The Dark Studio

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“To hedge effectively, you have to reject the silo mentality and instead embrace the systems thinking mentality.”― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr

Speaking of a silo mentality this is the entire methodology of the current era of the federal government. We’re living in a time that former Naval intelligence officer Jack Posobiec refers to as the era of regime politics. 

The grifting off of the American taxpayer has gradually fed the monster of the federal government and nurtured it into the destructive Leviathan that it currently is which is wreaking havoc daily and is literally at war directly against the American people. 

The silo mentality I’m referring to is the one in which the Administrative State agencies such as the FBI, CIA, DEA, IRS, and so on apparently don’t want to share everything they’re doing with the public’s tax dollars. We can gather this from all of the hearings that have taken place on the hill, yet nobody in the federal government from Fauci to the UFO department wants the American people to know what they are doing with your tax dollars. 

It only becomes an issue when something goes wrong like with the pandemic, or when we see brave whistleblowers come forward to testify and to give the public a little peek behind the curtain with some inside baseball. 

As I’m sure you’re aware the point is that with all of this cloak and dagger garbage going on the public still appears to have short memories which is exactly why this podcast and blog exists. 

This is why I’m using today’s episode to show you exactly why having a short term memory can be absolutely detrimental and very dangerous to you specifically with the picture I’m about to paint for you. Keeping that in mind I want you to know that I’m not here to paint a doom and gloom picture and to try to demoralize you. 

On the contrary I’m here to simply put on display a piece of objective reality for you to observe and through your growth as a Zenith you will be able to connect the dots of reality for yourself so that you can develop into another Emissary of Freedom that this country so desperately needs right now. With that in mind we are the Army of the Awakened and if you support this program you’re well on your way to becoming a Zenith and most importantly an Emissary of Freedom. 

So allow me to begin by first laying the predicate involving the degradation of our culture and how it’s obvious to me (and should be to you) that your government and big business are truly nefarious and hate you. This is not an exaggeration and I will give you firsthand evidence that you can easily observe and see how this trend of cultural rot has come on more and more gradually over time and is now running full steam ahead while being completely up in your face not even trying to hide their hate for you at this point. 

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Boston, Massachusetts

Before I get into the nuts and bolts of this episode here I am going to paint a picture for you that may send a chill down your spine, but just know at the end of all of this I’m going to offer a solution. 

After all, this show is about both identifying problems and solving them so please don’t despair, but rather understand that I want you to stand strong and to be the Zenith that I’m always encouraging you to be in your daily life so that together we can overcome whatever may be coming down the tracks to try to derail us as a nation. 

On that note let’s get into it. 

It was a sunny day back in April of 2013 when many spectators lined the streets of Boston to cheer on several runners in one of America’s most celebrated events involving the Boston marathon. 

However, even though several thousand spectators and many competitive runners were there to enjoy a friendly competition along with the beautiful scenery of the day it quickly turned into a nightmare as two homemade bombs detonated at the finish line. Even more disturbing, these two bombs were timed to detonate on a delay around 12 seconds apart. 

This terrorist attack immediately killed three people and injured 281 others causing severe injuries to some where they sadly left the event that day to soon become amputees. The city was in shock, but the mayhem was only getting started. 

In the wake of this terrorist attack the Boston area went on complete lockdown by the authorities in fear that the perpetrators would strike again. We would later learn that there were two brothers that were responsible for the attacks one being a 26 year old Chechen Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the other being his 19 year old brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. 

For four and half days these two brothers single handedly forced the lockdown of the entire Boston area and managed to stress every level of law enforcement from the local, state, and federal authorities. I remember how shocked I was about this at the time when it happened. 

The older brother would end up dying of injuries from a shootout with the police, but the younger brother was eventually seen by a citizen in his backyard hiding and then was captured by police. 

Now I’m not going to pretend to understand the motives that were associated with these two that were responsible for murdering and injuring so many people. Additionally the four days of chaos involved several other things involving the carjacking and kidnapping of one individual by the brothers who fortunately was able to escape them and eventually issued a call to authorities. (Source: History.com)

There was so much chaos and this continued up until the point when they even cornered the younger brother at the property of the citizen as he was hiding in a boat. Ultimately there would be over a 100 police officers that would converge onto the scene to surround the younger brother. 

It was at this point that one of the police officers would end up firing on the boat without authorization and others, thinking the shot came from the boat, joined in on opening fire towards the suspect. After this pandamonium was settled the police determined that the suspect was still alive using infrared technology from a police helicopter and eventually the suspect emerged and was taken into custody. 

Now why am I going to the trouble of taking you on a little stroll down memory lane to remind you of these two little terrorists from the Boston Marathon in 2013? 

Now before I answer that I don’t want you to misunderstand my message here as this is not just me coming down on the police and law enforcement community. That is not the point to this whatsoever. 

I remember at the time I had a conversation with one of my students who was praising the wonderful job of the authorities and how well they handled this obviously difficult situation at that time. However, I had a more critical and different perspective on the situation that I enlightened him to at that time and I can remember his reaction towards me was one of almost being borderline offended. Again, I wasn’t trying to come down on the police, but merely pointing towards observing objective reality. 

I am pointing to the reality that it only took these two brothers to literally lockdown an entire major city while also straining resources of the local, state, and federal authorities for four and half days. I mean think about that. It was just these two brothers and these two brothers alone that carried out what the nation would consider to be a massive disruption of civilian life along with the fact that they managed to strike fear into the hearts and minds of the public during this time of chaos that they managed to successfully create. 

Once again this is not a criticism of the local police authorities given the circumstances, but let’s take a look at some of the righteous criticism that is deserved in regards to the systems that were in place to allow this to happen. 

First and foremost, we can look at the citizenship of the two brothers. Apparently Tamerlan Tsarnaev passed the US citizenship test just a few months before he helped carry out the Boston Marathon bombings according to heavily redacted Department of Homeland Security documents that were obtained by the Boston Globe. 

Once again, I ask why do we always run into the problem of secrecy whenever we’re trying to get to the bottom of the truth? Obviously I’m referring to the redactions as this is an ongoing frustration as this always seems to be the tactic used to hide the truth from the public in these sorts of situations, but I digress. 

Regardless, according to The Christian Science Monitor the documents were released to the Globe as a result of the Freedom of Information Act and the result that was shown was one where Tamerlan Tsarnaev passed the U.S. citizenship test just a few months prior to his act of terrorism and apparently showed that he passed with only getting one incorrect answer. 

Of course, it also showed with what is public knowledge that he swore his allegiance to the United States and denied any links to terrorism. I guess we all know how much his word is worth at this point. 

Unless you’ve been asleep at the wheel for the past three years then you would know that the cultural rot that we’re seeing now is something that the domestic enemies of the United States aren’t even trying to hide anymore. In fact, the Administrative State’s hatred towards you and myself being U.S. citizens is quite obvious to most everyone right now at this point and time in our history. 

However, in the battle against society’s short-term memory I wanted to highlight this attack from the Boston Marathon bombings to illustrate that the cultural rot and the cracks in our societal and governmental systems were really starting to show more blatantly at this point with this particular event.  

As a big lead off example of the rot starting to show itself within our culture and society it was our Administrative State Media (ASM) that decided that on July 17, 2013 (only three months after the Boston Marathon bombing) Rolling Stone magazine decided to feature the younger brother little terrorist scumbag on the cover of their magazine. (Source: Rolling Stone)

Now Rolling Stone would use the flimsy excuse of doing this by stating that the decision for the cover was in line with traditional journalistic practices. 

As absurd as that statement is, considering the damage the ASM has caused our country, it’s a ridiculous position for Rolling Stone to take. 

Why do I say this? 

The question isn’t whether or not Rolling Stone had the right to post the picture of the terrorist on the cover of their magazine. The question that should be asked is whether it was the right thing to do given that period of time and the event that had just taken place at that time. That’s the distinction here. 

Obviously the ASM always claims they care about the freedom of press, but they certainly don’t mind opposition media being censored for offering an alternative perspective that may conflict with their narrative. I suppose they’re just fine with freedom of the press as long as that freedom solely applies to them, their stories, their markets, and their narrative. Outside of that freedom of the press and free speech itself has no grounds in their world. 

So realistically they do not care for freedom of speech, or freedom of the press, so when they take that position they’re continuing to demonstrate that they’re the biggest hypocrites in the room, yet people still support them over outlets like this one, but I digress. 

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Entropy

In the second law of thermodynamics the concept of entropy involves the measure of the disorder of a system. 

Within a given system entropy describes how much energy is not available to do work. In short, the more disordered a system is this means that the entropy is higher which results in less and less work being done due to the fact that there is less and less of a system’s energy available in order to do the work. (Source: OpenStax)

Basically entropy involves the loss of order. 

Speaking on the topic involving the loss of order this has happened to every civilization throughout history with what is referred to as the collapse of a complex system. Like Rome the collapse of complex systems is happening to the United States right now. 

According to the Roman philosopher Seneca when he wrote to his friend Lucilius he expressed the opinion that life would be much happier if things would decline as slowly as they grew. According to Seneca he noted that unfortunately “increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” 

Just like the second law of thermodynamics points out with entropy this similar concept can also be referred to as the Seneca effect. (Source: Tablet) 

As Seneca points out, the harsh reality surrounding this concept is that it always comes and it can present itself in multiple ways within the construct of our lives. If you think about it you know that when ruin comes in many cases it can be sudden, unpredictable, rapid, and destructive. 

