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The more a nation is in decline the more it's citizens it will thrash about in a doomed quest to demonstrate that it is otherwise.

I have traveled extensively these past ten years and not all that long ago a friend asked me if it is true that the people in the global south hate Americans. I could only answer her with "I would not say that that is so because they are well past that now. It is more accurate to say that they simply want us over and done with".

Alas, it is not difficult to see why.

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I have to admit I joined in the fun. I had some bumper stickers printed up;

"I used to blame everything on the cat, but now I know it's the Russians."

I have to say it has gone so far into farce that it's not really worth trying to argue.

Though the same bunch of people have operated for years under the assumption that debt doesn't matter, if it's more than anyone ever imagined before.

Having been a younger child in a large family, I learned early on it's better to just sit way back and take it all in, than try running to the front of the herd.

It's certainly descending into madness, whether totalitarian, or nuclear war, but it has gone beyond logic having any bearing, so I'm waiting out the cycle. Given the rate things are happening these days, the crashing and burning isn't that far away, so I might not die of old age first.

Remember when we would have to pay good money to go to the movies for this much suspense?

Grab the popcorn.

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Keep in mind that utterly corrupr Biden is also a MAJOR US war criminal !!

Interview w/Scott Ritter, April 6, 2022, By Don DeBar -- Bucha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfHohl6gCJY

Scott Ritter’s FAMOUS tweet below (April 6, 2022). He was immediately banned from Tweeter – than reinstated and soon again permanently banned without explanation.

Remember, Scott courageously fought US bipartisan War party’s WMD fraud in Iraq from the very start.

“The Ukrainian National Police committed numerous crimes against humanity in Bucha. Biden, in seeking to shift blame for the Bucha murders to Russia, is guilty of aiding and abetting these crimes. Congratulations America…. We’ve created yet another Presidential war criminal !!”

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@DefenceUkraine -- regarding the Tochka-U fired at the train station:

Get the serial number of the missile off the debris. Provide a list of all Tochka-U’s in your inventory by serial number. Prove that missile was never in your inventory.

But you can’t, because it was.. GUILTY !! --- Scott Ritter tweet – April 8, 2022

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Scott Ritter and The Battle of the Donbas – April 11, 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5RKNoIhE40

Russian army is highly trained and professional. Mainstream media should stop repeating Nazi-Ukraine and US War party lies and propaganda.

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DNC and Biden cabal claims that a biggest domestic threat are “white supremacists” – while financing and arming Ukro-Nazis !! What a FRAUD…

Your taxpaying money is paying for salaries of card carrying Ukraine Nazis – THINK about that !!

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Bravo !! US bipartisan War party needs a proxy war to retain power in November elections.

But -- WHY would American population sacrifice and support Ukro-Nazi government against CAPITALIST Russia; Russia which was key in defeating WW2 Nazis?

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One of their great strengths, perhaps their greatest, is Chinese moral unanimity, courtesy of Confucius and the First Emperor (who didn't practice it but insisted everyone else do so).

Moral unanimity makes planning possible, as Keynes observed, “Planning should take place in a community in which as many people as possible, both leaders and followers, wholly share your own moral position. Moderate planning will be safe if those carrying it out are rightly orientated in their minds and hearts to the moral issue.”

Confucius also proposed twin goals for this morally united people: a moderately prosperous, equitable society being the first. That's the national goal for 2049.

Is it any wonder that the PRC has kept all the 138 major promises in its Five Year Plans? Everyone's totally on board with them.

It has nothing to do with 'conformity,' and everything to do with morality.

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(PS: Condolences for 25 year journalism veteran Shireen Abu Akleh. Voldemort for US journalism)

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founding

Fantastic, “let us look at what is really happening”, has been replaced by “please don’t spoil the mood with all these details”.

I like your hypothesis doctor Lawrence: 911 rendered our story of innocence implausible, so now we embrace authority to fill the void but in truth we simply want to enjoy our ethically sourced lattes.

