By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com
Growing up in a small Midwestern town in the fading light of Norman Rockwell’s America, I came of age during the saccharine seventies amid the cannabis-crammed rock and roll arenas that were, seemingly, counter-weighted by endless replays of ABBA and The Bee Gees within the Frequency Modulated atmosphere of that era. During the eighties, I became an optimistic young Republican under the stewardship of Ronald Wilson Reagan; a moderately successful businessman in the nineties; and, later, a concerned patriot of the new millennium.
Immediately following the subprime mortgage crash of 2008, the election of Barack Obama and, especially, after the Benghazi attacks on 9/11/2012, I became increasingly aware of the tectonic shift beneath the American landscape and soon realized that Norman Rockwell, like Elvis, had left the proverbial “building”, never to return. The best way I can describe it is that the real power structures behind the United States, Inc., as well as the globalist, collectivist, political left, finally took their “their gloves off”, so to speak. Indeed, their “masks” were removed and nothing was hidden anymore.
For the last several years I have contemplated and tried to pinpoint exactly when America’s once great and promising song of liberty went off key. Was it when Lincoln overturned states’ rights during the Civil War era? Was it the establishment of the Creature from Jekyll Island, the Federal Reserve, in 1913? The development of the League of Nations followed by the United Nations? When Elvis first swiveled his hips on The Ed Sullivan Shew? The assassination of John F. Kennedy and the ensuing turbulent sixties? The advent of The Great Society under Lyndon Baines Johnson?
Dr. Benjamin Spock and his misguided propagandizing of child-centered parenting? Woodstock? The broadcasting of television programming like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie where women were portrayed with magic powers designed to play men like fiddles? Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, the feminization of the American male? Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Affirmative Action?
President Richard Nixon’s ending of the monetary gold standard? Watergate? Jimmy Carter? Disco? The Savings and Loan crisis? Black Monday 1987? The Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings? The giant sucking sound of American jobs, as prophesied by Ross Perot, as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)? George Bush the Elder and his singing to the tune of a New World Order? The desktop computer? Al Gore’s spawning of the internet? The stained blue dress? Hanging chads? 911? The Patriot Act? Smartphone technology? Bush the Younger searching for Saddam Insane’s elusive weapons of mass destruction? Too big to fail? The Hope and Change President’s fundamental transformation of America? The Affordable Healthcare Act? Political correctness? Illegal immigration? The Cloward and Piven driven near-doubling of the national debt under Obama?
Pick any of the above and remember that opinions are like noses and glutei maximi; everyone has them and they all smell to some degree. In fact, this could be the core reason as to why the band is breaking apart: Too many opinions. Clearly, if there are performing elements competing with each other in any musical composition, and if they are playing separate and unrelated notes, the result is a dissonant cacophony of amalgamated noise.
Undoubtedly, there are multiple explanations why the United States has fallen into disharmony; but if anyone cares to listen through all of the discord, they will find the root problem is two separate bands marching to competing drummers. On the right we have the Individualists and on the left there are the Collectivists. One band sings soaring and inspirational songs of freedom, national pride, autonomy, reason, equality of opportunity, and self-reliance. The other group plays a mix of folk and rap music over the irreconcilable bass and drum beats of self-indulgence, mutual dependence, rebellion, sacrifice, lawlessness, pleasure, pain, justice, diversity, poverty, equality of outcomes, globalism, and world harmony.
Of course many problems in modern America are furthermore exacerbated by defective instruments; including fractional-reserve banks playing promissory notes, like decrescendos of musical confetti, falling from defective Federal Reserve trumpets blowing hot-air from on high. Still, the primary and most transparent means by which the modern bandmasters and conductors strive to control the music-makers is through heavy taxation, expansive regulations, out of control entitlements, and pervasive political correctness; all familiar lyrics directly transcribed from the blood-stained pages of Karl Marx’s hymnal.
Why don’t political leftists and Fabian Socialists ever look to history to contemplate the proven outcomes of their beliefs? Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party, Venezuela; or Detroit, Chicago, and every other liberal-governed urban shithole staining America’s once blossoming fruited plains. It’s not hard to connect the bridges, except for the Collective Left. Why can’t the snowflakes of today understand what happened after Hitler implemented gun control and perfected socialized medicine? Why don’t they see the similarities between The Fuhrer’s Brown Shirts and the ANTIFA crowd of today?
What is so hard about logic and history for the Collectivists to understand? Is it because they can’t see; or because they won’t look?
Regardless, and most assuredly, the disharmony began during the times of the first songs. Somewhere, tens of thousands of years ago, it started with those living in caves. GROK invented the wheel and, thus, made lighter the burdens of Mankind. As goods became more easily exchanged, villages increasingly engaged in trade, and the regional economies thrived. But then THUG organized a gaggle of goons sporting primitive weapons; they formed a committee, and began to tax, regulate, and control all they could. Later, in THUG’s greed, and as his armies progressively realized the benefits of their grift; they came to feel entitled, and their lust for power, and indolence, grew insatiable right up to the first revolution.
And, so it went on through the ages in rhythmic lockstep: Left. Right. Left. Right.
But what of the future? Has anyone ever conceived, let alone established, a perfect collectivist society? How about a government, or nation-state, comprised of those one-hundred-percent fully dedicated to Collectivism in its pure ideological form? Actually, there is a world so envisioned.
When the author Ayn Rand (1905 – 1982) was in her early thirties, she wrote a novella about a future collectivist dystopia entitled “Anthem”, which was published in 1938 in Great Britain. She wrote the book in 1937, or five years after Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and eight years before George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and, at the age of twelve, she witnessed her father’s successful business seized by Bolshevik soldiers under Vladimir Lenin in 1917. Obviously, Rand’s early first-hand experiences with Collectivism inspired Anthem as well as her later writings; which proclaimed the merits of Individualism and promoted her philosophy of Objectivism.
Anthem takes place in a post-apocalyptical setting many years after “The Unmentionable Times” and depicts a civilization where the word “I” has been replaced by “we”, the candle is embraced as high technology, and society is governed by a World Council of Scholars. The story’s protagonist is known as Equality 7-2521 who first strives to realize his individual identity, and then later rediscovers knowledge that was lost to Mankind. Equality 7-2521 eventually renames himself Prometheus, in reference to the “deliverer of light” from Greek mythology. However, before Equality 7-2521 could completely defy the conventions of the collectivist ideology as enforced by the World Council, he first had to discover freedom:
There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.
Rand, Ayn. (1938). “Anthem”, Signet Books via The Caxton Printers , Ltd, Seventh Printing, 1946, Chapter Chapter 12, pg. 118
Certainly, Ayn Rand venerated America’s liberty and revered the Individual against the Collective. Her indisputable devotion to America’s freedom would also explain why she later revised Anthem and published it in the United States in 1946. For the American edition, Rand replaced some of the poetic and flowery language in favor of a simpler, clearer presentation; and in the author’s forward for the U.S. Edition, Rand said she altered the book’s “face”, but not it’s “spine” or “spirit” and “confined the editing to its style”.
Paradoxically, I own an ancient Anthem paperback complete with Rand’s forward, dated April 1946, and showing a price of $.60 cents on the cover. It also contains ads for the other Signet paperback editions of Rand’s Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged for $.95 cents, and $1.25, respectively.
Of course, in 1946, a year that coincidently corresponds to the beginning of Strauss and Howe’s last American First Turning, Rand clearly wanted Americans to digest what she considered the antidote to the burgeoning “social” aims and objectives of the multifarious councils and organizations of that day. These entities, from the perspective of Rand, were already wielding the tyrannical conceptual power of the word “We”:
The word “We” is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.
What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey?
But I am done with this creed of corruption.
Rand, “Anthem”, Chapter 11, pg. 112
Similar to the writings of Huxley, and later Orwell, Rand also warned mankind regarding what she considered as the inevitable dystopian denouement, from conception to crescendo to coda, of when a society sings the praises of collectivism and community ideals. Instead, Rand envisioned a world where men live by their own right, having the freedom to choose their associations by merit, as opposed to surrendering to the insatiable demands of “We”, the Collective:
I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned….
For the word “WE” must never be spoken, save by one’s choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man’s soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all evils on earth, the root of man’s torture by men, and of the unspeakable lie.
Rand, “Anthem”, Chapter 11, page 111
And what is the unspeakable lie? It could be what the Entitled believe in their hearts; that they have the right to lay claim to the life-songs of others. Who gave them the right? “We”, that’s who. Well, like Rand, and the signers of the United States Constitution, I reject that premise. But, what does this mean?