Aside from individual examples ranging from household to household, family to family, or individual to individual the concept of ruin is also true concerning the existence of civilizations. If you can take a moment and look around at the United States you have to ask yourself the question “How could our country be any different?” 

After all, if you can engage in the act of observing objective reality you’d know that our borders are non-existent at this point and human trafficking has now given rise to the United States engaging in the world’s modern day slave trade under the watchful eye of Joe Biden and company. 

As horrific as this is, we are also getting a front row view to the collapse of our currency and probably our monetary and financial systems in a way that we never could have dreamed up over a hundred years ago. 

Like Rome, we are over extended with military bases stationed all over the world in an attempt to play the world’s police even in the face of the majority of American citizens who do not want that role, or vouch for it in the least. 

When you combine this with the fact that there are record homeless American citizens that are starving on our own streets you have to ask the obvious question of Why are we sending billions of dollars to Ukraine in an attempt to secure their borders while we speed up the ruin of our own? Why these Simp Ukraine supporting Americans can’t see this is beyond me. 

According to that well written article in the Tablet concerning the mechanism of collapse it compares the interlinking network to one of those old school popsicle stick bombs we used to make when I was a kid in elementary school. This notion of the popsicle stick bomb, though completely harmless, serves as a great illustration of how an interlinking network of a system is held together while also simultaneously demonstrating how fast it can also come apart. 

You see in the popsicle stick bomb construction you essentially have four popsicle sticks with the two middle sticks being overlapped in the center like the letter X. Solely through the application of leverage you can bend the other two sticks by placing them into a firmly held position by utilizing the force of leverage of each stick against the other at the outer ends of the X and by finally joining the outer two sticks at a single point at the top as the final point of leverage.  

These entertaining little toy popsicle stick bombs have served to irritate grade school teachers across the nation for decades, but for the purpose of this discussion it is the perfect illustration of how systems are reliant on each other because of how they are connected to one another within the function of a civilization. 

The points where the sticks touch are known as nodes and these nodes are connected by the links, or in the case of the stick bomb it would be the sticks themselves. It’s when one of these nodes lets go of a link the collapse moves to another node. This can also be referred to as a domino effect, a cascading failure, or once again we can use the term Seneca effect. All in all, entropy sets in fast on the way to ruin as the order of the system is completely lost in rapid fashion.   

In terms of the Roman Empire’s collapse it’s been a topic that has fascinated historians for quite a long time. 

The longstanding question that many people have frequently asked is Why did it happen? 

Well, like the United States, the Roman Empire was a massive network. This network of trade and services spanned across the Roman Empire in the form of people who traded in a variety of industries related to food, goods, and services. 

Like any industry the driving factor associated with the Roman Empire’s economic system was money. However, in the case of the Roman Empire that money was based on precious metals in the form of silver and gold which were predominantly mined in northern Spain by the Romans. This worked fine as long as the mines were producing what was needed for the empire. 

As long as the Romans could continue to extract the metals from the mines they could afford to pay their military, their bureaucrats, and their workers. However, if you really pause to think about it this was a system that was not one that could be sustained forever. The source of energy that drove the work was the money, but as the money dried up there was less energy available as entropy started to set in. 

After all, mining was expensive and even though they used slave labor to extract the metals from the mines the slaves still required food, shelter, and tools. Sure they could extract many metals from easier more accessible veins, but once those were tapped they would be forced to dig deeper for more cumbersome and less concentrated veins. 

Because of these increasingly difficult demands the operation required more and more manpower, more tools, and more resources in order to sustain the venture. By the third century Anno Domini the mining operation for the Roman Empire had completely collapsed and with it entropy started to set in. 

At this point much of the gold started disappearing. A great deal of it got dispersed to pay for other luxury goods that were located in China such as silk. Sounds familiar, right? On a side note this is another reason domestic manufacturing is so important. 

So getting back on target here the point is that no gold meant no money and no money meant that the Roman Empire couldn’t continue to pay their troops. Since there was no money to pay the troops there were no troops to repel the invading barbarians (like the Visigoths). Again this sounds eerily familiar to the United States right now, right? 

The point is that the financial house of cards came crashing down and there was no money to pay the judges, the bureaucrats, the police, and the workers that were tasked with infrastructure. It’s no surprise why the Roman Empire collapsed when you examine the details. 

The Wrap Up

In short, there are many parallels between the United States and the Roman Empire, but to me the beginning cracks of ruin were really started as far back as WWII with FDR’s New Deal which laid the foundation that grew the Administrative State into the leviathan that it is today. 

However, the cultural rot started to really show itself back in 2013 when those two brothers murdered and maimed those innocent people at the Boston marathon.  Following this tragedy it was only three months later that Rolling Stone magazine gave one of those terrorists plenty of notoriety for his efforts by putting his face on the front cover of their magazine. 

Furthermore, after looking at the extent of damage those two brothers were able to cause by themselves fast forward to now and we know we have over 20 million illegals who have literally invaded our country with an estimated 100,000 of those being Chinese nationals that are young single men of military fighting age. 

If the two brothers managed to cause as much damage as they did back in 2013 how much damage can 100,000 potential bad actors cause here in the states today? Even more disturbingly, will there be enough magazine covers to give them a similar level of notoriety as the Boston marathon bombers if they’re successful? 

Combine this with the fact that, like Rome, we are seeing the money dry up here in the states as our currency is being destroyed right in front of our face with Biden weaponizing it towards Russia and with the Federal Reserve printing literally trillions of dollars at the touch of a button. 

Look, I told you I was going to point towards some hard facts that would send a chill down your spine today, but I also said that I wasn’t here to solely paint a gloom and doom picture. Sure the facts are hard to swallow, but these facts are necessary if we are to seek solutions. 

So on that note I want to hit on those very solutions and talk about how you can hedge and protect yourself against these chaotic forces. Ah that’s right, The Hedge is the title of today’s episode.   

In the world of finance that term Hedge means to take an offsetting position in an asset, or some other investment, in order minimize the price risk, or devaluation, of a current position that may present itself to be riskier given the change of environment. 

Well, when you look at the huge influx of young military age Chinese national single men that have invaded the country I interpret that as being a risky position. However, unlike Roman citizens you being a United States citizen still do have a second amendment right and you should look to maximize your efforts in exercising that right. 

To hedge yourself I don’t mean just deciding to go out and purchase a firearm, but rather I’m referring to the fact that if you do go out to purchase a firearm that you should train to be proficient in using that firearm with a high level of precision and accuracy. To me that’s a smart hedge. 

I’m not giving financial advice at all, but if you’re like me and looking at the destruction of the U.S. dollar through economic warfare and how it’s potentially being used in your investment portfolio to fund Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) with woke companies then perhaps your hedge is to examine that by looking to put your money elsewhere. Once again, I’m not telling you what to do with your money, but I am simply pointing out that if your money is being weaponized against you in a way that you discover for yourself then perhaps you might choose to take action in order to hedge yourself with a different investment. That choice is yours and yours alone, but the environment that we’re in is one you must understand whether you like it or not. 

I know Rome used gold and silver as their primary currency, but those precious metals have a 5000 year track record and are still used today as a hedge on inflation. With the threat of the dollar losing its status as the world’s primary reserve currency I’m personally a believer in diversifying with gold and silver, but I am only speaking for myself when I say that. 

Another area of concern to me is the supply chain system in the United States. Like the popsicle stick bomb I referenced earlier, the nodes of the supply chain are at risk of flying apart which could in turn trigger the Seneca effect on the supply of food, medication, and other goods. 

The longer these Communists within the ranks of our government are in control to me signals that the risks of a supply chain disaster are really high. Therefore, I personally choose to invest in additional food reserves and I also happen to be a hunter. Perhaps investing in some extra food storage is also another smart hedge for you to examine. Once again, that choice is completely up to you. 

In addition to this it’s easy to see how these big corporations in the United States have gone woke and are literally at war with their own customers being the United States citizens. To hedge against this chaos I’m a huge proponent of the parallel patriot economy. As a smart hedge against this woke madness I am choosing to do my best at supporting Freedom First and America First businesses as much as I possibly can. Perhaps this is something you may choose to look at as a hedge for you and your family. I’m not trying to issue a shameless plug, but if you’re in search of a Freedom First business you can choose to support this platform. 

The bottom line to all of this is that in the face of all of this chaos the TRUE hedge against all of this risk is you and you alone. 

You must work to secure up all of your own nodes and personal supplies by making yourself more independent from the very system that is causing the ruin of society. We have made ourselves too dependent on the very institutions that are now actively working to accelerate us towards ruin. 

The communists are actively rolling out the red carpet for entropy, but you don’t have to choose to lose order in your own household. 

This is exactly why I adopted the tagline for this show pointing towards helping you to be a Zenith during these chaotic times. 

Of course, the biggest hedge of all is putting your faith in God and acting on your faith by helping as many people as you can.

I hope you enjoyed today’s article/podcast.

