I think I finally understand what Yeats meant by “the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” thanks to this column. And why the best, like you, lack all conviction.
“This is the time of dime-store messiahs, tinpot tyrants, zealots, gurus, hustlers, hosers, scam artists, quacks, snake oil salesmen of every variety, fanatical revolutionary movements, new religions and political parties, and so on.”
It almost makes it worth living through these Apocalyptic times if it inspires incandescent prose like that. You’ve been cast in the role of a lifetime, CJ, and I for one am honored to witness the sparks zinging off your fulgurating mind.
P.S. “Keith Olbermann is no shrieking hatred” > Is “no” supposed to be “now”?
I always smile to think how peeved he would get by people constantly begging him to recite “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” which is probably how the later Beatles felt when people asked them to play “She Loves You.”
100%. I used to always cite a similar Russell quote from "The Triumph of Stupidity," but the sentiment Yeats expresses there is so unbelievably true, and tragically seems to be woven into the very fabric of reality. That or we are just always in the End Times haha
As someone involved with the newage (rhymes with sewage)/alternative health/eastern religion culture in the 80's-90's it seems to me that it's always been "“...the time of dime-store messiahs, tinpot tyrants, zealots, gurus, hustlers, hosers, scam artists, quacks, snake oil salesmen of every variety, fanatical revolutionary movements, new religions and political parties, and so on.”
This war has too many fronts, with too many battles on each. Normal people are being eaten alive like this poor crab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s_zHccAYxQ. Too many criminals to prosecute. We can no longer count on free speech. We can't even count on corporate greed, as companies fire or purposely destroy their brands. The secret to all this is who is rewarding them. Who is rewarding Fox, and its shareholders, for destroying viewership? Who rewarded Budweiser for destroying Lite?? Who is rewarding the women's clothing companies for using male models? That is the secret to all this insanity. Forget "SOROS" -- it's much bigger than him.
There are at least 3 levels of corruption at play. There's the local stuff -- a councilman in a small town votes yes on a project and out of the blue finds the cash for a nice Hawaiian vacation. Then there's the Soros/Gates level, where individuals are so wealthy they can purchase pieces of the political mechanism, like prosecutors and congress people. Or a company, through its ad programs, can purchase a little piece of reality through the media. We have reached the third and possibly final level, where none of the things we took for granted are still operative. One side of this is "men can menstruate," a claim so ridiculous that until 5-6 years ago nobody would even say it, much less believe it. The other side is companies like Fox and Bud, who for decades could be trusted to put the almighty dollar first. Soros and Gates do not have the disposable income to fund stuff at this level. Think of all the invaders at our southern border: Who feeds, clothes, and washes them? Who provides them with a place to shit (I know they're not pooping on the sidewalk as they do in SF)? Who gives them plane tickets and keeps them safe along their journey? It isn't Gates and Soros. Follow the money.
So true! If I may be forgiven the solecism, I actually thought so much about your key question concerning who is subverting corporate reward structures and why that I ended up writing a whole article about that topic here (https://honestlyre.substack.com/p/your-precious-capitalism-wont-save)
If you're so inclined, I'd be very interested to hear your (or any other curious reader's) thoughts. Regardless, it is heartening to see other people grappling with this, and all the best to you.
I read quickly through it. I disagree that effective advertising must be either boring or crazy. The sweet spot for marketers is the middle. You also seem to harbor the same sort of "it will all work out" that I hear from certain individuals when I ask: "Why do you vote for open borders?" "Why do you vote for the right of bums to shit on the corner of Geary and Telegraph?" "Why do you vote for teaching 7 year olds how to give a proper blowjob?" In every instance they say it's just a fringe or passing thing, an anomaly or outlier, and that "overall" the democrats represent their interests. I then ask, "You mean interests like open borders, 7-year-olds sucking wieners, public defecation?" At which point they usually get up and leave the room confident, as you are with capitalism, that it will "all work out."
I get it. I was a liberal up to age 30, when I read all of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, etc. and for the next 35 years I defended capitalism like Hunter protects his crack stash. Like the lefties who whined that socialism just "hadn't been done right" I defended capitalism's abuses and its many sins. It wasn't really capitalism, it was that it just "hadn't been done right." Regulations? "Awww, companies have no incentive to fuck you. It says so right there in The Fountainhead, page 937."
But now I see the endgame, which is an unfathomable concentration of wealth -- POWER -- in just a few hands, hands capable of buying up everything and everyone, which they have. They have ALREADY fucked us and will continue ad infinitum.
Forget that the top 1% owns half of everything because (if that stat is even correct) if you own the critical half (or even the critical 10%) you own it all, control it all, and they do.
The original article was, if I recall, about reality. The Unreality Industry is never out of ideas. At some point they may no longer teach 7 year olds the fine art of fellatio, but they'll replace that with two or three other equally ridiculous things. They will always be 2-3 issues ahead of us because, as they say, the best defense is a good offense.