It means: “Yes, Obama, I did build that”. It means living free according the laws of my land that were signed by the blood, and sacred honor, of my forefathers. It means just because I buy a computer, or a smart phone, or purchase internet service with the money I have earned, it does NOT give anyone the right to spy on me.
It means:
- If you want to physically assault someone walking on the street simply because they are wearing a Trump hat, then you are out of tune.
- If you believe the Russians “hacked” the 2016 presidential election, or that Trump is not a “legitimate” president, then you are singing sour notes.
- If you believe the mainstream media is NOT the primary source of “fake news” in America today, then you’re off pitch.
- If, you support a general counsel inquiry trying to overturn the legitimate results of presidential election, then you are out of key.
- If you value your own “welfare” more than your country, then your song has gone flat.
- If you esteem social justice, identity politics, and political correctness over logic or common sense, then you are untuned, off-tone, and pitchy.
- And, if you, as an American, truly believe that Islam is a religion of peace, or that illegal immigration is good for America, then you are playing “Taps” for your nation with a kazoo.
All those today who believe they are entitled are, actually, not. From the times of the first songs there have been those who sought to control the music. They can only do so when it is their notes being played; until the music stops.
At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of the freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled.
But then he gave up all he had won, and fell lower than his savage beginning.
What brought it to pass? What disaster took their reason away from men? What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The worship of the word “We.”
Rand, “Anthem”, Chapter 12, pg. 119
In the ensuing dissonance of revolutions and war, we will hear loud symbol crashes, and drum rolls, and screeching trumpets. The lyrics and harmonies will be forgotten until someone remembers how to make music again. It will begin by first searching for what was forgotten.
The trees have swallowed the ruins, and the bones under the ruins, and all the things which perished.
The words of the Evil Ones… The words of the Unmentionable Times… What are the words which we have lost?
Rand, “Anthem”, Chapter 2, Pgs. 49-50:
The enormous city, state, national, and global problems we currently face are caused by individual beliefs exponentially multiplied by the population. Nothing will change until common sense individuals become convinced the correction to the problems begins with them. Nothing will change until we recall the lost words, in harmony.
The out-of-tune opposing players desire to set the premises and establish the rules of play. We should reject them entirely. Why? Because fuck them. That’s why.
In the outgrowth of the forthcoming devastation, we must recall the qualities that are revealed in the paintings of Norman Rockwell, and as established in the U. S. Constitution. If we don’t, the old songs won’t be worth remembering anyway.
A nitpicky comment to a good article. “$.60 cents ” is redundant. Either it’s $0.60 or it’s 60 cents, but you essentially wrote ‘sixty cents cents’ which makes little sense ( or is that $ense?)
TJF – nice. Be a dick to the author with the first post. Asshole.
I counted on Uncola being able to handle constructive criticism. Just trying to help I’d say only one of us is being a dick and it’s not me. Either way, I doubt Uncola really needs you to leap to his defense.
That was not constructive. You were being a dick.
Ok Kimosabe Dundee, whatever you say.
Ha, ha! TJF is all like “What I do? What I do? I was just trying to be helpful!” Don’t feel bad TJF, I once had 600 downvotes here on one thread (by Stucky’s count), so, you’re not so bad after all. But seriously, I made your suggested changes above on the article on my site. No worries, mate
A plus plus plus. Scents, sense, cents. Same same.
600 downvotes!
Yeah I remember that one. It was brutal. Had my share of down votes as well. The comments I like best have equal likes to dislikes.
Besides around here getting shit on is a badge of honour.
So in Praise of Lord Odin. happy Wodensday everyone.
The Apostle RiNS
lighten up!!
Hardhead – that was actually me being light. You must be new around here.
Here is an idea – mind your own beeswax.
Hardhead was replying to TJF. You must be new around here.
Here is an idea — lighten up.
US fell apart 1) with implementation of income tax, and 2) when welfare was first introduced.
Re other issues, the one I am currently harping on is that most TBPers know the debt level is unsustainable, yet bleat like sheep at the slaughter if it is suggested that Social Security and Medicare be eliminated.
The US has a deficit each year of around $1 trillion. To eliminate that, and to implement a repayment plan for debt already accumulated would require trimming around $1.5 trillion a year from expenditure.
That would mean the following cuts: say $200 to $300 billion a year out of military, and $1.2 trillion a year out of welfare – SS and Medicare. That means more or less halving those expensive welfare expenditures.
The number really should be a $2 trillion cut, as the US needs to be spending hundreds of billions a year on infrastructure – immediately.
Those $1.5 or $2 trillion in cuts should happen now, immediately, and not be phased in. The time for phasing is long past. It is tough medicine time. It will be catastrophic but there is no choice. People will die. Homelessness will happen. But what else can be done? The alternative will be worse.
Otherwise, an entire collapse will happen. And the devastation will be unimaginable.
Let the bleating begin. Many of the boomers around here will want to make this collapse happen to the future generations – to anyone but them. That is immoral. They value their own situation above that of their country and that of their children.
Nice article.
Llpoh wrote:
“Re other issues, the one I am currently harping on is that most TBPers know the debt level is unsustainable, yet bleat like sheep at the slaughter if it is suggested that Social Security and Medicare be eliminated.”
Perhaps they are bleating like sheep because they have paid into that system with their hard earned money all of their working lives.
Art – so what? The money is gone. It was a tax. All taxes paid get spent. That people are too dense to understand that it was nothing more than a tax is neither here nor there. They need to wake up. The money was not set aside, it was not invested – it was spent. It is a giant Ponzi, and expecting the young to cover the old is absurd.
And borrowing money, the repurcussions of which will fall to the
young, to provide welfare to Boomers who were too irresponsible to set aside funds for their dotage is wrong. Time to pay the piper for being irresponsible. And it is a hefty bill.
Reality………what a concept!
I fully expect to get screwed out of SS despite having paid in. Got my head around that fact years ago.
art,nobody pays crap into medicare/ss compared to what they get out of it unless they have no med problems and die relatively soon after retirement–
TR – I agree, Medicare is a much larger drain on the fedgov budget than SS when you take the relative contributions by their recipients to the 2 programs into account.
There are no relative contributions. It is all tax, all used as general revenue, all spent, plus a trillion more each year.
Tampa – it is impossible to convince someone to believe the truth when their SS, and their ability to look themselves in the mirror, relies on them believing a lie. Lots of TBPers believe the lie, so they can live with their hypocrisy.
No, we’re all victims of a shitty elite government. And you have decided to come out and throw shit at people who have been stolen from their entire lives. Get what you can. The system is predatory. The elite are doing everything they can to own everything and turn us all into milk cows.
LLPOH, you have no solution other than…”Fuck you suckers”. Geronimo’s revenge? If so, it’s the wrong target.
I don’t why there’s no reply button on your comment below but income/wealth inequality is the #1 problem in the country if not the entire world.
1) means test SS otherwise you’re an asshole.
2) make people work.
3) let the bankers/elite fail instead of bailing them out.
4) cut any and all monopolies. There are many.
5) end and regulations/laws concerning starting a new business.
Likely to happen? Those are called SOLUTIONS LLPOH. No, they won’t happen. Hence my recommendation to get whatever you can while you still can.
WIP – you think Boomers have not benefitted by the massive debt being incurred? You think people have not been living far beyond their means? You think they will willingly give up the gravy train?
Stolen from? Not the boomers. The young, yes. The boomers? Not a chance. They have lived far beyond their means and are kicking the bill onto the young.
Boomers are raking in SS and Medicare far in excess of their contributions. How is that stolen from? Boomers are stealing the future from the young.
It is a disgrace.
The only solution is to eliminate welfare. Take care of your damn selves.
Exactly TR–I do rounds at a Skilled Nursing Facility for some “stroke” patients.
The simple mathematics is that most of those individuals who reside in the 3 facilities I haunt are in their 80’s and 90’s- about 100 to 200 bed per bldg.
Now consider that for those of them who worked full-time jobs at decent salaries ( the majority are female and many never worked outside of the home) a 1960’s and 1970’s salary was pretty good if they made $20k to $30k back then. Their contribution to the Medicare catastrophe may have been a few hundred bucks a year at most ( many homemakers paid nil so that contribution really should be divided in half for the male breadwinner as it covered husband and wife.)
