find themselves without one. Perhaps this too is by design. With all that has happened the past two years alone, the endless biological crimes against humanity you’d think there’d be some men out there willing to rain hellfire down on those we know are responsible hiding in plain sight, and yet, apparently there are no more lions left to roar for our pride. More on all that soon. Back to the nuts.
In response to a question about the reported deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children as a result of sanctions, Albright said, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”
She was a refugee who rose to the highest levels of government and became a well-positioned advocate of American exceptionalism.
Madeleine Albright, the first female U.S. Secretary of State, a prominent liberal interventionist, and promoter of NATO expansion, died on Wednesday from cancer at the age of 84.
Born in Prague on the eve of the Second World War, Albright came to the United States with her family as refugees and rose to the highest levels of government service. A scholar of international relations and a professor at Georgetown University, she entered public service as ambassador to the United Nations in Bill Clinton’s first term, and then was nominated to lead the State Department in the second.
Albright was a major influence on the Clinton administration’s foreign policy and consistently pushed for a more hawkish and interventionist line in response to foreign crises and conflicts. Her foreign policy worldview was rooted in the history of a Europe ravaged by total war, but this also served to distort her understanding of international problems and encouraged her to favor military options too often. She was a significant influence on the increasingly combative approach at the end of Clinton’s presidency, and her role in building support for U.S./NATO military intervention in Kosovo was her legacy.
“My mindset is Munich,” she would often say as an explanation of how she saw the world, and like generations of Europeans and Americans haunted by WWII she made the mistake of seeing new Munichs around every corner. As Owen Harries observed a quarter-century ago when Albright was nominated to lead the State Department, “she epitomizes a belief in the virtue of uninhibited American interventionism.” Entering government service in the 1990s when U.S. power was at its apex, Albright was well-positioned to advocate for that uninhibited interventionism. Especially in the Balkans, she succeeded in making that official policy.
Albright has long served as the exemplar of overreaching American interventionism in the 1990s. According to a famous anecdote, she berated Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”
Social Security recipients got a nice benefit increase this year, but according to a report by The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), “Almost half of all households that receive Social Security benefits might pay taxes this year on a portion of their benefits.” This raise and the possible reduction in benefits reveals the true nature of Social Security.Social Security is welfare for senior citizens. [Click to Tweet]
The Social Security program provides monthly benefits to retired workers, families of retired workers, survivors of deceased workers, disabled workers, and families of disabled workers. It is funded by a 12.4 percent payroll tax (split equally between employers and employees) on the first $147,000 of an employee’s annual income. Self-employed individuals pay the full 12.4 percent but receive both a reduction in their net earnings from self-employment and a tax deduction equal to 50 percent of the amount of the Social Security tax they paid. One must pay Social Security taxes for a minimum of 40 quarters, or 10 years, to be eligible for benefits, which are figured on the basis of one’s Primary Insurance Amount (PIA) — the average of a worker’s 35 highest years of earnings (up to a particular year’s wage base), adjusted for inflation.
Since 1975, the Social Security Administration has based benefit increases (cost-of-living adjustments, or COLAs) on related increases in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers. This is a monthly index calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). A COLA increases a person’s Social Security retirement benefit by approximately the amount of the COLA times the benefit amount.
Social Security recipients received a 5.9 percent COLA for 2022 — the largest increase in benefits since the 7.4 percent increase in 1982. Since 2011, COLAs have all been only 2 percent or less (except for 2.8% in 2019). For three years (2010, 2011, and 2016), there was no COLA granted at all.
Many senior citizens weren’t cheering as loudly as they normally would about the 5.9 percent COLA, for soon after it was announced last fall, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that the standard premium for Medicare Part B — which is deducted from most people’s monthly Social Security benefits — would jump by 14.5 percent for 2022 instead of the 6.7 percent that the government had initially estimated. So much for the 5.9 percent COLA.
But that is not the only way that Social Security benefits will be reduced in 2022. According to the Social Security Administration (SSA):
Up to 50% of Social Security benefits are taxed on income from $25,000 to $34,000 for individuals, or $32,000 to $44,000 for married couples filing jointly.
Up to 85% of benefits are taxable if the income level is over $34,000 for individuals or $44,000 for couples.
