JOHNSTONE

It is true that this civilization is made of lies, was grown by lies, is powered by lies, is controlled by lies.

And it is true that this civilization is woven from violence, was birthed by violence, is sustained by violence, is preserved through violence.

And it is true that this civilization is built on exploitation, is run on exploitation, exists to facilitate exploitation, is the product and the producer of exploitation.

And it is true that this civilization is flying facefirst toward collapse on myriad fronts and that any attempt to draw attention to this gets met with a "that makes me uncomfortable" hand-waving dismissal.

But it is also true that a staggering beauty rips through it all like a thunderbolt, continuously and pervasively.

And it is also true that there is a boundless intimacy hidden beneath all things that, if you like, could be called holiness.

And it is also true that the self is an illusion and that all that arises is innately free and deliciously purposeless.

And it is also true that science is in its infancy and that what we know is a tiny minnow in the vast ocean of what we do not know.

And it is also true that the universe is oh so very much bigger and oh so very much older than our tiny primate brains will ever be able to comprehend.

And it is also true that it is possible for the human organism to undergo a radical transformation in the way that it operates, from contraction around the ego illusion to a life-sized expression of the unity of all things.

And it is also true that the ability to see beauty in everything is a skill that can be mastered, and that a failure to appreciate the beauty of any moment is simply a failure of perception.

And it is also true that you can tell you're approaching clarity in this sense when you are able to see beauty in the billboards and bustle of a busy city just as easily as you can see it in the forest.

And it is also true that we are never meant to stop growing and learning, and that being the same person you were five years ago is a signal from life that something's not right.

And it is also true that our society's measures of success and failure are made of the same madness that got us into this mess and should therefore be ignored when crafting a beautiful life.

And it is also true that you can continue falling in love with your romantic partner for as long as you're willing to grow and expand, and that the honeymoon never needs to end.

And it is also true that your sexuality can be a powerful tool for healing, creativity and growth if you can succeed in making it conscious.

And it is also true that none of this erases the harshness of our situation and we must all be very tender with each other as we plunge into whatever comes next at this unprecedented point in human history.

And it is also true that you should be tender with yourself as well, because it is only by loving ourselves deeply that our hidden endarkened bits can be coaxed into the light of truth.

And it is also true that you are doing your best, and that any mistakes you have made up until this moment were only because you did not yet have sufficient consciousness to make different choices.

And it is also true that you are crackling with beauty, and it would be a damn shame if you never let yourself truly see this.

And it is also true that humanity itself is crackling with beauty, and that the only thing worse than our species slipping away would be if it slipped away without really seeing and appreciating itself.

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Reading by Tim Foley.

Two powerful leaders met beneath the hot Jeddah sun to discuss oil and killing and friendship.

One of the leaders rules a tyrannical regime which funds terrorists, murders journalists, suppresses civil rights and commits war crimes. The other, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, is no better.

They greeted not with the traditional handshake, nor with a stern finger wag from the American for the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, but with the most epic fistbump in the history of civilization.

Since the invention of the fistbump there have been none so pure, so affectionate, so expressive of perfect union and harmony. Observers said they thought they heard angels singing.

Where their two fists connected, their souls merged. Their eyes locked with an intimacy poets and lovers have spent their whole lives trying to capture. Their dick chakras burned with the intensity of a thousand stars.

"This is who we are," the fistbump roared to the heavens. "This is who we have always been. Our sacred bond presides over an empire that is fueled by oil and blood, and we rule as one in holy communion with the great kings of old. Nothing shall ever come between us: not bone saw nor mass beheading nor strained lip service to human rights values on the presidential campaign trail."

Time froze as the two joined fists in genocidal matrimony, flashing coy grins at each other upon a mountain of Yemeni corpses and the tortured bones of Syria. Their faces turned to skulls. Doves with red-stained feathers filled the air.

And the Marxists of the world say "If only we could one day capture that kind of class solidarity."

And the wives of the world say "If only he would one day look at me like that."

And the arms manufacturers of the world say "Hoo hoo yeah buddy boy this is gonna be great let's go snort coke off a Tomahawk missile."

And the hidden saints say "Something's gotta give here."

And the world rotates on the axis of those two joined fists into ecocide and atrocity and Google Hollywood McDystopia.

And the imperial juggernaut marches on, and the Earth spins off into the blackness, and we all hold hands and look to providence as we plunge into an increasingly strange Unknown.

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Reading by Tim Foley.

In short, there is no exit strategy to this proxy war. There are no plans in place to deliver Putin a swift defeat, and the Biden administration remains steadfastly dismissive of even the slightest gestures toward diplomacy with Moscow. Boris Johnson has reportedly been buzzing around admonishing Ukraine's President Zelensky, France's President Macron and who knows who else not to work toward peace in Ukraine. The doors to ending this war quickly by either winning it or negotiating a peace settlement are both bolted shut, all but guaranteeing a long and bloody slog. 

Reading by Tim Foley.

Genocide walrus John Bolton outright admitted to planning foreign coups with the US government in conversation with CNN's Jake Tapper on Wednesday. That's coups, plural.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, and Chris Hedges have lent their expertise to the subject of the war in Ukraine with some recent comments that help bring some much-needed clarity to an often confusing and always contentious issue.