Are you saying we are douche bags? Oh my.

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@ Patrick Lawrence🎯

Well Mr. Lawrence you've nailed it, as usual.✔ The recent deplatforming (censorship) of ConsortiumNews gives sad recognition to your informative observations herein. I'm holding on to the possibility that thoughtful communicators, such as yourself, Matt Taibbi, Aaron Mate, Greg Palast, Naomi Klein, Jeremy Scahill, Glenn Greenwald, Craig Murray, with special emphasis regarding Edward Snowden & Julian Assange, and many others that refute and expose the imperial mythology, will attract and hopefully rehabilitate, the diminishing attention span of our public's conscious awareness.🤷‍♂️

As Usual,

Thom Williams☠ aka ethanallenspeaks

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Good article as was the first. We in the US and vassal West are in a period of chantage, where everything is falsified, and masses of man can be moved with a shout! An example from the past

of chantage, was when the Nazi's told the German people that Poland had attacked Germany in

1939 -- and the German people believed it. Belief was predominant in the 1000 year reign of the Christian revelation, that followed the fall of Rome to circa 1450, when reason found it difficult to be squared with medieval faith. At the apogee of the Cartesian revelation, we have entered upon

another historical crisis. Disorientation to be followed by desperation, and then movement to the periphery clinging to extremist corners of reality. We need a new revelation for the Carsonian epoch we have already entered. See Ortega y Gasset 'Man And Crisis' for more on this. Ortega died in 1955, but like George Orwell, he was a prophet of history in reverse.

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I'm sorry to come late to this party, Patrick, but I've come to realize that all right thinking people are wrong (John Cleese in a Monty Python skit). That's probably the kindest thing I can say. Of course, we all know who's responsible for the "good" people of Great Barrington. It is the corrupt and crafty journalistes considering, conniving, and conspiring with shadowy government officials who frequently wear sunglasses indoors and dark Fedoras to craft a narrative (read: a lie) for sale to the mentally challenged. (Whew, I worked hard on that sentence).

Is it possible that "liberals" are simply shallow people who will believe whatever they are told? It would seem so. I use believe in a very specific way here. A belief is a tenet that is accepted without the necessity of proof. Personally, I only believe in two things: One is causality. If you could show me something that occurred without a proximate cause, my world view would be seriously shaken. The other is that something is responsible for starting all this (i.e. the universe) and whoever it was, should be take out behind the woodshed and given a severe thrashing.

One always needs to discover why something happened. What was it's proximate cause? Without that, one is likely to spend one's time wandering around clueless; constantly being surprised when a glass shatters after being dropped. Your philosopher friend would doubtless fall into this category. Somebody also needs to tell her that concepts like good, kindness, compassion, and love are, in fact, mutable.

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Thanks for an excellent analysis of the current phenomenon of mass-madness. I live in Canada, and , as one can guess, it's even more so here.

I would like to share your article on FB. I am subscribed to Scrum, but some of my followers are not. As I know, those who are not subscribed to Scrum will get only a few lines at the beginning of the article; would you allow me to copy (and paste) a few more paragraphs?

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Patrick,

I’m late to this thread but what I want to bring up with you seems pretty timeless.

In discussing Murdoch you say “if I read [her] correctly”. I’m replying because I’m not sure that you do.

To show why, I’ll need to quote her at some length. Apologies.

In “The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts” (one of the three essays in the collection you mention) she writes:

“The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, to see and to respond to the real world in the light of virtuous consciousness. ‘Good is a transcendent reality’ means that virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is. It is an empirical fact about human nature that this attempt cannot be entirely successful.”’

“Of course we are dealing with a metaphor, but with a very important metaphor and one which is not just a property of philosophy and not just a model. As I said at the beginning, we are creatures who use irreplaceable metaphors in many of our most important activities. And a decent man has probably always, if uncertainly and inexplicably, been able to distinguish between the real Good and its false double.”