(Income here is “provisional income” — adjusted gross income + nontaxable interest income + half of Social Security benefits.) Back in 1984, when the taxation of Social Security benefits was introduced, fewer than 10 percent of beneficiaries paid taxes on their benefits. Now that figure is almost 50 percent, and is expected to cost beneficiaries $45 billion in 2022. Turns out that Congress has never adjusted the income thresholds that subject Social Security benefits to taxation. They have never even been indexed for inflation.
COLAs and taxation of Social Security benefits reveal the true nature of Social Security.
Social Security is welfare, plain and simple.
Like other welfare programs, Congress can raise or lower Social Security benefits at any time and for any reason, means-test benefits, delay benefits, or change the way benefits are determined. What Congress gives in the form of COLAs, Congress can take away by taxing benefits. Just as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families is welfare for the poor, the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program is welfare for new mothers, and Supplemental Security Income is welfare for the disabled, so Social Security is welfare for senior citizens.
The fact that most Americans don’t think of it as welfare is because they “paid into the system,” “earned it,” “paid for it,” or are “entitled to it,” is irrelevant. There is no connection between Social Security taxes paid and benefits received, there is no contractual right to receive benefits, and benefits are calculated by an arbitrary formula that Congress can change at any time.
In response, some say that the money that comes out of Americans’ paychecks says it is for Social Security. In a sense it is, but not for the one who has it deducted from his paycheck.
Because the Social Security taxes collected are immediately spent on benefits and government programs, Social Security can be described as a system that takes money from the young who work and gives it to the old who don’t. This makes it an intergenerational, income-transfer, wealth-redistribution welfare program rather than a bona fide retirement savings program.
Meanwhile, the populist Right’s narrative on China has infiltrated independent media. Figures like Tim Pool, Joe Rogan, Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro, Lex Fridman, Saagar Enjeti, Jack Posobiec, The Young Turks, and many others, push the same narratives about China that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene did in her statement. Why are these figures trying so hard to convince Americans that their enemy is not the politicians controlling their lives, but instead is a regional power on the other side of the globe?
On Wednesday, March 13, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene released a statement on the war in Ukraine.
As the White House is purposely prolonging the conflict, risking a wider war, Greene’s statement is praiseworthy and needed.
She condemned weapons shipments to Ukraine, decried the establishment of a no-fly zone, and warned of the real risk of nuclear war with Russia. She criticized America’s long, pointless wars in the Middle East. She spoke against sanctions that would prevent Russia from exporting fertilizer, grains, and energy and warned these measures will push Russia closer to China. She called for a declaration that Ukraine will never join NATO. She said that the U.S. must broker peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. She even mentioned the American role in the 2014 Maidan Revolution.
There is much to like about what she said. But at the same time, her statement contained many hawkish narratives that have become synonymous with the populist Right, mainly, that:
Joe Biden is weak (if only he were more aggressive, we wouldn’t be in this mess)
U.S. involvement in Ukraine plays into China’s hands (the 21st Century is defined by great power competition with China)
Joe Biden caused the war in Ukraine by lifting sanctions on the Nordstream II pipeline (despite previously saying sanctions are a precursor to war)
“Deadly Chinese fentanyl” is flowing through our southern border each day (China has infiltrated domestic policy and is attacking us from within)
Her statement largely echoes the prevailing narrative on the populist Right, that, instead of picking a fight with Russia, or wasting blood and treasure in the Middle East, the United States should instead focus on countering China.
It’s worth recalling: the United States became the world’s greatest industrial power at a time of generally falling prices.
Incidentally, don’t let them convince you that the rise in other prices is being caused by the rise in oil prices. That’s an easy fallacy to fall into, and (not coincidentally) it serves to divert responsibility away from them.
Here’s why it’s wrong.
Tom Woods
Now that prices are rising, the lizard people are devoting time they once spent writing nonsensical things about COVID to writing nonsensical things about price inflation.
Of course they’re blaming it on anyone and everyone but themselves. Oh, it’s Russia (even though these price trends began before Russia had taken any military action in Ukraine), or it’s corporate greed, or it’s actually a sign of a robust economy!
Actually, falling prices generally indicate a robust economy.