And you can't get much more offensive than getting blown by a 7 year old.
Whoa, slow the wagon train there, Hoss! I appreciate it a good rant as much as the next fella, but you may have read that article a bit too quickly because you certainly aren't describing my position there haha
Nonetheless, I genuinely appreciate the time and the thoughts. Keep fightin' the good fight, pardner ;)
Long ago, one of the killers told her what was coming-- "the great culling"... and "Neo-Feudalism"... it's about Master/Slave now and about "stakeholders" taking all the booty of the world, all the resources of the planet-- and most of the human beings culled-- they no longer need us to "buy their shit."
It's incredible and we seem entirely on this path.
You’re beginning to sound a tad like Francis Fukuyama that book of his, The End of History. Panicking perhaps in your own way? I say this because where I live in the Deep South of the USA the values of people down here are pretty much the same, family, community, work and God. I know it probably sounds trite to many, but it’s real.
Your values don't sound trite to me. And, even if they did, why should you or anyone care what I think? Hang on to what you have down there ... no ideology ever completely permeates society.
I live in the deep south of US also and have been targeted and abused for many years. The church going crowd have been some of the most abusive. I guess every "healthy" community needs a scapegoat!
I am reading this over a coffee in a lovely, tree-shaded cafe playing a melange of global music. We must enjoy our own calm and moments of respite while the culture we thought we knew fades.
Kind of makes me believe that the Anti-Christ is slouching our way! Foretold long ago. No man could buy or sell without the Mark of the Beast. Exactly like proof of the jab (a mark on a piece of paper or on an app) enabled people to eat in restaurants, fly in airplanes, avoid forced quarantines, and participate in polite society. I now see how the Mark will be enforced to the point of death. Sad to see this in my day. Come Lord Jesus!
I think you are right. Once the WHO Pandemic Treaty is signed (2024) and the dystopian changes to the International Health Regulations ratified, we are toast. That will be the cue for the next fake 'pandemic' (SEERS, 2025, but it may come earlier, as they know too many people are on to them). Then will come the universal mandatory 'vaccination', with no tolerance of dissent. No injection, no food. And the saviour, whether a person or a system (digital ID for food rationing, and CBDCs).
There are the people who stand in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square… And there are those that look like regular every day citizens, going along, who blow up key bridges and pour sugar in gas tanks. Everyone has something they can do that fits their personality and their level of bravery. People who are quietly working behind the scenes are just as powerful and necessary as those literally physically standing their ground.
I feel the same. I'm not complying, but I don't think you're going to see mass non-compliance - it simply isn't going to happen. Once people get hungry they'll take digital ID, a vaxx pass and electronic food vouchers. Mike Yeadon reckons they're expecting about 1 percent of the population to top themselves, starve rather than comply etc. That will hardly make a dent.
Thank you for the advice, Doc, but I haven't had a car for 20 years and my Victorian tenement flat, although it is on the ground floor, shares a small garden (aka 'drying green') with 7 other households, not to mention that there is practically no topsoil and it has no sun for a lot of the day and is too cold to grow anything except grass (with a large percentage of moss) and some border shrubs! Nice thought, though. If I had no family needing me to be here, and if my husband didn't still have a job here, I would have left long before my current 71 years and fled to the country, which will probably be safe for about a year or two after the cities are no longer safe. The other point is that 50% of the households in my city (Edinburgh) live in similar accommodation to mine. What the ghouls will do is tell us that our homes are not retrofittable to 2030 sustainable buillding standards and we will either be forcibly evicted or they will cut off our water, electricity and gas. I will take it as it comes - I only worry about my children and my grandchildren at this point.
I'm sorry that you have so little to work with, no "allotment".SW England and Wales are better for growing food, but still hard places to live that way. People seem to be making a go of it there, younger people than we are (65 & 71).
It's dramatically different in Texas, in so many ways. We are gardening our rural homestead, and also our rented duplex back-yard in Austin.
I think the UK is getting and will get one of the worst deals for the citizens.
I'm generally of the bleak persuasion (but with a dose of redeeming gallows humour), but for a lighter look at things, I'm getting very fond of the gentle and gentlemanly Richard Vobes, who's of a more positive persuasion and makes me smile despite everything!
Best comment so far and one I absolutely relate to. Oh and you are brave, it takes guts to not comply. Those that bend the knee are the cowards, bless you friend.🙏💕
yes was wondering whether you we’re adding the CBDCs to the diabolical ingredients for total and absolute tyranny. looking for other solutions to the existential problem to counter to onslaught of all this and not go bonkers (or be eliminated) in the process. as van morrison recently penned in his recent “where have all the rebels gone?”, we need courage and creativity to lead us out of this morass. perhaps what neville goddard was about with regard to the “i am” of human imagining can bring a series of miracles of the second coming in the form of a spiritual awakening of the limitlessness of the devine hidden deeply inside the self of mortal men and women.
the creator of all that is does not want this little experiment to end in dystopia.
just maybe there is hope in belief of something much better to come.