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“Political correctness is a war on noticing.”― Steve Sailer

The culture war and Cultural Marxism are real and if you don’t see that by now you are truly a victim of demoralization, or more accurately a victim of what KGB defector Yuri Besemenov would refer to as ideological subversion.  

Now if you’re suffering from political indoctrination you might read this and ask Brandon where’s your proof? 

Well first you have to be capable of observing reality and in observing objective reality you MUST be capable of looking at what is actually happening in the world with respect to what people actually say while simultaneously being able to look at exactly what they do in regards to their actions.  

I’m going to say this one more time so that you can implant this into your memory. Cultural Marxism is real. To give you a concrete example of this regarding the Orwellian style definition of words if you read Wikipedia’s definition of Cultural Marxism they define it as referring to a far-right conspiracy theory that misrepresents the Frankfurt School as being responsible for modern progressive movements, identity politics, and political correctness. 

It goes on to say that there’s an ongoing and intentional academic and intellectual effort to subvert Western society via a planned culture war that undermines the Christian values of traditional conservatism and seeks to replace this with culturally more liberal values. (Source: Wikipedia) 

Now when I look at this definition presented by Wikipedia I’m literally thinking about how those so-called more liberal values have resulted in literally destroying our currency, how those values have accelerated and assisted a mass invasion of our country, how it’s advocated for endless wars all over the world, and how it’s resulted in the development of the modern day slave trade by turning our borders over to the cartels and human smugglers. 

With every single thing that I just mentioned in terms of the actions of the things that are actually happening from the invasion of the country to the human trafficking these all have been brought about by our current Communist/ Progressive government that has given us three years of the real world application of these so-called “liberal values” as Wikipedia likes to point out. 

Aside from Wikipedia’s attempt to throw a metaphorical information grenade onto the definition of Cultural Marxism with their pathetic label of calling it a “far-right conspiracy theory that misrepresents the Frankfurt School” they did a pretty good job of getting the rest of the meaning of Cultural Marxism correct. 

So having cleared all of that up, why exactly was Cultural Marxism created and why are there institutions like the Frankfurt school that push forward these stupid societal ideas? 

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The short answer is that it’s about social control that serves to feed a political movement for a given party within a system of government in order to carry out the social desires by utilizing the levers of institutions within that society. 

This all sounds eerily familiar to the cultural rot that has infected our major institutions here in the United States, right? 

You see the prevailing narrative is that those who desire control at all cost will use the victimhood narrative in order to divide families, divide neighbors, divide people, divide communities, and divide nations. 

If you don’t believe me then all you have to do is switch on your TV to MSNBC and if you happen to be a Patriot that loves your country MSNBC has labeled you a Fascist, Hillary Clinton has labeled you a deplorable, and James Carvill (former political consultant to Bill Clinton) has labeled Christian Nationalists as being the biggest threat that this country has ever seen. Yes, as absurd as that sounds, Carvill actually said that. 

You see, these Cultural Marxists love to use an old psychological technique that I’ve covered several times here on this show that is known as projection. 

Psychological projection is defined as one that projects their undesirable feelings and emotions onto someone else rather than dealing with those unwanted feelings directly themselves.  

So when Hillary Clinton, James Carvill, or Joe Scarborough resort to using these labels to criticize 50 to 70% of the country it’s because they are ACTUALLY the very things that they are accusing everyone else of being. 

So the question is why do these people do this? I mean aside from dividing and conquering why do they resort to such sick and pathetic means to achieve that desired control? Instead why do they not just work to defeat their opposition in the arena of ideas by winning over hearts and minds? 

The short answer is because they can’t win in the arena of ideas so they must resort to direct personal attacks, censorship, and the suppression of the ideas of their perceived opposition. 

The reason they can’t win in the arena of ideas is because many people within the establishment system of media, universities, and the corporate world aren’t 360 Individuals, but are rather what are known as system operatives. 

The System Operative vs The 360 Individual

A while back I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine over the phone. This particular friend is someone who’s another intellectual powerhouse when it comes to the events of the day and can bring clarity to the reasons why all of this chaos is happening. 

Regardless, we have had many conversations over the years discussing the cultural and political landscape of what’s going on in the world and why such horrible things are happening in our country right now.  

In one of our conversations he referenced a term he had heard from Victor Davis Hanson referring to the reason why Donald Trump is such a powerhouse that has been able to literally take on the entire apparatus of the United States government from the media, to the judicial system, and the corrupt intelligence communities. 

The reason Trump has been so successful with winning over the hearts and minds of Americans, according to Hanson, is because he refers to Trump as a well rounded 360 Individual.   

In other words, a 360 Individual has vast experience in the world and has a wide range of tremendous skills along with being able to interact and engage with multiple groups of people from every kind of background you can think of. 

In short, a 360 Individual doesn’t necessarily have a huge marketing department, a consulting team, or a media network for themselves for that matter. They have learned to figure things out for themselves because they’ve been forced to figure things out for themselves in their lifetime due to having run a successful business, or businesses in Trump's case, and this makes them more well rounded, more capable, and more resourceful. 

A 360 man or woman has courage because they don’t care about being labeled or attacked by their opposition because they believe in actual change for the better. 

I’m always amazed at how many people for years, particularly so-called Republicans and libertarians, have complained about how our government needs a drastic change to benefit the American citizen, but when someone like Trump comes along to ACTUALLY implement REAL change some of these people complain about the process because it doesn’t go so smoothly. 

Have you ever noticed this with some of your friends and family? 

I mean when people complain about how he used to post on X (formerly Twitter) I would just scratch my head and ask them if they’ve paid attention to anything that’s literally happening in the world right now. 

I mean do you expect the current power structure to merely just hand over the keys to the country to a new leader like Trump after having literal decades of grifting off the American taxpayer through endless wars at the expense of American blood and treasure? I believe you have to ask yourself what you’re more offended by today. 

Are you more offended by the guy that publishes a mean tweet, or the deranged individuals that have controlled the levers of power for decades and have literally enriched themselves at the expense of American lives through wars that they are responsible for getting our country into? 

To me this is as clear as day and night, but I have found myself scratching my head over many people who complain about how Trump fights. Personally, I’m just grateful that we finally got an ACTUAL fighter to implement ACTUAL change in the country. In my view this change has been long overdue. 

So now that we’ve established what makes up a 360 Individual and what is it that I mean when I use the term system operative? 

A system operative is simply a person that is part of a large established system that works within their individual part to maintain the function of that system. A system operative is typically a worker within the corporate or governmental structure that does their part to make sure that the status quo of the system that’s in place is maintained due to their efforts. 

In short, the system operative is the opposite of a 360 Individual. A system operative cannot function like a 360 Individual because they don’t possess the vast experience, interpersonal acumen, and problem solving skills that a 360 Individual possesses due to their vastly different backgrounds associated with risk assessment. 

As an example, a system operative is less likely to take on the risk of starting a business because they are more risk averse versus the 360 Individual. A 360 Individual is more likely to take on risks because they’ve spent a lifetime learning, assessing, and taking on risks in order to build confidence in their abilities to manage risks and have the knowledge and experience to do so. 

The system operative may be greatly rewarded financially along with various rankings and titles within the system that they work, but they are always limited in terms of their scope and understanding of how the world works because they spend the majority of their time only viewing the world inside of the system in which they operate.  

A system operative prefers to solely engage in playing with house money (that would be only other people’s money) where a 360 Individual will literally put their own personal money where their mouth is to back up their venture. 

The 360 Individual is always learning. After a long day the 360 Individual will take the time to read over news stories, current events, and refresh themselves on events in history, philosophy, and finance. They may even take up learning a new trade. 

The point is that the 360 Individual more closely represents a Renaissance man or woman where the system operative is more of a worker bee that carries out the task of its organization. 

When looking at the corrupt media, the corrupt judicial system, and the corrupt Administrative State of government the problem is that the system is full of…well you probably guessed it…system operatives. 

However, with Donald Trump coming along he has shed a huge MAGA spotlight onto this problem and more and more Americans are realizing that we need to replace the system operatives that make up the overwhelming majority of the Administrative State with 360 Individuals. 

The Lion Tamer and The Chair

In looking at all of the animals in the wild there’s no question why the lion is known as the king of the jungle. 

Lions are incredibly powerful animals and they can travel in numbers consisting of a group known as the pride. Within that pride you will have both male and female lions along with the smaller cubs. The lionesses rear their cubs together and cubs can suckle from any female with milk. 

In addition to this and as you're probably well aware, lions are incredibly powerful animals. A male lion can weigh as much as 190 kg (418 lbs.) and a female can weigh in at 126 kg (277 lbs.).  The pride is very powerful as a unit and aside from being some of the most powerful animals in all of nature they are also very resourceful creatures. 

Lions are intelligent and typically do a great deal of their hunting at night as their eyes have adapted to the dark. Furthermore, it’s incredibly impressive that lions will also do a great deal of their hunting during storms so that their prey have a more difficult time sensing that they are anywhere in the vicinity of their space due to the noise from wind and rain, as well as the fact that the soft ground makes for an even more stealthy environment for the big cat when stalking its prey. (Source: WWF)

I wanted to summarize some of those interesting facts about lions prior to sharing a quick short story with you regarding the Lion Tamer and The Chair. I am including the story here along with the link to credit the website it is published on called Purpose Focus Commitment.  

