The Dark Studio

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“If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected .”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I’m sure you’ve watched a UFC fight here or there on one occasion or another. You may have even caught a fight that was exciting enough to bring the energy from the arena surrounding the fight directly into the entertainment area of your home.

The thing is that if you follow UFC closely then you know that when it comes to the world of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) a fighter can look like he or she is about to lose until suddenly they’re able to gain some leverage and surprisingly turn the tables on the outcome.

In many of these instances I’ve witnessed a fighter that was literally on the edge of total defeat only to suddenly flip the entire fight around by pulling and forcing the winning fighter into a position where they are weaker in order to gain the upper hand and totally snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

To back up a little bit when I was growing up as a GenX kid, like all other GenX kids, I was raised on hard hitting action movies during the cultural era when the action hero was the dominating figure at the box office. The truth is that this involved being exposed to a lot of Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris movies which ultimately led to me training in the fight discipline of Muay Thai.

In addition to all of that it was back in the 1990s when both myself and a handful of my closest friends would get together to watch some of the first Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) tournaments. This was no doubt the wildest and most entertaining thing I’ve ever seen in my life and in those days the UFC was a completely different animal. In fact, it was recognized as the wild west of sports.

You see, the entire reason UFC started in the first place was to satisfy the age old question of which martial arts, or which fight discipline was the dominant discipline. In other words, if you put a Kung Fu master in the ring against a Karate master who would win? If you placed an American Wrestler in the ring to face off against a Kickboxer then who would come out on top?

The formation of the UFC was an objective attempt at answering this age old question regarding the most effective fight disciplines. Of course, as time went on it became clear that the most effective fighters were those who ended up possessing experience in a blend, or mix, of disciplines where they had training in both effective stand up striking abilities combined with a solid ability of being able to get on the ground to grapple, hence the name Mixed Martial Arts.

Despite all of this the reality is that these UFC fighters are like chess masters. They understand their strengths and they are very good at exploiting the weakness of an opponent. This is the entire strategy of a great fighter on top of being tough as nails and conditioned for the art of fighting.

Now having said all of that I pointed out how fighters are good at looking to exploit their opponent’s weakness. To add on to this I will also say that the best fighters are also great at frustrating their opponents which often forces their opponents to act hastily further causing their opponent to expose a vulnerability that they can take advantage of in a given moment.

In other words, if a great fighter isn’t seeing an opening to exploit in a certain opponent then they will use certain tactics to frustrate their opponent (as the Sun Tzu quote at the beginning suggests) until that opponent gets irritated enough to act out in frustration which often opens them up to being submitted, or even knocked out in some cases. In other words, a great fighter will pull an opponent into the fight that they want their opponent to fight. The greatest fighters of every discipline do this extremely well.

Keep this in mind because I’m going to come back to this in a bit.

The Giant Slayer

“And a champion went out from the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, from Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. He had a bronze helmet on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze.”

1 Samuel 17: 4-5

It’s not often the easiest thing to overcome fear and doubt, but in order to do so the thing that has always helped me is the process of acquiring knowledge and understanding of the environment combined with having faith in God.

The thing is that when it comes to today’s world many people dismiss big ideas due to the fact that they’ve been conditioned to be dismissive. This often happens as a result of fear and doubt.

This attitude of dismissing big ideas is often followed with the excuse of the idea sounding too ridiculous, or absurd because it falls outside of the accepted boundaries of what is considered to be normal. In my view, and in many cases, this really only demonstrates intellectual laziness on the part of those who are quick to dismiss big ideas, particularly if those who are offering the big ideas have sensible criteria to back up what they’re proposing.

Now don’t get me wrong, some ideas are horrible ideas. However, keep in mind that ideas can also be very powerful and can even result in changing the arc of history whether those ideas are for good, or for bad.

Sure many ideas can be outright dismissed, but for the big ideas that can’t be dismissed they at least deserve your attention whether you support them, or not. Keep in mind that such things can manifest over time due to human action and through the process of winning the support of people over whether it be for good, or for bad.

In terms of how bad ideas can grow and become something very powerful, one good example of this would involve how some bad ideas formed in 1930s Germany would ultimately lead to Stalingrad. Keep in mind that Hitler and the Nazis had some powerful ideas which obviously led to the result of great evil in the world. The same can be said for Mao Zedong, Stalin, and Fidel Castro as well.

However, the thing to understand is that oftentimes ideas involve an evolving process. I mean this very article, or podcast was formed out of the idea and intention that I could use my voice in a way to influence others in order to fight against Marxist and Fascist ideologies. The plan was to contribute to that very thing along with doing my part to pile onto the Populist effort to destroy the Administrative State Media (ASM).

Now I would say that the truth is that at the start of this many people would dismiss my effort, or simply half pay attention to it until nearly three years have passed now and society is starting to see that the ASM is in total collapse.

Now to be clear I’m not at all suggesting that my Substack was responsible for collapsing the ASM. I know there would be an imbecile or two to read that and immediately start to suggest that is what I was saying. Anyone suggesting that would be totally missing the message I’m trying to deliver here.

However, the message I am delivering is the reality that I knew the ASM had gotten so out of control and corrupt that I saw the writing on the wall four years ago. I immediately understood that individual citizens, podcasts, and citizen journalists would have to step up and speak out against the narrative of the ASM if our country was going to survive.

In short, I knew that what our society was dealing with was a full blown information war that was designed specifically to dumb down the citizenry of our country resulting in a less aware, more fearful, and a more timid population that would self-censor in fear of being othered, or even doxxed by the ASM as we’ve all seen firsthand.

I knew that as a small business owner and career fitness and strength coach with a passion for history and philosophy that it was going to require a heavy lift for my voice to be heard in the midst of this massive information war.

However, I’ve never wanted to focus on that more than just working to effectively communicate my own ideas and the world as I see it during this time in history. In short, I knew the fire in my belly was burning hot enough to fight the ASM, but I just had to focus on how to channel it in a way that would be both impactful and effective.

I suppose to some degree that’s happening because I engage with hundreds and thousands of wonderful people every week that suggest this is the case. I also get attacked by the enemy as well so I know I’m doing something right in my contribution to this Populist movement that’s sweeping the world. The reality is that NBC, CNN, FOX, and MSNBC are no longer the media. You are the media, I am the media, and those we influence are the media now.

And Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.”

But David said to Saul, “Your servant used to keep his father’s sheep, and when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, I went out after it and struck it, and delivered the lamb from its mouth; and when it arose against me, I caught it by its beard, and struck and killed it. Your servant has killed both lion and bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God.”

1 Samuel 17: 33-36

When President Trump speaks about big ideas like absorbing Canada as a 51st state, or taking on Greenland to be a part of the United States territory he’s not just simply saying such things to just troll the leftists and the media for the sake of trolling, at least not entirely.

You see the reality is that when Trump looks at the entire landscape of the Western Hemisphere he’s looking at the global map while also understanding the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) attempt at expansion as seen by their physical presence in South America, as well as their undermining of the Canadian government. They have been doing this for quite some time and have been very open about it through their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

When President Trump makes such a comment about absorbing Canada as the 51st state there’s a direct reason for it and that reason isn’t just about trolling Justin Trudeau, although that would be pretty easy to do.

What Canadians need to understand, and what they will soon come to understand, is that between the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative and Donald Trump’s call to make Canada a 51st state is that they’re going to have to make a choice as to what they want in regards to their place in the world real soon.

You see the United States has propped up just about everyone financially in the West now for many decades. In fact, the U.S. bailed Europe out of two world wars, we pretty much single-handedly financed NATO, and we’ve basically subsidized the entire planet for what seems like forever. According to DOGE we’re even learning that our tax dollars have pretty much funded the entire Democratic Party as well, but I digress.

Sometimes big ideas have to be communicated with big words and this is exactly what President Trump is doing when he says that Canada will become a 51st state.

You see when he looks at Canada he understands that they’re under our nuclear umbrella and they’re not paying their fair share for defense and their border has been wide open to the United States.

Instead of being a normal polished establishment politician that might say something like Canada should look at their border, or consider adding more to their national defense instead Trump says, We’re going to make Canada our 51st state.

By stating it in this way President Trump is bringing attention to the problems by framing the problem to the public in this Art of The Deal outrageous sort of way, but the attention that this draws actually gets people to start thinking and talking about the actual problem.

President Trump understands leverage better than anyone which means he has a tremendous gift for exploiting a weakness in an opponent. Oh yeah, I mentioned that at the beginning of this episode as being one of the greatest traits that the best fighters possess.

You see one of the real problems of the far left that you don’t hear enough about is their lack of self-awareness. If there’s one thing that has become very apparent in the past four years it’s that the one obvious psychological malfunction that plagues the far left is their total lack of self-awareness and emotional maturity.

You see, in psychology having a lack of self-awareness means that one is clueless about how their actions affect others based on day to day interactions and especially when it comes to conflict resolution.

Those who lack self-awareness always look to blame others for problems that arise, they lack empathy, and are clueless about how they come across to others in any given situation. This basically sums up the entire far left along with the emotional immaturity that is also so frequently on display when they lash out about certain issues that they disagree with in public.

Given this psychological condition and given the fact that it directly results in these people always blaming others for problems that arise rather than being introspective and looking inward, it’s not surprising in the least that this has resulted in the overwhelming success of the victimhood narrative within the Democratic Party.

Because this lack of self-awareness involves the lack of introspection this leads directly to a victimhood mindset. Therefore when the left gets triggered by something they’re emotionally not capable of handling it’s because they don’t see themselves as the problem. In addition to this the ASM amplifies this because leftist causes lead to the media going into a full blown meltdown as well. This obviously leads to a series of extreme and widespread public displays of emotional chaos and personal meltdowns.

When this happens everyone else is then capable of easily seeing these people for who they are which buries the Democratic Party further and further down into the gutter. The reality is they’re stuck because they lack self-awareness and they’re currently in a spiraling state of self-destruction as a result of the current political realignment.

President Trump also understands this characteristic of the left very well. So when he makes what initially may seem to be an outrageous statement about making Canada a 51st state it sends a shockwave of emotional reactions across the population and media landscape which results in the left melting down into their usual state of insanity. While this happens it simultaneously opens the eyes and ears of the sane to start talking about actually addressing the real problems that President Trump is bringing attention to.

As these discussions about the real problems grow the transformation of the big idea into becoming a big reality also grows. In essence, what President Trump is doing is that he’s pulling the opposition into the fight that he wants them to fight in order to get them to submit just like that MMA fighter.

In the arena of the body politic he’s changing the battlefield and he isn’t playing by the usual establishment rules of political discourse that has been the status quo now for far too long. What President Trump realizes that the establishment has failed to understand is that this isn’t the business as usual political discourse because this is outright political warfare.

The Wrap Up

And when the Philistine looked about and saw David, he disdained him; for he was only a youth, ruddy and good-looking.

1 Samuel 17:42

Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the Lord, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you and take your head from you.”

1 Samuel 17:45-46

You see when examining what President Trump and the MAGA movement have had to face on the battlefield that is the political landscape it’s very much been a David and Goliath moment in history.

After all, Trump had the base of MAGA, but he was up against the literal entire corrupt machine of the federal government, the WEF, the media, Hollywood, the DOJ, the FBI, the radical judges, the establishment Republicans, governors of states including mine here in the state of Georgia, and even assassins.

In short, the enemy literally had all the money and all the resources, yet when all the smoke cleared Trump and the MAGA Populist movement emerged more powerful than ever before while continuing to grow in that power and influence.

So what is the lesson we can take from all of this?

I believe the biggest takeaway here is that as citizens of our society we can never become apathetic, or ignorant to the cultural and political environment ever again. We must strive daily to be a zenith within our society while influencing others to do the same.

We must become more than rule-abiding citizens. We have a civic duty to ensure the state of our existence and we cannot afford to squander, or ignore that duty.

The lesson that I desire to communicate here is the exact reason that this Substack exists in the first place and that is to be a tool that you can use to help you to become a zenith and to enhance your civic acumen so that MAGA is never in a position like we’ve seen in the past four years.

So it was, when the Philistine arose and came and drew near to meet David, that David hurried and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine. Then David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone; and he slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead, so that the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the earth. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. But there was no sword in the hand of David. Therefore, David ran and stood over the Philistine, took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him, and cut off his head with it.

1 Samuel 17: 48-51

Are you currently working towards changing the battlefield to gain the upperhand in your own life?

Do you see this MAGA Populist movement maintaining power for the next 50 years?

Post up in the comment section below and I would like to hear some of your feedback.

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“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

― Ray Bradbury

Have you ever been in a situation where you happen to walk into a room and pretty much right away notice the energy in that room based on the vibe of the people occupying the room?

I’ve been in this scenario more than a few times in my life and there have been times when I’ve entered the room and felt a positive vibe and there have been times when I’ve entered a room and immediately encountered a negative vibe.

The reason I’m bringing this up is that in these situations there’s no denying the reality that as people we have an ability to hone in on our environment and to assess that environment based on the energy output and behavior of other people. It’s a very interesting human trait, but is one that’s probably as intrinsic as any other instinct designed for the purpose of survival.

Speaking of survival this is an instinct that is deeply ingrained into the fabric of our being. In fact, your nervous system is a prime example of this.

So why do I say this?

When looking at your nervous system it’s basically binary in its design because of the sympathetic and parasympathetic make up of your autonomic nervous system. In regards to your survival mode your nervous system basically consists of your sympathetic nervous system (SNS) which involves the instinct, or ability for it to trigger your “fight or flight” response to prepare you for stressful situations.

When your SNS is triggered it increases your heart rate and blood pressure to deliver oxygen and blood to your organs and working muscles. During this time it will also dilate your pupils to improve your vision in dim or dangerous conditions. It also stimulates the production of adrenaline and noradrenaline hormones to further enhance your fight-or-flight mode to help you in whatever moment of danger you may find yourself in.

To dive deeper on the key component of your body being honed in on the state of survival there’s another very impressive and mysterious trait that you possess that you may not be aware of concerning your sensory perception. When looking at the function of your senses this involves your somatic nervous system.

As you may be aware when talking about your senses you are probably aware of the usual five senses that you possess and use on a normal day to day basis involving your sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. However, you do possess a sixth sense.

So what do I mean when I say that you have a sixth sense?

That’s right, you do actually have a sixth sense and I’ve discussed this before on an earlier episode, but I will include an excerpt from that episode here.

Your sixth sense is what is known as proprioception. You see within your muscles, joints, and tendons you have proprioceptors which are sensory receptors that signal external feedback to you from your environment. This function works so that you understand the location of your body in relation to other people and other things in space.

This is a key sense to have so that you don’t accidentally run into things and people when moving in space on a day to day basis. Now this may seem obvious, but many people’s sense of proprioception has been dulled in our society since the advent of technology along with the modern era of cellphones, the laptop, and desktop careers that now make up a large part of our comfortable and convenient modern way of living.

Basically your sixth sense of proprioception is your key sense of awareness.

You see, even though you have the ability of the sixth sense of proprioception this doesn’t mean that yours will work well unless you understand how to hone it. In order to optimize your mind and body you must FIRST possess awareness.

You see this is the problem with our modern society as too many people lack both physical and mental awareness when it comes to the environment that they live in.

If you don’t believe me I’ll illustrate the significance of my point here. I’m going to ask you to be a little patient with me because I’m going to give you an example of a person who would have a low level and dulled sense of proprioception while at the same time giving you some examples of people with a high level of proprioceptive awareness.

Let’s start by using the recent Christmas holiday season as a primary example of examining an environment where you would likely encounter someone with a low level of proprioceptive awareness.