Indeed I was an atheist until a couple of years ago, and I am 57. But surely CBDC will be mark of the beast, and it's supposedly coming in 2024 according to Musk's hand picked CEO of Twitter. It infects everybody. EVERYBODY. My own mother wants me to get on SSI for autism. I may well on the spectrum but damn if I going to give the controllers more control over my life.
Piss on em'. Signing off from my Uncle Ted cybershack. :-) As Uncle Edward Abbey said, if you can't piss off your front porch you live to close to town.
I used to scoff at some of these ideas. Until I started really doing some research, turning up all kinds of religious and symbolic connections from Luciferase and HeLa immortal cell lines CERN Shiva rituals and "Spirit Cooking"... let's just say I don't scoff so much anymore.
I can’t figure out who pisses me off more. The dullards who believe everything is hunky dory and will endlessly support the current thing until they literally die, or the Trumpers who just can’t let go even after he poisoned the world with Warp Speed and wouldn’t change a thing next time.
Do most of the supplicants know they are killing people or is it that they don't want to know? I say they are part of a cult, and they don't want to know. The vaccine is a sacred sacrament in their new religion!
May 22, 2023·edited May 22, 2023Liked by CJ Hopkins
A couple of paragraphs in, I thought about posting The Second Coming, and then you went right to it.
I posted it for my small group of friends on FB last week and had a good little time talking poetry. (It prompts you "what's on your mind?"and that was it.)
I think in terms of a Napoleon, and yeah much better to study as history than to live through. I'm about your age but am the kind of person with a shorter than average shelf life (and no children). I've had a more varied and interesting life than most, but now I'm in hedonic coasting mode. (I've outlived many of my friends and heros.) So now it's literature, music, comedy, and beer. ;)
This is one of your best essays. Things may fall apart, but you've pulled your thoughts together well here. Bravo.
Great article! As you allude to, the narratives we’re exposed to are embedded in the social and political control systems. So what’s important is to question prevailing narratives. All the time. And in fact, to adopt a default position of not believing any of it until otherwise proved.
The Mass Media, and other mechanisms by which the ruling class transfers narratives to the human mind, gives us a cultural paradigm which is accepted by Mass Man—giving him a blueprint which he believes is his own creation. Where once he wore outer chains, now he wears mental chains, the existence of which remain oblivious to him. Cold steel on flesh is eminently obvious but men are unaware of the inner chains they carry, all the while bearing the illusion that they are free.
The cultural norms and social institutions presented to mankind are designed to produce obedient workers who lack the critical thinking skills necessary to piece together the truth about the nature of reality— who lack the will to even care. Doing so maintains the corrupt control systems set in place that are designed to maximize profits for the ruling elite. Thankfully for them, an ignorant population doesn’t care about things that truly matter. And they certainly seem not care about the crimes committed by their own governments.
The byproduct of concentrating wealth into the hands of a few is that it keeps the rest of us busy with the basics of survival. We’re appeased by superficial consumerism, alcohol, video games, and streaming services. We’re too exhausted to contemplate how the system actually works, and too bemused to create better conditions for our lives even if we did.
The control system is in place to keep a population ignorant, submissive, confused, fearful, desperate, and distracted. Without it, people might start to see themselves as free and sovereign human beings. Without it, they might collaborate for their collective well-being. And without it, the curtain of deception crumples to the floor.
Despite our potential to be a peaceful, harmonious species, we have come to a point where we, as a people, have passively allowed multinational billion dollar corporations to come to the verge of destroying the planet.
This is a good read, thank you. The capitalist machine serves as the medium which converts difficult to quantify things such as community, trust, positive values, spontaneity, nature — basically the things that make life worth living — into egalitarian flat dystopia. As William S. Burroughs said, "What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits quantity."
Re: living in the woods, that's a rear-guard, losing action, as globohomo is doing everything it can to shuffle its non-integrating imported immigrants into rural red areas. You can run, but you can't hide from globohomo...
You are wrong. I am not going to tell you where I am at for hopefully obvious reasons, but there are no traffic lights, no rainbow flags, and no immigrants in my neck of the woods.
That’s an important angle. Land is not free. With land, you have something. Unless, of course, they figure out how to take it away from you. I am frequently reminded of Mumfords’s essay on authoritarian and democratic technics, where he describes all this as a magnificent bribe, where many things are offered but you can’t pick and choose, you have to take it all. It chases you down and forces its products on you. It’s written into the constitution, rights inhering in property, not the individual.
I know people living in the Vermont woods, which are getting invaded by wealthy New England liberals, driving up land values, and everybody still running around obsessing with covid shots. And of course sometimes they log the land, which means there are fewer squirrels to go around, along with nuts and berries and anything else you might live off of.
I’m dumbfounded as people like my sister have devoted their entire lives to farm to table living. Getting outside, exercising etc. She will literally organize a BLM rally in VT, scream her pussy hat wearing head off about TRUMP!!!!!! But has zero questions about the last three years. Even as cancer and suicide is exploding all around her. The punch line, she’s a science teacher. I hate our species.