The story begins by talking about a master lion tamer who was at the end of his career as he was ready to retire. Because of this it was decided by the circus management and the lion tamer that they would make the decision to start the search and training of his successor. This process would require a lot of work and focus for the new tamer to be able to control the lion. There were hundreds of candidates, but after some time had passed they finally made their selection with a new young student and the training began. 

With the first lesson, the master explained to the student that most courageous lion tamers use only two tools to control the fierce beasts prowling around the cage. The two tools of choice consisted of a whip and a chair. As the mentor presented this to his new apprentice he could see that the young man was taken by surprise and noticing this the mentor asked him “Which of the two tools do you think is most valuable to the tamer?” The student answered, “Surely it would be the whip.” To which the master replied, “No. The most important is the chair, but more specifically, the four legs of the chair.”

After being told this the young student stood there baffled. “A chair,” said the student, “that’s odd! But why a chair? And why do the four legs matter?” The master lion tamer replied “A lion can easily overpower, kill, and maul a person. However, it’s only easy for the lion to do so if it can focus on a singular object or just one person. The lion tamer uses the chair as a means of distraction. When the lion is faced with the four legs of the chair, or stool, it tries to focus on all four points at once which causes the lion to be confused so it just stands there frozen and unable to focus. Because of this the lion tamer remains relatively safe as long as he has the chair to use for this purpose.” (Source: Purpose Focus Commitment) 

The Wrap Up

So why did I go to the trouble to hit you with all those interesting facts about lions and to then segue into the story about the lion tamer and the chair? 

I know you know that everything has a reason when it comes to the function of this podcast and if you’re thinking that now then your assessment is correct. 

You see, the other day I had a subscriber send me a quote that said It’s no longer our job to awaken the sheep, but rather it’s our time to awaken the lions.  

With that in mind there’s an important observation to make in regards to how our society has been lulled to sleep and led into a state of confusion now for many years by our government, media, universities, and just about every other major institution in our society. 

To help you connect the dots these institutions have produced, if they have produced anything at all, a weak culture that has coddled generations of kids and young adults, pandered to the mentally ill, and created a society with a mindset of “dependency,” instead of a culture of more rugged individualism. 

Just like the story of the lion tamer and the chair, the tamer used the chair to confuse the lion much in the same way our institutions have confused much of our population now for generations and I’ve seen this change occur firsthand. In fact you don’t have to go back that much further in time to observe this as the 1980’s were the decade where our country was a nation that was full of lions working together like a pride and the world knew without a doubt that the United States was the king of the jungle. 

Fast Forward to the current day and we caught a glimpse of the start of the awakening of the lions between 2016-2020 when we had a 360 Individual in Donald Trump to take over the White House. However, as soon as we witnessed the corruption of our election system you can easily see how the longstanding tamers of our society are desperately trying to maintain hold of that chair in order to keep our society confused once again like the lion in that circus. 

This is exactly why I’m here to tell you about this and to illustrate to you about how much power you possess as an individual. You can be a lion and once you realize that with your discipline, your action, and your merit then you can optimize yourself to be a 360 Individual and it will become clear to you that the tamer’s chair is simply there to confuse you and that the tamer is not threat you’ve traditionally perceived him to be. 

Right now our world doesn’t need anymore system operatives. 

We need lions.

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.

One way you can do this right now is by joining me and giving me a like here on Public SQ. This platform is directly tied to the support of a freedom first movement by allowing you to line up your purchasing power with businesses that share your values.

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“I didn’t know what made people want to be friends. I didn’t know what made people attractive to one another. I didn’t know what underlay social interactions.”--Ted Bundy

After watching the behaviors and actions of people in the media and government over the past three years I’ve come to believe that there are way more mentally sick people walking the streets, talking in front of the TV cameras, and ranting on social media than I ever would have previously guessed in my wildest dreams.  

This is a disturbing realization, but regardless it is the reality of the current societal situation that we all find ourselves in. 

You’ve heard of the terms sociopath and psychopath in today’s world, but what do these terms mean? Is there a difference between these two terms? 

I want to focus a bit more on the psychopath rather than the sociopath today, but I want to take a second to highlight a few differences between the two for more clarity. 

Today the words psychopathy and sociopathy are terms that imply an antisocial personality disorder. Given that these two carry this characteristic they may seem like the same thing, but even though they overlap and share commonalities these two do differ in some ways. (Source: Forbes Health)

So what is a sociopath? 

This particular term was covered back in the days of behaviorism in the arena of psychology and psychological theory, but over time it has fallen out of use. 

To put this into a more literal context according to Kent Kiehl, Ph.D you cannot get funding from the NIH to study ‘sociopaths.’ On a side note I suppose the Dr. Fauci’s of the world aren’t issuing those grants for others to potentially learn more about them, but I digress. Regardless, Keihl is a neuroscientist studying brain imaging, psychopathy, and other psychotic disorders in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

According to Kiehl when the term was in use it was essentially believed that people were born as blank slates and as a result they were shaped by their environment and the social forces surrounding them resulted in a good or bad personality outcome. 

However, according to Kiehl this view was determined to be incorrect and, as focus shifted to increasing accuracy and reliability in diagnosis over time, the term “sociopathy” was dropped from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) roughly 20 years ago. (Source: Forbes Health)

So what is a psychopath? 

Psychopathy is also not a term that is an official diagnosis per the DSM-5. However, the term psychopathy remains a term in psychology today that points to those individuals who display high levels of callousness and unemotional behavior. It also applies in the same way to those who exhibit impulsiveness and developmental antisocial traits, that involve outright destructive and aggressive behavior. 

When it comes to the symptoms of psychopathy they generally appear in early childhood and as the individual ages throughout life it directly impacts all areas of an individual’s life. This would include relationships with family, friends, and colleagues at both school and work environments.

In short, traits of psychopathy overlap with symptoms of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) which involves a mental health condition that consists of traits involving irresponsible, impulsive, and criminal behavior. (Source: FHE Health)

Now an interesting statistic by the Frontiers of Psychology from 2021 makes the claim that about 1.2% of the adult population throughout society is walking around with psychopathy. Those who are plagued by this mental and behavioral illness tend to display antisocial behaviors. 

Some characteristics of the antisocial behaviors might include a lack of empathy and the disregard for the well-being and emotions of others. With such behavior it’s easy to understand how this would be problematic for these people and those they have relationships with in their daily lives as it’s a huge struggle, and perhaps even an impossibility in some cases, to connect and trust the world around them. 

As I read over the details concerning the traits and characteristics of sociopaths and psychopaths it seems to me that there’s a lot of overlap, but I found that the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) presented in the Forbes Health article seemingly clarifies this with a scoring scale to determine whether someone can be classified as a psychopath. 

This assessment essentially includes a list of 20 items of which any given individual can be rated on a scale of zero to two based on how much the amount of their behavior and personality matches the description. This basically results in two primary scales with one measuring the level of emotional detachment while the other gives measurement of the level of antisocial behavior. 

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These all combine for a total score and the highest that one can score on this PCL-R test is a 40, but only a score of 30 is needed for someone to be classified as a psychopath. 

The items of the PCL-R test from the Forbes Health article include the following: 

* Glibness/superficial charm

* Grandiose sense of self-worth

* Need for stimulation

* Pathological lying

* Conning/manipulative

* Lack of remorse or guilt

* Shallow affect

* Callous/lack of empathy

* Parasitic lifestyle

* Poor behavioral controls

* Promiscuous sexual behavior

* Early behavioral problems

* Lack of realistic, long-term goals

* Impulsivity

* Irresponsibility

* Failure to accept responsibility

* Many short-term relationships

* Juvenile delinquency

* Revocation of conditional release (meaning someone was granted a conditional release from prison and that release has been revoked.)

* Criminal versatility

Now according to the Forbes Health article for a patient to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder they must display a “persistent disregard for the rights of others.” 

Now to me that last line is exactly why I wanted to talk about this topic in regards to the culture of today’s media landscape and the institutional rot that both you and I can see on display right in front of our faces on a constant basis. 

As you’re very familiar with a point I’m always hammering away on with this platform, information warfare is at the tip of the spear at making literally everything in our society happen. 

Keep in mind that everything is a narrative including this platform. However, this platform was created out of the need of being a counter-narrative to the Fascists/Communists narratives that our society is hit with by the Administrative State Media (ASM) news cycle on a constant day to day basis. 

The process of Narrative vs. Counter-Narrative serves as the fighters inside the arena of information warfare that I’ve frequently referred to lately as Thunderdome. 

Now having said that, what do psychopaths have to do with the media, our other institutions, and this very discussion? 

Well, I mentioned Fauci earlier, but to use another example let’s look at the behavior of the media and almost literally every other major so-called scientific community group back when the pandemic was first raging and how they responded and what they told both you and me at the time.   

To pick a single item out of many, let's look at their behavior towards the recommended solution of using Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin as a treatment option for the virus. Both of these were proven to be highly effective against the virus, yet the production and the voices advocating for these were completely mocked, shut down, censored, and attacked by many people in the media, in medicine, and by several people on my social media feeds. 