At some point during your life I’m sure you’ve made your way inside of a shopping mall during the Christmas holiday season. Like me you may have not been the most enthusiastic individual for having to venture into the mall environment, but you did it out of the spirit of giving so like me you’ve found yourself inside the hectic shopping jungle known as the shopping mall.

As you walked along the mall trying to find your way to your destination I’m sure you had to weave your way in and out of walking lanes while having to dodge other people along the way. If you’re like me you typically don’t want to waste a lot of time inside and want to get in and out of the store as soon as possible.

However, when you were walking through the mall ask yourself how many people blatantly and cluelessly turned and walked directly into your lane, or even walked right into you?

Ask yourself how many of these people were on their phones, or just simply lacked any awareness of their surroundings as they walked through the public venue?

Furthermore, if you consider yourself a person that is highly aware of your environment ask yourself how frequently has this happened to you in a crowded place?

I point this out as this is a common occurrence and is direct evidence of people with low proprioceptive awareness. Now as you’re sitting there when I say this you’re probably asking Brandon how can you make such an assumption based on that life experience?

I would answer by saying that I can come to that conclusion like any critical thinker would draw their conclusions. The way we do this is by comparing polar opposite elements of the equation.

In this particular assessment you and I can observe what many might define as average everyday people (like at the mall during Christmas) while also observing how other high performance people act in other crowded environments.

For instance, if you carefully watch a defensive back in a football game cover a wide receiver you’ll see a guy that can back pedal and maneuver his body across the field of play while not even having to necessarily look at where he’s going.

The defensive back in this example can maneuver his body across the field without bumping into anyone and to cover a wide receiver because he has a high level of proprioceptive awareness. The defensive back knows exactly where his body is in space in relation to referees and other players on the field. The defensive back is aware of his environment.

If that example isn’t good enough then consider the next example. I guarantee you if you’ve ever been around a military serviceman that came back from a war zone and observed them in a crowded space you would see an individual who has a level of proprioceptive awareness that’s even greater than the football defensive back. Their sixth sense is fully honed and engaged with their respective environment.

If you still don’t believe me about your sixth sense then the next time you go out in public to a restaurant, or coffee shop try the following experiment, but please don’t get busted on exhibiting too much of the “creeper vibe” and end up blaming this one on me.

The next time you sit down at a local coffee shop, or cafe simply pick someone else out in the room that is also sitting, especially if they are turned away from you. Once you find this person simply lock your eyes onto them and stare at them without turning away.

The Official Substack Of Brandon Richey is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.”

― George Bernard Shaw

I want to open this episode up by asking you a few questions and when I ask you these questions I want you to take a few moments to ponder on them and keep your answers in mind as you read and/or listen along to this episode.

When you were growing up, were there people in your life that were often regarded as being the smart kids, or people most likely to succeed, that have proven to be absolute morons as you were able to observe their online behavior here in the past four years?

Of these people, how many of them are currently a part of a big corporate system and how many actually went out and blazed their own trail in life by starting their own business?

Of those people that actually did start their own business, how many of them built a business off their own capital without having to lean on some government subsidy in order to operate their venture?

Take a moment and really think about these questions as you remember those people who were praised in your communities and in your schools, but proved to be completely clueless about the world, history, philosophy, and geopolitics in the last four years.

The reason I’m asking you to do this is to relay a very important point to you and that point is that the mistake of misplacing hype and misplacing credit to people that don’t deserve it has been a huge mistake that our American culture has been completely guilty of repeating over and over and over again for far too long now.

This mistake has been prevalent everywhere and it’s been something that I’ve been aware of my entire life, but haven’t really thought about it as deeply as I have until the last four years. Of course, given the course of both society and the world in these last four years it’s been quite stunning to me as to just how clueless many of these so-called “smart folks” really are and have been when observing their behavior in the last few years.

If you’ve been paying attention to the world since Biden took office then you can see where meritocracy has been something that has taken a backseat to identity politics and a culture that has been persistent in pushing a belief system that you aren’t capable of solving your own problems. This victimhood mindset is bad enough, but because of it as a society we have managed to create an entire ecosystem around the absurd illusion of embracing that victimhood as a badge of honor.

Even more absurd than that is the reality that the corrupt and useless systems in which we have managed to create have laid the foundational narrative that the victimhood mindset is the norm in our modern day Zeitgeist.

This has happened due to the fact that those people I mentioned earlier regarding the so-called smart people were merely mouthpieces that were groomed for the system that was built on this current societal victimhood foundation. These sorts of people are what I’d refer to as being system operatives which are merely people that work within a system to perpetuate the system that was built for them to operate.

The idea is that these people can work well within the system that they are in, but if you’re able to pull them out of said system their ability to adapt and overcome a new environment would prove to be very difficult for them. These people aren’t Mavericks that are used to blazing their own trail, but rather system operatives that are comfortable and effective working within the fake environment that was built for them to maintain and prop up.

This environment of a woke Corporate America has steadily been moved away from meritocracy and has instead managed to morph into a modern day version of ancient Japanese feudalism that has been combined with technology to give rise to what is known as Technofeudalism.

If you haven’t listened or read my episode on Technofeudalism then make sure you scroll down the article here on this episode and click the link here to listen and/or read that one. The history and details of that episode will blow your mind.

The Joe Montana Effect

So I began this episode by talking about the common mistake of our country falling into the trap of giving credit to people that I’m sure you’ve been familiar with your entire life who are held up by society as being the brains within the community, or sector of the population, that you’ve been a part of for either a good portion, or for all of your life.

However, to your surprise you’ve probably noticed many of these old friends, colleagues, or coworkers demonstrating just how ignorant and stupid they are in regards to their lack of knowledge on how the world actually works, particularly in the face of all the chaos of the last four years.

I’m sure their idiotic behavior in caving in to the narrative of wearing masks, or being quick to obey walking in a newly specified direction down the aisle of the grocery store during the pandemic managed to leave you scratching your head about these people. If you’re a critical thinker I’m sure it left you wondering how they were able to gain such credibility by your peers as being intelligent people for so long.

This is because these people are most likely system operatives and are comfortable living in a matrix that they have built their lives around in order to live in an illusion of comfort. They’re so comfortable that they never even bothered learning history, philosophy, finance, or the basics of human health.

Instead they have managed to fall victim to the culture of the Zeitgeist that they have always known without even possessing the ability to question it. They never even thought deeply enough about the fragility of this illusion, let alone wanting to embrace a much desperate change that is needed to escape this matrix that can best be described as something that is basically the same thing as Plato's Cave.

Because of this lack of recognizing the illusion that they are living in they, like many, lack a fundamental understanding of what true intelligence really is which simply involves one possessing the ability to observe reality and improvise when necessary by exercising a willingness to adapt and overcome an unforeseen scenario when it arises. Instead these people fall victim to the established environment and resist fighting against the authoritarian establishment due to the oppressive emotion of fear.

In short, these people have created their own mousetrap, or more specifically their own human trap, and that’s just as much of a mistake as giving these people the credit for being the lead intellectuals of society. The craziness is that they’ve managed to do this while all along they’re merely just a bunch of overhyped system operatives that are comfortable playing inside their little matrix living out an illusion of comfort while being showered with fake accolades.

So you may be thinking Brandon, what other kind of example can you give to demonstrate how someone might be given credit that actually may deserve to go to someone else?

I’m going to answer that by using a pop culture example here when examining the careers of two NFL quarterbacks that I’m sure many sports talk shows have spent countless hours debating about over many years now.

However, given the context of the discussion here on this episode I’ve taken the time to dive into the mistake of society overhyping individuals within the system, or matrix, that we have come to identify as our society. On that point, I want to take a look at a couple of guys that have had quite impressive careers during their time in the NFL.

I want to begin by saying that I don’t watch the NFL anymore, nor am I a fan. There was a time when I did, but nowadays if I see any part of a game it’s only in passing and is not something that I have any interest in anymore.

With that being said when looking at the careers of Joe Montana and Tom Brady there are a lot of similarities regarding the success of both men when looking at their time in the NFL. However, just as there are similarities there are a lot of stark differences between these two quarterbacks and it’s these differences that I want to focus on today to illustrate the point of my discussion.

However, before I dive into that I want to draw some stark differences in the game of football itself during the time periods of which each man played the game.

For starters, back in 2002 the NFL made it illegal to hit a quarterback helmet to helmet after a change of possession. According to the NFL, contests marred by dangerous, or unprofessional behavior somehow manages to take away from the greatness of the game and put players at risk of injury.

The NFL’s modern day virtue signaling goes on to say that making sure players and staff conduct themselves in a manner that honors the game and safeguards its reputation for future generations is a priority. It’s really funny that the NFL says this as it's a known fact that youth enrollment in football now has been declining at a rapid rate for many years now with many participants citing safety concerns as one of the main reasons for the decline of youth participation. I suppose the future generations that the NFL is referring to is a pool of young people that keeps shrinking rather than growing due to the advocacy of their policy.

According to Refrsports defenders nowadays are not allowed to even make contact with the head or neck area of the quarterback under any circumstances. Using the concussion narrative this rule has been instituted to reduce, or prevent concussions and other injuries in quarterbacks.

However, despite all the virtue signaling on safety and the rule changes in trying to decrease concussions according to Ohio Today the NFL saw an increase in concussions from 213 in 2022 to 219 in 2023.

Granted the NFL certainly has extended the season of play in this modern era with teams having to endure longer seasons, but many would also argue that much of the concerns against player safety regarding that has been offset by better equipment these days to prevent injury.

Now look, let's not make this complicated. The reality is that the game of professional football is an incredibly physical and dangerous sport that can certainly cause severe injuries in players. However, that understanding should be a given when talking about the game of football itself.

Furthermore, the NFL has drastically changed the rules on safety in what they would describe as an attempt to preserve the reputation of the game, along with making their players safer and in a lot of ways the complete opposite has occurred, perhaps with the exception being at the quarterback position.

When I was a young teenager I would argue that the NFL was considerably more popular and influential in the culture than it is today. Well, maybe I’m wrong. After all, the league did have a huge impact on spreading the woke culture more than anything I’ve seen in my lifetime for the last few years now, but I digress.

The point is that when I was a young teenager the personalities and the violence of the game was the central focus of the marketing of the NFL to its audience, whereas today the focus is entirely on woke culture, safety, and corporate image. This is purely my subjective opinion, but if you ask me the latter has made the NFL a total snoozefest.

Now to make this even worse just this week I’ve been noticing a lot of posts online where people have been questioning the validity of the game itself. In fact this past week Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports shared a video clip from the game where he was being critical of the officiating during the AFC Championship game between the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Portnoy shared the clip which involved a fourth-and-1 call in the fourth quarter where the Bills were stopped short. As Portnoy played the video he passionately ranted about the spot of the ball on both third and fourth down with what he believed were egregious errors by the referees.

As he fumed over the calls Portnoy vowed to quit watching the NFL and took aim at the commissioner Roger Goodell saying that what he saw was “blatant cheating.” (Source: Yahoo Sports) The bottom line is that the times sure have changed with the NFL since I was a young kid and even though I don’t watch the NFL anymore as an adult it seems like these criticisms over the validity of the games is something I’ve been hearing more and more every year.

To give you an example of how much the culture of the NFL has changed I remember seeing an interview from either the late 1960s, or early 1970s with the L.A. Rams defensive end Deacon Jones when I was a kid. In this interview Deacon Jones was talking about what he had imagined doing to the quarterbacks that he played against. In his own words he had said that he used to imagine putting all the quarterbacks inside of a bag and then he would take a baseball bat to beat the bag.

Now as if this wasn’t shocking enough to hear when I was a teenager, it was also the attitude that existed in those days concerning the Zeitgeist of the sport of football. Now I wanted to tell that story to you in order to tell you the following point.

You know as well as I do if any player in the league said that in an interview today there would be a 24/7 meltdown by the media and that player that made such a statement would be ordered to attend sensitivity training probably for a twelve week period. You also know as well as I do that they would have to do this while donating a significant sum of money to some charity of the league’s choice to maximize the league’s opportunity to virtue signal to the tenth power with the viewing public.

This illusion of creating such a “sanitized” environment for a violent game has only managed to neuter the game in my view while creating a cookie cutter image to where you really can’t differentiate one player from the next. Basically all the players talk the same, look the same, and act the same.

The point is that in the era of Deacon Jones there were literal rivals between teams where one team really wanted to make an example out of the other team and they wouldn’t offer any apologies for doing so. Today the NFL makes the apology and the victimhood status the central tenet that defines the league and everything they do.

Additionally I remember one older retired NFL player talking about these changes once in his commentary where he pointed out that the main difference between yesteryear and today’s NFL is that in the old days there were true rivals, whereas he pointed out that in today’s league everyone is playing against everyone else’s brother in law. I thought that little statement was both truthful and amusing.

So why am telling you all of this?

Well, the point here is that if you ask most any football fan today who is the greatest NFL quarterback to play the game to date most people would be quick to answer that question by naming Tom Brady.

Now don’t get me wrong Tom Brady was a phenomenal quarterback and he has seven Super Bowl championships to prove it. As another honorable mention Tom Brady had also made the Pro Bowl fifteen times in his career which is another impressive feat that has to be acknowledged.

However, given everything that I’ve covered here in this episode regarding the culture and Zeitgeist of the NFL today compared to the days of players like Deacon Jones the biggest distinction was the difference in the culture of the league. The main difference that anyone can point to regarding the history of Tom Brady is that he simply did not play in the most physically brutal era for quarterbacks with the likes of players such as Deacon Jones, but Joe Montana did.

Now before some obnoxious sports personality tries to call me out on Deacon Jones already having been retired prior to the arrival of Joe Montana in 1979 I already know that. If that is your criticism then you have already missed the entire point that I’m trying to make.

The point I’m making is that the era that Montana played in was simply filled with many guys like Deacon Jones that wanted nothing more than to put a bullseye right between the shoulder blades of every quarterback.

There were many players that shared the attitude of Deacon Jones back in the 1970s and 1980s and Joe Montana played during that era which was also an era that had not yet built an entire system around it where the NFL rule book was written for the protection of the quarterback.

Despite the fact that Joe Montana played during one of the most physically and mentally brutal eras for quarterbacks in the NFL he still managed to rack up four Super Bowl Championships himself along with eight Pro Bowl appearances. It is also worth mentioning that both he and Tom Brady came into the league at age 23, but Brady played until he was 45 and Montana played until he was 38. I believe it’s safe to assume that the seven additional years of Brady’s career can be chalked up to the quarterback protections that were put in place inside the NFL rulebook.

Now this is no indictment on Tom Brady, but it is a recognition of Joe Montana being able to demonstrate a high level of skill, ruggedness, and mental toughness that used to be the defining characteristics of the NFL rather than the current day concerns of corporate image, wokism, and the questionable validity of the game itself.

Brady no doubt took advantage of the system and was quite the system operative, while Montana had to navigate a jungle of violence with a bullseye on his back. At the end of the day that’s essentially my point.

Because of these stark differences this is why I believe that there’s a bit of overhype when it comes to Brady’s career if you really compare the system and the culture of the NFL today versus the era of Joe Montana. Because of this I believe this is a cultural example of misplaced credit when it comes down to society’s view of who should be named the best whether that label is given to the best quarterback in NFL history, or to the smartest person in your graduating class.

Confidence In Ability

For many years as a strength coach I’ve had the opportunity to share some wonderful experiences with training many different types of athletes. One of those experiences involved me having had the opportunity to develop the strength and conditioning programs for amateur and professional fighters in the disciplines of Muay Thai and MMA.

During this time I myself had extensively trained in the art of Muay Thai to both gain the benefit of knowing the discipline, as well as giving myself an even deeper physical education to make myself a more effective strength coach for training competing fighters.