Yeah, the cognitive dissonance is terrifying. I like referring such people occasionally to El Gato Malo’s blog here, as this author clearly knows her stuff and is overall a promoter of this culture’s dominant medicine, and critiques the whole covid thing within a framework that should make sense to them. But overall, the research funding is corrupted, the medical publishing is corrupted (publish anything critical of pharma and pharma pulls their ads) the EPA and FDA are corrupted (since Citizens United everything has gotten worse) and it takes ten years for stuff to get recalled once people start recognizing it’s killing people. There is nothing extremist about recognizing all this. It’s not even partisan. It’s just how this system works. So much denial.
Indeed. I tried very early on to turn her on to Brett and Heather. But she is clueless. Only MSLSD and genius celebrities like Sarah Silverman can get through to her. At this point I think that she actually realizes that I was right about everything. But she has emphatically stated that she has no desire to learn any more. It’s time to move on you see. I suppose that I would put up the same wall if the choice was awakening and accepting the reality that I had poisoned my children or just screaming lalalalalala and hoping it will all just go away. What infuriates me is that AFTER I emailed her 1000 questions that she could never answer, she played the science card on me. Ummm, no. FU actually. FU very much.
It's sad we are at war with our families over whether to accept dystopia or not. My 80 year old mother is visiting soon, and I know I don't have much time to spend with her, but I can't really honestly say I am very much looking forward to her visit when she insists on taking over my living room and watching MSM news for an hour every day, and will likely at some point bait me into a political conversation I studiously avoid with her. The best I can hope for is to take to the lake and focus on nature which we both love.
You quote Yeats, so here's a line from Robinson Jeffers: "when the cities like at the feet of the Beast, the mountains will remain." In other words, Babylons may rise and fall, but there will always be those who turn their backs on the madness, opt-out, and wait for sanity to return. This does not necessitate hiding in a Kaczinsky cabin, merely an acknowledgement that Ozymandian arrogance always winds up in the dust.
Just the fact that a human being can write this says something more profound than we can begin to fathom... and speaks of types of complexity that we haven't even begun to comprehend. How glorious is that? And I think it is glorious.... and gloriously mysterious. In this picture, it's amazing how paradoxical four hundred years of science have managed to become. But what of love? If ideology and love were to coincide, as they obviously, in the most objective sense, should... then what? Thank you C.J. Hopkins. Bloody wonderful as always.
IMO, this is the End Times, maybe the beginning or maybe we missed seeing the beginning and we are further along. The good news is it won't last forever. But it will be so horrible we can't imagine the horrors the world is in for. What is going on is world-wide now. We can see the destruction of civilization everywhere, all around us. Many people refer to Yeats' poem. My Bible-believing pastor refers to it quite a lot. I assume Satan knows his time is nearly up and he is on a tear.
The "no one is safe - until everyone is safe" mantra clearly translates to - "No One is Stupid - Until EVERYONE is Stupid!"
I think I finally understand what Yeats meant by “the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” thanks to this column. And why the best, like you, lack all conviction.
“This is the time of dime-store messiahs, tinpot tyrants, zealots, gurus, hustlers, hosers, scam artists, quacks, snake oil salesmen of every variety, fanatical revolutionary movements, new religions and political parties, and so on.”
It almost makes it worth living through these Apocalyptic times if it inspires incandescent prose like that. You’ve been cast in the role of a lifetime, CJ, and I for one am honored to witness the sparks zinging off your fulgurating mind.
P.S. “Keith Olbermann is no shrieking hatred” > Is “no” supposed to be “now”?
No, the "no" was supposed to be a "not." Thanks, always grateful for typo alerts! And I wouldn't say I lack all conviction, just a lot. And Yeats still give me chills sometimes ... https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43298/under-ben-bulben
Ah, “not” was my other guess :-)
That’s a haunting one, surely. His “foul rag and bone shop of the heart” is quite the Muse:
• https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43299/the-circus-animals-desertion
I always smile to think how peeved he would get by people constantly begging him to recite “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” which is probably how the later Beatles felt when people asked them to play “She Loves You.”
Beatles invasion another societal psycho op experiment?
100%. I used to always cite a similar Russell quote from "The Triumph of Stupidity," but the sentiment Yeats expresses there is so unbelievably true, and tragically seems to be woven into the very fabric of reality. That or we are just always in the End Times haha
As someone involved with the newage (rhymes with sewage)/alternative health/eastern religion culture in the 80's-90's it seems to me that it's always been "“...the time of dime-store messiahs, tinpot tyrants, zealots, gurus, hustlers, hosers, scam artists, quacks, snake oil salesmen of every variety, fanatical revolutionary movements, new religions and political parties, and so on.”
1) "Ripple in still water.."