On a personal note I remember how shocked I was that people were all the sudden advocating for censorship like a bunch of authoritarians that just popped up all over my newsfeed. It was one of the most disgusting and infuriating things I’ve ever personally experienced and it’s a huge reason that this podcast and blog exists today. I started this platform out of the desire to metaphorically contribute to pounding those people’s voices and their authoritarian attitudes back into the stone age where it belongs. 

After all, this is the United States of America which is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave and all I remembered seeing on that day was a bunch of cowardly authoritarians that were calling for censorship and othering everyone who disagreed with their position just because the TV told them so. This was insanity. I couldn’t let that stand. 

To me these people’s actions literally resulted in the killing of people who could have had a solution to their illness, but instead had the rug ripped out from under them before they ever realized it. This was the case because these authoritarian psychopaths were constantly displaying a FULL disregard towards the rights of those who were sick by silencing the voices of those who were trying to help them. The same thing is happening to this platform now three years later and as I am talking to you right now I’m still dealing with a restricted Facebook account and am locked out of my X (formerly Twitter) account. 

It’s pretty obvious to me that The American Psychopaths are very present in our modern society. Even though the Frontiers of Psychology claim that 1.2% of the population are walking around our streets with psychopathy I would bet that a large percentage of that 1.2% are working for the media, the NIH, the CDC, the FBI, the CIA, and many of the other three letter agencies that make up the Administrative State. 

Dexter Morgan

Now in my previous episode titled The Absence of A Conscience Round I talked about what conscience means. 

To recap your conscience is defined as that inner voice that is viewed as a guide to help you understand the difference between right and wrong behavior. The way I interpret this for myself is sort of hearing my own voice, or a version of my inner voice, that communicates with me whenever I’m faced with certain decisions where I have to weigh the difference in what I interpret as right or wrong given the circumstance. 

Perhaps you share this similar trait, but if you don’t then this article will attempt to address such circumstances in others with such a condition. Now I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but I understand right from wrong and I can read and interpret the meaning of words so let’s dive into this a little deeper. 

On that note, according to the traits of a psychopath concerning the conscience when looking at extreme cases of psychopathy these people exhibit, or at least give the impression of a total lack of conscience. (Source: APA PsycNet)

Now in the way that I just explained to you in terms of my experience with my own conscience I would say that this explanation of those people who give the impression of a total lack of conscience probably lack that inner voice altogether, or perhaps it’s just distorted in some way. 

Regardless, this is an intriguing discovery in terms of how our minds work. I mean as I described to you my inner voice, and after reading that people with extreme cases of psychopathy lack that inner voice, that’s a hard thing for me to imagine. I mean slow down and really think about that for a moment. It’s a complex scenario when you really think about the fact that some people are walking around and they lack their inner voice to tell them right from wrong. That’s a wild realization.  

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You know what this discussion of the conscience reminded me of when I thought about it? 

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the hit TV series Dexter, but this is exactly what this topic reminded me of and it also points to another interesting question that the TV show Dexter brings to the forefront concerning this discussion on conscience. 

You see in the TV show the main character Dexter Morgan works for the Miami police department as a crime scene blood spatter expert who also happens to be a serial killer. That’s right, if you’re not familiar with this show it’s got quite an interesting storyline that will keep you on edge. 

However, Dexter’s adoptive father was also a cop that had found him at a horrific crime scene when he was a young child where his mother had been killed. This trauma obviously impacted Dexter and the cop that was working that case was Harry Morgan. 

Harry would end up adopting Dexter as his son, but as Dexter got older Harry would notice that Dexter would exhibit certain traits that were consistent with killers. Harry would take note of Dexter’s behavior where he would demonstrate an interest in killing and at a young age Harry could tell that this was something that would only grow inside of Dexter over time.  

However, in the show Harry is only presented to us (the viewers) as either a memory, or as a voice of reason as he appears to Dexter when Dexter is faced with difficult life scenarios and high pressure situations. Harry only appears to the audience in this form because he is deceased. 

You see in the series Harry comes to realize that he can’t stop the sinister urges that he noticed growing inside of Dexter so he decided that perhaps he could channel Dexter’s urges for wanting to kill by teaching Dexter a code to live by in order to have Dexter only target and kill other serial killers. This code would also serve as a blanket of protection over Dexter to keep him in line so that he wouldn’t get caught by authorities and being a cop Harry knew the code would be effective in working to Dexter’s advantage in this way as long as Dexter would honor the code. 

As the series plays out we can see that Dexter would honor the code and if a scenario of a killing were called into question Harry would appear to Dexter in order to guide him (as his conscience) to walk him through honoring the code and making the right decision. In this part of the show the appearance of Harry to Dexter suggests that Dexter has a conscience. 

Now since Dexter is a serial killer one might automatically think that he’s a psychopath and we’ve established that psychopaths, at least in extreme cases, lack that inner voice, or conscience. Now granted Dexter is a make believe character, but for the purpose of this discussion to me this suggests that Dexter is a serial killer with a conscience. 

Well according to the FHE Health Restore article not all serial killer behavior is based solely on sociopathic or psychopathic traits, but also there are social and environmental influences, traumatic circumstances, abusive experiences, and mental illness. 

So on that note and as a quasi-layman I suppose Dexter could be a serial killer and still have Harry speak to him as his voice of reason and not necessarily be a psychopath, or a sociopath. I suppose he could have some level of Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). After all, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Charles Manson were diagnosed with ASPD which involves overlapping traits along with the checklist of a psychopath. 

However, I suppose the only way to be certain about the psychopathic diagnosis would be to have a professional run the PCL-R test to find out, but then again Dexter is a made up character so that wouldn’t work, but the same observation applies to anyone who might share Dexter’s qualities in the real world. 

On that note, why did I decide to jump into the make believe world of Dexter Morgan to hypothetically discuss whether or not Dexter has a conscience and whether or not he is a psychopath? 

Well the truth is that the character of Dexter Morgan may or may not be a psychopath, however he carries many traits of a psychopath and in recognizing those traits as outlined in the PCL-R checklist I covered earlier I can see with my best estimate that Dexter carries about 9 of the 20 traits that were in that list. 

As best I could tell those would include the following items from the PCL-R checklist: 

1. Glibness/Superficial charm

3. Need For Stimulation

4. Pathological lying

5. Conning/ manipulative

7. Shallow affect

8. Callous/ lack of empathy

10. Poor behavioral controls

12. Early behavioral problems

20. Criminal versatility

Now that I’ve established how many items of the PCL-R apply to the serial killer Dexter Morgan I also made another interesting discovery concerning this list and how it applies to other real life personalities in media and government. 

For instance, I mentioned Anthony Fauci earlier in this episode and I can already see that the likes of people like him and most of the personalities at MSNBC surpass even Dexter on the number of items you can check off the list of the PCL-R assessment. Here I’ve totaled 12 items for Fauci which gives him three more than Dexter Morgan in my previous example and these are only the items that you and I can access with public knowledge. Who knows how many more could be added to the list if we knew more about Fauci’s personal life? 

For Fauci alone these would include the following items…

1. Glibness/Superficial charm

2. Grandiose sense of self-worth

3. Need For Stimulation

4. Pathological lying

5. Conning/ manipulative

6. Lack of remorse or guilt

7. Shallow affect

8. Callous/ Lack of empathy

9. Parasitic lifestyle (As a side note I included this because he’s a bureaucrat that grifts off the American taxpayer and abuses his position of power)

15. Irresponsibility

16. Failure to accept responsibility

20. Criminal versatility

The Wrap Up

The point is that our society is plagued by people in power who are mentally sick. There’s no question about this and whether or not the whole lot of The American Psychopaths in media and government are all psychopaths is beside the point. The point is that they all carry many similar traits and all you have to do is be willing to observe reality in order to see it. 

It doesn’t even require you to watch a TV show about an imaginary serial killer who lives by code to further his survival in the world by helping him to evade capture and to channel his curse for vigilante justice. It doesn’t require you to do that at all in order to see the psychopathic nature of the likes of Anthony Fauci and MSNBC because unlike Dexter these people don’t exhibit an inner voice of reason because I’ve not seen them be reasonable to the American public over the past several years in the least. 

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In fact, all I’ve seen is these people browbeat the American public and make the claim that the public should always follow the science. Heck, Fauci even proclaimed that “I am the science.” 

Dexter Morgan may not be a real person, but at least in his imaginary world he has Harry as his inner voice of reason. Contrast that with the real world concerning the likes of Fauci and most of the personalities on MSNBC and tell me where you see evidence they possess an inner voice of reason at all.

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.

One way you can do this right now is by joining me and giving me a like here on Public SQ. This platform is directly tied to the support of a freedom first movement by allowing you to line up your purchasing power with businesses that share your values.

In order for BOTH you and me to influence and strengthen our society we must not stay idle so please make sure you hit the subscribe and share buttons here below.

Spreading messages like this one is how we influence our culture and I need your help in order to do it.

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“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”― Hannah Arendt

In a world that is spinning out of control could you imagine being one of those individuals that was a proponent of the nefarious government mandates and narratives that ushered in all of this chaos? 