Fast-forward to the present. These folks cost $5k A MONTH or more for meds, beds, food, 24 hour nursing/toileting, laundry, visiting wound doctors, physical therapists, speech therapists ( think swallowing/aspiration issues), specialists, the maintainance crews, lights, heat, AC etc etc etc..
The short of it is this–almost every single person in a nursing home or a senior who is in and out of the hospital or goes to the doctor a few dozen times a year–MOST cost more in a year or two than they contributed their entire working careers. A single month in a nursing home usually equals 10 years of their contributions ( and they still have extra costs for hospital visits, doctor visits, podiatrists, optometrists, transportations etc)
The SSI and Medicare systems NEVER could work–simple inflation guarantees that. Throw in the fact that there was never a fund drawing interest or maturing with investment ( the government spent that money and Ponzied the entire system by using current workers contributions to pay ut the old promises) and it is not just broken–it is STEALING.
“Change hasta’ start someplace”…how about changing to the truth?
Nobody “paid in.” The money was taken. An involuntary ponzi scheme is still a ponzi scheme…equally schemers are the ones enabling, in good co-dependent & cogdis reducing fashion, by saying they “paid” instead of saying they were heisted.
Like the voluntary – & just as too good to be true – Madoff scam, con & conned enabled each other.
“You can’t cheat an honest man.” Not continuously, in the same way, at least. Those who are cheated continuously & in the same way are in on it.
LLPOH
You’re solution IS a collapse, no?
Also, if we did as you suggest, who ends up with all the assets? The bankers, correct?
WIP – There ain’t no assets. What part of $200 trillion in total liabilities don’t you understand? The bankers will go belly up, same as the rest. When you are leveraged as high as the banks, what do you think happens when folks stop paying? Printing money always fails. In the end.
That is what resets are for.
Just another tool in the toolbox for TPTB.
LLPOH
I get it, you’ve made your point. There is no money. We all agree.
When you take that much money out of the spend column, you will get defaults all the way up the chain. I like that actually. What I don’t agree with you on is that the banks will fail. That is laughable imo. The bankers are the most protected class in the entire world.
If the bankers and politicians don’t have to pay for their malfeasance, then everyone else is going to want their pound of flesh/money. It’s a big circle jerk. Better get whatever you can.
Llpoh – “Printing money always fails. In the end.” Historically accurate. However, what if your “money” (really “currency”) is the international reserve currency, the continued status of which you can enforce at the point of a gun. In that case “the end” can be a long way down the road and the total liabilities may continue to increase substantially. This might be Lord Keynes “long run” of indefinite duration. This is particularly true if large sections of the populace are increasingly “dumbed down” in “public” schools so as to be totally unable to understand what’s being done to them even if it’s explained to them. I don’t necessarily believe that the above is the likeliest scenario but it certainly seems to have demonstrated some recent applicability. Would appreciate your thoughts in this regard as I appreciate your views. Best – ARW
If you watch the debt clock, it increases by about $2,000,000 every minute. That is just the debt portion, which means the fed gov is spending what, like $10,000,000 every minute of every hour of every day? Holy Fuckin’ Shit. And the maroons always want to spend MOAR!
The way things look everyone will be Going Galt, whether they want to or not. If you live in a city, get the fuck out while you still can…
Barefoot – right you are. People gonna have to take care of themselves.
A friend of mine in the mortgage brokering bidness says there are not enough places for sale out here in the Ozarks.
I would like to see a break down in your “welfare” cuts so you may further clarify your proposal. Lets see, My $186,000 taken from me during my working years to fund my retirement – gone. My $84,000 forcibly taken from me to fund my public pension – gone. my $200,000 saved by my own efforts for my IRA – confiscated for the benefit of the state. My $45,000 savings confiscated for a “bail in” to save my local bank from collapse. and what else would you have them take from me, Lipoh? Maybe my property wisely bought years ago in the Badlands of the Southwest? Just give me back what’s been stolen from me with interest, and we will call it even.
Robert – there ain’t no even. The money is gone. Dumbass.
Just how are they going to pay anything back? I am not proposing they take anything from you. Quite the contrary. But what they already took is too bad so sad. It is gone, baby.
I am proposing they stop giving you a damn thing. Nothing. You get squat. Same goes for everyone. What you have, you keep. But the idea that you have a claim on the output of others because, hey, you got screwed and you trusted them, is pure bullshit. What kind of immoral is that – “they screwed me, so I am gonna give it to the young, twice as hard. ”
The horse is dead. No amount of beating will resurrect it.
By the way, the $184k and the $84k are just a fraction of what you would claim back in SS and medicare, at least until,it folds. But if it is gone, its gone. Quit crying. But hey, I know you are counting on getting a million or more back, paid for by someone else. That money was not an investment, it was a tax. You do not get that back.
By the way, if you add all that up, it STILL does not come to what they take off me EACH year.
Quit crying. If you have enough to survive, fine. If not, you are going to get screwed. It is inevitable. What cannot be paid will not be paid. And better to make that decision now, so the young have some kind of chance at a future not tied to carrying your sorry ass along.
I knew the sheep would bleat. Yup, kick the can down the road so the young get stuck with the bill. Immoral does not come close to describing it.
You’re not being honest, Lipoh. And you like name calling, a sure sign of insecurity. What passes through your hands as gross receipts doesn’t belong to you. Nobody takes it off you , it moves through your system. So quit crying. You signed up for what you’re doing. If you don’t like it, do something else.
As far as providing welfare for the young, it won’t be there for them no matter how much you take from the Boomers, way too late for that. As for my sorry ass, not sorry at all. Basking in the sunlight of a lifetime of rewarded hard work. I feel your discomfort in your writing. Something bothers you and you think nipping at the ankles of others will improve your mood. Like I said. if you’re unhappy, why not just make changes in your life?
Robert (QSLV)
Robert – I personally (me, not my company, which pays heaps more) pay more in fed tax each year than all the money you listed above, and that is a fact, and it is not close. Believe what you want.
Insecure? I am not that introspective so as to be able to say. However, I am very aggressive by nature.
I am happy as a clam. I live where I want, do what I want.
And as before, I am not proposing taking anything from anybody. I am proposing not giving anything to anybody. It is not the same thing. Stopping the giving a gift is not taking anything away. That is the common fallacy of the loony left. The welfare parasites think if we stop giving them welfare we are taking something away. But it is not true.
Borrowing to give someone something, and placing the burden of that on others, is immoral. That you defend that action by saying, effectively, what the hell, there won’t be any for them anyway, so keep giving me stuff, is immoral.
You are clueless.
Not clueless, but I don’t have all the answers, like some. Your income and cash flow exposes the fact that you are embedded in the same system that mortgages the future of our children so you can be prosperous today. You are fully signed up.
It’s a zero sum system, this world. And for someone to do as well as you enjoying the fruits of other’s labor is not intrinsically wrong, just suspicious. He doth protest too much, I think.
Robert – you dumbass. Parroting Obama’s “you did not build that” crap. So I was only successful because of someone else.
Not that hundreds of people owe their livelihood to what I built. I owe mine to them.
Man, the horseshit stinks. The govt drone is laying it on thick.
llpoh, it’s amazing to me how much even red pilled individuals feel entitled to something. It seems like with each passing year more and more TBP readers reveal themselves as entitled.
All you need do is read one original article from admin and the truth…reality…is right there staring you in the face. Deny it all you want…won’t change a thing. They call SS, Medicare, Medicaid, EBT, and all other forms of welfare UNFUNDED LIABILITIES for a reason.
Now you’ve just gone flippin over the edge, “It’s a zero sum system, this world”
Wow, just wow. Never thought I’d see anyone spewing this bilk on TBP.
Do you know how money is created in “our world”?
I’m not talking about the Fed creating fiat currency in exchange for the govt’s promissory notes either–I’m talking where MOST money comes from?
Do some research on fractional-reserve banking, seriously and then get back to us with your whole “zero-sum” claptrap.
PS: Enjoy what you have labored for and managed to retain from the government/banksters schemes. Threatening young men and women with prison if they don’t labour to pay for your monthly checks ( of money you had stolen and is long gone) is immorality of the highest degree.
You essentially are justifying the govt theft of someone else’s labor to pay back what they stole from you first–sad.
QSLV sez what passes thru your hands doesn’t belong to you.