Now for the purpose of full disclosure I’m not in the same fighting shape as I used to be as I’ve transitioned more of my discipline and focus from practicing the art of fighting in the gym to fighting in this information and culture war here on this Substack platform. Regardless of this new reality the movements and the knowledge of Muay Thai have managed to stay with me even to this day.

Now if you’re not familiar with the art of Muay Thai this martial arts discipline is known as the Art of 8 Limbs. This interesting name fits because this particular discipline encompasses the use of the different limbs of the body for the purpose of striking which involves your punches, elbows, knees, and kicks.

In the beginning phase of training in the art of Muay Thai one thing you will experience is tremendous soreness as your body will have to adapt to the stress of the discipline. During this adaptation phase you will experience going through a body hardening period as the rugged style of training conditions your body for the purpose of both being able to deliver devastating strikes to an opponent while also being able to withstand strikes at the same time.

One of the main areas of your body that must adapt during this body hardening phase involves your shins. You see a good Thai fighter will always have what may seem to his or her opponents as having bullet-proof shins as Thai fighters deliver the hardest kicks in all of martial arts by delivering their strikes by using their shins in order to do so. If you’ve ever experienced this then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

In building up and working on the hardening of the shins Thai fighters will perform thousands of kicks to bags, pads, heavy bags, and even banana trees if they happen to be training in Thailand.

This repetitive act of striking hardens soft tissues in the body and produces an adaptation in the trabeculae of the bones translating into the actual hardening of the bones themselves along with the surrounding muscle and soft tissues during fight training.

It’s through this grind of training that a fighter will adapt and grow more confident in his or her ability to stand in the ring and spar, or eventually go directly into a competitive fight after they experience this mental and physical hardening process of their body.

So why did I take the time to go into the details about the adaptation involved for hardening your body during the process of fight training?

The reason is that our society as a whole is currently experiencing the same thing. As a society we are now finding ourselves in a position where we are having to harden our abilities to navigate, judge, properly criticize, and properly credit people that are involved in the current political and cultural landscape.

The Wrap Up

The reality is that our society has been victimized by communist grafters that have infiltrated our government and media landscape for a very long time resulting in the longstanding abuse of the American citizens.

This steadfast abuse has been carried out for so long now that it’s warped the thinking and judgement of many Americans who have a difficult time discerning between the truth and a lie. Over time this has managed to create a culture where people within society have been softened in their discipline and ability to think deeper before placing blame, or even credit for that matter, onto others when weighing out various social judgements that create the prevailing perception of their own society and those certain people that they form opinions about within their society.

This is exactly why those people (the system operatives) in your social circles I was talking about earlier got praise as being the smart folks in your community that never deserved that label from the start.

We’ve seen these same misjudgments with the likes of Donald Trump for the past decade when people constantly referred to him, and his followers for that matter, as fascists, Nazis, deplorables, etc. all while they believed their own hype that they were the smart folks of society. Fast forward to today and we now unequivocally know that these people had it all totally and completely backwards with their labels, their worldview, and their brain function.

Now looking at our society as a whole we’re now having to right the ship because we’ve allowed the majority of these overhyped people who’ve been the system operatives to steer us towards a very dangerous and disastrous place. Because of this you and I don’t have the room for making any more bad decisions regarding the direction of our society.

Therefore, it’s up to us (the real intellectual leaders) to harden our abilities to make sound judgments and to properly apply both criticisms and praise to those people within our society who deserve it. This ability to harden our judgments and to acquire more sound knowledge to do so will require more discipline and work from us just as it does from the Thai fighter that needs to harden their shins for combat.

We need to dig more and think deeper about decisions and about which people and businesses we want to support in order to shape the society that we want.

If we don’t do this then we will get the disastrous society that we were led towards by those people who were failures that we wrongly credited with being the smart folks.

This is where you and I must study and support the parallel economy, we must share information among our groups, and continue to grow this MAGA coalition to ensure that we never end up on the brink of a thousand years of darkness ever again.

This is the American Mistake that we can never afford to make again.

Have you encountered people in your life that were propped up by the system and exposed during the past four years?

Are you exercising more caution and thinking more deeply about people who get overhyped from the public?

Post up in the comment section below.

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“If you’re going to fight, fight like you’re the third monkey on the ramp to Noah’s Ark. And brother, it’s starting to rain. — on a t-shirt being sold by a Bangkok street vendor”

Jake Needham, And Brother It’s Starting to Rain

Having been a small business owner now for twenty years I can tell you for a fact that the customer is not always right. That old quote is one of the biggest fallacies that exist when it comes to running a business.

Now don’t get me wrong, the customer definitely carries some significant weight for every business, however it’s always up to the business owner to assess that customer’s weight in order to determine whether or not that customer is worthy of engaging in a business transaction either temporarily, or for an ongoing basis.

Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself Brandon, what exactly do you mean?

First of all, if you’re a business owner, or more specifically a small business owner, you want to develop a great relationship with your customers, as well as other businesses that you might deal with. This should go without saying, but the relationship between a small business and their customer base is of vital importance because that relationship is one that allows the business to provide a quality product, or service, to that customer on a consistent basis so that the business owner is profitable. This is important so that they can remain solvent and the customer can always walk away happy and fulfilled with the product and/or service that they paid for.

However, what about those circumstances that occur when the customer proves to be difficult to deal with? Additionally, what if the customer proves to be so difficult that they cost the business more money, time, and energy than they are worth? Believe me this happens from time to time and in these circumstances the customer can surely demonstrate why they aren’t always right, or correct, in the midst of a business transaction.

In this scenario it’s probably better for the business owner to choose to do limited business with such a customer, or to simply walk away from the customer altogether. The same thing can be said with business to business relationships as well.

A good example of this would be like that time we all heard the story of the Christian baker that chose not to bake the cake for the gay couple that wanted to get married. In this case the business owner made the decision not to compromise on their faith and bake the cake although they still offered to assist the couple in finding another alternative so that they could get their cake. This ultimately resulted in the customer suing the business and resorting to using lawfare to force that business to run their business the way they (the customer) believed it should be run.

You see this is a perfect example of why the customer isn’t always right. If you say Brandon had they just gone ahead with baking the cake then they wouldn’t have had to endure a lawsuit, right?

You may, or may not be correct, but that’s a cowardice option to consider. I mean slow down and think about this. What would it say about any of us who practice our faith whether that be Christianity, Judaism, or Buddhism that would encounter a customer that had some request that was in direct conflict with our faith and belief system, yet we chose to cave and do what was demanded of us by a hostile customer?

In addition to this if you are a self-proclaimed freedom loving American the media would focus on the so-called freedom of the customers in this example, but what about the freedoms of the business owner? How much money, time, sacrifice, and energy did the customer that was wanting to force the baker to bake the cake contribute to that business? The answer to that is absolutely zero. In fact, they only contributed a loss as they resorted to using lawfare to try and bully that business.

What would it say to you as an individual who was the one who invested your entire livelihood with your money, blood, sweat, and tears into starting that business to now be bullied by someone else to force you to run your business the way that THEY see fit?

Now that I’ve covered the scenario of how the difficult customer might warrant a decision from the business owner to walk away from a business relationship I want to shift gears to look at how important it is for the business owner to nurture the relationship with the customer that’s worthy of developing that relationship concerning a business transaction.

My brother works in the construction business and there’s obviously a lot of politics that have to be played in that arena as in that business you have to rely on various subcontractors to do the job that you hire them to do and to do it on time and within the specified budget for the job at hand.

Now I’m not a construction guy, but I know enough to understand this quote that my brother shared with me once when he was telling me about how he was able to convince people to get things done that needed to get done.

I remember he said that he could win more people over with honey rather than vinegar. This basically means that it’s much easier to persuade people with kindness rather than to brow beat them with negativity and hostility.

The point here is that driving action of any kind has to come from within and if that action has to be forced with too much vinegar then the recipe will always end up bitter in the end…sort of like that cake that never got baked.

The Monroe Doctrine

On December 2, 1823 in his seventh annual message to Congress President James Monroe articulated his Monroe Doctrine which included a theme of how the European powers, according to Monroe, were obligated to respect the Western Hemisphere as the United States’ primary sphere of interest.

This doctrine warned European powers not to interfere with the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine also happens to be the best known U.S. policy regarding the Western Hemisphere.

In his message to Congress in 1823 the message with the doctrine warned European nations that the United States would not tolerate further colonization, or puppet monarchs.

In 1865 the Monroe Doctrine was invoked when the United States government exerted diplomatic and military pressure in order to support Mexican President Benito Juarez. This support enabled Juarez to lead a successful revolt against the Emperor Maximilian who was basically placed on the throne by the French government at that time.

In 1904 nearly 40 years later many European creditors of a number of Latin American countries threatened to go kinetic in their actions with armed intervention in order to collect debts from people in the region. This was when the Rough Rider Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the right of the United States to exercise an “international police power” to deter such “chronic wrongdoing” in what is known as his Roosevelt Corollary which was his extension to the Monroe Doctrine.

Furthermore, in 1962 the Monroe Doctrine was symbolically invoked again when the Soviet Union began to build missile launching sites in Cuba. During that time with the support of the Organization of American States President John F. Kennedy threw a naval and air quarantine blockade around the island. This was no doubt a very tense moment in our history that was better known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It was only after several tense days that the Soviet Union agreed to finally withdraw their missiles and to dismantle all the sites that they had been working on at the time. Subsequently, the U.S. ended up dismantling several of its air and missile bases that were located in Turkey at the time.

Now here we sit 62 years later with only a few days left before Donald Trump retakes the office of the presidency and he’s talking about securing the Panama canal, taking Greenland, and using economic pressure to absorb Canada to make it part of the United States. So why is Trump talking about doing this and what would be his motivation for wanting to do any of this?

Well, just like our cake baker example with the customer wanting to exert their will over the baker to force them to do what they wanted them to do with some vinegar (such as lawfare) we can see that same thing happening on a global scale with the behavior of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The CCP has worked to subversively spread their influence into the West with the practice of elite capture inside government and corporate institutions. In fact the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as the New Silk Road was launched back in 2013 by Xi Jinping and included a vast collection of various development and investment initiatives that’s sole purpose was to initially spread their tentacles, otherwise known as the CCP’s influence, to link East Asia and Europe through physical infrastructure.

However, in the decade since their tentacles have spread further to Africa, Oceania, and Latin America significantly resulting in broadening the CCP’s economic and political influence. (Source: Council on Foreign Relations)

So in short here we see the CCP disrespecting our sphere of influence involving the Western Hemisphere even more so than that of our European counterparts since the 1800s. In fact, we can see their presence today throughout a major portion of South America.

One big example is their military base located in Argentina. According to the Center For Strategic and International Studies in Beijing the space sector is vitally and strategically important for national military, economic, and technological development. If this isn’t concerning enough, this setup here for the CCP is more closely tied to the state than most all other industries.

In addition to this the CCP has also strengthened ties with Brazil as we’ve seen in Brazil’s most recent election when the CCP assisted with installing the current president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. According to the The National Committee of The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Xi Jinping noted that the two partnering countries decided to establish synergies between them for a certain project the CCP is very fond of known as the Belt and what? Oh yeah, that would be the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Granted, the CCP’s disrespect of the United States sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere is only occurring because many domestic traitors here in the U.S. have allowed the slow, steady, and continuous encroachment from the CCP to proceed over many decades now. This has happened due to the fact that they have either been captured by the CCP’s influence, or even worse, they have willingly and intentionally merged with the CCP for some sort of personal gain.

In addition to all of this the CCP has now exerted control over the Panama canal and according to an article by NBC News persons close to President Trump have shown data demonstrating Chinese encroachment into the Western Hemisphere which includes scenarios where Panama has the ability to prioritize shipping for Chinese over American shipping.

According to the NBC article the second person that’s familiar with the situation says that Trump’s threat to take the canal is a “negotiating tool” to get Panama to get more favorable treatment for U.S. shipments.

In terms of Trump’s position on Canada it is primarily “an epic troll,” however the article talks about how the trolling is leading to some discussions regarding policies that Trump desires to gain traction with as he’s put some real teeth behind the negotiations. As an example just last month Canadian officials announced a plan to increase spending on border security. Perhaps Trump’s talk of tariffs has some of the Canadian leadership sweating bullets.

So what about Greenland?

Well, from a geopolitical standpoint the island of Greenland would be a very smart location to secure for the United States. It’s known among Trump’s allies that the island of Greenland is something that he very much desires. Apparently a person that’s familiar with the discussions, according to the same NBC article, pointed out that Trump has never given up on acquiring Greenland which he also tried to purchase during his first term for defense reasons, but was rebuffed.

However, with the CCP’s continued pursuit of the BRI and Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine, Greenland gives the United States a much easier point of access to the east.

It should also be noted that Donald Trump Jr. and Charlie Kirk just took a trip to visit Nuuk which is the largest population center located on the island of Greenland and they were well received by the citizens upon arrival. While they were there President Trump even called in to deliver a message to the Greenlanders.

Trump’s interest in all three of these geographical locations involving Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada all stem from their importance to the United States due to their significance involving our national security.

Furthermore, Greenland has been under the control of Denmark since the 14th century, but was fully integrated into Denmark back in 1953 under the country’s constitution. Greenland became a self-governing territory in 1979 and Greenlanders also have full citizenship in Denmark.

Incentive and Transformation

Even though Trump wasn’t able to acquire the purchase of Greenland back during his first term it’s safe to say that today the environment is significantly different and certainly more primed in a way that makes it much more likely to happen.

Upon their arrival to Greenland many of the Greenlanders communicated to Charlie Kirk and Don Jr. how they were sick of struggling economically and not being secure in terms of the geopolitical instability that is going on in the world which is not too far from their shores. I also failed to mention that the CCP has also been trying to meddle into the affairs of Greenland and I’m pretty sure the Greenlanders are not thrilled about that possibility at all either.

In fact, the world is awakening to the sick globalist plan of trying to force everyone into a one world system of governance and this next Trump term is going to execute BIG plans in order to capitalize on this Great Awakening in order to thwart those annoying globalist plans. I believe we are living and experiencing a watershed moment in history.

I believe that last statement is quite an important one for you to remember because that is exactly why this process and possibility of Trump looking to acquire these three geographical locations is a much greater likelihood.

So why do I believe this geopolitical plan is more likely and, more importantly, why should you think it may be more likely?

Well, there are several reasons, but for some different perspective you can take a look at what Techno-feudalist and Hillary Clinton supporter Marc Andreesen said in a recent interview about Trump. He basically spent the segment praising Trump’s communication skills and his ability to possess a systems way of thinking.

In that interview Andreesen points out that due to Trump’s extensive background in real estate and business that he’s developed into one of the best people in the world in terms of understanding how various systems work in business, real estate, and government. What Andreesen points out is that Trump can look at the operation of a given system and quickly wrap his head around it in terms of understanding how that particular system operates.

In fact, Andreesen and the interviewer even pointed out that during his first term Trump had warned Germany about fixing their energy problem. He made the point that if they didn’t get their domestic energy problem fixed that they would be dependent on Russian oil and just a few short years later that’s exactly what has happened. What’s even funnier is that the German leadership laughed at Trump at the time when it made the recommendation, but they sure aren’t laughing now.

With this understanding Andreesen points out that because of Trump’s business background it’s what has allowed him to adapt very quickly into the system operation of the federal government. According to Andreesen when you combine this with the fact that he’s got four previous years of already having been in the White House that this time he’s considerably more prepared to disrupt, transform, and shape a new and more efficient system. Considering the current dysfunction of the federal government this is the mandate that he was voted back in for in the first place.

As a professional fitness and strength coach I can tell you that there’s a particular method that us coaches apply in the realm of human performance that is known as the SAID principle. That word SAID is an acronym that stands for Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands.