2) "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro"
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow
This war has too many fronts, with too many battles on each. Normal people are being eaten alive like this poor crab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s_zHccAYxQ. Too many criminals to prosecute. We can no longer count on free speech. We can't even count on corporate greed, as companies fire or purposely destroy their brands. The secret to all this is who is rewarding them. Who is rewarding Fox, and its shareholders, for destroying viewership? Who rewarded Budweiser for destroying Lite?? Who is rewarding the women's clothing companies for using male models? That is the secret to all this insanity. Forget "SOROS" -- it's much bigger than him.
There are at least 3 levels of corruption at play. There's the local stuff -- a councilman in a small town votes yes on a project and out of the blue finds the cash for a nice Hawaiian vacation. Then there's the Soros/Gates level, where individuals are so wealthy they can purchase pieces of the political mechanism, like prosecutors and congress people. Or a company, through its ad programs, can purchase a little piece of reality through the media. We have reached the third and possibly final level, where none of the things we took for granted are still operative. One side of this is "men can menstruate," a claim so ridiculous that until 5-6 years ago nobody would even say it, much less believe it. The other side is companies like Fox and Bud, who for decades could be trusted to put the almighty dollar first. Soros and Gates do not have the disposable income to fund stuff at this level. Think of all the invaders at our southern border: Who feeds, clothes, and washes them? Who provides them with a place to shit (I know they're not pooping on the sidewalk as they do in SF)? Who gives them plane tickets and keeps them safe along their journey? It isn't Gates and Soros. Follow the money.
Government will subsidizes their ESG losses. World bankers. There is no longer free markets.
If you still believe and look in your heart, you’ll know who.
I've looked. Don't keep me in suspense. Who?
Rhymes with "banned".
Haha this is NOT the UNZ Review :)
In the land of the banned you lose your views, (rhymes with "Turk").
So true! If I may be forgiven the solecism, I actually thought so much about your key question concerning who is subverting corporate reward structures and why that I ended up writing a whole article about that topic here (https://honestlyre.substack.com/p/your-precious-capitalism-wont-save)
If you're so inclined, I'd be very interested to hear your (or any other curious reader's) thoughts. Regardless, it is heartening to see other people grappling with this, and all the best to you.
I read quickly through it. I disagree that effective advertising must be either boring or crazy. The sweet spot for marketers is the middle. You also seem to harbor the same sort of "it will all work out" that I hear from certain individuals when I ask: "Why do you vote for open borders?" "Why do you vote for the right of bums to shit on the corner of Geary and Telegraph?" "Why do you vote for teaching 7 year olds how to give a proper blowjob?" In every instance they say it's just a fringe or passing thing, an anomaly or outlier, and that "overall" the democrats represent their interests. I then ask, "You mean interests like open borders, 7-year-olds sucking wieners, public defecation?" At which point they usually get up and leave the room confident, as you are with capitalism, that it will "all work out."
I get it. I was a liberal up to age 30, when I read all of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, etc. and for the next 35 years I defended capitalism like Hunter protects his crack stash. Like the lefties who whined that socialism just "hadn't been done right" I defended capitalism's abuses and its many sins. It wasn't really capitalism, it was that it just "hadn't been done right." Regulations? "Awww, companies have no incentive to fuck you. It says so right there in The Fountainhead, page 937."
But now I see the endgame, which is an unfathomable concentration of wealth -- POWER -- in just a few hands, hands capable of buying up everything and everyone, which they have. They have ALREADY fucked us and will continue ad infinitum.
Forget that the top 1% owns half of everything because (if that stat is even correct) if you own the critical half (or even the critical 10%) you own it all, control it all, and they do.
The original article was, if I recall, about reality. The Unreality Industry is never out of ideas. At some point they may no longer teach 7 year olds the fine art of fellatio, but they'll replace that with two or three other equally ridiculous things. They will always be 2-3 issues ahead of us because, as they say, the best defense is a good offense.
And you can't get much more offensive than getting blown by a 7 year old.
When the grid goes down and stays down some people wil have gardens, water and propane.
Others won't.
Bunkers..? Who is your hired-help for your bunker?
Whoa, slow the wagon train there, Hoss! I appreciate it a good rant as much as the next fella, but you may have read that article a bit too quickly because you certainly aren't describing my position there haha
Nonetheless, I genuinely appreciate the time and the thoughts. Keep fightin' the good fight, pardner ;)
I'll read it again if I remember. I got an F in speed reading.
haha! No worries at all. It's not my strong suit either :)
:)
"Degrowth". Or maybe, "The Great Degrowth" is upon us.
This fever dream is what it looks like.
Orient.
Proceed.
Secure your essentials of life going forward.
:-) Have a nice day.
Look up Rima Laibow-- she KNOWS who is destroying whom and why. She did a great interview on https://zeeemedia.com/interview/dr-rima-laibow-devastating-90-of-the-global-population-will-die-globalist-agenda/
Long ago, one of the killers told her what was coming-- "the great culling"... and "Neo-Feudalism"... it's about Master/Slave now and about "stakeholders" taking all the booty of the world, all the resources of the planet-- and most of the human beings culled-- they no longer need us to "buy their shit."