The stoopid burns! You just proved his point ya fucken’ retard! All those contributions given to goobermint for safe keeping have been passed thru alright and that turd of entitlements was flushed down the toilet. But it gets better QSLV was/is (don’t know and don’t care) what for it, a government drone.
Christmas came early this year. Lord Odin has answered my prayers…
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Tough crowd. Opened some eyes, I hope.
P.S. Stupid, not stoopid.
Robert (QSLV)
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And yes, something bothers me. Leaving insurmountable debt and societal destruction to the young bothers hell out of me. The welfare state bothers me. That people who should know better want to cling to the welfare state bothers me. Those things bother me.
This, we agree on.
Immoral is the bastards implementing all these hidden “taxes” so that all the open air slaves never realize just how hard they are getting bent over. This country was never free, it wasn’t too bad until the war of northern aggression, and then it got real bad with the creature from Jekyll Island. We’ve been on a tidal wave of surplus energy reserves but we’re in the shallow bay now and a crash is a coming.
Chemicals and pollution in the food and water, chemtrail and electromagnetic soup filled skies, schools that program not to think, flouride and vaccines, garbage tv, social media promoting terminal levels of egomania and narcissism, fake pandering asshole politicians shouting incomprehensible nonsense, an ever expanding multitude of ways to make sure the masses of USA! USA! Merkins don’t have a useful thought in their head.
We claim to be a stronghold of freedom but all I see is the cast of Idiocracy cheering on our debasement and oppression. Drink water? Like from the toilet? Don’t forget the trannies, they deserve to be treated special, like Bruce, or is it Caitlin? Oh who the fuck cares, if this is what it’s come to let’s just burn it to the ground. Bankers and politicians first.
Also, this site is great, someone should hack a way that it becomes every Merkins home page.
Another great piece Uncola. I always look forward to your contributions and the responses you stir up.
“Also, this site is great, someone should hack a way that it becomes every Merkins home page.”
Minus the unfortunate ads
Unfortunate ads? I don’t think so.
What’s not to like!
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A bit naughty,
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Tennis anyone!
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Some fun in the sun,
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Well maybe you got a point.
Anyways to all those snowflakes that get easily offended just turn on.
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Pretty simple. Even a stoopid fuck like me can do it.
All one needs is enough. And that is a lot less than a lot of folks think it is.
Llpoh, While I certainly agree with your premise of where we are, I wouldn’t be too hard on the Boomers. They generally played the game with fairness in mind. The rules got changed in the “bottom of the 8th inning”. That’s too late for lifetime change. The systemic corruption really got going on their/our watch but not because they believed in a free lunch. If the government/banker/war machine had been kept under control and the societal costs of a certain race was commensurate with that of the general population, deficits and outlooks wouldn’t be as onerous as they are today. Yeah, I’m a Boomer who worked hard, raised a family and NEVER expected something for nothing. I have 3 daughters, all in their 20s so, I have plenty of skin in the game. And, I’ve warned them early and often that they will be stuck with the debt and stupidity surrounding them. The point being, they know how the game will screw them and can PLAN ACCORDINGLY for reduced wealth expectations, a harder and a simpler life.
The rules got changed in the “bottom of the 8th inning”.
What rules got changed? The writing was on the wall a LOOOONG time ago, plenty of time for any boomer to plan accordingly. D-E-M-O-G-R-A-P-H-I-C-S is a bitch. Maybe the boomers should’ve all had families like the Mormons do and we’d be in better shape. It’s not rocket science to understand a ponzi or know that your SSI tax dollars were not in a “lock box” for safekeeping.
My father is an older boomer and he often tells a story of a professor that told him in the 1960’s that by the time he retired there would be no SSI left to collect. Well, he’s retired and he’s getting his monthly check. Ta-da!
Providing we don’t have a total collapse there will be a SSI check for me someday (I’m an X’er) but I fully expect the .gov to do their machinations to keep the program solvent, i.e. means testing, raising the age to collect, inflating the currency to oblivion. It’ll be there, it just won’t be worth a damn. I’m with LLPOH, end the fantasy now and lets get back to reality.
Eliminate our 1000 military bases abroad and the several hundred billion/yr that the US is paying to maintain an “Empire” that is a dead loss, and then we can talk about cutting other stuff. Throw in elimination of Medicaid, and we are running a surplus…
I agree that the deficit is out of control and needs to be reduced, immediately. However, why do you pick on the one thing that everyone has had to “donate” to at gunpoint; SS. Why don’t we start with welfare payments to those that won’t work. All the lazy cheats sitting on their asses getting paid to shit out the next generation of lazy cheats. Free landlines, cell phones, food, liquor, housing, and the expectation of more. No, the demand of more, and complaining that they were cheated out of their good life.
Go after that first, and I’m with you. Leave me taking back what Uncle Sam stole from me alone.
Air cooled – I said get rid of all welfare. I agree with you.
I’m all for the collapse now. Nothing like a good firefight out front on the street for property values.
Seriously, I would tend to believe the major f’ing of the US began with the Mexican War which ended us being a Farmer’s Republic. Next biggest f’ing was the Federal Reserve. One largely overlooked except probably here was the killing of the republican aspect of the government with the 17th amendment’s direct election of Senators. The Senate was no longer the states checking the Feds but a much less useful super legislature. The derelict Clinton did the most damage in recent years with the legalization of Credit Default Swaps which had been illegal since the Teddy Roosevelt administration, and for good reason. The Bank bailouts under the Ivy League shithead Presidents (Bush1, Clinton, Bush2, Obongo) were several well driven nails in the coffin for sure.
I thought the musical allegory was apt.
Rand was wrong about one founding principle of Objectivist philosophy; we do not raise ourselves from infancy- that requires the sacrifice and hard work of many people in creating the “I”. There is a Collective effort that cannot be ignored and that makes untying this Gordian knot an impossibility.
Similarly the Collective depends entirely on the creativity and unique contributions of the Individual. There is no way to separate the two without some form of conflict or destruction.
Same as it ever was.
The distinction needs to be made between collective and community, the latter being a term that Uncola and Rand never use.
Of course we must cooperate with one another, but the old ideal of freedom of association must prevail. The choices we have about whom we help, whom we ostracize, whom we patronize to obtain needed commodities, etc. have been intentionally and steadily eroded. The end is a terrible loss of liberty and ultimate dehumanization.
The people left after the Great Reset will only survive by recapturing the community model as the backbone of their society.
I agree, and would add that once people get beyond a small community, probably not more than a few thousand people, governance becomes a problem because cliques and lobbies start to control things.
In “Atlas Shrugged”, the Dagney “heroine” character (I guess it actually her brother) **inherits** a railroad (which she then tries to save, IIRC). How the fuck does anyone think a railroad gets built in the first place? You can only build it by taking land from someone else, usually by government force.
In using this example for her tycoon protagonist, Rand inadvertently sustains the “you didn’t build that” assertion. And really, most tycoons amass wealth mainly due to supposedly-societal laws which they write and exploit (eg. Koch brothers, Mellons, Carnegies, etc.)
Yes, these days rent seeking behavior predominates, and honest workers and inventors are left in the dust…
“In contrast to the slow, almost creeping pace of the factory owners in the race for wealth, the railroad owners sprang at once into the lists of mighty wealth-possessers…vested with a sweep of properties beside which those of the petty industrial bosses were puny. ”
” Great railroad systems, in the building of which neither J.P. Morgan nor his associates had in the slightest participated, which had been constructed largely with public funds and gifts of public land, and which they had never seen until long after they were in operation — these railroads suddenly passed into the ownership of the Morgan combine, which largely meant Morgan himself.”
“History of the Great American Fortunes”, Vol 2, Gustavas Meyers, 1910
http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/myers/myers_index.html
In those days, on flat land, railway coul be constructed for $9,000 a mile; on unpleasant surface, for $25,000 a mile.
Thanks to rugged individualists like John Morgan, the United States got four times as many miles of railroad as needed, for the price of $125,000 a mile. hip-hip for rugged ones. (the builders received a dollar a day for a ten-hour workday)
http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/pettigrew/petig_07.html
http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/cloud/monopoly_06.html
Amen to you Uncola, you rugged individualist!
I credit my father for my sense of individualism. A common reply to many using “We” in his presence was “What’s this WE shit? You got a mouse in your pocket?” That’s how I’m wired. You march to your drum and I’ll march to mine.
‘Murica’s problem started when the federalists gained the upper hand over the anti federalists.
