Fourth Turning – Page 14 – The Burning Platform

Is This Worse Than ’68?

Saturday, in Pittsburgh, a Sabbath celebration at the Tree of Life synagogue became the site of the largest mass murder of Jews in U.S. history. Eleven worshippers were killed by a racist gunman.

Friday, we learned the identity of the crazed criminal who mailed pipe bombs to a dozen leaders of the Democratic Party, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

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From restaurants to Capitol corridors, this campaign season we have seen ugly face-offs between leftist radicals and Republican senators.

Are we more divided than we have ever been? Are our politics more poisoned? Are we living in what Charles Dickens called “the worst of times” in America? Is today worse than 1968?

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America Is on the Brink of a Nervous Breakdown

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” ― Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

Yet another shooting.

Yet another smear of ugliness, hatred and violence.

Yet another ratcheting up of the calls for the government to clamp down on the citizenry by imposing more costly security measures without any real benefit, more militarized police, more surveillance, more widespread mental health screening of the general population, more threat assessments and behavioral sensing warnings, more gun control measures, more surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities, more “See Something, Say Something” programs aimed at turning Americans into snitches and spies, more metal detectors and whole-body imaging devices at so-called soft targets, more roaming squads of militarized police empowered to do more stop-and-frisk searches, more fusion centers to centralize and disseminate information to law enforcement agencies, and more government monitoring of what Americans say and do, where they go, what they buy and how they spend their time.

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Normalcy Bias and the Fourth Turning

Hat tip The Feral Irishman

Via The Christian Mercenary

There is an article on Zerohedge discussing the Fourth Turning which places America in the same 80-100 year cycle, or what is called a “saecula” as it was during the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II. This is something I had been thinking about for some time, not the saecula, I’m not that smart.

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Robotic Optical Mail Bombs in the Uncanny Valley

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

To those who are politically and cynically aware, the October Surprise designation has become a misnomer. Instead, these predictable events should now be termed October Inevitabilities, or, even, October Hand-Writings-On-The-Wall.

Just like the hands of an old-fashioned clock count down the minutes in circular certitude, so too do election years churn up the same old tired shenanigans meant to manipulate outcomes via emotions stimulated by media shock and awe.

For over two years, the Orwellian Media has ceaselessly shilled a phony Russian election-hacking narrative, perpetuated by a bogus special counsel investigation; even as both operations demonstrably overlooked the real election collusion between Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign, the DNC, the FBI, and the Department of Justice.

Furthermore, in Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination debacle, the nation witnessed the self-perceived purveyors of social justice attempt to convict and hang an innocent man.

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Full Circle: Lessons of the Lost City in the Sands of Time

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

This post will be a little “outside of the box” so to speak. It’s more of an afterthought, really. Therefore, it may not tie into current events and, specifically, the upcoming midterms and aftermath. Or, in a roundabout way, it could be exactly about those coming events. Regardless, as always, it is the reader’s choice to tag along while simultaneously, and at your whim, possessing the power of the click.

Of course, that’s just one of the bonuses of being an internet animal.

Another includes the occasional morsels discovered when hunting and gathering online. These may often be feel-good stories that reassure one’s belief in humanity. Other examples might include new scientific breakthroughs that, at the time, are only reported on the shadowy fringes of the interwebic blogosphere. Or maybe the tidbit is about a social, or health, tip that enriches one’s life. And, oftentimes, other postings are historical; even connecting antiquity with modernity in ways that resurrect the imaginations of childhood.

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Dirty Deeds Done: The People of the Slough

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

slough (slo͞o, slou) also slew (slo͞o) n.

1. A depression or hollow, usually filled with deep mud or mire.

2. also slue A swamp, marsh, bog, or pond, especially as part of a bayou, inlet, or backwater.

3. A state of deep despair or moral degradation.

2-1. The dead outer skin shed by a reptile or amphibian.

2-2. Medicine A layer or mass of dead tissue separated from surrounding living tissue, as in a wound, sore, or inflammation.