If you answered No to that question then I’d say you and I are on the same page and we are both of the same intellectual construct. I find myself scratching my head over several of these people wondering what goes through their head when they act surprised at seeing the financial institutions going into chaos while inflation is burning through household savings like a forest fire that is raging out of control. 

After all, it’s not as if the actions that have caused these things are not blatantly obvious to those who understand how the federal reserve printing endless amounts of money combined with a federal government that outspends even the drunkest of the drunken sailors has led to this financial apocalypse that we’re all facing. 

I mean you can sit there reading, or listening to this blog and podcast, and you will get a steady flow of accurately sourced information and hopefully you learn something from the content. However, if you do learn something and are armed with the heavy artillery of accurate information then what do you find yourself doing next? 

For the past several years I’ve heard from many different people that claim to love what I’m doing with this blog and podcast, yet in the same breath they say they must be careful with spreading the information out of worry they may be fired from their job. They have also expressed concern over the fact that the corporate world is trying to discriminate against them due to their worldview and political beliefs. 

To me it should go without saying that the fear of being othered should be motivation enough to act courageous in this cultural, informational, and economic war, but if it isn’t then take a moment to consider the following. 

I understand the risks very well, yet here I am talking to you about all of this. You may recognize that and under your breath you may be asking yourself Well Brandon, why do you do it? 

You might be thinking: Brandon, after all, you do talk about being censored and canceled from various platforms frequently so why are you doing this? 

That’s a fair question, but if you have to ask then you don’t recognize the problem you’re facing and the actual environment that you’re currently living in. 

The reality is that if you’re more concerned about the here and now than you are about the next 12 months then you certainly do not understand the environment you’re living in. 

If you’re thinking it’s a good decision to lay low and hopefully not rock the boat because you want to appease the authoritarians here and now then you’re only guaranteeing a national death and quite frankly only prolonging your own for a few more months.  

However, if you can embrace the most important virtue in courage right here and now to the best of your ability and get involved as an activist to save your country you may hit some turmoil here in the present, but you’d be investing in the salvation of this Republic. That’s right, by getting involved now chances are in the next 12 months you’ll be putting yourself in an even better position in life than you currently are at this very moment. . 

You’ve heard the old saying that There are no guarantees in life except death and taxes, however I’d add a third guarantee to that list and that third element would be the fact that your personal inaction, or action will yield a result that is deserved in your lifetime. 

I mean if you don’t believe me you prove this to yourself every single day. After all, to use a sound example you pay your electric bill to keep the heat and the lights on. Sure there are outages at times, but at least in the current societal environment we are living in, those outages are most likely the exception and not the rule, maybe with the exception of being a California resident, but I digress. 

Now if you were unable to pay that bill due to some unfortunate reason then you know the lights and heat get shut off. In this instance you’re living out a clear cut example of cause and effect every single day you awaken and that cause and effect is a direct result of your daily action, or inaction to pay your electric bill regardless of the reasons involving why you can, or why you can’t. . 

When it comes to fighting for your country in this modern era your action, or inaction still also stand the chance to also yield a result that is desired, or undesired and in this current environment we’re living in it literally may involve the act of keeping your power on. When talking about the fact that what you’re living through right now in the United States is a full blown attempt at communist revolution I am being dead serious about the prospect of you being able to keep your lights on. 

Milo of Croton

One of the most renowned wrestling names in antiquity is the Greek athlete known as Milo of Croton. Aside from wrestling Milo’s name is also proverbial for extraordinary strength. 

Milo flourished in the 6th century BCE on the Olympiad in the sport of wrestling and was a figure that led a life that stories of legend are made of. 

Milo was a greatly honored native of Croton (now Crotone,Calabria), an Achaean Greek colony that is located in southern Italy. Here Milo also led the Crotoniate army to victory defeating the Sybarites (Greeks from Sybaris, also located in southern Italy) around the time of 510 BCE.(Source: Britannica) 

In the Greek national games Milo racked up wins in 32 wrestling competitions. However, according to legend, one of the most magnificent stories regarding Milo in my personal opinion can be found in his approach to training in order to prepare himself for the Olympics. 

“Be the first to see what you see as you see it.”--Robert Bresson

The other day I shared a humorous meme that said GenX-The only generation that became 30 at the age of 10 and still is 30 at the age of 50. 

Admittedly this made me chuckle and being a proud GenXer I had to share this out with the rest of my community on social media. 

As an old friend used to tell me, the key to humor and storytelling is when it involves a touch of the familiar. As that relates to this meme I shared I would say that all of us GenXers are familiar with that sentiment. 

If there’s one thing that us GenXers understand it’s that we had to take on many adult responsibilities at a very young age as that’s just the way things were when we were kids. 

Sure, many of us enjoyed a relatively normal childhood, but even though we were taught responsibilities at a young age this also allowed us on many occasions to experience having more true freedom in our lives at a very young age as well. 

This has no doubt been an issue as we enter into this modern day culture because many people in my generation are realizing that many of the people in the generations that came up after us lacked that knowledge of taking on responsibilities and this is why we are seeing many members of younger generations starting to be a burden on society. 

Now before you get angry and click off of this episode, slow down and digest what I just said. If you happen to be in a younger generation than GenX and the shoe doesn’t fit you in terms of this description then there’s obviously no need for you to get offended. If the shoe doesn’t fit I’d assume you wouldn’t find offense in the comment anyways, but then again there’s a lot of people in our culture these days that thrive off of the notion of being offended. 

In fact, many organizations and institutions have turned that entire sentiment of the victimhood mindset into a very profitable, although very destructive to society, business model. 

I’ve come to realize that in today’s society there’s an unbridgeable gap between two diametrically opposed positions regarding the human condition in this current environment. 

As I alluded to in my quote about GenX the issue with where this unbridgeable divide began in our culture with a significantly greater number of individuals within these younger generations is due to the lack of discipline and structure. 

Now don’t get me wrong there’s plenty of blame to go around for this in terms of the cause. I mean I understand that I said the cause was a lack of discipline and structure, but the question of what caused that lack of discipline and structure still has to be asked. 

So what caused this lack of discipline and structure? 

The lack of discipline and structure is caused by a lack of discipline and structure. I know that sounds funny, but if you take a moment to think about it then it makes perfect sense. After all, bad ideas, bad ideology, and bad habits are always passed down from one generation to the next. In many ways bad ideas can take root and spread faster than good ideas. 

If you need your memory jogged on how fast bad ideas can spread then all you have to do is look back at when the government said it would be two weeks to slow the spread of the pandemic, or how endless wars in foreign countries without congressional approval is in the interest of national security, or what about the idea that becoming trade partners with a Communist regime that wants to destroy us is in our best economic interests. The list of horrible ideas spreading like wildfire has been something that has proven to be a real pandemic in of itself here in the United States for quite some time. 

So why does this trend of bad destructive societal ideas continue to happen on repeat in the United States like a broken record that keeps playing the same horrible song over and over again?  

Well one of those bad ideas serving to be a major catalyst for causing the lack of discipline and structure more so than all the rest is the acceptance of collectivism within our culture over the idea of individuality. 

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Collectivism vs. Individuality

Ayn Rand warned us about collectivism, but if you’re not familiar with that term then what does that word collectivism mean? 

Collectivism is the position and practice that involves the belief that the group should have priority over all individuals that are in the group. In such instances many who subscribe to collectivism will often use the phrase It’s for the greater good in order to subvert the rights of individuals in exchange for ceding over more control to the group which is also known as the state. 

Collectivism is the opposite of Individuality where the creation of the United States was founded on protecting the world’s smallest minority being the individual. That’s right, the founders of the United States set up the country around the central tenet being the protection of the individual which boils down to individual rights which consists of rules that the government (aka the collective) should not be allowed to violate or break. 

However, in this current societal dilemma we find ourselves in the Communists have infiltrated our government from top to bottom and the Communists do not care about the individual (You) because their entire belief system is centered on the collective. Therefore, they want to destroy the individual and erase civil liberties so the collective can be established as the ruling overseeing authority of society.  

This gap between collectivism and individuality is an unbridgeable gap that will serve as the dichotomy of the human condition. The only question left to ask is that how will this dichotomy resolve itself in the context of our society and the way we will live moving forward? 

Well you might not like hearing this, but the reality is that this situation will only be able to resolve itself with a great conflict. 

Now when I say the word conflict am I referring to a kinetic war? 

Perhaps, but I hope that isn’t the case because the process of politics is supposed to allow for the necessary platform for grievances to be settled peacefully between different groups of people without having to resort to violence through war and conflict. That’s the entire point of people running for office, campaigning, and holding elections.

However, there have been many times throughout history when this political process has failed because some groups of people won’t adhere to the laws and agreements set forth by society and would rather make an attempt to force their will upon other groups of people. 

Unless you’ve been sleepwalking during the past eight years then you would know that the establishment order of our federal government, as well as many state governments have been literally forcing their will upon the people instead of the government submitting to the will of the people. In America, the Communists have tried to flip this model of the government submitting to the people on its head where now the people are expected to submit to the will of the government. If you don’t believe me just look at the most recent and blatant ignoring of the law and constitution with this latest ruling by the Colorado Supreme court to keep President Donald Trump off of the ballot. 