It's incredible and we seem entirely on this path.
You’re beginning to sound a tad like Francis Fukuyama that book of his, The End of History. Panicking perhaps in your own way? I say this because where I live in the Deep South of the USA the values of people down here are pretty much the same, family, community, work and God. I know it probably sounds trite to many, but it’s real.
Your values don't sound trite to me. And, even if they did, why should you or anyone care what I think? Hang on to what you have down there ... no ideology ever completely permeates society.
I live in the deep south of US also and have been targeted and abused for many years. The church going crowd have been some of the most abusive. I guess every "healthy" community needs a scapegoat!
Sorry to hear that.
I am reading this over a coffee in a lovely, tree-shaded cafe playing a melange of global music. We must enjoy our own calm and moments of respite while the culture we thought we knew fades.
Like a Tibetan singing bowl....truth, unadulterated truth. Thank god for your continued existence CJ.
Kind of makes me believe that the Anti-Christ is slouching our way! Foretold long ago. No man could buy or sell without the Mark of the Beast. Exactly like proof of the jab (a mark on a piece of paper or on an app) enabled people to eat in restaurants, fly in airplanes, avoid forced quarantines, and participate in polite society. I now see how the Mark will be enforced to the point of death. Sad to see this in my day. Come Lord Jesus!
I think you are right. Once the WHO Pandemic Treaty is signed (2024) and the dystopian changes to the International Health Regulations ratified, we are toast. That will be the cue for the next fake 'pandemic' (SEERS, 2025, but it may come earlier, as they know too many people are on to them). Then will come the universal mandatory 'vaccination', with no tolerance of dissent. No injection, no food. And the saviour, whether a person or a system (digital ID for food rationing, and CBDCs).
"We are toast" only if we capitulate to the tyranny.
Mass non-compliance is essential. Will they kill us all? Can they kill us all? Maybe.
I do not consent to being ruled by tyrants. I will not give them the satisfaction of handing them a victory by complying with their insanity.
I'm not brave. I pray for courage every day. I'm going to die one way or the other. But it won't be as a slave.
There are the people who stand in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square… And there are those that look like regular every day citizens, going along, who blow up key bridges and pour sugar in gas tanks. Everyone has something they can do that fits their personality and their level of bravery. People who are quietly working behind the scenes are just as powerful and necessary as those literally physically standing their ground.
I feel the same. I'm not complying, but I don't think you're going to see mass non-compliance - it simply isn't going to happen. Once people get hungry they'll take digital ID, a vaxx pass and electronic food vouchers. Mike Yeadon reckons they're expecting about 1 percent of the population to top themselves, starve rather than comply etc. That will hardly make a dent.
"Be the change..." , Sister.
Grow a vegetable garden.
Be a friend.
Ride a bike.
Thank you for the advice, Doc, but I haven't had a car for 20 years and my Victorian tenement flat, although it is on the ground floor, shares a small garden (aka 'drying green') with 7 other households, not to mention that there is practically no topsoil and it has no sun for a lot of the day and is too cold to grow anything except grass (with a large percentage of moss) and some border shrubs! Nice thought, though. If I had no family needing me to be here, and if my husband didn't still have a job here, I would have left long before my current 71 years and fled to the country, which will probably be safe for about a year or two after the cities are no longer safe. The other point is that 50% of the households in my city (Edinburgh) live in similar accommodation to mine. What the ghouls will do is tell us that our homes are not retrofittable to 2030 sustainable buillding standards and we will either be forcibly evicted or they will cut off our water, electricity and gas. I will take it as it comes - I only worry about my children and my grandchildren at this point.
Cold weather in Edinburgh, too.
I'm sorry that you have so little to work with, no "allotment".SW England and Wales are better for growing food, but still hard places to live that way. People seem to be making a go of it there, younger people than we are (65 & 71).
It's dramatically different in Texas, in so many ways. We are gardening our rural homestead, and also our rented duplex back-yard in Austin.
I think the UK is getting and will get one of the worst deals for the citizens.
I am truly sorry about the ghouls...
https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/the-great-degrowth
I'm generally of the bleak persuasion (but with a dose of redeeming gallows humour), but for a lighter look at things, I'm getting very fond of the gentle and gentlemanly Richard Vobes, who's of a more positive persuasion and makes me smile despite everything!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7nZod3VzSY
If only we could just tell Klaus and co. 'we don't like your idea, now toddle off, there's a good boy ..."
Best comment so far and one I absolutely relate to. Oh and you are brave, it takes guts to not comply. Those that bend the knee are the cowards, bless you friend.🙏💕
Thank you Sirka Sie.
May God protect and bless you, as well.
Sadly, and even more embarrassingly, this batch of effete, neolib tyrants would likely turn us into avocado toast, at that.
