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Random Musings at The End of Life as We Knew It

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

For me, the proverbial glass is either half empty or half full contingent upon where I’m looking. When I watch the news, I get angry. And every day, as I experience the strange surreality of post-America, I have to pinch myself just to make sure I’m not dreaming like Rip Van Winkle waking up in a Tim Burton film.

For my own mental state, therefore, I have to look away at times and step into the brilliant day. It truly is a beautiful time of year. Even so, whilst out in the lush emerald environs, and under the warm sun, it’s hard to shake the sense of doom; as this may be the last good summer.

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—-The Stage is Set

Society is wide open here currently and masks, for the most part, have been relegated to the lowly relevance of a bad memory.

It’s a trap, of course, that will likely spring shut this fall and winter. But, in the meantime, the people are celebrating their freedom-via-Big Pharma, and perfectly timed with good weather. It could not have been planned any better. This is because the Covid vaccinations have, apparently, “culturally misappropriated” the power of Vitamin D in the summer sun. Or stated another way: Big Pharma is stealing the immune system’s valor.

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An Offer You Can’t Refuse

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

We read to know we’re not alone.

Although that particular truism is often mistakenly attributed to the author C.S. Lewis, it was actually William Nicholson who wrote those words in his 1989 play “Shadowlands”, a story about C.S. Lewis.

Indeed. The power of words. And perhaps many of us out here in the interwebic blogosphere write to know we’re not alone as well.

Especially during times like these.

We use words to comfort and curse, to encourage, to promise, to teach, buy, sell, debate, learn, manipulate, lie, share, seduce, pray, preach, promote, warn, and even survive.

In the aforementioned play, “Shadowlands“, there is another quote that many now reading this may also find relevant to our times:

….pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Why must it be pain? Why can’t he rouse us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be wakened, is the dream that all is well.

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It Is What It Is

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

I was in a gathering of folks when a dispute escalated between a husband and wife over what has now become the title of this article. During our discussion someone recited those words and the wife divulged how much she hated that statement. After quietly listening to the exchange for a few moments, the husband spoke up and said: “Well that must be more proof of how opposites attract, because I LOVE that phrase and I say it all the time!”

Which may have been part of the reason why the wife disliked the expression, but I wasn’t about to go there.

Instead, I mentioned how that particular shibboleth of sorts was surely defined in the minds of the beholders. On the one hand, its utterance could be an excuse – even a fatalistic expression derived from laziness or defeatism. Or, like the purveyor of produce in Ayn Rand’s epic tome, “Atlas Shrugged” – when Dagny Taggart asked the grocery vendor why she didn’t move her product from out of the sun and into the shade and her reply was: “Because it’s always been that way”.

Oh, the world sucks? Of course it does. Why bother.

It is what is.

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‘BIRD BOX’: Christianity, The Great Awakening 2.0, Transhumanism, and the Neo-Feudal Order

NOTE TO READERS (from Doug / Uncola): This piece was NOT written by me, but is a response to my earlier “Bird Box” article. The following essay was e-mailed to me by Plato Publius, a regular commenter here on The Burning Platform. Other than cursory proof-reading adjustments for punctuation and formatting Plato’s selected headings, photos, and links, this article is posted on behalf of Plato Publius and at his request:

—-

Guest Post by Plato Publius

I find it intriguing that my observations of “Bird Box” mirrored Uncola’s, particularly his description here:

In spite of its viral buzz during the final days of the year, as we watched ‘Bird Box’, we were mostly underwhelmed, except for the ‘B-movie’ satisfaction of our ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K)’commentary as the scenes unfurled.

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!

FAITH, LOVE, HOPE

Uncola’s analysis of the “faith” and “courage” aspects of the film were amazing and VERY true, but didn’t go far enough.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

– Hebrews 11:1 King James Version (KJV)

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Netflix’s ‘Bird Box’ Contains Clear Coding on Continuing in Cataclysms

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

A recent Netflix original movie has taken America by storm. The film is called “Bird Box”, starring Sandra Bullock. The online streaming service claimed it was viewed by more than 45 million accounts during the first seven days after its release; the best week ever for a Netflix film. Although I was, initially, hesitant to write about it, it’s now become such a big deal, I’m compelled to add my proverbial two cents.

The film became available for streaming on December 21, 2018 and since that time, it has propagated as a viral topic of conversation, instantaneously, online and in three dimensions. My kids mentioned it over Christmas break and the discussion continued to expand by means of social media, internet memes, and a plethora of articles both in print and throughout the electronic interwebs.

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Peachy Keen and Cool as a Cucumber in a Banana Republic

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from the movie “Almost Famous”. I enjoyed that film because I sort of lived it; and it does have a lot of great lines. But, for me, the most treasured words of advice in the movie came from a famous music critic who was encouraging a young aspiring writer. He said:

The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.

As mentioned before I’m an obscure businessman who’s found a late-in-life catharsis with writing. Honestly, I was inspired by the courage of others throughout the unregulated internet, and started my blog in the fall of 2016 when I fully expected Hillary Clinton to win the U.S. Presidency.