Just to let you know that’s basically a fancy way of saying that if you are seeking to improve on getting better at a particular skill that you should practice the execution of that particular skill in order to master it. In terms of performance and to give you an example, if you wanted to master the skill of hitting a baseball then you wouldn’t spend the majority of your time practicing and working on your ability to shoot a basketball. In this example, to master the skill of hitting a baseball you would spend a lot of time practicing with your ability to hit a baseball in order to get better at that specific skill.

So why am I bringing this up about the SAID principle?

In the case of Donald Trump we are looking at an individual that has spent the majority of his life and work experience where his job has been to understand complex systems and to work to communicate to others how to get things done within those complex systems in order to make it all successfully work in the end.

With Trump’s ability to do this, along with this toughness and grit to stay the course in his pursuit to save the Republic, even opposition party members like Andreesen are starting to bend the knee to show their respect as they see he has been right about most everything since the start of his political career.

Because of this, society is starting to transform more into an America First environment and this positive recognition of Trump’s ideas and policies is spreading beyond the borders of the United States.

Since this is happening there’s plenty of incentives in place for these other geographical regions such as Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal to actually want to get onboard rather than the United States needing to strong arm anyone to force any unity during this point in time in history where expansionism is already prevalent.

The Wrap Up

Since we’re living in a time where the CCP has literally been at economic, chemical, biological, cyber, information, and psychological war with the West and have been unrelenting in pursuing their BRI plan, Trump's position is similar to that of the cake baker I mentioned earlier.

In other words, Trump’s position is that as a nation we’re not going to allow the now rotten business partner/customer in the CCP to come into our store (The Western Hemisphere) and force us to bake the cake that they want us to bake and to run our business the way that they see fit.

Since this disaster of the Biden regime it has literally resulted in the country having been run off a cliff and we’ve witnessed a tremendous exodus of people voting with their feet by fleeing communist blue run states in order to move to more freedom first red states in the last four years.

If you take a quick minute and zoom the picture out from this domestic activity I just mentioned with the exodus of people from blue to red states you can also see the same thing starting to take shape on a geopolitical scale with other countries and territories looking to flee the potential grip of communist totalitarian rule.

Obviously Greenland and Canada would be a good example of this. In this current Fourth Turning that we’re living in it’s obvious that the CCP is trying to use subversion and elite capture as their tactics for achieving expansion throughout the globe with their BRI plan.

However, it very much seems like MAGA is the antithesis of this by demonstrating that the policies and ideas that it puts forward serves to be more of an incentive to attract other regions that are also sick of the globalist insanity and are also a good fit for escaping the grip of communist totalitarianism. In short, MAGA is trying to win over people with honey while the CCP is trying to use vinegar.

I believe this is what we could refer to as the Era of Incentivised Expansionism and before long maps and globes may end up looking very different than what we’ve been used to seeing throughout our lives.

What do you think about the reality of WWIII involving the opposing strategies of MAGA vs. The CCP’s BRI?

Are you currently in support of an incentivised offer of expansion for the United States with such territories as Canada, Greenland, and Panama?

Make sure you post up a comment below as I’d love to get your feedback.

I hope you enjoyed today’s article/podcast.

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“We have a mantra, Facts get shares; opinions get shrugs.”

–Steve Bannon

In nature there’s a certain animal that frequently demonstrates its toughness and deters possible predators should they decide to advance on it for the purpose of trying to turn it into prey. The interesting thing about this particular animal is that it’s one of the most ferocious fighters in the entire animal kingdom, yet is far from being the biggest, or most intimidating at first glance.

In the wild there are plenty of predators that you might first think to put at the top of your list in terms of what you may identify as being the most dangerous, or being the types of animals that you might see as being the biggest threat in nature. Some examples that come to mind might be any number of venomous snakes, big cats such as lions, perhaps wolves, bears, and maybe even hyenas.

In terms of ranking animals in the wild in a top category from most dangerous to least dangerous any of these options I just mentioned would rank pretty high on the list for being an animal that would be a real threat to your livelihood if you were to cross paths with it in the wild.

However, none of these include the animal that I’m referring to here in my example. No, the animal I’m talking about here is probably the most ferocious and unrelenting animal in all of nature when it comes down to survival and the animal that deserves to wear that crown of being the fighter among fighters is the one and only honey badger.

Just to give you some perspective the adult male honey badger can have a mass of only about 20-35 lbs while a female can range between 11-22 lbs.

First of all, even though the honey badger has a reputation for being nature’s own version of the toughest street fighter around, these little animals will go to a lot of trouble to avoid trouble. However, if the honey badger is cornered, or feels threatened it will quickly demonstrate where it got its reputation.

When looking at the physical breakdown and capabilities of the honey badger this animal is quite impressive. Honey badgers possess a high level of intelligence and have demonstrated various problem solving abilities in certain environments of captivity where they use sticks, rocks, and limbs to bridge escape routes while also figuring out latches on gates and small cages.

In addition to this they are also really good at digging holes and they prefer to eat small animals such as scorpions, snakes, insect larvae, small rodents and, as the name suggests, honey. This animal has claws that can dig a hole in the ground incredibly fast and their teeth and jaws are so powerful that they can crush bones with relative ease. Oh and I know I mentioned that they preferred small rodents and insects, however honey badgers have also been known to take down young antelopes, wildebeest, and waterbuck.

As if this isn’t impressive enough the honey badger also has a very loose and thick coat of skin which protects it from other potential predators while also making it difficult for a predator to hold onto the honey badger because of the loose thick coat allowing it to quickly torque its body to bite and claw an adversary.

It also possesses the ability to spray a nasty odor from its anal gland similar to that of a skunk to deter and confuse an adversary while also simultaneously going on full blown offense quickly turning the hunter into the hunted.

You’re probably wondering just how tough are honey badgers?

Well we all refer to the lion as the king of the jungle and I’m pretty sure 100% of you reading or listening to this would have immediate respect for a big cat such as a lion, tiger, or leopard should you ever come face to face with one.

With that being said there are multiple accounts of honey badgers having been attacked and outnumbered by big cats such as lions and leopards. Yet in these situations they end up taking the fight straight to those big cats to the point that they flee the honey badger scared and not wanting anymore of the fight that the honey badger has to offer. There are even reports of them having taken down humans in certain situations. (Source: Londolozi Blog)

This animal is relentless and will not stop going after a threat while typically taking aim at the groin, or scrotum area of the animals that try to attack it. Given the unrelenting ferocity and build of the honey badger this is one gruesome and terrifying predicament to imagine one finding themselves in. In addition to all of this these animals also have a pretty good immunity to snake venom.

There are other stories of people having interactions with honey badgers in captivity where they possess the ability to demonstrate affection, but at the same time ONLY do so on their terms not showing any deference, subservience, or fear in the least. These animals possess absolutely no fear whatsoever. It’s quite a remarkable trait to learn about this animal.

I will come back to the honey badger here in a bit, but for the moment just place this little lesson about the honey badger into your memory bank and hold onto it for the moment.

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The Recap

Just like you I remember back in 2020 how concerned I was with what was going on in the world as there was a very dark and oppressive feeling I had in the pit of my stomach after having witnessed everything that had happened during the pandemic along with everything else that followed.

I knew in the first week of the pandemic that it was a situation that included a much larger problem than merely just being about a virus. I mean it didn’t take long to see how the federal, state, city, and local governments were all the sudden transitioning into more authoritarian roles. Here they were limiting where we could travel, shutting down our businesses, forcing us to wear masks, and positioning society as a whole to submit to continual totalitarian rule if we hadn't had a significant enough portion of the population to start pushing back against the system.

If you’re on the same page as I am here you understand exactly what I’m talking about. However, my interpretation of the circumstances at the time wasn’t that we were in a pandemic, but rather that we were being attacked in some way with a form of biological warfare. That was my stance then and it turns out my assessment was accurate as we later came to understand all the nefarious things that have been going on inside these labs that have been dangerously engaging in gain of function research now for years.

I knew we were at war, but at the time I didn’t quite understand the origin of it and why it was happening the way it was. This was because of my ignorance and in the spirit of seeking some level of understanding I spent the following years up to now intensely studying, listening to podcasts, and seeking out alternative voices to the mainstream media (aka Administrative State Media). Granted, I never liked the Administrative State Media (ASM) anyways, but I was in need of figuring out the details that I knew I wasn’t getting from them at the time.

As I chose to pursue this journey I quickly realized I was on the right path due to the fact that the voices that could offer valid explanations for what was going on in the world were consistently being cancelled and censored by the big tech companies. For the record this included me as well.

When I first entered college I initially went in with the plan that I was going to major in history because I initially had considered being that stereotypical coach in school that taught history. There were several factors that played into that plan being changed when I attended the University of Georgia and part of that decision involved the fact that I saw then how the university system was indoctrinating students with Marxist ideology who would eventually go on to be future teachers.

Even though at the time I didn’t possess the knowledge of Karl Marx and who he was I still understood that much of what the college of education at the University of Georgia was teaching future teachers wasn’t right, because they constantly emphasized “multiculturalism” and centered everything around identity over merit in everything that they communicated within every class in that college of education.

To me I remembered thinking to myself, Why am I paying these people to force feed me this garbage knowing full well it’s garbage? Why am I financially supporting this nonsense? Once I realized that it made my decision to get out of the school of education very easy.

From there I went on to study at the school of health and human performance at the Ramsey center at the University of Georgia. Back then they left the woke ideology predominantly at the college of education where I had previously departed. Fortunately for me, at the time, the woke mind virus had not yet impacted the school of health.

So why did I give you this personal history lesson about myself regarding my experience with Marxist ideology when I was in college?

The reason for this personal history lesson regarding my path of education at The University of Georgia is necessary is because it clearly illustrates how long this Marxist problem has been prevalent, not only in my own personal life, but in your life as well.

I mean this was circa 1998 and when we fast forward to today you can clearly see how the Marxist ideology has grown throughout the world mainly because of years and years of these university systems poisoning the minds of multiple generations of students. Over a long enough period of time we’ve seen this result in the worst people imaginable being installed into leadership positions of power throughout Corporate America and throughout most every government of every major Western power in the world.

Recognizing this is what leads me into the next phase of this discussion.

Enter Steve Bannon

For years I remember constantly thinking to myself how society was always telling me that if I disagreed with a person, an idea, or an ideology that I was essentially not supposed to challenge it and to be “tolerant” of the idea regardless of how absurd or stupid the idea might be.

Since those days when I first encountered Marxism in college I’ve noticed its spread and impact on society in a lot of ways ever since then and I would argue that it’s only been able to do so because there hasn’t been enough people to challenge the spread of Marx’s poisonous ideology. I can say that experience opened my eyes to the types of idiotic ideas that were being taught in society within our education system at large.

As you and I look at everything that’s going wrong in the world today it’s easy to see the negative impact of Marx’s philosophy as it’s managed to bring a lot of brain rot and decay to our institutions and way of life to a degree and in a manner that is literally historic in nature.

For the record I mentioned my interpretation of how society has always communicated to me to tolerate bad ideas from people over the years, but that’s not something that I personally ever found that I could adhere to. I’ve always felt the urge to call out absurdity when something is so outrageously incompetent that I find myself in a position where I just can’t ignore it.

In my search for answers following the pandemic and the rigged and stolen 2020 election I had a close friend of mine that referred me to a talk show host with an individual that happened to share a lot the same sentiment that I had regarding the out of control incompetence, corruption, and absurdity that has been plaguing our country and the world at large.

According to my friend this gentleman was very good at calling out stupid ideas and wouldn’t back down from challenging the establishment way of thinking one single inch. The man that I am talking about here is the one and only Steve Bannon.

I’ve often used the term Maverick to describe certain people that go out into the world and blaze their own trail in life, build businesses, and are an example of success by the very fact that they aren’t afraid to pursue a life venture regarding something that they believe very strongly in.

There’s no question that the term Maverick directly applies to Steve Bannon who himself was an officer in the United States Navy from 1977-1983 and after his time in the military he would go on to become a successful investment banker with Goldman Sachs. Bannon also would go on to be an executive producer for 18 Hollywood films and documentaries, he co-founded Breitbart News with the late Andrew Breitbart, and he became the White House Chief Strategist for President Trump in 2016. Bannon now currently runs the biggest political show in the world airing four hours a day Monday-Friday known as the War Room. (Source: Wikipedia)

Like Donald Trump, Bannon has the ability to evoke some strong reactions in people that both oppose and support his message. However, in speaking for myself the first moment I took the time to intently watch and listen to Bannon on a few of his shows I quickly came to realize that this guy was backing up every major issue he discussed by bringing evidence and historical context to support his narrative. In Bannon’s own words he refers to this action of bringing strong evidence to the table to support an argument as bringing the receipts.

I have personally included Bannon into my regular viewing schedule now for nearly three years and am admittedly an avid viewer of the show. I am constantly reading and listening to other shows throughout the week, but I’ll admit that I pay especially close attention to Bannon because he has a very sharp talent and skill for drilling down on the meat of a narrative. He also possesses a real skill for cutting through the noise in order to get to what he refers to as the buried lede, or the real signal of the stories that are being pushed out by the ASM on a daily basis.

I find that a lot of the ire that gets directed towards Bannon by his opposition (as well as what I personally experience myself at times) is because people aren’t carefully listening to what he’s saying while, at the same time, not willing to give him the credit when he’s proven to be right on one major cultural and political issue after the next as they manifest into reality.

In addition to this many on the far left refer to Bannon as being a far right conservative or Republican in terms of the current political environment, but the reality is that according to Bannon he is neither of these in terms of his worldview.

Bannon will be the first to tell you that he’s a Populist and Economic Nationalist. Granted, for years I more closely identified with being more Libertarian myself, but after the past four years I would say that I still have many of those Libertarian views, but they have been combined in some ways with me developing a strong Populist lean.

So you and I have often heard many others make reference to the typical political monikers such as Republican, Democrat, Conservative, Liberal, Libertarian, and Communists, but what exactly is a Populist?

In terms of political ideology Populism is a bit of a different animal. Populism essentially serves as more of a lens of viewing the world rather than consisting of a checklist of principles to which a certain ideology follows. Populism really boils down to how an environment is viewed and it often appeals to and involves the concerns of everyday people and how the chief concerns of the everyday citizen is typically ignored by the elite establishment.

Populists can be left or right leaning politically speaking, but when it comes to Populism, regardless of the flavor, it typically involves the little guy rising up against the big guy.

In looking at the rise of Populism it’s a direct reactive result of the rise of big government, but more specifically, the rise and merger of big government and big wealthy elites.

In the view of the Populist the rise of a bigger and bigger federal leviathan, combined with that leviathan’s relationship with bigger and bigger wealthier elites, has not happened by accident or overnight and the Populist would be 100% correct in that assessment.

You see in the Populist view these so-called Conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians who supposedly stand on their principles, and have been center stage in the political arena now for many years, have continued to allow the degradation of civil liberties along with the continuation of feeding the growth and power of the unforgiving and dangerous leviathan.

As Steve Bannon points out the Populist movement is about actually recognizing how the more familiar political implants regarding the so-called Conservatives and Republicans have not done a single thing to slow down, or stem the growth of the federal leviathan, but rather are directly part of the problem.

Earlier in this episode I communicated how society has historically encouraged the tolerance of bad political, or cultural ideas and when you look at the behavior of Washington D.C. this has been the norm for far too long. This business as usual mindset transitioning from one election cycle to the next as if it’s business as usual while implying that Americans should seek compromise has only led to the destruction of the country at large. This is because the decision makers that sit in their highchairs in Washington D.C. have, for years, told you and me to sit down, shut up, and to mind our own business.