In an economy with a stable or slowly increasing money supply, this is what happens:
Business firms invest profits into capital goods, which make possible the production of an ever-greater quantity of consumer goods.
This greater productivity, yielding a greater supply of consumer goods, pushes prices down and increases everyone’s real incomes as a result.
That ten dollars of yours, instead of buying a hat, now buys you a hat and some socks.
We don’t observe this phenomenon of productivity-driven price decreases anymore (except in particular sectors like consumer electronics) because it is obscured by the constantly increasing supply of money, thanks to the Fed.
The point is: falling prices are generally a sign of a progressing economy that is investing in capital goods, becoming more productive, and producing more goods less expensively. A general rise in the price level, by contrast, doesn’t necessarily indicate any such thing. It indicates only that the central bank is creating money, which in itself doesn’t improve our standard of living at all.
It’s worth recalling: the United States became the world’s greatest industrial power at a time of generally falling prices.
Incidentally, don’t let them convince you that the rise in other prices is being caused by the rise in oil prices. That’s an easy fallacy to fall into, and (not coincidentally) it serves to divert responsibility away from them.
Here’s why it’s wrong.
People have only so much disposable income. If prices at the gas pump go up, people don’t suddenly have extra money to pay those higher prices and also keep up the rest of their usual consumption. Something has to give. If they continue to buy as much gas as before, then they have less money now to spend on other things, and that in turn puts downward pressure on the prices of those other things. So it’s a wash.
The only way for all prices to rise, therefore, is for there to be an increase in the supply of money that can keep all those prices high simultaneously — and in the present system, only the Federal Reserve can do that.
So the present problem is caused by the Fed, period. No other alleged cause makes any sense. (If “corporate greed” were the issue, why weren’t those companies greedy a year ago? Why do they suddenly stop being greedy?)
Bloomberg is recommending, as advice for navigating rising prices, “Don’t buy in bulk.”
Now that’s some dumb advice.
If you expect the price inflation to continue, of course you want to buy in bulk in order to lock in present prices. Better to be in real goods (i.e., not money) than in a money you expect to keep losing its value.
We went from “there is no inflation” to “there’s inflation but it’s ‘transitory'” to “inflation is good for you” to “inflation is caused by Russia” pretty fast.
As always, the regime wants to divert the blame from itself onto something else, and it’s hoping you’re enough of a dope to blame “greedy rich people” instead of them.
The best rule of thumb, as we have learned through hard experience, is: don’t trust a word these people say.
Even better than that: don’t trust them even when they’re silent.
This week I’ve been on an Internet privacy kick — I’m the exact kind of person the bad guys would want to destroy, so why hand them what they want on a silver platter?
There are simple things you can do to improve your privacy right away, and our old friend Glenn Meder is going to walk us through five of them tomorrow night.
Don’t trust these people. Reserve your spot at the link below, and I hope to see you there:
Moreover, the US’s recent seizure of Russia’s central bank reserves should make any regime think twice about holding large amounts of dollars. If Washington can do it to Russia, Washington can do it to anyone, and other regimes are likely to see this and slowly flee the dollar.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that isolating Russia and totally cutting it off from the global economy is not going to be easy.
As I discussed last week, from Mexico to Brazil to China to India and much of Africa, the world is resisting Washington’s call to treat Russia as a pariah nation. In the words of James Pindell, “Most of three huge continents—Asia, Africa, and South America—are either still working with Russia or trying to project the image of neutrality.”
Yes, the US will certainly inflict a lot of damage on the Russian economy with its sanctions, but it’s unlikely to be enough damage to incapacitate the Moscow regime. This is because much of the world has shown it plans to continue having relations with the Russians, albeit while taking some efforts to avoid any direct policy confrontation with Washington.
But this all also means that if Washington wants to press the issue of global cooperation and assistance with US sanctions, the US is going to have to threaten many other regimes with secondary sanctions—sanctions designed to force compliance with the initial sanctions on Russia. This will be diplomatically and economically costly for the US. After all, if the US is trying to build up alliances and economic partnerships against a potential Russia-China bloc, trying to impoverish dozens of countries as punishment for noncompliance with Russia sanctions will only encourage other regimes to insulate themselves from both the US economy and the US dollar. Whether or not this happens will largely depend on how hard the US is willing to bully third-party countries in order to win compliance with its Russia sanctions.
