Wall Street – Page 3 – The Burning Platform

TECHNOLOGY: DISTRACTING, DISTURBING, DECEIVING & DELUDING OURSELVES TO DEATH

“What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth.

When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

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Something as mundane as using the restroom at work sometimes ends up triggering deeper thoughts about technology – its benefits, deficiencies and danger to our culture. I’ve been using the same restroom at work for the last twelve years. They remodeled the restroom a few years ago with the latest technology – automatic flushers, automatic soap dispensers, automatic spigots, and automatic towel dispenser. This technology is supposed to make things better, but from my perspective the technology just added complexity, glitches and unnecessary complications.

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A Satirical Dream: Trump’s 2019 State of the Union Address

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, the First Lady of the United States, and my fellow Americans:

It’s been another year since your president has stood before you to, once again, deliver yet another State of the Union address.

Tonight, however, will not be the standard fare. Instead of half-truths and false optimism, I am going to set aside all that in order to say what I believe is true.

Dear citizens, we now stand a crossroads and we must choose. We must choose if we are to move forward and deal with the real problems facing our nation, or to progress as a country of corruption; whether to return to our roots as an honorable republic – a nation of laws, or to continue our decline into lawlessness and the abyss.

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The Intersectionality of Online Shitfests, Political Tribalism, Religion, Systemic Oppression, & Useful Idiocy

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

– Liberal democracy is antithetical to multiculturalism.

– Z-man

Of course, Z-man’s quote above would cause a gaggle of snowflakes to scream in unison: “Racism!”. And, if the past is any indicator, then the next exclamation out their collective mouths would be something like: “America has always been a nation of immigrants!” Yet what they fail to consider is how past generations of United States immigrants assimilated into American culture. This is not happening today. Indeed. It does appear liberal democracies the world over, have been sacrificed upon the altar of multiculturalism and via the thought-control mechanism enforced by the globalists: Political Correctness.

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TICK TOCK

“This country, and with it most of the Western world, is presently going through a period of inflation and credit expansion. As the quantity of money in circulation and deposits subject to check increases, there prevails a general tendency for the prices of commodities and services to rise. Business is booming. Yet such a boom, artificially engineered by monetary and credit expansion, cannot last forever. It must come to an end sooner or later. For paper money and bank deposits are not a proper substitute for non-existing capital goods. Economic theory has demonstrated in an irrefutable way that a prosperity created by an expansionist monetary and credit policy is illusory and must end in a slump, an economic crisis. It has happened again and again in the past, and it will happen in the future, too.” – Ludwig von Mises – 1952

Image result for recession

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MAD WORLD

And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very very
Mad world, mad world

The haunting Gary Jules version of the Tears for Fears’ Mad World speaks to me in these tumultuous mad times. It must speak to many others, as the music video has been viewed over 132 million times. The melancholy video is shot from the top of an urban school building in a decaying decrepit bleak neighborhood with school children creating various figures on the concrete pavement below. The camera pans slowly to Gary Jules singing on the rooftop and captures the concrete jungle of non-descript architecture, identical office towers, gray cookie cutter apartment complexes, and a world devoid of joy and vibrancy.

The song was influenced by Arthur Janov’s theories in his book The Primal Scream. The chorus above about his “dreams of dying were the best he ever had” is representative of letting go of this mad world and being free of the monotony and release from the insanity of this world. Our ego fools us into thinking the madness of this world is actually normal. Day after day we live lives of quiet desperation. Despite all evidence our world is spinning out of control and the madness of the crowds is visible in financial markets, housing markets, politics, social justice, and social media, the level of normalcy bias among the populace has reached astounding levels, as we desperately try to convince ourselves everything will be alright. But it won’t.

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Three (3) Reasons Why Elections Don’t Matter

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

In so many ways, elections in America have become just another manifestation of bread and circuses; like watching a reality TV show when your house is on fire. It’s why this article was almost named:

“The Inevitableness of Reality Requires Honesty and Acceptance”

Of course, the 2018 Midterm Elections will be analyzed ad nauseam, with other writers and pundits parsing it better than this blogger. However, suffice it to say: There was no Blue Wave and Trump has now solidified leadership of his Republican Party; at least more so than during the last two years of his administration.

In a raucous press conference the day after, Trump claimed victory and said his party “defied history to expand our Senate majority”. The president also said his focus in the days prior to the election remained on the senate and pointed out that most of the candidates for whom he campaigned had won their respective races.