This is exactly why Steve Bannon has been a force of nature in helping to further the development and growth of this Populist movement. The MAGA movement is a Populist movement unlike any other in the history of the country.

Contrary to the traditional implants in Washington D.C. with the likes of the establishment Conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, and Libertarians this new MAGA Populist movement, along with Bannon, is the political equivalent of the animal kingdom’s honey badger. In fact, Bannon himself has earned the nickname of being the Honey Badger.

The thing that this Populist movement gets right that all of these worthless traditional politicians don’t get is that all the problems of the country have been caused directly by the improper actions, or inactions of those traditional political implants in Washington D.C. Therefore, the rise of Donald Trump’s Populist MAGA movement is about engaging the problems directly the way the establishment order has not done in many years.

I recently had a debate on social media with a so-called conservative over the fight with congressman Chip Roy voting against the recent Trump supported CR bill, particularly regarding this recent bill with Trump suggesting to eliminate the so-called debt-ceiling.

I understand the thought behind not getting rid of the illusion known as the debt ceiling, but congressmen like Roy who say that they want to cut spending, while resisting the one and only incoming administration that’s serious about gutting the system, didn’t back up Trump on the bill. The reality is that there is no debt ceiling. If there were an actual debt ceiling that would limit spending by congress then how is it that we are literally going another trillion dollars in debt every one hundred days?

People like this so-called conservative I was debating online just don’t understand the strategy, or the way in which the system has always worked, or they just simply choose to ignore it. The reality is that the current system that has been in place is doing everything that it can to leave Donald Trump the biggest mess before he takes his hand off the Bible on January 20, 2025.

In addition to this these so-called conservative establishment types like the one I debated online are also clueless about the staying power of the MAGA movement. They actual believe that this Populist movement is simply a flash in the pan and are completely blind to the reality of this seismic new political realignment of a more engaged and informed populace unlike any other time in history. This MAGA populist movement isn’t going anywhere.

The Wrap Up

In 1964 a Columbia-trained University historian named Henry Littlefield wrote a breakthrough article in the scholarly American Quarterly titled The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism. Within this article Littlefield made the claim that Frank Baum’s 1900 book conceals what he referred to as an unsuspected depth.

According to Littlefield, The Wizard of Oz was actually a story that served to be an elaborate metaphor for the Populist movement that was occurring in the nation at the time which in actuality was a rising political force in the 1890s. The result of the movement, and the story of The Wizard of Oz according to Littlefield, involved a complicated critique over the country’s monetary policies of the time.

Does this sound familiar, or what?

For some historical context on Populism at the time the movement served to be a rising third-party campaign of angry disenfranchised “plain people” consisting of farmers, and to a smaller degree, factory workers that were seeking to wrest power away from bankers and business leaders of the time.

These men and women of this era, much like our current day dilemma, recognized the threat of concentrated capital in regards to their well-being and they also advocated for bimetallism (the coining of both gold and silver), nationalizing the railroads, a graduated income tax, and a reduction in immigration.

Their support of adopting silver, along with the gold standard, came from the belief that it would inject money into the economy while reducing inflation. Of course, this would be a positive change for people paying mortgages, but a bad one for the banks that would be holding the loans.

In Littlefield’s close reading and interpretation of The Wizard of Oz he argued that most of the character’s in Baum’s fictional story represented real people, places, and ideas from the rising Populist movement of the 1890s.

To break down some of the examples as Littlefield interpreted them we can start by looking at Dorothy’s slippers. During the story when Dorothy’s house crash lands on the Wicked Witch of the East Dorothy is given a pair of magic slippers. Unlike the 1939 classic movie when Dorothy is famously given a pair of ruby slippers, but in the book and the play these slippers were silver.

In Littlefield’s interpretation of this he believed that Dorothy was a stand-in for the average American and that the magical silver slippers were a strong representation of the late 1890s free silver movement. During the time Populists believed that the federal government should adopt an inflationary monetary policy which involved freely minting silver money in order to re-energize the national economy.

Additionally Littlefield looked at Oz’s yellow brick road as the existing gold standard of the time which served as a tether to fix the paper currency to a specific price for gold bullion. In reading Littlefield’s interpretation, the Emerald city, which was the terminus of the yellow brick road, is actually representative of Washington D.C..

Furthermore, the characters of the scarecrow and the tin woodman also symbolize other important aspects of the Populist movement of that time. The scarecrow displays a “terrible sense of inferiority and self-doubt,” which Littlefield pointed towards representing the American farmer which happened to make up the bulk of the Populist movement back then. The representation of the tin woodman mirrored the factory worker of the time as the simple laborer that had essentially been transformed into a machine.

William McKinley was the candidate that ran on a protectionist platform. He pledged support for American workers, he sought high tariffs to make foreign goods unattractive, and he supported the gold standard. McKinley’s opponent was William Jennings Bryan who Littlefield compared to the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz. (Source: National Museum of American History)

Bryan was famous for his “Cross of Gold” speech and he also supported the monetary policy of free silver. Coincidentally McKinley was assassinated in 1901 several years after his victory over Bryan in the election of 1896.

In a nutshell Populism has had a long and interesting history here in the U.S. for well over 130 years. What makes this movement so interesting is that the same concerns that had brought on the rise of the movement in the 1890s are also the same reasons that have given rise to the MAGA Populist movement now in the 2020s.

These problems all revolve around the politics and culture of money. Just like people began rising up with the movement in the 1890s, the explosion of this Populist movement now in the 2020s has actually been a growing movement since 2010 beginning with the Tea Party movement and ultimately evolving into the MAGA movement that we all know so well.

It takes a focused and well informed populace in order to enable Populism to take hold and to maintain the tenacity to face and fight big important issues.

Thanks to God above, this current MAGA Populist movement is more informed and loaded with more intellectual horsepower than any movement in history. Alternative and decentralized media platforms such as this one help to ensure that we maintain the informed populace.

To further add to the success and staying power of this movement thankfully we also have the fight and tenacity combined with the intellectual horsepower to keep this Populist movement steamrolling over any anti-American obstacle that stands in the way.

With voices like Bannon we have created a movement full of honey badgers that will be relentless until we achieve the victories that we need in order to save this Republic.

Are you engaged in this Populist movement by being a honey badger that calls out stupid ideas like we’ve seen with the woke agenda?

Are you engaging and sharing platforms like this one on a regular basis to counter the ASM narrative and to contribute to saving this Republic?

Post up and comment in the section below.

I hope you enjoyed today’s article/podcast.

If so I hope you would choose to support this platform as part of the patriot economy as well. Be an Emissary of Freedom and help to push this piece out to your friends, family, and coworkers.

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“All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither; deep roots are not reached by the frost..”

― J.R.R. Tolkien

The newscycle moves so fast these days that I often have to slow down and take a moment to sit in silence to think about the cultural and political landscape.

I want to take a moment to explain why because I think that doing my best to offer some level of understanding will help me to communicate to you why I take the time to do this perhaps for reasons that you may or may not be able to deduce even if you’re a regular reader, or listener to this show.

First of all, I have often heard people over the years talk about how they wished that the media would just report the news without injecting their own bias. Now on the surface that sounds nice, but in reality there’s just simply no such thing as unbiased media. Humans by our very nature are biased. Personal bias is an inherent trait within all people and as long as humans have anything to do with the reporting and creation of stories there will always be bias within those stories.

In fact, every news story involves an intentional bias because someone had to shape the story in a way to create a narrative before the story gets pushed out in front of the cameras, or onto the printing press.

Typically such stories need to be sensationalized with eye catching headlines which drives viewership, subscriptions, and ultimately more advertising dollars. After all, for years the common phrase if it bleeds, it leads was the motivation for which stories would be pushed to the frontlines in order to drive viewership for the mass Administrative State Media (ASM). At the end of the day catchy headlines drive views and sooner or later those views turn into money.

I mean in reality all media requires sponsors, or financial backing of some kind because people have to earn a living. However, the problem with the ASM is that it’s been an apparatus that has been in complete control of the flow of information for the majority of the country now for a very long time.

Because of this they have had the money, manpower, and distribution to reach the masses with whatever narrative they have desired to push forward to their viewing audience. When you take this combined with the fact that they have been in bed with the government for so long they have had a monopoly on the flow of information.

This uncomfortable reality is something that still may not sit well with a bunch of people reading, or listening to this episode, but it’s a fact. In addition to this with everything going on in the world during this Fourth Turning the newscycle moves really fast which means there’s a flooding of the zone with information.

It’s because of this flood that I have to sit in silence to focus on the cultural and political landscape so that I can get a visual on the narrative that I want to create in order to present my own story to you.

That’s right, I’m narrative driven as well and I’m not going to pretend that I’m not because that would be dishonest. However, at the end of the day in the world of information warfare you will have choices placed in front of you concerning narrative and counter-narrative and it’s up to you to choose what you want to believe, as well as which media outlets you choose to support in the process.

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The Accurate Meaning of Labels

I know it’s close to Christmas and given the current digital world we live in I realize that you probably do a great deal of your shopping online, however the reality is that many customers still hit the malls and department stores and turn out in big numbers during this time of year.

Even if you’re an online shopper I’m sure you’ve still managed to venture out to the malls and department stores during this part of the year from time to time. You’ve probably even managed to make it in after the holidays too whenever the stores are looking to clear out the rest of their inventory in order to make room for an entirely new stock of products to kick off the new year.

It’s typically during this time of clearance that you’ll get to benefit from the clearance sales that these department stores and malls will put up to move the old product out in order to make room for the new. It’s at this time that you as the consumer get to benefit from these clearance sales.

In much the same way as our department stores will initiate a clearance after the holidays it’s also apparent that the current state of our country, our government, and economy are in need of a clearance, or a purge, of a bureaucratic and ideological element. It’s obvious that this corrosive element has been rooted in and is directly at fault for both the domestic and global instability that’s spreading throughout the world.

So I want to talk about the word systems and identify which systems are to blame for a significant portion of our domestic and global hardships.

Well to be fair that’s a loaded topic, but for the sake of this discussion I will start by singling out and explaining the current economic system that we find ourselves in regarding our current situation on trade and the dangers associated with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) nefarious mercantilist practices.

I’ve always considered myself to be open minded and able to evolve my thinking of how I view the world, particularly when I learn something new in an area I previously might have been ignorant about until I was able to get my hands around all the information.

I understand that we like to use labels to describe our views and to reflect our belief structure, but in reality I’ve discovered that labels such as Republican, Democrat, Conservative, Liberal, and Libertarian in the reality of the world tend to be fluid in their meaning over time.

The reality is that we have been living in a postmodern society for one, but in addition to this certain terms have been misrepresented, or hijacked by groups of people throughout the political landscape. When this happens these people consistently misuse, or misapply their meaning on a consistent basis over a long period of time which brings a different interpretation of the meaning to such words in the eyes of society over time.

Essentially we should all be more willing to blend the meaning of such labels to describe our own beliefs as those beliefs evolve within the given political and economic system that we find ourselves in. I’ll come back to explain this point further in a bit. In short, we must remain strong on our principles, but be willing to understand where our principles apply to a given situation.

So what do I mean by nefarious mercantilist practices when I reference the CCP?

Well, to explain this we first need to define what mercantilism means in the first place. Basically the goal of mercantilism involves a trade practice where the goal is for a state to increase its supply of gold and silver reserves with exports rather than to deplete them through using imports.

This mercantilist practice was also a strategy that was implemented by the British Empire starting back as early as 1651 to control trade and commerce within its own colonies, as well as with other countries in the outside world through laws that were known as the Navigation Acts.

In fact, the British government had banned a lot of U.S. production so that the manufacturing of military equipment could remain within Great Britain. Fast forward to today and we’re seeing the same sort of strategy regarding our current economic trading relationship with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). We currently find ourselves within an economic system of elite capture.

From Elite Capture To Elite Merger

Once again we tend to use labels to identify ourselves in regards to what we may be more closely aligned with along the political spectrum. In terms of myself I have always considered myself to be more Libertarian in nature.

Now having said this I’ve also evolved in this because the Libertarian philosophy, like everything else, has been turned on its head in a lot of ways in the past four years, particularly regarding the traditional Libertarian stance on foreign trade. Because of this I would say that I’m now probably more accurately described as a Libertarian with a strong Populist lean if there is any such a thing that can exist.

I’ve known many Libertarians, along with many Republicans and Democrats, over the years to refer to the issue of trade, particularly as it relates to our economic trading relationship with China, as being a relationship of free trade. Because of this I’ve also heard many of them say that Donald Trump’s stance on tariffs would result in a very negative outcome leading to a tariff war with China, as well as our other trading partners.

So remember when I said I would come back to talk about how certain words and their meanings get misused and are misapplied to certain situations on a consistent basis? Well this example here with many of my Libertarian, Republican, and Democratic friends using the word free trade to describe the economic trading relationship between the United States and China is a perfect example of the misuse and misapplication of the word and the circumstances that surround it.

This is because the United States and China’s trading relationship doesn’t have anything to do with free trade. No, the United States and China definitely have a trading relationship, but it’s nothing close to being a free trade relationship.

This is not the case because we (here in the United States) have for far too long placed ourselves into a precarious situation by offshoring so much of our manufacturing to our biggest enemy here with China that it has left us all vulnerable regarding our own supply chain and not securing the availability of our own products and goods.

China has obviously not been engaging in free trade, but rather has been engaging in mercantilism. On that note we have allowed this to happen to our country and have found ourselves being more a chief importer from China rather than a dominant exporter of goods.

With that being said, guess who has been trying to stockpile the world’s largest gold supply? Well, since we defined the act of mercantilism as the goal of a state working to increase its gold supply by being a chief exporter of goods, China has shown a record increase of gold stockpiles since 2020 following a dip in gold reserves from 2016-2018. (Source: Statista)

So what changed with China’s gold supply since 2020 compared to their lower accumulation of the precious metal in the three years between 2016-2020?

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“Hide not your Talents, they for Use were made. What’s a Sun-Dial in the shade!”

- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1750

In looking at the history of war, the strategy of psychological warfare has always been a weapon in the arsenal that has been used among military combatants to gain numerous advantages over their respective enemies. Psychological warfare refers to tactics intended to reduce an opponent’s morale and their will to engage in a fight. This strategy can include tactics that involve fear, intimidation, deception, and surprise. (Source: The Collector)

However, just as we’ve witnessed in the last four years psychological warfare can be used in peacetime and can sadly enough be used by a government directing it towards its own citizenry. This is the current state that we find ourselves in, but fortunately for us the first amendment gives us the power to wage this war right back at those nefarious government actors that started this psychological war in the first place.

The application of psychological warfare can throw off an enemy, overwhelm an enemy, and keep an enemy guessing in regards to challenges that they may expect to face during a certain conflict. In terms of how psychological warfare is used in our current society it’s primarily been administered by the Administrative State Media’s (ASM) actions of spreading propaganda through television airways, Hollywood, and print media such as The New York Times.

In short, psychological warfare has been administered from those who have been in power for far too long and control the information flow among all outlets from print media, to television, and to the digital world of social media.

However, with the advanced digital age the power of psychological warfare can be easily implemented by means of information and narrative. This can more easily be done by the Administrative State on its own citizens due to the technological advancements that exist in this day and age, particularly with the coming rise of AI.

Then again, like anything in life, the rise of technology in this digital age can serve to be a double edged sword. Obviously both yours and my technological devices can and have been weaponized against us in a very big way.

The good news is that there’s another edge on the blade of the sword. Because of this we have seen the rise and expansion of the Digital Ronin consisting of citizen journalists, decentralized media outlets such as this platform, and people who support those alternative outlets (such as you) by being force multipliers and financial backers with the information providers. This new decentralized apparatus that now exists can deconstruct and redirect the fire of this information war right back at those who were trying to place the bullseye onto your back and mine to begin with.