What Are Secondary Sanctions?
Before we proceed, let’s look at what exactly secondary sanctions—and the closely related “extraterritorial” sanctions—are.
At their most basic, secondary sanctions are sanctions imposed on a third party that is not the target of the initial, primary sanctions. For example, if the United States wants to force a change of policy in Iran, the US will impose sanctions directly on Iran but might also decide that this isn’t enough. The US might also seek to prevent other countries from doing business with Iran as well. In order to do this, the US will then impose secondary sanctions on firms and entities in other countries that do business with Iran.
The tyranny will only get worse until we actively innovate back toward liberty. It’s time to liberate the people from the propaganda, lies and social manipulation of these goons which has caused untold suffering in the past two years alone.
The famous phrase about truth as the first casualty of war is everywhere these days if only because the people recognize the truth is often nowhere.
There are variations of this saying, and this one on populism is appropriate given the past decade of rising animosity to elites and global management.
Truth is not the first casualty of war alone: it is the first casualty of populism. — Theodore Dalrymple
You’ve heard the term “if it’s free you are the product”? Well, that’s always been a quaint yet silly advertising slogan for our collective malaise with our digital world. The implication being if it’s free, you will be paying for it in may other ways that you cannot see. A more appropriate and honest slogan would be: “You are and always have been the target.” Your body, your mind, your mental state, your political beliefs, your private and public habits, your DNA (the past two years) and now your bank accounts and ideological and philanthropic associations are being targeted by western governments for lists, censorship, seizure and freezing out from participation in society unless you submit and obey, forever.
What’s happening in Canada will not stay in Canada. What’s happening in Russia will not stay in Russia. What’s happening in Czechia, The UK, Slovakia, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, New York Kindergartens will not stay there. Tyranny may have arrived with a bioweapon wrapped in a pandemic PR campaign and the pretense of a deadly threat, but it’s quickly mutating in virulence with a manufactured war designed to massage our lizard brains and pull our heart strings.
In order for tyranny to gain a permanent foothold across the west with future Silent War fronts against humanity, it will require total control over information so that events can be framed through manufactured narratives. Right now there are far too many leaks for the truth to escape and expose and undermine those prepared narratives. For tyranny to maneuver freely under benevolent disguises of safety and security it must have the consent of the people, which can only be artificially manufactured with lies and propaganda that are unvarnished by truth.
Our present digital model is one of social and civilizational rot which is why using the term ‘social media’ is a fallacy that should be substituted with ‘attention networks’. The organizing principals of our digital model of monopolized attentions networks is one that shadow governments and intel agencies adore and finance and partner with for new normal fascistic capitalism’s mass surveillance and censorship circus. The capitalism side of that equation no longer matters in a future of great resets and great narratives created by the gatekeepers of ‘stakeholder capitalism’, a controlled and engineered future of centralized technocratic power that must destroy the old models.
For years scholars have separated online mass surveillance from censorship, often ignoring the latter altogether. The two are linked. You cannot have censorship without first having mass surveillance in order to know what is forbidden, even if determined by artificial intelligence programmed by humans with little intelligence on the consequences of censorship. The role of official state censors has always been pervasive in the post printing press world to keep out information and ideas that were a threat to whatever centralized powers controlled the censors. We have only existed in a world without official censors for a very brief time, and were naïve to think given the structure of information creation and consumption today that it could last much longer. In fact, you could say it no longer exists at all. The official censors are back. Their resurrection happened in the algorithmic shadows, at first quietly, but now in a torrid rush playing out for all to see, or not see if they’re allowed to succeed.
A brief trip through time requires we see how we arrived at this present day model of information dissemination and consumption, (how we became targets) by visiting a recent book by George Gilder, Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and Rise of the Blockchain Economy (2018), whose conclusion is going to need some updating given recent events in Russia, Czechia, Austria, Australia, Canada, ah hell I should just write ‘the world’.
23 years of preparing for the destruction of liberty across the west. Censorship is good.