The anthem of the medical freedom movement. Watch the hit music video FOREVER FREEDOM BRIGADE. https://turfseer.substack.com/p/forever-freedom-brigade
yes was wondering whether you we’re adding the CBDCs to the diabolical ingredients for total and absolute tyranny. looking for other solutions to the existential problem to counter to onslaught of all this and not go bonkers (or be eliminated) in the process. as van morrison recently penned in his recent “where have all the rebels gone?”, we need courage and creativity to lead us out of this morass. perhaps what neville goddard was about with regard to the “i am” of human imagining can bring a series of miracles of the second coming in the form of a spiritual awakening of the limitlessness of the devine hidden deeply inside the self of mortal men and women.
the creator of all that is does not want this little experiment to end in dystopia.
just maybe there is hope in belief of something much better to come.
happy talk maybe but what else we got, huh?
run-on sentences are a thing with me apparently.
Indeed I was an atheist until a couple of years ago, and I am 57. But surely CBDC will be mark of the beast, and it's supposedly coming in 2024 according to Musk's hand picked CEO of Twitter. It infects everybody. EVERYBODY. My own mother wants me to get on SSI for autism. I may well on the spectrum but damn if I going to give the controllers more control over my life.
Piss on em'. Signing off from my Uncle Ted cybershack. :-) As Uncle Edward Abbey said, if you can't piss off your front porch you live to close to town.
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2009/03/it-was-20-years-ago-todayedward-abbey-lives/
I used to scoff at some of these ideas. Until I started really doing some research, turning up all kinds of religious and symbolic connections from Luciferase and HeLa immortal cell lines CERN Shiva rituals and "Spirit Cooking"... let's just say I don't scoff so much anymore.
Amen!
Great essay. I'm afraid you are right.
As bleak and dire as your writing may be, I do so enjoy reading the creations of your brilliant mind and wisdom of your heart.
Perhaps the medium is the underlying message, and the remnant of conviction.
I can’t figure out who pisses me off more. The dullards who believe everything is hunky dory and will endlessly support the current thing until they literally die, or the Trumpers who just can’t let go even after he poisoned the world with Warp Speed and wouldn’t change a thing next time.
Do most of the supplicants know they are killing people or is it that they don't want to know? I say they are part of a cult, and they don't want to know. The vaccine is a sacred sacrament in their new religion!
There's a new church in town. Watch CHURCH OF THE PANDEMIC MIND. https://turfseer.substack.com/p/church-of-the-pandemic-mind
Why not just ignore them all? (I realize this leaves a much smaller world, but perhaps that's where you/we belong.)
A couple of paragraphs in, I thought about posting The Second Coming, and then you went right to it.
I posted it for my small group of friends on FB last week and had a good little time talking poetry. (It prompts you "what's on your mind?"and that was it.)
I think in terms of a Napoleon, and yeah much better to study as history than to live through. I'm about your age but am the kind of person with a shorter than average shelf life (and no children). I've had a more varied and interesting life than most, but now I'm in hedonic coasting mode. (I've outlived many of my friends and heros.) So now it's literature, music, comedy, and beer. ;)
This is one of your best essays. Things may fall apart, but you've pulled your thoughts together well here. Bravo.
Great article! As you allude to, the narratives we’re exposed to are embedded in the social and political control systems. So what’s important is to question prevailing narratives. All the time. And in fact, to adopt a default position of not believing any of it until otherwise proved.
The Mass Media, and other mechanisms by which the ruling class transfers narratives to the human mind, gives us a cultural paradigm which is accepted by Mass Man—giving him a blueprint which he believes is his own creation. Where once he wore outer chains, now he wears mental chains, the existence of which remain oblivious to him. Cold steel on flesh is eminently obvious but men are unaware of the inner chains they carry, all the while bearing the illusion that they are free.
The cultural norms and social institutions presented to mankind are designed to produce obedient workers who lack the critical thinking skills necessary to piece together the truth about the nature of reality— who lack the will to even care. Doing so maintains the corrupt control systems set in place that are designed to maximize profits for the ruling elite. Thankfully for them, an ignorant population doesn’t care about things that truly matter. And they certainly seem not care about the crimes committed by their own governments.
The byproduct of concentrating wealth into the hands of a few is that it keeps the rest of us busy with the basics of survival. We’re appeased by superficial consumerism, alcohol, video games, and streaming services. We’re too exhausted to contemplate how the system actually works, and too bemused to create better conditions for our lives even if we did.
The control system is in place to keep a population ignorant, submissive, confused, fearful, desperate, and distracted. Without it, people might start to see themselves as free and sovereign human beings. Without it, they might collaborate for their collective well-being. And without it, the curtain of deception crumples to the floor.
Despite our potential to be a peaceful, harmonious species, we have come to a point where we, as a people, have passively allowed multinational billion dollar corporations to come to the verge of destroying the planet.