I’m always big on reading and using the culture and history in order to illustrate and to try and bring clarity to the world as it is, as well as, what it could be. In this current era, a lot of people have lost their identity and by extension the country came very close to losing its identity as well until the American public stepped up with the election on November 5th.

Granted, even though the election is over I can’t stress this point enough to you and everyone within the sound of my voice that the real work to restore our country is literally just starting.

A time to love, And a time to hate; A time of war, And a time of peace.

–Ecclesiastes 3:8

When you slow down to study and observe the current cultural and political arena you can see that we are obviously at war. I mean look at what our country has had to endure for the past nine years with the relentless drumbeat from the media regarding how terrible the citizens are of this nation that support Donald Trump.

Every single institution has been infected by the woke mind virus to borrow a phrase from Elon Musk. Because of this, these Marxist infiltrators within our society managed to expand the battlefield of their stupid doctrine by waging a war on literally everything that is designed to make our society function for the better.

For instance, as I’ve already stated there’s been a relentless war on identity where they have been teaching multiple generations of people in schools to hate their country by using garbage content from the likes of people like Howard Zinn to poison millions of minds of college kids now for many years.

Zinn, a Marxist, gained notoriety from his book A People’s History of The United States which is a dishonest portrayal of historical events and narratives that have repeatedly been called out for completely taking historical events out of context. This has been done for the purpose of spewing the overall narrative of oppressor and oppressed which falls in line with the reductive Marxist philosophical arm of Critical Theory.

Zinn’s book was famously given a boost from being mentioned by Matt Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting. Of course, it’s a cute line when mentioned in dramatic fashion in a scene from Good Will Hunting, but in reality there’s nothing cute about an America hating narrative that a Marxist hypocrite like Zinn profited from before turning generations of young minds into complete mush.

The Multi-Front War

The Marxists have been waging a multifront war on us for many years now trying to get us to lose our identity both as a nation and as individuals. Talking about the loss of identity for crying out loud, several people these days don’t even know the difference between a man and a woman. When has this ever been an issue in our society to the current extreme level that it has become until these last nine years?

In addition to this they’ve waged a war on meritocracy, accountability, and good old fashioned common sense. This war has been carried out heavily in the culture and has devastated our society resulting in a severe level of psychological damage and brain rot that has birthed the development of this far left communist faction of our society.

I remember recently having a discussion with one of my training students and he made a really cool point to me about how long the socialist/Marxist messaging has been infiltrating our culture. To make the point he started telling me about his all time favorite hit TV series Star Trek.

Using Star Trek as an example he went on to point out to me that the set up of the Star Trek crew within the series was basically a socialist utopia involving a post-scarcity economy where all needs of human existence could be immediately produced through the radical advancement of technology in the series.

If you’ve seen the series then you’ve probably seen how any food item can be readily created out of thin air by giving the computer aboard the Starship Enterprise a simple command. Admittedly I’ve never been a huge fan of the series, but in addition to ordering the computer to make a sandwich I never remember seeing any of the characters make that command and follow up the delivery of the desired item with any form of monetary payment.

In short, I found the central point from my student regarding how Star Trek presented us with a socialist utopia to be very enlightening. At the same time I also remembered the series pointing out another socialist/communist civilization that was more dystopian than utopian in nature with their introduction of the Borg. I pointed out to my student how I believed that the socialist exercise that was illustrated by the Borg was more closely related to real life than the socialist view that the Star Trek Enterprise displayed to the viewing audience.

After all, the civilization of the Borg operated as a hive mind and their main objective involved flying through the cosmos in a giant cube shaped spaceship in order to conquer other lifeforms for the purpose of assimilating them into their Collective by transforming them into mindless drones using nano-technology. To me this more closely resembles our current real life socio-economic scenario involving the steady development of technofeudalism.

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To make matters even worse the Marxist virus has infiltrated our financial institutions, our military, and even our food and agricultural systems. Not only are these Marxists determined to break us financially, but they’re working to strip away and poison our food system as well. I mean we are literally allowing our enemy in the CCP to buy farmland here in the states, ceding more control of our food supply over to our biggest enemy. When, why, and how did anyone ever think it was a good idea to do ANY of this?

We live in a clown world right now and fortunately thanks to God almighty we have Donald Trump coming into office here in January to work to straighten all of this out, but my fear is that these Marxists are currently doing everything in their power now to destroy the country and to hand off a complete mess to Trump on day one of his presidency in an attempt to make his presidency ineffective. These people involved in doing this within the Administrative State need to go to prison.

On top of all of this you and I have to make sure that we’re on top of everything happening in terms of being more well rounded citizens. You and I must work to be a Zenith in these chaotic times by optimizing our individual efforts to combat this evil and incompetence that has infiltrated our society and government.

If you focus on the current battlefield that we as Americans are facing it can seem overwhelming at times. After all, when looking at the possibilities of the collapse of our complex systems, a possible attack on the power grid, digital hacking theft, supply chain shortages, a collapsing dollar, and the specter of WWIII the average individual would naturally want to curl up into a ball and choose the path of apathy, or adopt the ignorance is bliss approach in order to not face such possible realities.

However, I’m banking on the fact that if you’re a regular reader and listener to this show that you’re not going to choose such a path, but rather you’re willing to step up your efforts to be that Zenith in your individual life which will feed the development of a stronger society at large as we all work to optimize ourselves within our own individual lives.

So what types of things am I referring to when I mention individual optimization concerning all of the possible problems related to societal instability? In this current informational, digital, economic, and cultural war I’ve already mentioned several problem areas regarding the collapsing dollar, supply chain issues, and digital hacking theft as areas of concern that we all need to be aware of in our current environment.

However, in order to combat these things as individuals we first have to be aware of them and if you’re listening to this episode then you’re already ahead of the majority of the population on that front so that’s a solid start. The next thing is that you need to understand what resources you have at your disposal in order to mitigate these risks, or to outright combat them directly.

Now to be clear I’m not here to tell you what to do with your finances and what things you should choose to invest in regarding your personal investments. I’m not a financial advisor and I don’t care to be in that field in the least. However, I am here to present you with information and to encourage you to seek as much information and knowledge as you can in order to make yourself a Zenith which will hopefully make both you and your family more well rounded and more impervious to attacks that will be occurring in this current Fifth Generation War. In short, you must immerse yourself in the tactics that you need to fight this war. You must be an immersive warrior.

To use myself as an example regarding the threat of the collapsing dollar and inflation having been raging on at a forty year record high I chose to learn more about protective financial hedges against inflation such as gold and silver. In regards to the possible threat of digital hacking theft I have personally invested in faraday wallets and bags to protect my electronics and credit cards from these advanced hackers in this current digital age. In terms of the potential for supply chain disruptions I’ve also chosen to invest in some extra food storage should the grocery stores face some kind of disruption leading to a shortage.

I know the far left is simplistic in their thinking and would start throwing around the label of me being a prepper, but such simplistic thinking is exactly why Donald Trump won this most recent election by a landslide.

The point here is that because the far left have been allowed to encroach more and more into our societal institutions we’re seeing the very obvious and very visible damage that they have wrought throughout our country at large. In addition to this these people have relentlessly used tactics of lawfare, directly violated the constitution, and imprisoned political opposition in order to try and achieve their ends.

A Forest of Corpses

When examining the rise and fall of civilizations throughout history there’s a common theme that has echoed throughout time concerning the nature of human beings and that theme involves the seemingly never ending desire for one group of people to attempt to conquer and control others. If you’re a regular listener, or reader to this show then you’ve heard me reference this phenomenon before and there’s actually a word that exists to describe this. This desire for civilizations, or people, to conquer and control others is what is known as the conquest ethic.

In historic times the conquest ethic was carried out by using force in the form of kinetic war with one kingdom, or civilization, exerting its dominance over another in an attempt to take control of a rival in order to absorb their people and resources. However, this method doesn’t last forever, yet has been repeated over and over throughout history until this very day.

Granted there’s only been one country in the world to have been established without using the conquest ethic and if you happen to be reading, or listening to this episode anywhere in the United States then you’re standing in the only country that wasn’t established by the conquest ethic. On the contrary, the United States was established by Patriots who fought against the original Globalist Totalitarians in the British Empire in order to establish freedom and liberty from totalitarian rule. You know it’s basically the same exact thing that’s happening today.

I mean these communist criminals that have infiltrated our institutions have been relentlessly using intimidation, lawfare, and imprisoning innocent citizens who were simply expressing their first amendment right.

As I stated earlier, thanks to God himself Donald Trump was elected, but had he not been the communist Kamala Harris would have had this country descending into a deep dark place that was magnitudes worse than what we’ve already experienced since 2020.

Donald Trump hasn’t even been sworn into the White House and you can already see the meltdown and collapse of these communist systems that have been in place now for several years. I mean Rachel Maddow is literally breaking down in tears on live television because she knows that her network MSNBC is imploding financially and that Elon Musk was trolling the network with a meme threatening to purchase it.

Additionally Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski begged for a meeting with Donald Trump after the election in Mar-a-Lago to go down and kiss the ring of Trump after having spent the last decade relentlessly lying and attacking him on their now failing network. This goes to show that these people are low life mercenaries in the information war that will sell themselves out to the highest communist bidder.

On top of this the special prosecutor Jack Smith had manufactured charges to use to go after President Trump in an attempt to put him in prison for the rest of his life had he not won the election. This was a blatant exercise by Jack Smith to engage in election interference and had Trump lost the election he would have died in prison.

All this time the left has been screaming that this wasn’t a politically motivated pursuit for Jack Smith, however after Trump smashed these communist scum in an election landslide victory now all the sudden Smith is moving to dismiss the two made up felony cases against President Trump.

With Jack Smith’s move to dismiss these cases this is a blatant admission that he was engaged in a political witch hunt for the purpose of election interference after all.

Jack Smith should be facing severe financial and legal consequences for this communist stunt along with Fanni Willis, Tish James, and all the rest of these communist clowns that can’t win with anything in life other than using state power like a bunch of communists to try and destroy people’s lives. The era of lawfare and the allowance of communists in the United States to abuse state power is abruptly coming to an end, but we MUST force it to end by sending a strong message in order to purge this completely out of the system.

Speaking of strong messages in June of 1462 a vast Ottoman army that was led by Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror had decided to advance on the city of Targoviste. Along their journey in their attempted conquest of the Wallachian capital Mehmed’s army had to endure weeks of ambushes and thousands of Turkish deaths due to the grueling voyage.

However, as Mehmed approached the capital he sent a detachment calvary out ahead to survey what was out in front of the main military force. It was at this point that this detachment encountered something that shook them to their core.

As they went out ahead they ended up discovering a forest of corpses of well over 20,000 Ottoman captives that were impaled and rotting on stakes in the summer heat. This forest of corpses on stakes stretched out for a harrowing distance of two miles in length and spanned out to a shocking distance half a mile in width.

This sight was simply too much for the Ottomans to handle and they obliged this gruesome deterrent and retreated. This scorched earth strategy was implemented by none other than the infamous Wallachian ruler Vlad III, also known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula.

That’s right, Vlad III was the inspiration for the famous modern day pop culture character known as Count Dracula. Bram Stoker was inspired to use this real life individual for his famous novel which was later made into the hit 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Granted Vlad III might have been a legit maniac and a ruthless killer, however his main motivation for such an act was to grind the Ottoman expansion’s desire for conquest into his homeland to halt. Oh and interestingly enough there’s that word conquest again.

So why did I go to all the trouble to give you this small history lesson about Vlad III. Well I opened this episode talking about the effectiveness of psychological warfare as a means to gain an advantage on an enemy combatant.

Obviously when looking at Vlad III and his scorched earth effort to build a literal forest of bodies made up of his enemies rotting on stakes in the summer heat he probably holds the trophy for the biggest psychological warfare victory in all of history.

The Wrap Up

Now I wanted to include the history of Vlad III in order to use his story as a teachable moment. I strongly believe that the main lesson that we can derive from Vlad III right now is exactly what is needed for us to secure the restoration of making our country great again.

You’re probably thinking Brandon, what exactly do you mean?

To be clear, the point I’m making isn’t about building a forest of corpses from our communist enemies, however metaphorically speaking we need a modern day version of this in the form of a forest of justifiable convictions involving those who abused state power.

We must ensure that we rack up as many legitimate convictions as humanly possible regarding all the criminals that have been proven to abuse state power in order to go after their political opposition. I’m not talking about neglecting anyone's fair trial. No, this doesn’t have anything to do with retribution, but it does have everything to do with the direct application of justice. The point here is that there should be many of these cases that end up in a criminal trial followed by many guilty verdicts and a lot of prison time.

The only thing that we can do to restore our nation is to ensure that every criminal politician, deep state agent, and corrupt media outlet that has been guilty of abusing state power must face full accountability for their actions.

The very act of following through on balancing the scales of justice will serve to be the greatest kinetic warfare victory in the modern age along with being the greatest psychological warfare victory deterring any globalist from ever entering into our country to attempt a conquest such as this ever again.

To ensure this you must continue to be an immersive warrior in this modern era of Fifth Generation Warfare. Just as I stated with the Benjamin Franklin quote at the beginning of this episode you must use your talents of communication, problem solving, memory, writing, marketing, etc. to be the impactful and immersive warrior in this current battlefield that you find in front of you.

The sooner you can accept this and do this the sooner we can restore liberty and freedom. Don’t worry about what anyone else is saying that they won’t do, but rather do everything that you can do to immerse yourself and to use your own personal agency to contribute to victory.

Who would you place first on the priority list in this war to face full accountability for their criminal actions?

Have you personally immersed yourself in the culture war in these past four years in order to engage the fight in this Fifth Generation War?

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“People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.”

― Niccolo Machiavelli

According to the Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary the sin of Envy involves jealousy over the blessings and achievements of others especially involving the spiritual enjoyment and the advancement of the kingdom of Christ freely and graciously bestowed upon the people of God. 

The sin of Envy is often confused with the sin of Covet. Covet means to have an unhealthy desire for what others have which in turn can lead to the sin of Envy which is where the jealousy and other actions that follow can come into the picture obviously making a bigger mess of things. 

For some context when you covet something you just want it, whereas if you envy it you’re jealous that someone else has whatever it is that you want. Therefore, if the other person doesn’t deserve it because you can’t have it then nobody deserves it. 

I want you to keep this in mind, but for the moment I want you to put this on a shelf as I’ll come back to this in a bit. 

I’ve talked about being a GenX kid growing up in the 1980s here on this platform on more than one occasion in several of my episodes. However, just in case you’re new to my show I’ll mention it here again because it is going to have some significant context here regarding today’s episode. 

Growing up in the 80s, or more specifically the mid 80s, as I approached the age of 10, 11, and 12 I can remember the difference of the culture then compared to what it has been here in the United States since that time. In other words, even though I was only a kid during that time I can still remember how powerful the culture was in terms of America being the dominant force in the world and how the culture had a strong America First attitude that could be seen literally everywhere you looked. 

The reason for this was due to the fact that the American populace, or a more engaged populist movement, was unified behind an anti-Communist America First president that lived in that time by the name of Ronald Reagan. 

To illustrate this prevalence of strength throughout American culture at that time even the entertainment industry was especially dominant with a culture of action movies that celebrated masculinity and femininity in a way that hasn’t been done since then. The music was iconic, people were more engaging with one another, and the economy was booming after President Ronald Reagan came into office to cut down federal bureaucracy while his Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker blew up interest rates to 20% in order to wring the inflation out of the system from the damage that the previous Carter administration had caused. 