2-3. An outer layer or covering that is shed or removed.

—

Not Bolshevism, which Stalin liquidated along with all the old Bolsheviks; not Nazism, which perished along with Hitler in his Berlin bunker; not Fascism, which was left hanging upside down, along with Mussolini and his mistress, from a lamp-post—none of these, history will record, was responsible for bringing down the darkness on our civilization, but liberalism. A solvent rather than a precipitate, a sedative rather than a stimulant, a slough rather than a precipice; blurring the edges of truth, the definition of virtue, the shape of beauty; a cracked bell, a mist, a death wish.

– Muggeridge, Malcom. (1985). “Vintage Muggeridge: Religion and Society”

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The Tyranny of “The Collective” by the Illusions of Narratives

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.

– George Orwell, “1984”, part 3, chapter 3,

Tyranny:

1 : oppressive power especially : oppressive power exerted by government

4 : an oppressive, harsh, or unjust act : a tyrannical act

It is a fact the election of Donald Trump exposed certain undeniable realities in the United States for those willing to see. Perhaps first and foremost of the various revelations is the bona fide existence of The Collective. Also known as the Uniparty or The Establishment, The Collective is comprised of the following: The Democratic Party, Republican’s in Name Only (RINOs), Neo-conservatives (Neocons), the Mainstream Media, the Corporatocracy, globalists, elite bankers and unelected government bureaucrats and officials; also often referred to as The Deep State or Military Industrial Complex.

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A Clockwork Orange: Waiting for the Sun

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Society should not do the wrong thing for the right reason, even though it frequently does the right thing for the wrong reason.

History has shown us what happens when you try to make society too civilized, or do too good a job of eliminating undesirable elements. It also shows the tragic fallacy in the belief that the destruction of democratic institutions will cause better ones to arise in their place.

– Stanley Kubrick on “A Clockwork Orange”, an interview with film critic Michel Ciment

An obscure Texas political consultant named Bill Miller once said “politics is show business for ugly people”. It’s true for the most part, aside from the consequences. This is because the theatrics of politicians result in policies that affect the lives of others; often against the will of the governed. In books and movies, however, the characters are much ado about nothing. Until, that is, life imitates art.

So it is with the futuristic dystopian story of “A Clockwork Orange”. Both the book, by the author Anthony Burgess, and the film by director Stanley Kubrick, serve as moral dilemmas and cautionary tales plumbing such considerations as free will, the duality of mankind, societal anarchy, and the ascendancy of an all-powerful state.

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WHAT KEEPS THEM UP AT NIGHT

“Government has coddled, accepted, and ignored white collar crime for too long. It is time the nation woke up and realized that it’s not the armed robbers or drug dealers who cause the most economic harm, it’s the white collar criminals living in the most expensive homes who have the most impressive resumes who harm us the most. They steal our pensions, bankrupt our companies, and destroy thousands of jobs, ruining countless lives.” – Harry Markopolos, Madoff Whistleblower

The tenth anniversary of the Wall Street created financial catastrophe brought back some bittersweet memories this week. I wrote my first articles during the summer/fall of 2008 for Seeking Alpha. They included: Is The U.S Banking System Safe? (Aug 2008), The Great Consumer Crash of 2009 (Aug 2008), Looming Financial Catastrophe: A Real Inconvenient Truth (Aug 2008), Is Wachovia the Worst Run Bank in America (Sept 2008), The U.S. on the Precipice (Sept 2008), On Board the U.S.S. Titanic (Sept 2008), Our Coming Depression (Oct 2008), among others. I was pumping out 5,000 word articles every 2 or 3 days.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

Strauss & Howe provide four possible outcomes to our current Crisis:

This Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. For this Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection and bad luck.
The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rythm – which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance – could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. Such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.
The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. The nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, the Soviet Union only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a thread in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most lethal war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.
Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.