This is a good read, thank you. The capitalist machine serves as the medium which converts difficult to quantify things such as community, trust, positive values, spontaneity, nature — basically the things that make life worth living — into egalitarian flat dystopia. As William S. Burroughs said, "What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits quantity."
Re: living in the woods, that's a rear-guard, losing action, as globohomo is doing everything it can to shuffle its non-integrating imported immigrants into rural red areas. You can run, but you can't hide from globohomo...
You are wrong. I am not going to tell you where I am at for hopefully obvious reasons, but there are no traffic lights, no rainbow flags, and no immigrants in my neck of the woods.
That’s an important angle. Land is not free. With land, you have something. Unless, of course, they figure out how to take it away from you. I am frequently reminded of Mumfords’s essay on authoritarian and democratic technics, where he describes all this as a magnificent bribe, where many things are offered but you can’t pick and choose, you have to take it all. It chases you down and forces its products on you. It’s written into the constitution, rights inhering in property, not the individual.
I know people living in the Vermont woods, which are getting invaded by wealthy New England liberals, driving up land values, and everybody still running around obsessing with covid shots. And of course sometimes they log the land, which means there are fewer squirrels to go around, along with nuts and berries and anything else you might live off of.
I’m dumbfounded as people like my sister have devoted their entire lives to farm to table living. Getting outside, exercising etc. She will literally organize a BLM rally in VT, scream her pussy hat wearing head off about TRUMP!!!!!! But has zero questions about the last three years. Even as cancer and suicide is exploding all around her. The punch line, she’s a science teacher. I hate our species.
Yeah, the cognitive dissonance is terrifying. I like referring such people occasionally to El Gato Malo’s blog here, as this author clearly knows her stuff and is overall a promoter of this culture’s dominant medicine, and critiques the whole covid thing within a framework that should make sense to them. But overall, the research funding is corrupted, the medical publishing is corrupted (publish anything critical of pharma and pharma pulls their ads) the EPA and FDA are corrupted (since Citizens United everything has gotten worse) and it takes ten years for stuff to get recalled once people start recognizing it’s killing people. There is nothing extremist about recognizing all this. It’s not even partisan. It’s just how this system works. So much denial.
Indeed. I tried very early on to turn her on to Brett and Heather. But she is clueless. Only MSLSD and genius celebrities like Sarah Silverman can get through to her. At this point I think that she actually realizes that I was right about everything. But she has emphatically stated that she has no desire to learn any more. It’s time to move on you see. I suppose that I would put up the same wall if the choice was awakening and accepting the reality that I had poisoned my children or just screaming lalalalalala and hoping it will all just go away. What infuriates me is that AFTER I emailed her 1000 questions that she could never answer, she played the science card on me. Ummm, no. FU actually. FU very much.
It's sad we are at war with our families over whether to accept dystopia or not. My 80 year old mother is visiting soon, and I know I don't have much time to spend with her, but I can't really honestly say I am very much looking forward to her visit when she insists on taking over my living room and watching MSM news for an hour every day, and will likely at some point bait me into a political conversation I studiously avoid with her. The best I can hope for is to take to the lake and focus on nature which we both love.
RD Laing’s rules apply to so much of this.
Rule #1. Don’t.
Rule #2a. Rule #1 doesn’t exist.
Rule #2b. We never discuss the existence or non-existence of rules #1, 2a or 2b.
Culture as abusive relationship.
“Doctor” Fatty Arbuckle and his “patient” Buster Keaton join forces to remind us “Trust the Science.” Watch the hit music video TRUST THE SCIENCE RAG here: https://turfseer.substack.com/p/trust-the-science-rag
You quote Yeats, so here's a line from Robinson Jeffers: "when the cities like at the feet of the Beast, the mountains will remain." In other words, Babylons may rise and fall, but there will always be those who turn their backs on the madness, opt-out, and wait for sanity to return. This does not necessitate hiding in a Kaczinsky cabin, merely an acknowledgement that Ozymandian arrogance always winds up in the dust.
Yes, there's the old Zen saying: "The empire is lost, mountains and rivers remain."
I like that!
me too
However, we are neither mountains nor rivers. They will remain for the descendants we will never know.
Just the fact that a human being can write this says something more profound than we can begin to fathom... and speaks of types of complexity that we haven't even begun to comprehend. How glorious is that? And I think it is glorious.... and gloriously mysterious. In this picture, it's amazing how paradoxical four hundred years of science have managed to become. But what of love? If ideology and love were to coincide, as they obviously, in the most objective sense, should... then what? Thank you C.J. Hopkins. Bloody wonderful as always.
Great comment
IMO, this is the End Times, maybe the beginning or maybe we missed seeing the beginning and we are further along. The good news is it won't last forever. But it will be so horrible we can't imagine the horrors the world is in for. What is going on is world-wide now. We can see the destruction of civilization everywhere, all around us. Many people refer to Yeats' poem. My Bible-believing pastor refers to it quite a lot. I assume Satan knows his time is nearly up and he is on a tear.