These two paragraphs are ones I could easily imagine you writing (definitely a compliment). I don’t think she ever saw us as “stranded on the universe’s beach”, much less absolved from or incapable of making choices. Instead, it was the unavoidable necessity to judge and to make choices that led to her attempt to define how these might be better made.

Her friend and fellow student Marie Midgley wrote a preface to a new edition of “The Sovereignty of Good”. Early on she quotes Murdoch: “We are anxiety-ridden animals. Our minds are continually active, fabricating an anxious, usually self-preoccupied, often falsifying veil which partially conceals the world.” Towards the end of the preface, Midgley returns to the image of the veil:

“She concedes that, in facing hard dilemmas, we may indeed feel our situation to be hopelessly unintelligible and irrational. But this (she suggests) is because we concentrate arbitrarily on the moment of apparent decision, ignoring the mass of imaginative work that was done earlier, work which depends above all on deliberate and selective attention. She instances a woman who has been half consciously despising her daughter-in-law and who, wondering whether she is being unfair, ‘reflects deliberately about D, until gradually her vision of D altars.’ This woman now sees facts that she did not see before, not by deceiving herself but by using ‘just and loving attention.’ The imagination (that is) can itself be used to pierce and unweave the veil with which it has helped to blind us. It is not just a deluding factor or a luxury item to amuse humanists. It is itself a vital organ, a workshop where we forge our view of the world and thereby our actions.”

One final quote which struck straight to my heart and may do the same for you:

“Any story which we tell about ourselves consoles us since it imposes pattern on something which might otherwise seem intolerably chancy and incomplete. However, human life is chancy and incomplete. It is the role of tragedy, and also of comedy, and of painting to show us suffering without a thrill and death without a consolation. Or if there is any consolation it is the austere consolation of a beauty which teaches that nothing in life is of any value except the attempt to be virtuous.”

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May 12, 2022·edited May 12, 2022

When is it LEGAL to invade a neighboring country, you ask?

Answer: When Jared Kushner "blesses" it: https://ibb.co/k002rFx

Seriously, people should not misread this moment. The Soviet Union is "gone". Even Russia had 20 years to try and "fit in" with US interests....that died with Yukos. The aim is "no Russia". The money taken from Russian Central Bank is NOT going back. Finland is gone too. They say Russia will "escalate to de-escalate". They also say, the US will let current status quo simmer till Russia hurts from economic strain and depletion. How will that de-escalation work, i ask!

The world has maybe 5 years tops given present insights into what's going on, and then it's time to hope nuclear shelters work. (We don't get real "news", but missile defense is a bigger con than Elon Musk...$40 bn has been spent on a 40% solution given Pentagon's own manicured test conditions).

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🤨 REMEMBER. . .

PAY THOSE TAXES, FREE CITIZEN OR They'll "Lien" on YOU!

and worse than That.

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WE are in, big T-R-U-B-B-E-L Padraig.smile

Delinquent "politicians"(Tweeds who 'back-up to the Pay Table') are to be Indicted;heh heh. But, who's going to DO It? and...who's going to take 'Their' Place? Then there's the long-ago,toxic fruit-bearing academic "graduates"

of"The FrankfurtSchool"; prolific.

And an "Ostrichized" Public.

"THEY'RE INSIDE THE WIRE" comrades and, WE're: Along for 'the Ride'. Didn't need to 'be' this Way.On the other hand, mebbe It Did. Cheers.🥂🍺

BTW:Enlistments are DOWN.

*Seasoned* Sailors, soldiers & Marines are not: 'Shipping over';

Spec Opns.are: Advertising(!!) full bore. Ominous.The witchhunt, for Nationalists; Social-Engineers continue at D.O.D.Level "and" below. Is Everyone ready for the ass-kicking that's Coming, from 'Without' to accompany th appall-

ing disintegration frm Within?AND, "THE BAND PLAYED ON".

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