In this blatant and idiotic ruling the Colorado Supreme court based their ruling off of the 14th Amendment-which disqualifies insurrectionists from office. Mind you this ruling is based off of a crime that Trump hasn’t even been convicted of and doesn’t exist. (Source: CNN) They essentially have based their decision on a crime that a citizen did NOT commit. Slow down one more time and digest that last statement. Furthermore, if the political optics aren’t bad enough for this then forget about that and put that aside for a moment. 

What’s worse than this is that they are setting a dangerous precedent that they can determine election outcomes by not allowing certain people’s names to be printed on the ballots. This simply means that they no longer respect, OR fear the will of the people to make the choice of the candidate that they prefer to be in office. Instead these government officials would rather make that decision for the people and by THE VERY DEFINITION this is what is known as tyranny and we’re seeing it play out right in front of us here in real time. 

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Looking at this arena I’ve named Thunderdome over the past eight years or so I have often found myself getting irritated with people who criticize Donald Trump’s approach to social media and his handling of the media. 

I will often hear them say things like I wish he would just keep his mouth shut and just do his job, or He should act more presidential. When people say those things I will often hear the thought go through my head saying to those people What world do you think we are living in?  

Then the thought enters my mind where I’m thinking: How else is a man in his position of power supposed to fight a media that drives a narrative of complete lies? How else is one supposed to act towards an entire apparatus that is literally trying to destroy him and his family? Furthermore this same apparatus is normalizing even trying to kill him. In short, if you had to endure such attacks on your family, your livelihood, and your life how would you respond? 

If you don’t believe me then you don’t have to look any further than the recent Washington Post article written by a so-called leading conservative and psychologically deranged Robert Kagan in his article comparing Donald Trump to Julius Caesar. 

In this article Kagan writes 'Like Caesar, Trump wields a clout that transcends the laws and institutions of government, based on the unswerving personal loyalty of his army of followers.' In case you need to be reminded of a bit of history, the Ides of March is the date that is often referenced in remembrance of the assassination of Julius Caesar. Because of this Kagan’s comparison of Trump to Caesar is an intentional one and feeds a narrative for the normalization of assassination, otherwise why make this specific reference? 

Furthermore, those like Kagan who are psychologically broken and infected by Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) have been normalizing this comparison of Trump to Caesar for quite some time. Another example of this could be seen back in 2017 when the Shakespearean New York play showcased a Caesar character onstage that looked like Donald Trump. 

At one point during the play this Trump character (like Caesar) was assassinated onstage by a group of senators by way of stabbing. The scene caused so much outrage that key sponsors of the show like Bank of America and Delta Airlines pulled their funding from the show. (Source: The Guardian)

For crying out loud these people manufactured evidence with the Steele Dossier to try to put Trump away and then falsely, under no authenticated and substantiated evidence, impeached him twice. 

Then as if that’s not enough with Donald Trump merely being a threat to return to office and not actually holding the office of president they have been relentless in trying to destroy him, his family, and imprison all of his political cabinet members the way Communist third-world countries do. Yet, I hear people criticize a man by how he speaks and what he tweets on social media. To me this is incredibly short sighted ignorance regarding the environment that those people are failing to recognize that they are currently living in. 

You may ask: What environment would that be Brandon? 

To this I would reply we are literally at war with Communists my friend.  

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E Pluribus Unum

The latin phrase E Pluribus Unum translates into Out of many, one. 

This was one of the key phrases that was originally adopted by the United States and came from the concept involving the original 13 colonies that would emerge as a single unified nation. This phrase can also be seen on the scroll and clinched by the eagle’s beak on the Great Seal of the United States. 

I wanted to bring up this phrase E Pluribus Unum and its original context and meaning to illustrate a larger point concerning our current modern day dilemma. 

Out of many, one was originally illustrating the unity of the United States as a nation. Obviously that unity is demonstrated in the country’s name …The United States of America. 

However, now the Communists/Fascists that have infiltrated all of our major institutions of media, universities, and within the walls of congress are desperately trying to alter this original context and meaning of Out of many, one. 

In their own context they want Out of many, one to exemplify out of many individual states came one centralized dominant overseeing authority that serves as Central Control which is also known as the Federal Government. 

They are always redefining words and phrases to suit their agendas in constant Orwellian fashion, but more importantly they want to continue to control others and justify their own bad decisions and actions as they project their own actions and bad ideas onto others. 

To illustrate such a psychological break concerning the nature of man you can get a real feel of this in the horrifying short story titled The Tell-Tale Heart that was written by Edgar Allen Poe in January of 1843. (Source: The Tell-Tale Heart) I am going to summarize that story for you here. 

In this short story Poe writes about the experience of a madman that begins the story telling you he has not lost control of his mind, but rather makes the case to himself, as he tries to make to you (the reader), that his alleged illness has only made his mind, senses, and feelings more powerful. 

As he continues he starts to describe how his sense of hearing has become even more powerful to the point that he could hear the sounds coming from both heaven and hell. Then he goes on to describe to you how well his hearing is and how correct he is in regards to the health of his mind. 

From here the man talks about how it's unclear to him in regards to how a certain idea first entered his mind. He’s clearly referring to some sort of act he committed and is reflecting on that moment with you and I (the readers). 

He continues to talk about how he did not hate the old man and that there was no reason for what he did. He then admits that he even loved the guy. 

He admits the old man never hurt him and never expressed any desire towards his money. He then points to the issue of the matter being caused by the old man’s eye. He refers to the old man’s eye like it was the eye of a vulture because the eye of a vulture is a terrible eye that watches and waits while an animal dies only to then fall on the body of the animal to tear it to pieces in order to eat it. 

The man claims to have felt a cold chill run down his spine every single time he would look at him with that eye and because of this it made his blood run cold. This meant he finally had decided that he had to kill the man in order to close that eye forever. 

Then he goes on to ask So you think that I am mad? According to the man a madman cannot plan, yet he talks about how all that week he was as warm and friendly towards the old man as he possibly could be. 

Then he escalates this activity by transitioning from talking about his actions during the day to then talking about his actions during the night. 

Every night at midnight he would open the door to the old man’s room. When the door was opened wide enough he’d put his hand in and then his head. He talked about how he would carry a light with him with a cloth covering the light so that no light would shine through. 

However, he would then carefully lift the cloth only a slight bit so that just enough light would shine through and it fell across that eye. He went on to say that he did this for seven straight nights every single night at midnight. 

After engaging in this activity he would then talk about how he’d greet the old man every morning with a warm friendly voice asking him how he slept. He’d talk about how the old man couldn’t have guessed how he looked in on him as he slept. 

He then said that on the eighth night that the hands of the clock would move more quickly than his hands which was a clear sign there was a level of anxiousness, or possibly even excitement. Who knows? 

Regardless, according to him the old man was lying there unaware that he was at the door. Then he said that suddenly the old man moved in his bed. He said you might think he became afraid, but he was not afraid. 

He talked about how dark it was and that he still opened the door placing his hand in, then his head, still holding the covered light. Suddenly the old man sat up in his bed and cried “Who’s there!!?” 

He said he stood there still not moving for a whole hour. Apparently he didn’t hear the old man lie back down which meant that he remained sitting up in his bed listening. Then he heard a slight cry of fear from the old man. Because of this he points out at that moment that he knew that the old man knew he was there hiding in the dark. 

Then he removed the cloth from the light to allow it to hit that vulture eye he was talking about and that eye was wide open causing him to feel a rush of anger as the eye looked straight at him. 

He then immediately started referring to how great his sense of hearing was once again now hearing the literal beating of the old man’s heart.  He said he stood still, but the sound got louder and louder, making him believe that the old man must have been in great fear for sure. 

As this noise grew louder to him his own fear grew into anger towards the old man and this caused him to rush the old man screaming at him to die. He talked about smiling in this moment knowing that the success of killing him to shut that eye was almost near. 

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Finally, the beating would come to an end and the old man was dead from suffocation. 

It was at this point that he described how careful he was to put the body where nobody could find it. As gruesome as it sounds he talked about separating the body and placing the parts separately in different pieces underneath the floor. After removing the boards of the floor to hide the body he then would carefully place the boards back so that nobody could tell that they were ever moved. 

As soon as he finished this task he heard someone at the door as it was now 4 a.m. in the morning, but it was still dark. The neighbors had heard screams and had called for the police and they were now there at the door. 

He asked the police to come inside and told the police that the screams had come from him due to having had a nightmare and that the old man was away to visit an old friend. He took the police through the whole house telling them to search it and to search it well. 

As if playing a game with them he led them into the old man’s room and asked them to sit down and talk for a while. He even goes on to say that his calm and easy manner had the police believing his story. 

As a result the police did sit and talk with him for a while, but this easy manner didn’t last forever as he would find that he started wishing that they would leave. He goes on to talk about how his head would hurt and that there was a strange sound in his ears causing him to talk to them faster. Suddenly he realized the sound wasn’t in his ears and not just inside his head. 

He talked faster and louder and as he did the sound became louder. The sound was familiar, but it started to dominate the man’s attention. He did not understand why the men did not leave as the sound continued to get louder and louder until he walked around even pushing a chair across the room to try and make more noise to cover the sound.

No matter what he did the men still sat, talked, and smiled. How could they not hear what he was hearing? 