The corruption of our education system has had the most detrimental effect on our downfall. Get ’em young and possibilities are endless. I think they stopped teaching kids to think and reason during my school years, 1971-1985. Take away those skills or never instill them in the first place and you’ve got a population of sheep……complete idiots and it will never occur to them to to question anything. In fact, most were taught or told “what” to think at very young ages. Just ask them to explain their beliefs or why they hold them and they can’t.
Things are damned sure gonna get interesting!
My father in law would say “Don’t go in(money) with anyone(the “we”) unless it can be eaten or drunken within thirty minutes.
Thanks, great article.
On your point of:
“If you value your own “welfare” more than your country, then your song has gone flat.”
If by “welfare”, you are referring to government money to those who do not work, I agree.
However, if by “welfare” you are referring to “the health, happiness, and fortunes of a person”, I must say that I do indeed value my “health, happiness and fortunes of a person” more than my country.
I was thunkin’ the same thing. Gotta take of myself before I can take care of the country. Besides, I think my country walked out on me first, but I’m willing to kick a little ass to rectify that.
Nicely done Uncola,
You ask where ‘Our once great and promising song of liberty went off key.’ All the things you mentioned have played their part like a death from a thousand cuts. The war of Yankee aggression was the first real body blow, but the knockout punch was the combination of the federal reserve act along with the income tax. These 2 unconstitutional ‘laws’ passed in the dark built the machinery that weaponized the mental virus of ‘From each according to his ability to each according to his need.’
The collectivist’s of our age have morphed into an army of angry grasshoppers. The ‘dissonant cacophony of amalgamated noise’ as you call it has made them tone deaf to the songs of liberty. These songs of freedom still play in the hearts of those who did build that. Without the I that the locust swarm would extinguish nothing of lasting value or beauty would exist in this world. Every good thing that is is because of I.
Anyone who has not read Anthem at this point should get a copy and read it. I remember my uncle gave me the book when I was ten, it sat unread for a couple of years until I was in 6th grade. Once read that book changed my life. The fruits of my labor are mine and mine alone. I refuse to comply to the demand that I owe someone simply because he/she was born at this time.
Everyday more and more I feel like I am in America yet I am not of America. Be the change you want in yourself and in your family. This is where opprotunity still exists to stem the tide. Last week the wife and I spent the whole week cutting, weeding, mowing, trimming trees, burning, harvesting, preserving to the point of exhaustion. On sat and sun we watched while enjoying smokes and drinks as all 4 of the neighbors around us got at it and did some overdue cleanup.
This article was very well done. I will share it with my tiny circle. Even though they have heard this, the song does remain the same.
Yes, I definitely meant government “welfare” (hence the quotation marks) and I plan to clarify this by updating the article on my own website.
I write these essays to consolidate thoughts and test ideas. Just before posting, I always feel like I am leaving home on a trip, and I ask myself: “What am I missing? What am I missing?” What’s great about TBP, is that the commenters always let me know right away.
Some really excellent, and thought-provoking, comments above. Thank you
Yes, I didn’t like that idea either. The welfare of your people might have to come before yours on a few occasions, but the welfare of the State is of no interest to me, except that I wish it would be downsized 99%…
Llpoh, everybody will not go broke. the banks might go broke but not the bankers. They have bought up real stuff with their stolen money.
This is the best counterpoint imo LLPOH.
Depends where it’s located. The banksters generally don’t tend to purchase rural assets.
Don’t bet on that. They probably own more of rural America than you think.
Uncola
Great article.
You ask, “What am I missing?” In your long and sad litany of the destroyers of our heritage, I believe you left out one important thing: Roe vs. Wade, which passed in 1973. This decision crowned the Self as the arbiter of moral law, confirming that there is no ultimate higher standard to be followed. Moral relativism has eaten away at all of our institutions ever since, and our economy has never recovered the vitality it had at that time.
you are right because of that as a country it was the brick that broke our back
A monk asked Dasui, “When the fire at the end of an aeon rages through and the whole universe is destroyed, is this destroyed, or not?”
Dasui said, “Destroyed.”
The monk said, “Then it goes along with that?”
Dasui said, “It goes along with that.”
Brothers will fight and kill each other,
sisters’ children will defile kinship.
It is harsh in the world, whoredom rife
—an axe age, a sword age
—shields are riven—
a wind age, a wolf age—
before the world goes headlong.
No man will have
mercy on another. – Edda
In the Name of Odin
Diogenes
Individualists aren’t right. Or left. Both those are collectivist. Both those are “we.” As are country clubs.
All those questions at the beginning, that don’t begin at the beginning. The local beginning. The “revolution.” The articles. The constitution. Meet the new beginning. Same as the old.
Disco responsible for the fall of America? Hardly! Disco saved America. I like to dance.
“Why don’t political leftists and Fabian Socialists ever look to history to contemplate the proven outcomes of their beliefs?”
Maybe the same reason the drunk who wakes up in his car somewhere he’s never been before, 6 hours from home, with a horrible hangover, & says… “Damn. I’ll never do that again.” is out drinking again that evening. Denial? Selective remembering? Fallacious reasoning? Alcoholic rationalization? Mental illness?
“It’ll be different… this time… I ate something before starting to drink.”
One thing the leftists have is an overwhelming sense of their own intelligence and morality and are sure that they will get it right. Especially the ones who are drones.
Maybe they like the results, including the mass slaughters….NYT certainly seems to…
Another nice article Herr Uncola.
I’m surprised no one mentioned Big Corporations.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the many positive contributions Corporations have made in making America perhaps the most economically prosperous nation ever to have existed.
But, surely, you are aware that the little proverb “too much of a good thing is a bad thing” is very very often true. And it’s true for corporations.
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I’m not going to say that Corporations are evil. Buuut;
1—– Corps exist for one thing and one thing ONLY; to make a profit
2—– Corps have ZERO loyalty, except to their own survival. They don’t give a flying fuck about God, country, you, your family, or apple pie.
3—– Corps have no soul. No morals. No feelings about right and wrong. No remorse. But, they do have a powerful PR / Advertising / Marketing arm to make you think they do.
That’s a deadly combination if allowed to run amuck. And it certainly has. And it has manifested itself in a few critical ways that are destroying America.
1. They have an enormous and seemingly endless resource called Cash.
2. Corp Money is power. Corp Money buys influence. Corp Money squashes all peons in their path. Corp Money buys the government we have. We are arriving at this point, or have arrived, whereby Govt = Corp.
3. And then The Supremes decided that Corporations have the same rights and privileges as people! WTF???
Oh yeah. Corps helped make America great. But, that ship has sailed.
Stuck, the coming NWO is nothing more than A Corporation of the People, By the People and For the People. That’s why Corporations were elevated to “People” status. That’s why laws all over the world are being morphed into Uniform Commercial Code (UCC). Read the TPP treaty and you’ll find that under it, corporations and individuals accused of “harming” corporate interests would not be subject to US laws or courts but a kangaroo court of former corporate CEO’s.
The entire world will become one giant “company town” in effect.
Good point about corporations, Stucky. It used to be that anything labeled a “person”, from a legal standpoint, would have a limited lifespan. Relief from any oppression by the “person” would at least have an expiration date for us subjects. Not anymore, with advent of the corporation.
The 19th Amendment should also come into play in any discussion about the “tipping point” of where it all went wrong. Yesterday’s post by Pat Buchanan included Samuel Adams’ quote about democracies always committing suicide. What the 19th Amendment actually did, by giving women the vote, was to double the BTU value of the fuel that will propel us to destruction.
You know, Stuck? I was thinking the very same thing.
I believe Collectivism does apply to corporations today. There is a profound divide between Norman Rockwell-era, Main Street Capitalism, and modern Wall Street Capitalism.
Near-monopolistic and predatory corporations like Google, Facebook, Nestle, Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, et al, have become the new safe-havens for tyranny in our day. Their collective human resource departments have, no doubt, become the new Room 101 right out of Orwell’s worst nightmares.
If they are too big FAIL or too big to JAIL or in violation of antitrust laws; or if they are contravening, and thus defiling, the U.S. Constitution like so many telecommunication and internet companies today that are secretly cooperating with government agencies against the will of the American people, then fuck them too. For they shall one day soon collectively inherent the wind as they watch the proverbial sand sift through their collective hands on the way towards finding eternal damnation and torment for their miserable, greedy, empty souls.