Information Systems Over the course of three centuries Gilder traces the concept of ‘system of the world’; a set of ideas that “…pervade a society’s technology and institutions and inform its civilization. A system of the world necessarily combines science and commerce, religion and philosophy, economics and epistemology.” For nearly a millennia there was no system aside from ideas rooted in religion and superstition. The first ‘system’ with roots in today’s ‘information system’ can be observed in 17th century Newtonian discoveries.
Instead of training in military pursuits, personell are learning all about racism, sexism, ableism, ageism and all the rest. Rather than learning how to be better soldiers, sailors, marines, pilots, they are being educated in wokism. At this rate, after their military service is over, they will be good candidates to get jobs in higher education where they can bully professors for engaging in micro-aggressions.
I’ve done it. I’ve finally done it. I’ve finally converted to wokeism. Count me now amongst all of my new friends on the left in favor of cancel culture, transgenderism, intersectionality, BLM, stamping out micro-aggressions, critical race theory, Marxism, and calling for diversity, inclusion and equity rather than ability to do a job. I now see systematic racism as the source of all evil. I now apologize for being a white heterosexual male.. (It is a bit inadvertent; I can’t help it; well, I suppose I could work on the sexual part, but, I’m not inclined to go that far. I’m not known far and wide – at least in my own mind – as Walter Moderate Block, for nothing at all). I’m now a liberal, a socialist, a communist, a collectivist, a pinko, a leftie, a progressive. I hereby apologize, profusely, for, yes, I admit it, being a member of the ruling class thanks to being supremely white and cis-gendered. (See how I can now spout the correct lingo!)
What turned me around on this? What made me see the light on this matter? What was the turning point for me on my road to Damascus?
It was the woke military of the U.S. I finally woke up (pardon the pun) to the fact that the armed forces of this nation are themselves waking up, and that this is an altogether a good thing. No, scratch that. A very, very good thing.
The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines started weakening themselves by welcoming homosexuals. Then, they followed through by inviting women into their ranks, with roughly the same results, although for obviously different reasons. The latest wakefulness of these organizations is that they have embraced the explicit wokeist philosophy. The same thing seems to be occurring north of our border, and this, too, is all to the good: Canada has almost always been a junior partner in US expansionism.
Instead of training in military pursuits, personell are learning all about racism, sexism, ableism, ageism and all the rest. Rather than learning how to be better soldiers, sailors, marines, pilots, they are being educated in wokism. At this rate, after their military service is over, they will be good candidates to get jobs in higher education where they can bully professors for engaging in micro-aggressions.
Space Force Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, commander of his squadron, objected to this new initiative. He was fired for writing a book mentioning these concerns of his: “Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military.” In this book he criticized, among many other things the 1619 project of the New York Times. That’s a bad book, based on this new philosophy.
Want to hear about a good book? The US Chief of Naval Operations has recommended on his professional reading list for sailors, How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi. This is a publication that proposes future discrimination against white people.
But these are only the tips of the iceberg, matters for headlines. The actual day to day training of army personal is ongoing, comprehensive and supremely woke.
Why is this all to the good? That is because the main function of these people is not to defend the home country, but, rather, to roam around the world trying to export democracy to the entire planet. To this end, there are some 800 military bases located in about 130 different countries. Since there are only roughly 200 nations on the entire planet, this constitutes a clear majority of them.
Has U.S. military imperialism been a force for good? That is a difficult position to defend. Had this country not entered world war I, the two sides would have run out of soldiers, on both sides, thanks to losses in trench warfare. There never would have been a Treaty of Versailles, which led to the German hyper-inflation of 1923, which eventuated in the rise of Hitler, the Nazi party, communism and world war II. It is difficult to see what the U.S. sojourns in VietNam did any good for the world. The same holds true for the American fighting presence in Afghanistan for almost two decades. Now, the neo-con warmongers are pushing for entry into the Russian – Ukrainian fracas even though, again, US foreign policy – pushing Nato to the very border of Russia – was to blame..
However, thanks to the weakening of the U.S. military (hey, we can still kick Grenadian butt), it becomes less and less likely that this institution will intervene. So, let us raise a glass to wokeism in our armed forces. That is perhaps not the best route to world peace, but beggars can’t be choosers. The less power wielded by the US the more likely we are to be saved from thermo-nuclear war. We always have to be ready to welcome strange bed-fellows. Yay, wokism. Three cheers, not two.
MCViewPoint 