Reading by Tim Foley.

You may vote and debate freely on any issue which does not affect the functioning of the empire. When it comes to how money, weapons and resources move around the world, however, you suddenly find that your votes don't matter and your position has no mainstream representation. They'll let you argue until you're blue in the face over whether or not you can have an abortion or whether minorities should have civil rights; they'll even let you vote on it. But things like military expansionism and neoliberal globalization and deregulation are off limits.

The empire relies on false political dichotomies like Democrats vs Republicans to keep everyone fighting over issues which don't affect the functioning of the empire so the machine can trudge onward uninterrupted by the local riff raff. That is the entire job of those parties. 

The mainstream media exist to keep everyone spellbound by those false dichotomies on the level of discourse and debate. They manufacture culture wars which split the populace in half over an issue which doesn't affect the empire, then continually feed into that debate.

The Bernie/AOC/TYT "populist left" and the Trump/Tucker Carlson "populist right" factions are there to lure parts of the population who get a little too curious about the raw mechanisms of empire back into the political false dichotomy so they stop asking unauthorized questions.

The entire political/media class exists for this purpose: not to help people, not to fight for civil rights, not to create a well-informed populace so that democracy can function, but to keep the grubby little mitts of the unwashed masses far away from the true levers of power. That's their whole entire function.

Reading by Tim Foley.

And what's interesting is that underneath all the babbling propaganda stories about what's happening in our world, humanity is indeed showing signs that we are collectively slipping out of our old relationship with mental narrative. It's happening in the usual sloppy, awkward, two-steps-forward-one-step-back shamble which has always marked all of human progress, but it's happening.

It's happening in the way people are moving away from religion as we collectively discover that those ancient narratives which so long transfixed our ancestors are not necessary or helpful for finding meaning, morality and fulfillment in our lives, and as we collectively notice that doctrines about eternal reward for obedience and eternal damnation for disobedience sound made-up.

It's happening with the rise of cryptocurrencies as people figure out that money is made up and we can change the rules whenever we want. Money is nothing more than an agreed-upon story that's only as true as we all continue to pretend it is, a collective narrative that we can collectively rewrite at any time.

It's happening as people figure out that a romantic relationship doesn't need to look the way they've looked throughout most of our recorded history; that it's only narrative which says one man and one woman must love and have sex with only each other throughout their lives, or even throughout their relationship. That those rules have only ever been made of empty narrative fluff and can be replaced with an entirely different set of guidelines.

It's happening as people figure out how much narrative overlays things like gender and sexuality, that there's nothing inscribed upon the fabric of reality which prescribes our longstanding models of men and women and what their roles are and how their sexualities should express. Rearranging societal narratives that deeply entrenched in our culture is causing a lot of chaos and confusion, and the arguments it's bringing up are very upsetting for a lot of people, but it's gradually working itself out as people pick through the narratives and sort out fact from story.

Indeed each issue I'm describing here has brought in its own set of quandaries, challenges, bad faith actors and abuses that had previously been avoided under the old models, but it's not like the old models have been free of those things either. And as we all discuss, argue, push and pull and muddle our way through these obstacles with each other, we are collectively sinking into the real important insight which underlies all those more superficial areas of contention: that our society is made of narrative, and we can change the rules whenever we want.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The video footage coming out of Sri Lanka right now has been the recurring nightmare of every ruler throughout history.

Thousands of protesters outraged by the deteriorating material conditions of the nation's economic meltdown have stormed the presidential palace of Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and I guarantee you the aerial footage as they poured into the building en masse has made every government leader and plutocrat a little uncomfortable today.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Link to footage: https://twitter.com/NewsWireLK/status/1545686446224183296

And then one day we just couldn't anymore.

Couldn't keep up the maintenance on our shouldn'ts and shoulds.

Couldn't pay the contractors to keep building our skyscrapers of spin.

Could no longer hold up the weight of a world made of lies

and so we let it splatter on the floor

and sprout night orchids.

And that was when the Forgotten Ones rushed in.

No longer staved off by propaganda and pain,

no longer contained by our cages made of mind,

they set to work with sharp claws and great mandibles of ivory

slicing away the steel bands wrapped around our soft hearts

and cutting the bolts on the door of the old grandmother magic.

And they taught us— no!

They reminded us

how to walk on this earth as they walk.

How to step with a pregnant tenderness

in communion with the planet.

How to grow our hair long so it makes love with the wind

and listens for the whispers that are too quiet for our ears.

How to work with the land not in dominion but in friendship

and to extract the thorns of dogma and punditry from our flesh

and to vomit up the madness of millennia of civilization.

And we forgot our old stories of separateness and shame,

our minds now too life-sized and world-shaped for falsehood.

And we strode in companionship with the Forgotten Ones back to Eden,

untamed beings in an untamed world.

Untamed beings in an untamed world.

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Reading by Tim Foley.

Boris Johnson resigning would only be interesting in an alternate universe where there was some remote chance that he won't be replaced by another depraved sociopath.

Reading by Tim Foley.