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10 YEARS LATER – NO LESSONS LEARNED

“A variety of investors provided capital to financial companies, with which they made irresponsible loans and took excessive risks. These activities resulted in real losses, which have largely wiped out the shareholder equity of the companies. But behind that shareholder equity is bondholder money, and so much of it that neither depositors of the institution nor the public ever need to take a penny of losses. Citigroup, for example, has $2 trillion in assets, but also has $600 billion owed to its own bondholders. From an ethical perspective, the lenders who took the risk to finance the activities of these companies are the ones that should directly bear the cost of the losses.” – John Hussman – May 2009

This month marks the 10^th anniversary of the Wall Street/Fed/Treasury created financial disaster of 2008/2009. What should have happened was an orderly liquidation of the criminal Wall Street banks who committed the greatest control fraud in world history and the disposition of their good assets to non-criminal banks who did not recklessly leverage their assets by 30 to 1, while fraudulently issuing worthless loans to deadbeats and criminals. But we know that did not happen.

You, the taxpayer, bailed the criminal bankers out and have been screwed for the last decade with negative real interest rates and stagnant real wages, while the Wall Street scum have raked in risk free billions in profits provided by their captured puppets at the Federal Reserve. The criminal CEOs and their executive teams of henchmen have rewarded themselves with billions in bonuses while risk averse grandmas “earn” .10% on their money market accounts while acquiring a taste for Fancy Feast savory salmon cat food.

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Those Who Don’t Take Heed Die of Ingratitude

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

One evening, while in college, I attended an extracurricular lecture held by my college adviser on nuclear proliferation. It was a concern that was close to his heart and I admired his “doing something about it” at the time.

During his talk, he shared the parable of “the frog in boiling water” and it was the first time I had heard it told.

Essentially, it boiled (pun intended) down to this:

If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out to save its life. However, if you place the frog into a pot of room temperature water and slowly heat it to a boil, the frog will gradually boil to death.

The lesson from the story?

For me, it was this:

Inattention and complacency kills; gradually by degree at first, and then all once.

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A Fork-in-the-Road Approaches: The Short List – 95 Revelations from July, 2018

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Beginning in May of this year (for April), this blogger had the idea to track linked internet headlines from various link-aggregating websites as documented transitions and arrange them into catalogued anthologies. The goal was to map a veritable road, if you will, on the way toward future revelations.

Beyond that, the series of encyclopedic atomization was meant for posterity, a means to compare tracking from previous months, and assembled in outright defiance against increasing internet censorship and memory-holed search engine results.

Predictably, like dots formulated into patterns on a grid, or in a matrix, so too have trends come into better focus as we continue our monthly trek toward the 2018 Midterm Elections.

As stated by this blogger before, President Donald Trump is the manifestation of one of the following three possibilities:

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U.S. President Donald Trump Initially Refused to Acknowledge Manufactured Reality

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Why should Trump give any credence to the intelligence agencies who first tried to prevent, and later subvert, his presidency?

You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.

– Margaret Atwood

The above quote, attributed to the author of “The Handmaid’s Tale”, is seemingly representative of the elite establishment today in their dystopian zeal to erase the presidency of Donald Trump. How? By means of manufacturing an Attitudinal New Reality complete with Orwellian-style and Twilight Zone-type narratives reminiscent of the “Upside Down” , the other-worldly dimension of Netflix’s “Stranger Things”.

Of course, where we are today was likely inevitable from the start.

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A NATION BUILT ON LIES

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

The world becomes more chaotic by the day. Good luck finding a politician, business icon, or religious leader who is not bought and sold by corporate or special interests. Finding truth telling honest leaders in today’s world is virtually impossible. Charles Foster Kane, a quasi-biographical portrayal of William Randolph Hearst, is a fine representation of the billionaire clique that pull the strings in our warped, deceitful, greed driven, materialistic world.

Citizen Kane’s thematic portrayal of the American Dream is far more germane to our society today than it was when made in 1941. Financial affluence, material luxury, wielding power over others, and controlling the opinions of the masses through propaganda media, did not guarantee happiness or fulfillment for Kane or todays oligarchs. Kane was happiest as a poor child, living with his parents, playing in the snow on his sled – Rosebud.

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