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FAITH: A Light in a Dark Fun-House of Mirrors

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

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Last week I experienced a loss which represented a part of my existence for the last fifteen years. The loss doesn’t matter now as much as the sadness and grief currently experienced. A door has been closed. Others will open someday, but that can’t be adequately processed right now. Sadness and grief are inherent to the human endeavor. This too, shall pass.

In my own experience, transitions are valleys and mountain-tops; hallways and doors. I don’t understand – and yet I realize every experience I ever had, and every choice I ever made, put me right here in this place. What does one do when they don’t know what to do? Sit and stew? React? Find peace? Some words come to mind that are a minor variation from a poem I once wrote during a transition of long ago:

……Do you see and hear, then use your reason?

For everything, a time and a season

Do you fight with your might and exercise your will?

Or stay quiet and peaceful and just be still?

All of these contain blessings and each one’s a curse

And if time were money they’ll empty your purse…..

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Who Will Watch the Watchers?

by Uncola for TheBurningPlatform.com

On December 15^th, 2016 Facebook announced a series of measures designed to address what they have termed the “issue of fake news and hoaxes”. The assault on fake news by Facebook will consist of four initiatives including: Easier reporting by readers, flagging stories as disputed, informed sharing and disrupting financial incentives for spammers.

If Facebook readers, in their infinite wisdom, decide a certain shared story is a hoax, they can simply click the right hand corner of the post. This is great. Why, it might even make the Facebook community a last line of defense in the online information war. I don’t know about you, but I, for one, am going to sleep much better knowing this. What could go wrong?

Next, in order to flag any story as fake news, Facebook has started a program working with third-party fact checking organizations that are “signatories of Poynter’s International Fact Checking Code of Principles”.

Thirdly, “Informed Sharing” is explained by Facebook in this way:

We’re always looking to improve News Feed by listening to what the community is telling us. We’ve found that if reading an article makes people significantly less likely to share it, that may be a sign that a story has misled people in some way. We’re going to test incorporating this signal into ranking, specifically for articles that are outliers, where people who read the article are significantly less likely to share it.

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COMFORTABLY NUMB (Oldie but Goodie)

Originally published in November 2011.

Hello?
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone at home?
Come on, now,
I hear you’re feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain
And get you on your feet again.
Relax.
I need some information first.
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts?

Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb

As I observe the zombie like reactions of Americans to our catastrophic economic highway to collapse, the continued plundering and pillaging of the national treasury by criminal Wall Street bankers, non-enforcement of existing laws against those who committed the largest crime in history, and reaction to young people across the country getting beaten, bludgeoned, shot with tear gas and pepper sprayed by police, I can’t help but wonder whether there is anyone home. Why are most Americans so passively accepting of these calamitous conditions? How did we become so comfortably numb? I’ve concluded Americans have chosen willful ignorance over thoughtful critical thinking due to their own intellectual laziness and overpowering mind manipulation by the elite through their propaganda emitting media machines. Some people are awaking from their trance, but the vast majority is still slumbering or fuming at erroneous perpetrators.

Both the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement are a reflection of the mood change in the country, which is a result of government overreach, political corruption, dysfunctional economic policies, and a financial system designed to enrich the few while defrauding the many. The common theme is anger, frustration and disillusionment with a system so badly broken it appears unfixable through the existing supposedly democratic methods. The system has been captured by an oligarchy of moneyed interests from the financial industry, mega-corporations, and military industrial complex, protected by their captured puppets in Washington DC and sustained by the propaganda peddling corporate media. The differences in political parties are meaningless as they each advocate big government solutions to all social, economic, foreign relations, and monetary issues.

There is confusion and misunderstanding regarding the culprits in this drama. It was plain to me last week when I read about a small group of concerned citizens in the next town over who decided to support the Occupy movement by holding a nightly peaceful march to protest the criminal syndicate that is Wall Street and a political system designed to protect them. My local paper asked for people’s reaction to this Constitutional exercising of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Here is a sampling of the comments:

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“It’s Over For Me” Matt Drudge Warns Public “You’re A Pawn In The ‘Ghetto-isation'” Of The Web

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/09/2015 21:50 -0400

The very foundation of the free Internet is under severe threat from copyright laws that could ban independent media outlets, according to Matt Drudge. “I had a Supreme Court Justice tell me it’s over for me,” said Drudge, warning web users that they were being pushed “pawn-like” into the cyber “ghettos” of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

“Reclusive” Drudge says he has not had a photo taken in 8 years

As DCClothesline.com reports,

During an appearance on the Alex Jones Show, Drudge asserted that copyright laws which prevent websites from even linking to news stories were being advanced.

“I had a Supreme Court Justice tell me it’s over for me,” said Drudge. “They’ve got the votes now to enforce copyright law, you’re out of there. They’re going to make it so you can’t even use headlines.”

“To have a Supreme Court Justice say to me it’s over, they’ve got the votes, which means time is limited,” he added, noting that a day was coming when simply operating an independent website could be outlawed.

“That will end (it) for me – fine – I’ve had a hell of a run,” said Drudge, adding that web users were being pushed into the cyber “ghettos” of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

“This is ghetto, this is corporate, they’re taking your energy and you’re getting nothing in return – nothing!”