On another note, look what our dear Revanchist hath made. Not only a gifted writer but in possession of quite the artistic eye as well. Very talented, indeed:
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Doesn’t look like Photobucket is posting. Trying this (design by Revanchist):
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Holy Crap! Are we really gonna do the whole Ayn Rand/Objectivism debate again? This is yet another entry into the world of utopian philosophies all of which are doomed by a common flaw: they require a basic change in human nature.
Television … Destruction of Community
Uncola
A great article sir. Well done once again.
I haven’t commented on one of your posts for a while but this piece for some reason struck a chord. Right now I am in midst of building an outdoor patio and walkway out of flagstone. It was delivered in random shapes and sizes. A jigsaw puzzle without a picture. Work is proceeding and what was once just a pile of rock has with some work become a mosaic of patterns, shapes and colours.
I must salute your ability to write and chronicle what is going on right now. Someday in future a historian will no doubt look back and read what you wrote. I do think it captures the disfunction current. I haven’t been writing a whole lot because to me there seems to be no descernable pattern or cadence to the song being played. This might be due as you point in piece due to the increasing polarity of the songbooks of the opposing camps.
Yesterday after the heat and beer got the best of me I resigned myself to the basement to cool off. For some reason, maybe it was an exercise in confronting my bias, I decided that it would be good time to watch CNN. Yeah a sucker for punishment.
You talk about out of tune. Each hour a new host/hostess would take the reigns and beat the same dead horse. I was only half paying attention to it. Rest of the time I was reading fake news on the internet.
What struck me when I did pay attention was the plaintive cadence of the interviewers and guests. It was almost hypnotic. They kept repeating the same points over and over again. For those too stoopid to listen the words were put in bold face type at bottom of page. I felt like Winston just sitting there watching it unfold.
Then Erin Burnett came on. Her usual concerned look front and center. She went thru the lineup for program. Not much impressed me other than a panel she planned to convene to pillor an employee of Google who decided to write an essay. To Erin and her panel of 3 women this man had committed the ultimate sin. He made a compelling argument for the individual rather than the collective.
I opposing we.
Merit versus quotas.
Blather ensued. I thought about Googling the story, the irony not lost and read the offending essay. At the time I was just too tired to bother. Besides I was hoping that Erin would tilt just a bit moar towards the camera. Flash a bit of cleavage and maybe show me more of her tits. A bit shallow of me but yesterday I paired well with that woman and her vapid TV news network.
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So today I read it.
What was yesterday a compelling case for a man being burned at the stake was today a thoughtful and balanced opinion on how to better run a company in 2017.
He got fired anyways.
You wrote at end in conclusion that
The out-of-tune opposing players desire to set the premises and establish the rules of play.
Words spoken never more true.
Pretty cool, Rob. As I was gathered here before the ethernet campfire, it was like I was right there with ya’, cold beer in hand, watching your rant.
Large breasted “Big Sisters” daily tearing down various Emmanuel Goldsteins. Whether working on behalf of monolithic multinational corporations, or governments – like Jack Nicholson said in “The Departed” (paraphrased): “When you’re staring into the barrel of their “guns”, what difference does it make?”
Fascism, Socialism, and Communism all killed the Capitalism Star. All are statism packaged into diversely patterned wrapping paper and topped off with the same rainbow-colored ribbons and bows. Collectivists, all.
Again, I enjoyed your rant.
To Admin or TMWNN – I earlier posted a reply to Rob above and it was up for a while, but now I see it has disappeared. Could you see if it was spammed-out or something and please repost it if possible? Thanks
Hey Uncola
I am kind of played out as far as commentary. Most days I’d rather reach for chuckles then say something serious. Burnout and doom fatigue is my diagnosis.
Aug 9th, another great day in history. The second bomb drops on Japan. I would add something inane but works beckons.
I was at this concert. 120,000 people. It was fucken’ awesome!
This was the best song of the night. It captures the zeitgeist of 2017 for me. the certain resignation to fate that awaits us all. Like you say we are all just staring down a barrel of the gun. With that in mind I find these days are better spent finding a shady place and having a cold beer.
Anyways Cheers!
“I am kind of played out as far as commentary. Most days I’d rather reach for chuckles then say something serious. Burnout and doom fatigue is my diagnosis”
And then you shout at the top of your lungs how great it is that we dropped the bomb- the peaceniks are gonna be all over you if they see this.
Btw,your song did not post-who was it?
Cola,this was one of your best articles,keep it up.
edit-now the song is showing–
Tampa
Just my attempt at stirring the pot. I figured someone would latch onto that and take it for a spin.
The song was Harvester of Sorrow by Metallica. A good song for today and Nagasaki.
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The money is still here. No one will take it, at least not all of it. Fed will inflate it away when they turn on the presses to pay bills. The 1%ers own the hard assets, so you can bet your ass there won’t be deflation for any long period of time. Stock market corrects first, then shaky bond market comes down and makes stock market losses look like small change. When Gov offers you start-up digi-funds for new digital currency are you going to turn it down? 1000 big ones, free, just provide name, ss number, finger print, retina scan and a swab of your DNA. 1000 big ones? Enough to pay for food for three months!
Uncola,
A captivating article….devoured it…and then every single comment, great reads, laughs and insights! TJF that first comment tells me you had some rough toilet training. I agree that Roe Vs. Wade murder incorporated should have been added to the list…but before that kicking God out of the schools (I was in 6th grade) evolved the chewing gum/class cutting problem into mass shootings…just saying.
I went to school in the 50’s & 60’s (class of 67) Civics, American History, patriotism, discipline, clean fist fights, working hard from 13 on (two paper routes at the same time) it all started circling the drain from the 70’s on.
I’m a late 60’s Boomer, generational blue collar, no collage (well two semesters in a liberal clown school majoring in coeds, pot & beer after Nam…but I left to work on an oil rig…had to get out before I added to my confirmed kill list).
Clawed my way into the white collar corporate management world – gambled at 55 to open my own consulting company (had enough of the politics although I was pretty good at cutthroat survival and results). Made enough in the next decade to buy a decent piece of rural land, retire debt free, modest home, barn, out buildings, orchard, huge garden, grape arbors, fish pond, into all the self-sufficiency, prepper, gun/nut weapons/gear stuff…if not for me, my family. Outside the parasite Banksters with a decent stash/stacks.
Its not how much you have its also how much debt you have, how independent, skilled, prepared, armed, networked are you no matter your generation. Because the Great Reset is coming and its going to be a wild ride and this is one Boomer/Nam Vet who won’t be asking anyone for anything…except politeness and No Trespassing.
Hope (and pray) I don’t have to add to the list…but who knows…too many Americans circling the drain.
me to brother took care of me my family and that was it came back not believing the crap any more even took 10 yrs in the army to wake up it’s not going to end well
You sound just like the retired US Marine we’ve come to know in our community. The Reset is on, according to the people I talk to.
Before the income tax and welfare was voting for women. The communist traits of the female has driven us down this road. True or false? Discuss.
income tax was in place b4 women’s sufferage but i agree they should not be voting–
Larry Morris,
He would be my type…Bang a Gong…let’s get it on. Semper Fi Do or Die!
Newby,
Above are the two major types of American woman for the discussion…not sure on the numbers but I suspect they are way out of balance in the American estrogen, red, white & blue continuum .
Above is one of the red, white & blue hotties in balance talking about the 10 types of American weenie men you can backhand into submission…when push comes to backhand. (Don’t worry about shove and the latter shoot, that is far above their neutered pay grade).
Great article and lots of good stuff on this thread. A few thoughts of my own:
1) The cognitive dissonance screams even in this supposed bastion of critical thought. At some times everyone seems to understand that government=bad. An equation cannot be any more simple. Yet, everyone still wants THEIR social security payments. I get it, we all want good stuff for ourselves first–but most of us will not see social security money EVER. If you do end up getting it it will no longer have any fucking value…dear God, I though we all understood this. But how many times to we have to endure another “but I paid all this money into the system…” NO, your money has been STOLEN by your government and government=bad. Deal with it or don’t, but all the wining and appealing to fairness in the world will not change reality.
Another example that is always thrown around on this topic: Yes, I know that government has made EVERY SINGLE problem it has EVER tried to fix worse, but they can solve all our immigration problems overnight with a wall. IDIOCY. Giving more money and more authority to government (even for so wonderful a thing as a giant fucking wall) is fucking STUPID, because government=bad.
