covid lockdowns – The Burning Platform

THE WALL WAS TOO HIGH, AS YOU CAN SEE

“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

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“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” ― Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow

As I have witnessed and lived through the last three dystopian years of mass hysteria, mass delusion, and mass mental illness, I find myself drawn to the same thinkers, social commentators, and musical artists over and over. The wisdom, wit, and clarity of Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Roger Waters in describing a world gone mad makes me feel less alone in my observations about humanity, politicians, governments, bankers, billionaire funded NGOs, war mongering psychopaths, and entities intent on shredding the social fabric of this country and the world.

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Totalitarian Paranoia Run Amok: Pandemics, Lockdowns & Martial Law

Via The Rutherford Institute

“Totalitarian paranoia runs deep in American society, and it now inhabits the highest levels of government.”—Professor Henry Giroux

Once upon a time, there was a government so paranoid about its hold on power that it treated everyone and everything as a threat and a reason to expand its powers. Unfortunately, the citizens of this nation believed everything they were told by their government, and they suffered for it.

When terrorists attacked the country, and the government passed massive laws aimed at paving the way for a surveillance state, the people believed it was done merely to keep them safe. The few who disagreed were labeled traitors.

When the government waged costly preemptive wars on foreign countries, insisting it was necessary to protect the nation, the citizens believed it. And when the government brought the weapons and tactics of war home to use against the populace, claiming it was just a way to recycle old equipment, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were labeled unpatriotic.

When the government spied on its own citizens, claiming they were looking for terrorists hiding among them, the people believed it. And when the government began tracking the citizenry’s movements, monitoring their spending, snooping on their social media, and surveying them about their habits—supposedly in an effort to make their lives more efficient—the people believed that, too. The few who disagreed were labeled paranoid.

When the government allowed private companies to take over the prison industry and agreed to keep the jails full, justifying it as a cost-saving measure, the people believed them. And when the government started arresting and jailing people for minor infractions, claiming the only way to keep communities safe was to be tough on crime, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were labeled soft on crime.

When the government hired crisis actors to take part in disaster drills, never alerting the public to which “disasters” were staged, the people genuinely believed they were under attack. And when the government insisted it needed greater powers to prevent such attacks from happening again, the people believed that too. The few who disagreed were told to shut up or leave the country.

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The Joker: A Premonition

Via Brownstone Institute

It was two years and a few months ago – only a few months before lockdowns – that I dragged myself to see The Joker, a movie I dreaded but ended up respecting.

“It’s a movie about one man’s descent into madness,” said the ticket taker. “Nothing else.”

Why was the ticket seller pre-reviewing this movie for me? The line seemed overly rehearsed, a cautionary note to viewers as a way to prevent what has concerned people, namely that the movie’s fictional mayhem would generate real-world copycats. This was the great worry at the time.

Still, his mini-review did give me some reassurance. The previews alone were too creepy. Life is tough enough without movies introducing more sadness, which is precisely why I like to stick with uplifting fare. Still, I marshaled my way through this one.

There is a superficial way in which the man was correct. This was just about one guy. Even after leaving, I kept telling myself that. And yet after it was over, I experienced precisely what so many others reported at the time. The movie imparts an aura that you can’t shake. You take it home with you. You sleep with it. You wake up in the morning and see that damned face again. You think through scenes. Then you remember things. Then more starts to make sense – not moral sense but narrative sense.

It was also tremendously unpleasant viewing, the most difficult two-plus hours of movie watching I can remember. It was also brilliant and gripping in every frame. The score is perfect. And the acting didn’t seem like acting.

As for the “just one man” interpretation, that’s hard to sustain. The street scenes. The subways packed with people wearing clown masks, headed to the protest. The rich, established businessman running for mayor and the protests that engenders. The strange way in which this unsettling and violent figure becomes a folk hero on the streets. There was surely a larger point here.

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The Goal of Covidism is Communism

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Most of us have heard the phrase: “The goal of socialism is communism”. Perhaps, at its core, the statement is a reference to creeping incrementalism, or, stated another way: Give Marxism an inch and it takes a mile.

Just like Covidism: it was given an inch and it took a mile. In only eighteen months America advanced, incrementally, from Flatten the Curve® and lockdowns to mandatory vaccinations: All because of a virus that mostly endangers the elderly and those with serious health concerns.

From an economic standpoint, Covidism, like socialism, has allowed for some capitalism over the last year and a half: a centralized form of capitalism, to be sure, as some workers and businesses were defined as “essential” and others deemed more equal were financially subsidized by the state.

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BlackRock: The Company that Owns the World

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FOURTH TURNING DETONATION

“Americans today fear that linearism (alias the American Dream) has run its course. Many would welcome some enlightenment about history’s patterns and rhythms, but today’s intellectual elites offer little that’s useful. Caught between the entropy of the chaoticists and the hubris of the linearists, the American people have lost their moorings.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

“The ancients believed that each cyclical extreme, mirroring the hopes and fears of the other, helps generate the other. The night longs for the day, the day for night. In war, people yearn for relief from strife, leading to peace. In peace, people yearn to champion what they love, leading to war.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

When I started thinking about my annual beginning of the year article in early January, I tried to formulate a catchy title. Knowing we have entered the thirteenth year of this Fourth Turning, with the intensity of the crisis reaching an unparalleled level since November 4, I decided upon Fourth Turning Detonation. I immediately thought that might be too dire and figured I would change it later. After the first few weeks of the new year, I now think it might be grossly inadequate to describe what is coming in 2021.

It is easy to get distracted by the daily gyrations, ceaseless media propaganda, political theater, false narratives, and delusional beliefs of both the left and right, as this military empire built on debt and deceit spirals towards its fiery cataclysmic climax. Opposing forces have gathered themselves into position focusing on defeating their domestic enemies, with the left seeming to have strategic advantage but led by hubristic dullards, while numerous foreign adversaries circle like hungry vultures ready to pounce on the dying beast of an empire.

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A Time for New Beginnings and Ending That Which Must End

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Janus is an ancient Roman, a composite god who is associated with doorways, beginnings, and transitions. A usually two-faced god, he looks to both the future and the past at the same time, embodying a binary.

– Source

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.

– Thomas Pynchon, “Gravity’s Rainbow” (1973)

Two years ago, also during the month of Janus, I wrote a speculative article on Trump as two faces on the same coin and, specifically, considered the president as the “most interesting man in the world”: an enigmatic “ringleader”, of sorts, who always keeps us guessing between transitional episodes:

In so many ways, Trump is the perfect foil to usher in a new epoch… a forerunner of sorts before another ringleader takes center stage.

To be sure, President Trump is like a flip-sided Obama the way he’s branded upon America’s psyche. And, like Obama, he’s a walking, talking, Rorschach test.

For good? Or bad?

Either way: We all have our suspicions and are becoming more certain with each passing day.

And here we are today, two years later, still wondering.

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