Ross Peroting Trump with Coffee Man

The democrats are trying to make the starbucks dude into a credible populist candidate to sap votes from Trump.

Financial System Wealth Drain Better than Latin America Style Corruption

The current western financial system grew out of the industrial revolution and large scale industries like rail networks. The scheme for fiat money and theft through inflation is pretty recent, and as far as corrupt oligarchic systems go, it's not that bad. For one, since it's a theft per transaction, more or less, it requires useful economic activity to function--the hamster wheel must keep turning--so at least people don't starve or suffer other deprivations. Also, it fosters meritocracy, even among the ranks of the corrupt. Sure you get Potemkin village corporations and financial schemes to rob investors, but you also get some value from real honest people's efforts.

In other countries where cronyism and nepotism are the main forms of corruption, the systems that provide for people's well being rot and decay as they're stripped. There are so many examples it's not worth itemizing, but Venezuela is the most recent, most rotten one. Corruption and bad policies destroyed a country with a lot of natural resources.

Should the US intervene to overthrow the government of Venezuela? Probably not. The US should focus on home, and getting our shit together and being the example and the literal school for other countries. Collapsing another shitty government won't do anything to repair the infrastructure and systems of Venezuela, and working them over financially in the aftermath won't help either, obviously. Collapsing the government of Venezuela and converting it into a theater of Great Game bullshit conflict is retarded.

Will Corporate Produced Entertainment Face Internet Competition?

It's actually pretty interesting that news was the first media industry to face fierce competition from the Internet while other media, like comedies and dramas and other forms of entertainment haven't faced direct competition on a significant scale.

Immediacy and authenticity are big components of the value of news, and in many cases a simple recording of an event is superior to the type of reporting that the legacy media does, where a story is edited and condensed into a short clip.

Authenticity is a big component of the value of entertainment, too. In recent years, some corporate entertainment has become preachy on top of being repetitive and formulaic and has managed to alienate a large portion of its audience.

There has been independent entertainment content on the Internet since it's been able to deliver audio and video, however, as far as I know, there's nothing like the phenomenon of independent Internet journalism which seems like the next iteration of news. It takes more resources to produce a 30 minute comedy than for a guy to sit in front of a web cam and comment on politics, but really not a whole lot more.

I'm Going to Condense This Blog Into a Book

There are 444 posts on this blog. Over the course of 4 years I've managed to tease out a few observations and insights that I believe are valuable. While a lot of the stuff I write about is theoretical, my intent has always been practical, so in the next iteration of my work, I'll be putting some of the things I've been writing about into practice.

We're into the real cold heart of winter here, so it's a good time of the year for contemplation and planning. It will probably take a couple of months to edit the blog material into a short "book" form. I'll try to get it done by the spring equinox.

Linear History and Alchemy

Being human is really being "of the middle" and being a composite creature of mind and body and nature and culture. Being in the middle is conducive to learning and adaptation. Indeed, since information and knowledge are expressed as relationships among elements, being in the middle enables us to embody those relationships in our brains. A fairly popular notion is humans are unique and are the instrument of the gods in transformation of the world from the garden into the city on the hill.

The concept of Linear History is a religious and mythical concept. The idea that human history is the unfolding of some cosmic scheme permeates not only the Christian religion and bible, but it also permeates the occult and mystery schools in some cases. The alchemy of spiritual "tranformation" is one example.

Ideas couched in terms of linear history or evolution or spiritual growth and alchemy are really good fingerprints of a will at work, or a confidence game because they imply the fulfillment of a plan.

In a world like ours of all-change there's really no linear transformation or evolution. There's only co-evolution.

Sleepwalking with a 401(k)

You might hate the company Facebook and think it's a sociopathic parasite, but if you put money into a 401(k), chances are good you support it, maybe with hundreds or thousands of dollars per year. You might hate the democratic party, but if you're putting money in a 401(k), chances are pretty good that you indirectly supported Clinton's campaign through corporate and executive contributions to her campaign.

A 401(k) is a really good example of sleepwalking through life and avoiding conscious choices. Money that might have gone into local businesses or productive assets for an individual or family goes to support some random collection of financialized corporations and to support the lifestyle of the "managers" of the 401(k).

Covington High School Video--A Turning Point

One of the best scenes of the 1982 movie Conan The Barbarian is when Conan confronts Thulsa Doom and defeats him. Doom makes a great speech about how he was Conan's real father precisely because he'd toughened and strengthened Conan through adversity. (like the Johnny Cash song "A Boy Named Sue")

Doom is the embodiment of the world of lies. He's a trickster, con man, and murderer who is worshiped by a corrupt flower-child cult.

Conan surpasses Doom physically, but more importantly, by changing and growing his consciousness and understanding. Thulsa Doom's lie stops working and Conan chops his head off and unceremoniously chucks it at the cult members in a sort of reversal of Thulsa Doom's explanation to the answer of the "Riddle of Steel" koan.

I think this Covington High School incident is a turning point in modern-day US media propaganda. It's such a stark fail for the mainstream media, who ran with a totally incorrect story, which was then amplified by shrieking lefty partisans on social media, and was then immediately and resoundingly debunked in an almost comical reversal. (My inner conspiracy theorist wonders if the whole thing was staged to produce this exact outcome. The "Black Israelites" or whatever they're called seem like a fake, professional trolling troupe.) This might be the incident that snaps a lot of people out of the post 2016 election funhouse world into actual reality, and does severe and lasting damage to an already damaged MSM.