Now, with Never-Trump Republican senators like Bob Corker (R-TN) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), along with Democrats Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) all gone – Trump has solidified the senate so as to be in a much better position to navigate any cabinet and court appointments. Obviously, the bloodletting has already begun, starting with Mr. Magoo himself, Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

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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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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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Towers to Heaven: The Alchemy of Prophecy, Terror, and Unity

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer).

– Revelation 9:11

At the end of last month, I read an article that claimed Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was foretold by a “20 Year Old Movie”. The film was a 1998 thriller entitled “Enemy of the State” starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman.

My curiosity aroused, I selected the show from my electronic catalog and watched it unwind; similar to the way I once queued up songs on jukeboxes in the halcyon days preceding the matrix.

In the film, Gene Hackman played an Edward Snowden-type National Security Agency (NSA) contractor gone rogue who revealed to the viewers the U.S. government’s high-tech surveillance capabilities. Two decades ago when the film was released, the surveillance grid disclosed therein would have seemed far-fetched. But not today. Now, in the aftermath of 911, the Patriot Act, and the Snowden revelations, those capabilities are not only common knowledge, but are the subjects of ongoing daily headlines.

The antagonist in the film was played by Jon Voight, a power-hungry NSA bureaucrat who assembled a team of technology experts and security agents that blackmailed Congress and even murdered a senator. The politician was killed to aid the passing of a Patriot Act-style bill that would have, in effect, drilled the final screw into the coffin of the Fourth Amendment.

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The Persistence of Their Delusion is Despicable

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

As I’ve written of before, I’m part of a group of men that meet for breakfast on some weekends as a result of our shared involvement in a community organization. A few weeks ago, I dined with two of the men who seemed genuinely excited about the upcoming Blue Wave they believe will occur in the November midterm elections.

One of the men, a business owner self-identifying as a Republican, said that after much thought and analysis, Hillary Clinton would have made a better president than Donald Trump. The other man, who is a physician, is by any definition a rainbow-flag waving Cultural Marxist.

When I explained to them my perspectives, they said I needed to “quit watching the lies on Fox News”. At one point during our conversation, the RINO (Republican in Name Only) said the Deep State did not exist. When I asked if he would acknowledge the influence of unelected government officials throughout the “swamp”, he simply stated again “there was no Deep State”.

And so began conversations that extended over the next several days.

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QUOTES OF THE DAY

“The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them…

It is difficult not to marvel at the imagination which was implicit in this gargantuan insanity. If there must be madness something may be said for having it on a heroic scale.”

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929

“What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing— that resistance has been overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence. The first principle of our humanism is that the weak and the failures shall perish. And they ought to be helped to perish.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist

“It is always the soul that dies first, even if it’s departure goes unnoticed. And it always carries the body along with it… Man is nourished by the invisible, man is nourished by that which is beyond the personal. He dies from preferring the opposite.”

Jacques Lusseyran, Poetry at Buchenwald

“Those who are at present so eager to be reconciled with the world at any price must take care not to be reconciled with it under this particular aspect: as the nest of The Unspeakable. This is what too few are willing to see… Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.”

Thomas Merton, Raids on The Unspeakable

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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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Happy Birthday America: 144 Revelations from June, 2018

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Just as destination is determined by direction, so too are transitions roads to revelations. In other words, today’s trends are tomorrow’s historical markers. With that in mind, and for the purposes of cataloguing news articles in outright defiance against increasing internet censorship and memory-holed search engine results, the following disclosures occurred between the dates of June 1-30, 2018.

Although the list may be overly comprehensive for some, this blogger desired encyclopedic documentation for posterity, as well as to compare tracking from previous months.

For the reader’s convenience, the revelations are again sorted into the same category headings that were utilized for May, 2018; and, for those in a hurry who wish to bypass the entire “trifling minutia”, there are some concluding comments and questions at the end:

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When Running From the Devil You Better Be Faster than Hell

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.

– Benjamin Franklin

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

– John Adams

I’m of the opinion that many today are throwing the “baby out with the bathwater” when they claim the conservative versus liberal (right vs. left) construct is phony, or bogus.

Conservatives have lost political ground because they have accepted the moral premises of the Political Left. However, liberals use deception to hide their real motives while, simultaneously, blackmailing conservatives by means of conservative values.

How typical was the mainstream media’s “poor immigrant children” narrative that played the emotional heartstrings of dummies everywhere, like violins.

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