Does any of this sound familiar? 

It’s crystal clear that history has repeated itself in a large way today compared to the late 1970s leading into the 1980s. I mean in the 70’s leading up to the 80s communism was on the rise with it making its presence known during the cold war until Reagan, with a little help from his friend Paul Volcker, fired up the economic engine of the nation. This ran the Soviet Union, along with many communist countries throughout the eastern bloc, into the ground as they just simply couldn’t keep up with the building up of the United States economic engine and military might.

As we look at today’s battlefield you’ve seen the rise of the CCP and the corrupt Globalists joining forces to try and take down the United States. The outgoing Biden regime, along with his Federal Reserve have waged an all out war on the dollar resulting in 40 year record high inflation along with lending a hand to the BRICS nations by providing the motivation for them to  build a coalition in order to de-dollarize by eventually ceasing the use of trading in U.S. dollars. For the record this is an absolutely horrible scenario for the United States to find itself in. 

Similarly in the 80s Volcker knew the country had to take its medicine in order to get better on the other side of the inflation and that the dose of that medicine wasn’t going to be pleasant, not in the least. In fact, the rate hikes resulted in unemployment soaring to a whopping 11% in 1981-1982, but in 1983 the heartbeat of the United States economic body started pumping strong again. 

Once again the Democratic party under Carter had unnecessarily created the conditions that put the country through an unnecessary and difficult time. Fast forward to today and we find ourselves dealing with the same scenario with the problems being even bigger and worse than ever before due to the Democratic party’s thirst for complete power and the establishment RINO Republicans that have simply played the role of controlled opposition now since the 1980s. 

The corrupt establishment order of the Democratic and Republican parties have been entrenched in Washington D.C. now spending their entire careers and lives as politicians with the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. These people are part of the political class and are completely out of touch with reality and what’s going on in the everyday lives of American citizens. Even if we can assume that they do understand then they’ve demonstrated fully that they don’t care. 

The reality is that they don’t care about the country in the same way that you and I care about it. No, when they say that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement is a “threat to democracy,” what that really means is that they view the MAGA movement as being a direct threat to their hold on power and based on the way we’ve witnessed them behave it’s obvious that their philosophical application to hold onto that power is Machiavellian in nature. 

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Making The Proper Diagnosis 

Even today given everything we’ve seen from the record high inflation, the mass censorship campaigns from the intelligence service, to the mass invasion of the country, to the multiple assassination attempts on President Trump, and with the battery of nonstop lies from the media I’m always amazed at how there are so many people that simply cannot see the reality of these things that are happening right up in their faces. Whether it's blindness, willful ignorance, or just outright stupidity it’s an incredible thing to witness. The power of observation is definitely a lost art these days. 

You see after the pandemic and the media response from that all the lies became more blatantly obvious to me during that time. I simply learned a lot from watching and observing the Administrative State Media (ASM) carefully. Even now I really focus on what exactly they are trying to communicate with each story they push out to the public. 

I mean sure the media is always being dishonest about most every story that they push out to the masses, but at the same time, there is also a lot of unintended honesty that they include in their narratives buried within each storyline.  

For instance, when they start screaming that Trump is a dictator this is literally psychological projection in real time because after they levy such an accusation using such extreme language this is the key signal that they are accusing their opposition of exactly what they are guilty of doing themselves. 

Basically, for the past four years I’ve just worked to hone my skill of carefully observing the ASM’s message and discerning from their message the signal in order to get the truth from the media. Since doing this I haven’t been misled by their noise which covers up what it is that they are actually trying to hide which simply boils down to being the truth. 

The thing I want to communicate here is working to help you hone your ability to see through the media’s lies while being able to extract the signal from the noise which is always buried within their proposed narratives and storylines. 

When the pandemic hit back in 2020 I was already extracting the signal from the noise that the media would push out with their storylines, but at the time I didn’t use that term signal. I first learned of that term in regards to the media narratives from the great Steve Bannon. 

Granted, I had already been hard at work at discerning the truth from the lies, but Bannon really helped to shed some light on the matter for me along with helping to clarify what was going on with the information warfare that was being waged on the American citizens since the pandemic. 

Another thing that I’ve learned over the last few years is that if you really observe and listen carefully to what people say in the political arena you can get better at surmising and predicting certain outcomes before they actually come to light with the public at large. 

To further clarify what I’m talking about I’ll give you a cool example of a recent situation regarding this that I noticed during this election involving President Trump. 

If you remember the debate between Kamala Harris and President Trump there was a tense moment in that debate when President Trump was responding to one of Kamala’s false accusations. In this moment he was explaining to the moderators and to the viewers how horrible Kamala had been in the past four years not only criticizing her job in the White House, but going further to point out the hypocrisy of her party and how their so-called party of “Democracy” iced their own primary winning candidate Joe Biden and installed her in his place.  

Aside from Kamala being involved with such a government coup d'etat Trump was explaining how horrible and disloyal the act was for Kamala to engage in directly against her running mate within their own administration. 

It was at this point that Trump said something that got my attention. I don’t remember his exact words, but I will paraphrase to communicate the gist of what he was saying. After pointing out the betrayal of her actions he then looked at her and the moderators and referred to Joe Biden himself as being displeased with her disloyalty. 

From here he went a step further and went on to say something like You know he’s not happy with her and quite frankly he can’t stand her. He doesn’t like her at all. To me this sounded like he was saying this as if he had already been speaking directly with Joe Biden.  

Now during that time I didn’t think too much more about what Trump was saying, however just about a week before the last day of the election Biden posted a video where he went on the usual rant about Trump and the whole threat to democracy talking points, but then he took the statement even further by referring to Trump supporters as being “garbage.” 

It was clear that when he was delivering this video message that he was reading from some kind of script or pre-written statement. However, this statement seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back politically speaking due to the fact that the Nazi-like rhetoric coming from the communist left had reached its boiling point after a decade of them attempting to “other” everyone who has been a Trump supporter since the beginning. 

After all, they had already been referring to Trump supporters as Nazis and Deplorables so I suppose Biden thought it would be a good idea to pile on another dehumanizing insult by calling the MAGA base garbage, or did he? 

So you’re probably thinking Brandon, what exactly do you mean? 

Well this statement by Biden so late in the election without a doubt fired up the MAGA base even more and motivated Biden’s opposition to go out and round up ten or twenty more people to get out to the polls and vote for Donald Trump. 

Now that the election has passed we can see that Trump won the election in a landslide victory dominating both the electoral college and the popular vote giving him an absolute mandate to run the country based on the MAGA agenda. 

Just this past week President Trump went to the White House to visit with Joe Biden regarding the coming smooth transition of power discussion. They were both sitting in the White House in front of the press and I noticed something that made me chuckle. 

During this meeting Trump looked like his usual cheerful self, however Joe Biden literally looked like he was overcome with joy and had the biggest smile on his face that I’ve ever seen. I mean Biden looked like he just hit the lottery. 

This was sort of surprising at first, but then I remembered the debate when Trump made those comments about Kamala Harris and how Biden didn’t like her. In addition to this there was a photo of Jill Biden that went viral that showed her wearing a red pants suit as she walked to the polls on election day with a giant smile on her face as well. 

Given what Trump said in the debate along with Joe’s expression during his post election meeting with Trump and his wife’s red pants suit on election day I think we can surmise that the Biden’s intentionally worked to help railroad the Harris campaign as a form of payback for Kamala’s role in getting Joe kicked out of the presidential race. 

When you look at what these people say combined with what they actually do you can get a clear vision on what type of political philosophy they are subscribing to and it all boils down to one thing and one thing only and that involves the reality that they want to retain their position of power no matter what. 

Niccolo Machiavelli

I led off this episode with that famous quote from Machiavelli and it’s for a good reason. 

The Italian Renaissance political philosopher, statesman, and secretary of the Florentine Republic Niccolo Machiavelli authored his famous written work known as The Prince that branded him with the reputation as an atheist and immoral cynic. 

Given the backgrounds of those who stake their entire careers as being politicians it should come as no surprise that many career politicians ultimately make their professional decisions based on what would be advantageous in regards to keeping them in power rather than what’s in the best interest of society. In the case of Niccolo Machiavelli we could say that he created the very mold that forms this sort of thinking inside the deceptive world of politics. 

Machiavelli’s writings point to the very motivation for retaining power through the belief of the ends justifying the means. Interestingly enough, in an alternative writing to The Prince Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy points to a government system that is more consistent with a more Republican tradition that starts with Aristotle. 

The writings point to some solid foundations for maintaining a successful government and even highlights the importance of maintaining a balance of power within the acting system of government as he draws much of his comparison from the success of the Roman Republic. 

However, Machiavelli focuses on the importance of ruling a society and points to how it is ultimately important for one to be left alone on the matter. His view of Republicanism does not rest on the usual Republican premise that power is safer in the hands of many than it is in the hands of one. On the contrary, he asserts that to found, or reform, a Republic it is necessary to “be alone.” (Source: Britannica)

In fact, Machiavelli goes even further here to communicate that Romulus deserved an excuse for killing his brother and partner in the founding of Rome named Remus because it had to be done for the common good. Once again, this was about as blatant as one could be in terms of buying into the belief that the ends justify the means. 

Niccolo Machiavelli’s views and writings, particularly with The Prince,  basically boiled down to being a practical handbook for the tyrant. It was good in the sense of being effective and being practical, but not in the sense of being morally good. For Machiavelli it was always better to be feared rather than loved.

One Machiavellian Prince that we have seen in action applying Machiavelli’s philosophy was the ruthless Soviet leader Joseph Stalin who frequently engaged in purging his own Communist Party consisting of internal critics and potential rivals. Stalin applied the thought process of the ends justifying the means directly by ridding himself of any political threat while consolidating his hold on power. (Source: Ananya)

Given what we’ve recently seen with the endless lawfare that has been directed at President Trump, along with the sham indictments, and the media engaging in full blown stochastic terrorism we can see how the Biden/Harris regime can also easily fall into the same category as being a modern day version of a Machiavellian Prince with the way that they run the government. 

You see Machiavelli’s view was all about how good governing was the result of doing what was practical and efficient in order to protect the state. However, this doesn’t translate into politicians doing what is necessary to serve the best interest of their respective country. On the contrary, this thought process translates into doing what is necessary and practical in order to protect the regime that’s in power. 

In terms of the way these corrupt career politicians view their role in the United States they completely share the view of Machiavelli. The “protecting of democracy” isn’t about protecting the United States, but rather it’s about protecting the ruling class of corrupt actors that currently occupy and run the government that exists within the United States. We must understand this distinction. 

What I’m talking about here is an accurate diagnosis of the type of philosophy that is being employed within a ruling class that controls, or is trying to establish an ongoing control, over the United States government. 

Granted, if you’ve been on my platform then you know that I will be quick to refer to these career politicians here in the United States as being communist infiltrators and they are definitely that. In short, they are choosing to attempt to rule as communists as the form of governing (or technofeudalism) that they want to put in place, however when it comes to the philosophical application of actually installing that form of government they are following the playbook that mirrors the Machiavellian protocol. 

Fortunately Donald J. Trump has been elected by an overwhelming majority and he, along with those of us who support him, have employed a strategy of our own with the application of Sun Tzu’s Art of War to combat and stalemate the nefarious actions of those looking to perpetuate the Evolution of Devolution. 

The Wrap Up

The information warfare that has been waged against the American people has involved the Democratic and Republican party establishment’s attempt to employ a Machiavellian attack to brand Donald Trump and the MAGA movement in a negative light. 

However, the success of the MAGA movement and Donald Trump’s counter-attack has been using the platforms of alternative media to engage in the information warfare to expose these establishment communists to the public while revealing the truth about who these people are and what these people are actually doing.

This counter-offensive of alternative media is something that has been developing over a period of time, but it has been drastically accelerating since the 2020 election. It’s been something that I’ve felt for a long time is long overdue. 

Despite this I still frequently witness people consistently failing to observe the reality of the current cultural and political landscape. For instance, many people will make the mistake of often saying something like “Trump is a polarizing figure.”  

However, the reality is that it’s not necessarily Trump that is causing the polarization among our society. The reality is that this polarization is being caused by the ASM, the uni-party, and the longstanding corrupt and entrenched bureaucracy of the Administrative State. 

The truth is that Trump is simply the instrument that is challenging that entrenched system and the system is reacting. This is where the appearance of polarization is coming from. 

I began this episode talking about the sin of envy. I wanted to bring this up to point to the observation of when the entrenched established communist infiltrators start demonizing and trying to other Donald Trump and the MAGA movement it’s because they are envious. 

That’s right, these establishment D.C. politicians are envious of Trump and his supporters.  

So why do I say that? 

Well, I’ve already established that the majority of these corrupt D.C. politicians have literally spent their lives building a career in the arena of politics. Put yourself in their shoes and imagine the scenario that they currently find themselves in. I mean out of nowhere a guy that has never served a day in any political office whatsoever suddenly pops on the scene and wins his first election in his first seat as a politician and his first political office is the highest office in the land. 

Understand that these establishment politicians believe that they are the ones that deserve to be in power and know what’s best for everyone, yet they keep losing to Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

So how do they respond? 

As politicians that are supposed to be representing the American people they certainly aren’t making decisions that are best for the United States, but rather are making decisions that are Machiavellian in an attempt to grasp at the straws in their desperation to hold onto power and it’s failing them. 

As I stated in the beginning of this episode if it were the sin of covet all of this would have ended with Trump and the MAGA movement winning, but because the more accurate diagnosis here involves the sin of envy the apparatus and those loyal to it are adversarial to Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. 

If this wasn’t the case then why all the lawfare, the unlawful indictments, and the cheers from the other side whenever there were direct and dangerous attempts on Donald Trump’s life? The answer and the accurate diagnosis here is because it’s envy. 

James 3:16: 

"For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice"

Do you find people in your circles who consistently fail to accurately observe the corruption and reality of what’s going on in the world? 

Do you see the envy from those who are adversarial to the current rising success of the liberty movement that is being driven by the current MAGA movement? 

Make sure to post up a comment here below as we’d like to hear your feedback.

I hope you enjoyed today’s article/podcast.

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“Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.”

― Hannah Arendt

So we are now past the 2024 general election and so I wanted to take a moment to congratulate Donald J. Trump and the MAGA movement on achieving the greatest political comeback victory in American history. The good news here is that we have not yet lost the Sword of Damocles. 

Given what President Trump and the rest of us in the MAGA movement have had to endure over the last decade it feels great to celebrate in this moment of victory. With that being said the reality is that now the real work begins on purging the evil forces from the system that put Donald Trump and the MAGA movement through all of the difficulty and hardship in the first place. 

Now is not the time to relax. It’s fine to take a minute to acknowledge the big victory, but the reality is that the enemy is not resting. The truth is that right now they’re shell-shocked and severely wounded because they just got hit with the political equivalent of a thermonuclear weapon because this election wasn’t won by simply convincing voters to turn out for Trump in a business as usual election cycle. 

No, this victory was delivered because we have built a literal groundswell of a movement that is backed by a sound philosophical grounding in history, philosophy, economics, culture, and health. With that being said we must still remain vigilant while continuing to accelerate our efforts on offense. 

The creation of this grassroots movement has been a long steady growth by winning over the hearts and minds of people in the realm of ideas rather than peddling a relentless drumbeat of fear and hate which is fortunately now the broken backbone of the opposition. The sad reality is that this message of fear and hate has been the sales pitch for the communists now for several decades. 

Conversely, the sales pitch of this movement is quite the opposite and is the direct reaction, as Isaac Newton would describe it, of a corrupt series of actions of abuse, criminality, and seemingly endless bureacracy. 