And, of course, I have to bring up the whole Kathy Griffin fiasco. Everyone hates the government and the corrupt courts and the overcrowded for-profit prisons and absolutely loves the Constitution, until some talentless, hideous hack pretends to cut off beloved leader Trump’s head…then please government, please save us from the bad meanie and arrest her immediately. Fuck, people!
2) There is, as in most things, a delicate balance to be struck between strict individualism and community. No man is an island, yet I fully believe that collectivism ALWAYS leads to tyranny and great suffering. The answer, of course, lies in liberty–particularly true freedom of association and commerce. Nature always finds the right balance–and societies will always do so if individuals are free in their associations. Of course, it’s more complicated than that–we all have circumstances beyond our control and none of us pick our families or the time of our birth.
I have to leave it at this: “In all things balance.” It is the only universal truth I am aware of.
3) Corporations are a great scourge of our time. Yes, they provide all of our cushy lifestyles and most of our livelihoods, but at what cost?
An what is a Corporation anyway? Legally, it is nothing more that a document sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere. From another perspective they are nearly religious deities…worshiped by all their employees. Take a slightly different angle–how different are they from big, powerful, nasty, white-collared gangs?
Gotta say that was a good comment Drud.
Funny how so many are lone wolves when stealing from someone else.
I highly recommend this movie.
Admin, if I wasn’t too lazy to go to my computer downstairs? I would submit this movie with a comment.
I have been giving this some thought. I grew up on a farm, somewhat autonomous from social life, except for Sunday go to meeting and school, which could not be avoided.
I joined the Air Force, where I immediately became part of a collective, which responded on command for authority figures recognizable by little stars, bars and birds on their shoulders.
I became a mother and joined a new collective, where everyone was desperately trying to raise their kid right and give them a good future.
By the time I “met” the Corporation, it had become an individual whose interest could compete with my own in the eyes of the Law.*
The complete inability of the Law of the Land to recognize a HUMAN being over a business agreement as having rights that can’t be taken away is the single greatest tragedy of this great experiment.
Corporate identity destroys the individual, whether you own it, work in it or use its byproducts, which are produced at the lowest cost with the cheapest ingredients. Garbage in; garbage out.
*After I got out of the AF, I worked for a string of government contractors, first Boeing, then Northrup, then ARINC, then General Dynamics, then Robbins Gioia and from there I managed to land a great job taking care of my elderly father-in-law until he left this realm.
Great comment, Drud. You get a gold star!
Drud,
1. Some of U.S. know our money has been stolen…most don’t…but most of every generation don’t have a clue what has/is going on spiritually, culturally, politically, economically (in that order) or where we/U.S. are heading.
Some of U.S. who have paid in for many more decades then you have probably been alive through their blood…(I have three Purple Hearts) sweat, and tears want back at least what we paid in…if we live long enough. It was the deal we were raised with. We shook hands with the government/banksters…and now we are missing fingers.
Me, I’m not counting on anyone or any entity for my well being, I’ve made my own hedges, insurances, safety nets, security, stashes, stacks, and guns and gear to make any reverse taking extremely foolish and expensive. (Who knows the Great Reset could save me from the slow nursing home goodbye…something said for a for a quick end game).
Trump has become the Wall…before he even built it! Don’t know if it will go up…hope it does…have proud immigrant blood in my veins from both sides…but the Statue of Liberality is not a suicide pact with the rest of the world.
Kathy Griffin…who cares what any (and I mean ANY) of the blue bubble clowns say or do? Unless you live/have your fate in one…then all I can say is get ready for (as my Father would say) THE RUDE AWAKENING.
2. Good paragraph-keep searching for additional universal truths. I stumble over them every decade…at an accelerating rate.
3. Corporations?….the balance is one of those universal truths somewhere in your future.
I gave you the first thumbs Up!
“Some of U.S. who have paid in for many more decades then you have probably been alive through their blood…(I have three Purple Hearts) sweat, and tears want back at least what we paid in…if we live long enough.”
And therein lies the problem. The money is gone. It was a bad investment. When a bad investment is made, the investor should lose its investment. But no, the boomers want to pass the loss onto the next generation.
And the Boomers do not want what they paid in – they want many times more than that. What they paid in does not equate to what they hope to get back. If it did, there would be no deficit. Or not much of one.
The Boomers lived the high life. New cars, McMansions, big screen TVs, vacations, etc etc etc. They did this, largely, via their and the govt debt. They mortgaged the future for their lifestyle – one that they really could not afford.
And they still want “what was promised”. It is shameful.
Trying to blame the govt or banks and to ignore their own responsibility in this debacle is the height of hypocrisy.
If my forced FICA contributions were instead invested into financial vehicles (stock or bond funds-even Certificates of Deposits that paid high interest rates in the ’80s and ’90s) chosen by myself, the compounding would have yielded MORE than the “many more times” SS would pay out.
The point is, these were involuntary taxes, not “investments”. And yeah, they are unconstitutional transfer taxes, at that!
Rise up – that is my point.
SS was an insurance scheme, designed to insure widows, children, workers against early death or disablement. It was not set up, nor funded, to be a retirement scheme. Payouts are NOT legislated by law. Its structure is still that of an insurance scheme. But people have come to believe, or convinced themselves that it is.
The money was not invested and set aside. It was used, as all insurance money is used, to pay claims. Unfortunately, the claims outweigh the receipts per individual – massively in fact, especially when Medicare comes into play.
It is a tax, not an investment. And they have far over-promised. The bill for that will crash down on the young.
First, I’m not a Boomer spokesman or representative…I think many, way too many of my generation are/were Dr. Spock raised pampered poodles, Woodstock assembly-line stoned spoiled brats. I have always considered myself a throwback…to another century.
Oh I agree, the SS “Safety Net” became a handout Ponzi scam…along with a bunch of other Socialist boondoggles, but I didn’t figure the demographics out until the late 90’s in my late 40’s. One of the first Rich Dad – Poor Dad books got me investigating, scared and then planning.
The governments and the Banksters have put a debt load on every American (with fiat toilet paper since 71) they should be strung up, after being tared and feathered first. Not only is the Lock Box is empty, and we’re bankrupt and in to un-payable debt, but the whole world is trapped in the same experiment…that is about to hit the proverbial fan.
I have been forced to pay in close to $400,000.00 starting in 1966. I just started collecting 2 years ago at the rate of $2,200.00 a month, $26,400.00 a year (I’m 67). There isn’t a man in my family (either side) that made it to their mid 80’s alive. I figure if things stay the same (it won’t) I might get most of it back (not counting the taxes…thanks to the Peanut Farmer). But until I die or it all blows up I have no problem or guilt monthly.
If I had control of that $400,000 I would have done with it what I did with what they didn’t get their hands on. Saved more, invested more, stayed out of debt, stacked more, still lived below my means, same plan just with more and be far, far better off. I’m all for individual responsibility.
When I was a boy and we drove by the Poor House in the country in PA. my Dad would point at it and tell me if I didn’t manage my money well that’s where I would end up. Like a lot of lessons he gave me it stuck.
With the Great Reset coming and the current demographics the SS age will be raised, people will be means tested and reduced or eliminated…and hopefully we will get our pitchforks and torches out. But who knows…lots of grasshoppers playing their violins who vote…some of them don’t even belong here.
If the EBT cards and food stamps go down…all bets are off…burning tires and burning cities.
My son is 23 and unable to use our military retirement Tricare without buying his own “Tricare” policy, which would be fine IF HE WAS EVER SICK. It has crashed.
Llpoh says:
August 9, 2017 at 11:15 pm
Rise up – that is my point.
——————
And that is why I won’t feel any guilt if I get many more times back from SS than what I paid in, because I would have achieved that on my own if given the option to chose my investments vs. involuntary taxed.
Rise up – the hypocrisy it burns. You are pissed that they stole your money, but you are more than happy to screw the future generations.
That is some sorry ass belief system you got right their.
Llpoh,
We all play with the generational cards we have been dealt. I didn’t even realize SS was dealt from the bottom of the deck until my late 40’s….and then got scared and serious about becoming debt free, diversified, stacked, prepped, and armed to the teeth, etc.. outside the government and the banksters and every other entity and being on the plant, two decades is a long time once you understand the game with focus. When the unavoidable and inevitable happens SS won’t be my lost lifeline and I hope all generations rise up…but the shitstorm is coming, its too late.
I have been “rising up” politically/economically since the 90’s…I don’t know if I will get most of, all of, or more then what I have paid in and either does Rise Up, but I don’t see hypocrisy in Rise Up…he is just playing with the generational cards he was dealt.
Robert caught on way before I did, and like him I am worried for those who will end up eating dog food in the dark. Its one of the reasons I have way over prepped…some are in my family, they won’t listen…and I love them.
Exactly, Rise Up and Mark. I knew from my first payroll tax in 1963 that it was a scam and never expected to see any of that money ever. Don’t care, but I am pleasantly surprised that today I’m able to snatch back most of what I put out over the years. Absolutely no remorse on my part. The agency that stole my money is now stealing money from the millenials, and if not stopped will continue stealing it from future generations. End the payroll tax, as Llpoh suggests; fine by me. I’ll still get paid from the empty Treasury General Funds. It’s all just numbers magic. And if my payments stopped tomorrow, who cares. Like you , I’ve provisioned for a future in this pre Apocolyptic chaos. I do feel sorry for the cat food SS’ers who will literally starve to death when the payments stop. I wonder if those who clamor to end SS are prepared to take these unfortunates into their homes?
Larceny, slavery, is just numbers magic? Or is that characterization really just word magic? Should I be prepared to take Madoff’s partners in crime into my home, too? If not, why not?
Very well done Uncola, enjoyed that rampage down Atrophy Lane!
Have a rather successful YouTube channel in which battered white men opine on the antecedents of women turning in to fat bull dykes who scream rape, if your eyes linger too long on their greasy hair, wondering if inflation and QE4 has left shampoo beyond their castrating means.
Methinks you touched on all the right things, but I place enormous weight on the mass migrations of Communist Jews from Russia, and then increasingly from Poland and Germany in the mid to late 1930’s. Leading to, The Frankfurt School setting up shop at Columbia. https://redgreenalliance.com/2016/02/11/political-correctness-the-postmodern-cult/
These Trotsky-ites elevated Marxism from the dull of economic ideology, to that of vaginal tingles. Here was their 1930’s agenda:
THE 11-STEP PLAN OF CULTURAL SUBVERSION
The Frankfurt School has 11 objectives to destroy society [#2].
The creation of racism offences.
Continual change to create confusion
The teaching of sex and homosexuality to children
The undermining of schools’ and teachers’ authority
Huge immigration to destroy identity.
The promotion of excessive drinking
Emptying of churches
An unreliable legal system with bias against victims of crime
Dependency on the state or state benefits
Control and dumbing down of media
Encouraging the breakdown of the family
If I were an academician, I would grade them an A+ even on a weighted scale where Odumbo was graded on his ability to suck Globalist cock, while his wife Michael kneed him in the nads for forgetting to feed their fake kids (who themselves, were so stoned every time they twerked that greasy shit black women put in their weaves created modern art on the Secret Service’s dark suits).
It has all rather gone to hell, I see why Jim has lost his Muse, and stumbles in only occasionally now to hiccup and piss a Nihilist scented liquid in our general direction.
Well, here is to hoping that entropy one day kills all the Klintons and Bushes, cause the DoJ sure won’t.
It isn’t that Jim lost his muse, but more that he cannot believe the shit is still coming at the fan almost ten years later.
I stumbled onto TBP via ZeroHedge almost a decade ago. Like JQ, I can’t believe the people in the 30 blocks are still functioning in that shithold. However, unlike dear Admin, Nick and I removed ourselves from shit-flinging activities.
Maggie, I have been reading that long. The end of the second Bushian Imperative was at hand in 2007, when it struck me a wee bit off we had doubled our debt, made the world ever more unstable, lost ever more of our individual liberty under the Guise of a Patriot Act, and I could not even blame a Democrat for it.
The Cabals have been at this a long time. Virtuoso at motivating simps and other malleable and ductile objects in to their little plans. They are smart, persistent, can hire the best and the brightest, all to dangle out rotted carrots with shiny bezels. It is endemic to species. And I used to rail and rage and huff and puff and they blew me away like chaff.
I do still enjoy, parrying though. Soon, I will end my life, because to be honest, can’t find anything I really want to defend anymore. Least of all, the detritus your gender has devolved in to. Wow, they sure know how to create a eugenics plan the ladies can embrace!
Great job Uncola!
Your problem, like most of ours, is that we’re The Ancient Ones:
“At forty, they are worn out. At forty, they are sent to the Home of the Useless, where the Old Ones live. The Old Ones do not work, for the State takes care of them. They sit in the sun in summer and they sit by the fire in winter. They do not speak often, for they are weary. The Old Ones know that they are soon to die. When a miracle happens and some live to be forty-five, they are the Ancient Ones, and the children stare at them when passing by the Home of the Useless. Such is to be our life, as that of all our brothers and of the brothers who came before us. ”
Loved that book, and the “Homes for the Useless” for some reason became the most memorable quote.
Other than that, perhaps we should explore the concept that ALL ideologies, particularly political, are camouflage for “just plain evil”. Psychotics who want to commit criminal acts and not just “get away with it”, but want the sexual thrill of being applauded for it. And going down in history as heroes. Why is this a problem? 🙂
Thanks Uncola,
“We” enjoyed your article. My Mr. made reading
Ayn Rand a requisite for any future relationship.
To all commenters railing against the hypocrisy
and selfishness of Boomers demanding more $$
than they put in to the SS “fund”….Buzz off. Not
everyone wants it or needs it. Lesson: Medicare
is mandatory, for SS beneficiaries, and is in fact
mandatory for everyone. Doesn’t mean you can’t
buy “supplements”…but after 65yrs. you are
taking it/paying for it whether you like it or not.
Maggie,
Please excuse this intrusion, but didja post
a granola recipe and I missed it? I need granola
support. Am I entitled to it? No. But you said…
Suzanna, I couldn’t remember if I posted it or not. I crack me up.
I will create a post tonight downstairs. You may have seen my mention of having two computers I work on here at the log home? One is in the basement, where my dear husband is finalizing the basement toilet he never wanted in this home. When we “designed” the log home and ordered the Gastineau Oak Log Home kit from Lyn Gastineau, paying for it on AHEM… LAYAWAY… anyone remember that?
Nick and I paid for the home on the three year layaway plan.
Back to the basement issue. The “man cave/office” is in the basement and is not at all off limits to me. It is Nick’s little dream to have a place he can yell obscenities to the Cleveland Brown’s to his heart’s content without my panicking at his rage at the machine that as been Brown’s football all his life. The desktop and graphic support software are down there, as is my link to sign onto TBP without the Man with No Name banning me for forgetting my password.
This machine I purchased in Maryland and set up there. I keep it “virginal” from the data on the other machine. This is Maggie’s machine and I hope to keep it that way. Of course, last time my son visited (which is rarer and rarer, as it should be), he hacked my password and logged into a bunch of crap I didn’t want to see. LOL… fortunately, it is just nerdy computer science crap.
So, while I have great stuff to post when I get down there again, I am awaiting the completion of my water closet (we chose to use the shower drain as a drain for the dehumidifier, at least until we decide to use the water for other purposes. We get a gallon a day from our basement, which is good to know in case of a disaster!) I will make a real effort to get the granola recipe and information there tonight.
By the way, if this works? This is my Lady Loft… I figured it was my answer to a mancave and it is the balcony outside the second floor bedroom. Lady loft with lovely Edwardian desk I like to think of as belonging to a Bronte or a Jane Austen.
Or an Ellie Mae Clampett.
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Great article, uncola, and I read most comments. Well done, TBP fans.
Perhaps we could go to an education method…have the govt. benefits totals revealed in obituaries. Then a cost analysis could be done by youths and all to help them choose their course in a profession. I would be very interested in the rate of return on boomers, housewives, poor people.
Also, maybe limit federal voting to taxpayers, with photo I.D. Let locals do as necessary. Let the locals help more with old folks…dormitories, shared houses, etc. I am so thrifty, I could help brainstorm ways to help get the boomers used to lower s.s. payouts and higher vested ages ( I will probably be 80 before I am eligible for socscurity (spelling on purpose). Make Reagan speeches required during adolescence, the impressionable years. Also, have textbook choices from indie book sellers to get the conglomerates out of education.i would much rather my kiddos reading dines or rush or any Rand than the current teacher choices. Revision should not happen. And finally, get our factories up and competing with the Chinese crap. My vintage stuff is sometimes nicer than this modern crap.
Go me, and mine.