If you’re new to this platform my professional background is that I’ve been self-employed as a fitness and strength coach now for a couple of decades. If you know anything about running a small business then you understand that in order for that business to be successful, as the owner, you have to be willing to wear many hats. 

If I could offer any advice to anyone listening, the point to this is that no matter what field of study you choose to pursue, or what line of work you end up in, you have to be capable of dealing in the art of sales. The skill of being able to sell exists in every industry no matter your line of work. Whether you actually engage in the act of selling certain goods for a living, or you’re simply trying to beef up your resume in order to win the next offer for a brand new job you’re still selling. 

The art of selling requires an understanding of being able to recognize a need that someone else has so that you can then seize on the opportunity to provide the product, or service that satisfies that need for the person that’s in need of the thing you were able to identify. This involves the entire art of sales and the art of sales exists in every arena of life. 

Now when you hear such an explanation regarding the skilled process of identifying a need that somebody else has on the surface this sounds pretty simple, but the mistake that most people make is confusing what’s simple with what is easy and to be clear the art of sales is not easy. The reality is that once you’re able to identify a need sometimes bringing people to accept that reality is an uncomfortable process. 

This uncomfortable process of giving people that positive nudge in order to accept from you that need that you have convinced them that you are able to provide reminded me of an old episode from the famous TV series The Twilight Zone where Death himself had to be the most convincing salesman. 

Death’s Persuasion

On January 5, 1962 the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone aired episode #81 titled Nothing in the Dark. 

This episode centers around the character of Wanda Dunn who is a frail elderly woman that huddles down in a basement of an abandoned tenement. 

One evening Wanda is awakened by an altercation outside of her apartment where Harold Beldon (Robert Redford), a young police officer, is shot and falls down just outside of her front door. Beldon cries out for help as he is afraid that he’s dying. He pleads with Wanda to open her door to help, but she’s afraid of him because she fears that he could be Mr. Death trying to trick her into letting him into her house. 

Wanda is uneasy about letting the gentlemen in and she doesn’t have a phone to call for help, but Harold continues to beg so she finally gives in and helps him inside. After grabbing him she realizes that she doesn’t die and is immediately relieved as this convinces her that he is not Death after all. 

Once she helps Harold inside she takes a moment to clarify her reluctance to help him by explaining that she once saw Death in the form of a man take a woman’s life by merely touching her. She went on to say that since then that she had also seen him on many other occasions while having a different face and identity each time. 

As a result of her experience it’s obvious that Wanda chose to live unhappily in her apartment alone rather than to not live at all. 

After a bit there’s a knock at her door and Harold convinces her to answer the door. The man at her door starts forcing the door open and Wanda collapses to the floor in terror. Wanda ends up blacking out, but when she regains consciousness the man apologizes and explains that he’s a building contractor and had been given the task to demolish her building within the hour due to the building having been condemned. 

The man tries to convince her that what he’s doing is for a good purpose as getting rid of the old will create a path for the new. The man then goes on to remind Wanda that she has been given plenty of notice in order to leave and if she doesn’t then he will be forced to call the police. 

Once the man says this it’s at this point that Wanda turns to Harold for some help, but the contractor doesn’t see him so he turns to leave to go and get the authorities. It’s at this moment that Wanda happens to look into a mirror and doesn’t see Harold in the reflection. At this point it dawns on her that Harold is Mr. Death after all. 

Mr. Death then proceeds to explain to Wanda with a friendly smile that he had set up the ruse in order to gain her trust so that she would believe that he was there not to be a threat, or to mean her any harm. Wanda continues her protests, but he gently assures her that she has nothing to fear. Wanda eventually takes his hand and before she realizes anything has changed, she finds herself standing next to her own dead body. From here Wanda and Harold exit her apartment to walk up the stairs and out into the sunlight. (Source: Wikipedia)

“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me.”

Psalms 23:4

Sadly Wanda’s character is emblematic of many people who go through their lives living in fear. In The Twilight Zone’s episode here Nothing in the Dark the main character Wanda was so focused on clinging to life that she basically lived as a recluse in fear that she would meet Mr. Death. This is a sad scenario for one to have as the entire point of life is to journey out and to strive to build the life you desire to live instead of running from death. 

However, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from our society in the past four years it’s that a significant portion of the population, like Wanda, live their lives in fear. We saw this during the pandemic when so many people were so terrified of leaving their own home because of the fear of catching a virus that they were afraid would kill them even though the government was telling them that the virus had a mortality rate of .6%. What was even more perplexing regarding this was the fact that the actual percentage of those deaths were more highly focused among individuals that struggled with several other physical ailments, or comorbidities, that could easily be fixed through a healthy and disciplined lifestyle change. 

Once again this was a huge example of just how much damage the Administrative State Media (ASM) managed to inflict onto our society. Granted the successful brainwashing from the media started long before the pandemic, but the point is that it has created a real detrimental spread of a psychosis among the citizens of our population. 

You see fear is a control mechanism that can be manipulated through the use of propaganda. If one is in fear a good salesman can convince a person to believe in a lie that is designed to scare and control a person. From this point it’s the object of fear that keeps perpetuating the false belief and it’s in this moment that sadly many people place their faith in a complete lie on a foundation built out of fear. 

Now the problem with this is that getting a person to let go of that lie can be as difficult as breaking the hold that death has over a person, or with a person’s held belief that they can run from Death as we observed here with Wanda. 

The Great Man Theory

The historian Thomas Carlyle was one of a few main voices that were proponents of the idea, or theory that is recognized as The Great Man Theory. This theory centers around the idea that the world’s history is nothing more than a collection of biographies that belong to great men. 

Now if we look at history we are always referencing the leadership of great men during key moments throughout times in the past that often created movements and momentum that changed the direction of societies during such moments in time. 

It was Carlyle and other contemporaries of his time that had gained some serious recognition for their theory, as evidenced by such works including the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittannica Eleventh Edition. This encyclopedia went into detail telling the stories of various biographies of the great men that led during the great historical periods in time. 

However, not everyone agreed with Carlyle’s theory of the case involving The Great Man Theory. Herbert Spencer was another philosopher, sociologist, biologist, and political theorist of the era and expressed dogmatic beliefs involving criticisms of Carlyle’s theory that were focused around evolution and despite his criticisms his influence sharply declined after 1900. 

His criticism had more to do with his belief that leaders were merely products of their environment. He argued that before a “great man” can remake his society, that society had to be the factor in making him. (Source: Villanova University)

Now I don’t necessarily fully disagree with this component of Spencer’s viewpoint, however he’s a bit dogmatic and simplistic in his approach. For instance, if we use Donald Trump as an example here there’s no question that the country (which would be the environment) is in desperate need of his leadership and Trump, though already a proven and incredibly resilient individual, has undoubtedly become even more battle hardened and resilient after having to endure the endless lawfare, the unconstitutional attacks, and the actual violent attempts on his life.  

However, despite all of this as a leader he still had to be willing to look at the environment at the onset of his decision to run for the office of the presidency in the first place. In other words, there was an internal decision that had to take place within his mind first. 

I mean the moment he decided to come down that golden escalator on June 16, 2015 to give that speech and to let the world know that he was announcing his candidacy he had to already know he was ready and equipped to do the job and keep in mind this all came well before all the relentless unconstitutional attacks and the numerous assassination attempts on his life. 

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The problem with Spencer’s theory is that the environment didn’t have anything to do with him making the choice to lead. His role in history to lead wasn’t something that just randomly fell into Donald Trump’s lap, but rather was a choice and a venture that he consciously made to pursue for himself because he wanted to help the country. 

Granted, I believe it’s crystal clear that Donald Trump is doing this out of the love for his own country, especially given the fact that he was a billionaire that certainly didn’t have to choose to endure any of the brutal attacks and hardships that he has subjected himself to by making such a choice. 

Furthermore, for him to be such a successful indifividual with a billionaire lifestyle, yet he’s willing to tackle the most demanding schedule I’ve ever witnessed by any single human being has zero to do with the environment shaping him. In fact, I’ve heard stories from several of his staffers that are half his age saying that they had trouble keeping up with Trump’s work ethic.  

This is a man that only sleeps three to four hours a night and has the most insane travel schedule on the planet. This doesn’t even factor in the demands and the stress from being the leader of the free world and the champion for all of Western civilization. 

Given my background as a fitness and strength coach I can tell you firsthand that I don’t motivate my students to engage and maintain adherence to any consistent and challenging physical training regimen. It may surprise you to hear that, but after having over 20 years of experience in this field I can tell you with 100% certainty right now that true discipline and motivation are internal factors that are inherent traits within people. 

Sure these traits can be drawn out for a bit, but the long term sustainability of such discipline is something that has to come from a personal inner drive. The strongest form of such an inner drive must be centered around a strong inner belief that is directed towards a particular pursuit. 

To have such a strong belief, or strong conviction, towards a particular venture is something that has to come from a deep place within an individual.

I personally believe such strong internal beliefs are centered around love, empathy, and a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong. What I am describing to you is also what many would define as having a warrior spirit. 

This is why Donald Trump, as a leader, is so different than all the other so-called leaders. After all, if we’re adopting Spencer’s theory of the case that it is solely the environment that creates the leader then why is there only one leader like Donald Trump? According to Spencer’s criticism of Carlyle’s theory the environment should produce a lot a more Donald Trumps in the world, but right now it’s clear there’s only one Donald Trump. 

The Wrap Up

The attempt to sell fear and hate has been a long steady consistent effort that has come from the communists that have infiltrated our country and that sales pitch and drumbeat from the ASM has been a long slow steady one that has spanned many decades throughout the institutions in our nation. 

However, there’s no doubt there’s a strong case that this drumbeat has been drowned out by a new message that is coming through with the rise of alternative media, or in the words of Jake Tapper, MAGA media. The message I’m referring to is quite simply the truth. 

Because of this communist sales pitch of fear and hate that has dominated the airways for so long the delivery of a better sales pitch required a strong messenger that was loud enough and bold enough to pierce the veil of lies. In this moment of history that loud and bold voice initially came in the form of mean tweets at 3:00 a.m., but ended up resulting in the birth of an entirely new ecosystem of alternative media, or MAGA media. 

This new drumbeat of truth and justice will be a better sales pitch and it will soon be strong enough to break the hold that the lies have over the leftist/communist arm of the Democratic party in the same ironic way that it took Mr. Death himself to break the strong held belief that Wanda had that she could run from him. 

In the end death is easier to let go of than ideology, but with the application of The Great Man Theory happening in real time due to Trump recognizing the power of prolific human agency we’re getting closer to breaking that communist grip with every minute that passes.

I’m curious did the newly evolved ecosystem of media awaken you to some harsh realities here in the last four years?

Do you recognize the significance and power of prolific human agency in your own life?

Post up in the comment section here below as both myself and the audience would like to hear from you.

I hope you enjoyed today’s article/podcast.

If so I hope you would choose to support this platform as part of the patriot economy as well. Be an Emissary of Freedom and help to push this piece out to your friends, family, and coworkers.

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“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.”

― Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means

We cannot lose the Sword of Damocles and after November 5th we’ll know whether or not we have succumbed to this ultimate misfortune if Donald Trump is not elected.  

If you’re not familiar with the origin of the Sword of Damocles I’ll take a moment to explain the significance as it’s extremely valuable to you, your family, your friends, your neighbors, and every potential friend that you may ever meet. 

The famed Sword of Damocles is a moral parable that was made famous by the Roman philosopher Cicero in 45 B.C.. In his book Tusculan Disputations his tale centers on Dionysius II who happened to be a tyrannical king who ruled during the fourth and fifth centuries over the Sicilian city of Syracuse. 

Dionysius was a very rich and powerful man, however despite this fact he was a very unhappy individual. The fact of the matter was that because Dionysius was a tyrant he had racked up quite an enemy’s list of opposition which always occupied his thoughts and always kept him looking over his shoulder. 

Dionysius was so tormented by his fear of being assassinated that he slept in a bedchamber that was surrounded by a moat and he only allowed his own daughters to shave his beard with a razor as he didn’t trust anyone else to get that close to him.   

As Cicero tells the story the tyrant king’s dissatisfaction came to a head one day when a court flatterer named Damocles took it upon himself to shower the king with compliments and made remarks about how great and blissful the king’s life must be. 

However when Dionysius heard this he was annoyed and he posed a question by asking Damocles that if he believed his life was so great then “Do you wish to taste it yourself and make a trial of my good fortune?” 

After Damocles agreed to this trial Dionysius seated him on a golden couch and ordered a host of servants to wait on him. Damocles was spoiled and treated to the best cuts of meat and he was showered with the best perfumes and treated with the best ointments of the time. 

Damocles couldn’t believe his luck, but just as he was getting into the groove of enjoying himself by living the life of a king he noticed that Dionysius had hung a razor-sharp sword from the ceiling directly above his head. As if the presence of this sword wasn’t disturbing enough, what made it even worse is that it was only hanging by a thin single strand of horsehair.

After experiencing this new realization from then on the courtier was in fear of his life which made it impossible for him to enjoy the feasts and the ongoing luxury of having servants to wait on him hand and foot. After the agony of nervously glancing up at the blade on numerous occasions Damocles asked to be excused as he no longer wished to be as fortunate as he perceived the king to be. 

For Cicero this tale involving Dionysius and Damocles represented the idea that those in power always must labor under the specter of anxiety and death. In short, the lesson to take away in this scenario is that because of these circumstances, no one can find happiness who is under such constant apprehensions. (Source: History)

Convenience

Now I want to take a moment to shift gears and to look at another modern day scenario. As you’re reading, or listening to this episode you have the ability to either scroll your Facebook feed, or order your next meal through DoorDash all from the touch of your fingertip probably on the same electronic device you’re using to listen to this very podcast.  

This is certainly a readily available convenience of life that you and I are able to take advantage of due to the technological advancement of our society these days. Of course, the readily available convenience of such things doesn’t come without a little bit of work, at least in the beginning. 

I mean I don’t know about you, but every single time I decide to try to use a particular service through an online site, or app I always have to create an account with a username and a password. Like you I have so many of those accounts I had to create an organized notepad with all of the login information of every single one of these accounts just so I can get back into the account of my choice should the need arise again. 

I personally am not a fan of Amazon from the standpoint of having worked on the seller side of the site in addition to understanding how destructive the company is to the overall fabric of our economic system and to small businesses. However, I have shopped on Amazon in the past and with a functioning Prime account I understand just how careful I need to be in terms of where I click because it’s extremely easy to place an item into the cart, have it ordered, and shipped with what seems like a single unnoticed click sometimes. 

It’s insanely easy to order stuff off of Amazon and because Amazon has gotten so big and so efficient at handling orders, the headache involved with customer returns, and the ever challenging tasks of customer efficiency the popularity of the site has grown strictly due to the convenience they’ve worked to provide for the consumer. 

However, as we’ve learned in the last few years convenience isn’t necessarily a good thing. There is a very large and dangerous price for convenience as well. After all, I’d rather put up with a little bit of inconvenience than have a select few big tech companies grow to the point that they can corner an entire market for providing the majority of goods to society while putting small businesses through the wringer. 

This is especially troubling to see while understanding that most every single one of those small businesses are already struggling trying to figure out how to make it in a horrible stagflationary economy. The big tech corporations have the manpower, resources, and lobby to influence the power players in Washington D.C. to their benefit all the while the mom and pop store get railroaded by a weakened dollar, a lethargic economy, and endless tax and bureaucratic compliance that just keeps squeezing and squeezing every last drop of blood out of the American entrepreneurial body. 

This environment has stifled economic growth, disincentivized the entrepreneurial spirit, and has resulted in the single biggest transfer of wealth to these giant companies from the pandemic that the world has ever seen.