Then it occurred to him that they did hear and he was certain that they were playing a game with him. Suddenly he couldn’t bear it any longer and pointed to the boards admitting to killing the man, but why would his heart not stop beating? 

The Wrap Up

So you’re probably wondering, Brandon, why did you go to the trouble of summarizing Edgar Allen Poe’s dark short story titled The Tell-Tale Heart? 

I thought this story by Poe was an excellent vignette on illustrating the darkness of human nature and how people will rationalize and project their own evil at times onto others. 

In this story the madman is rationalizing his desire to commit murder on an innocent man by blaming the man’s eye and even comparing the eye to a vulture’s eye as a vulture’s eye is a terrible eye. 

This story by Poe also clearly illustrates a common problem that is plaguing today’s society and that problem is psychological projection. 

The madman is constantly talking about the evil eye and how he must kill the old man in order to close that evil eye forever. This is how he justifies the murder inside his own head. 

However in his efforts to do so he was overcome with anger in the moment of killing the man as he was driven by his own desire to both shut the man’s eye and to forever silence the man’s heart and calls for help. 

The madman’s desire was to silence the noise inside his own head by killing the innocent old man. In this story the key takeaway is how the madman justified murder to himself by projecting his own personal evil onto the innocent old man in the bedroom. 

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To this I have to pose the question of how is this any different than the broadway play projecting their hate and desires of getting rid of Donald Trump in their own sick and twisted comparison of him to Julius Caesar? 

Furthermore, the same can be said about the projection coming from the twisted psychological musings of Robert Kagan and his hit piece on Donald Trump in that Washington Post article. For that matter, let's not forget the actual pathetic attempt of the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling to silence Trump by removing his name from the ballot. 

All of these examples are demonstrating how those psychologically twisted people will justify their own bad nature and evil onto others. 

Sure nobody has committed actual murder yet, but the narratives that they are pushing certainly point to acts of violence in their own words. 

Regardless of that, the one sure thing that these people suffering from TDS have in common with Poe’s madman in the The Tell-Tale Heart is that they are actively engaging to silence their own manufactured terrors inside their own heads caused by their own psychological breaks.

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Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”― Sun Tzu

People ask me sometimes Brandon why do you put so much time and energy into your podcast and blog? 

Whenever I hear that question I find myself asking them if they have ever read the blog, or listened to the podcast in the first place given their question. 

If they answer No, then I tell them to go and listen so they can understand that had they done so they wouldn’t have had to ask that question in the first place. 

If they answer Yes, then I ask them why they’re asking the question given the fact that they claimed to listen. 

For the Yes people I’ll also add that if I’m talking to them about such a conversation I’ll remind them of how blessed they are to be living in the United States. 

I’ll point to how they’ve been able to live a comfortable life ONLY because so many other people that lived before them fought like hell and even ended up dead, broke, and in many instances lost their families and friends to the horrors of war so they could enjoy this very conversation. 

To elaborate on this I will usually take the opportunity to remind them that the freedoms and rights that they take for granted, as outlined in the Constitution, do not exist anywhere else in the world the way they do here. 

Then I tell them and show them the evidence of how Communism has creeped into our society in an attempt to take ALL of those very important freedoms away and then I circle back to the original question of why I feel the need to devote so much time and energy into this podcast and blog. Then I tell them that all I’m doing is simply pointing out and highlighting the reality of circumstances that are taking place across the globe, as well as, right here at home. 

I don’t know about you, but the biggest irritation to me are people that refuse to accept reality. 

I would borrow that old phrase “I hate to break it to you,” but then again I don’t hate breaking the reality to people that refuse to acknowledge it and if you’ve been listening to this show for a while then hopefully you feel the same way.  

All I can do is work to be honest. Whether you like the reality of the global situation you find us all in at the moment, or not is irrelevant because reality is literally coming to kick in your front door. 

Once again, the purpose of this blog and podcast is to purposefully drive a narrative to challenge your current mode of thinking. 

Look at it this way, at least I’m being honest and upfront with you about that fact. At least you know I’m not a media shill for some multi-million dollar corporate donor that is trying to feed you a narrative that they want pushed out into the public which for the record has led us all to this point of economic turmoil and the overall threat of societal destruction. 

You MUST understand the environment that you’re living in if you want to make a difference as an individual to contribute to fighting this war with the Communists. Do you want this War With The Inimicus to be won by the enemy, or do you want to do everything within your power as an individual to contribute to Taking the fight to the Inimicus? 

I can tell you right now I’m doing everything in my power to challenge people’s thinking and to build a coalition utilizing this platform to get us all on the same page so that we can all in a unified front put the enemy into our crosshairs. 

This all starts within your own household. This starts with your family. This all starts with YOU. 

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Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves

Welcome to Thunderdome. 

Thunderdome is obviously the title of today’s episode and I got that term Thunderdome from the third installment of the epic 1985 action film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome starring Mel Gibson and Tina Turner. 

Being a GenXer I grew up on some of the most epic action films ever made and I’d be doing both Mel Gibson and Tina Turner a disservice if I didn’t credit them with being a huge influence over my generation with both Turner’s music and with Gibson’s movies. 

The plot of the movie follows a lone roving warrior in a post-apocalyptic environment where he finds himself exiled to the desert and ends up encountering a surviving congregation of a child cult. These children happen to reside in an encampment inside of an oasis that centers around a crashed Boeing 747. 

One of the members of the child group stumbles upon Max after he is near death from being exiled from a dangerous outpost known as Bartertown. 

Max had previously ended up in Bartertown due to his search for trying to find out who was responsible for the theft of his vehicle. 

While Max is there he encounters the leader of Bartertown Aunty Entity (Tina Turner). She offers to resupply Max for his loss if he agrees to complete a task for her. 

Since everyone is living in a post-apocalyptic future due to nuclear fallout, resources are quite scarce and so Aunty Entity explains to Max that Bartertown’s precious energy comes from a subterranean refinery called Underworld. As we come to learn, Underworld is a segment of Bartertown that turns pig feces into methane and this refinery is run by a resourceful dwarf by the name of Master. 

As it goes Master is attached to a formidable escort named Blaster who serves as Master’s bodyguard with Master riding around on the shoulders of this imposing figure as Master Blaster. If you’re unfamiliar with the Mad Max franchise and this sounds like a wild story to you then you’d be correct. 

So back to the story. 

Aunty Entity is concerned about holding onto her seat in power over Bartertown as Master Blaster has started to challenge her for control of Bartertown. This is where she sees an opportunity to utilize Max in order to kill Blaster so that she can more easily subvert Master to carry out her will and plan for governing over the post-apocalyptic city . (Source: Wikipedia)

Ultimately Max is able to sneak into the Underworld in an attempt to size up Master Blaster, but in the process he befriends another character named Pig Killer who was sentenced to work there and subsequently got both his name and punishment for slaughtering a pig in order to feed his family. To me this is a brief, but powerful example that sort of illustrates just how tough the world is in the setting of this story. 

When Master Blaster learns that the new vehicle that he has acquired belongs to Max he forces Max to disarm a booby-trap, however when Max completes this task he manages to set off an alarm and this is where Max discovers that Blaster seems to have a weakness as he is hypersensitive to high-pitched sound. 

When Max returns to the surface he discovers he’s not getting any help from Aunty as she tells Max that the law in Bartertown for settling disputes demands a fight to the death inside an iron clad caged arena known as Thunderdome. This is where two men enter, one man leaves. 

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Max publicly accuses Master of stealing his vehicle which results in a battle being scheduled inside Thunderdome between Max and Blaster. 

From here the fight ensues and the giant is dominating Max until Max blows on a whistle he has in his possession causing Blaster to grab his own head in pain exposing the weakness Max had observed with Blaster earlier.  

After this happens Max manages to knock Blaster’s helmet off of his head and prepares to kill him. However, once Max sees Blaster he realizes that he has an intellectual disability and stops himself. 

It’s at this point that he reveals Aunty’s plot to everyone and Master threatens to shut down the refinery. As a result she has Blaster killed. This allows Aunty to terrorize Master to keep the refinery running and since Max broke their deal this is where he’s ultimately exiled and is found by the member of the child cargo cult where I began at the beginning of this episode. 

The significance of pointing out this story with Max inside Thunderdome is that his fight was a result of the inevitable power struggle that was starting to fester there regarding the control of Bartertown. 

Essentially Max’s role had nothing to do with the turmoil that was already taking place inside Bartertown. He simply served as the catalyst to set the course of the story on a different path which I won’t bother to tell you the rest of the story, but you get the idea. 

The point here is that you and I are sort of taking on the role of Max in this story of real life while those in the establishment power of government are struggling to hold onto what they have so that they can use us for our wealth and resources. 

The dilemma we all find ourselves in seems to be one similar to Max where the forces that are in control are willing to go to great lengths in order to maintain their current trajectory of power which involves the complete extraction of wealth as they sell out our country to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). 

After all, with a name like Bartertown you can rest assured that the economic situation of such a place was undoubtedly one of scarce resources. When examining the realignment of our modern day world you can see the decline of the United States at every turn, but this isn’t happening by accident. The intentional act of trying to transform the United States into its own version of a Bartertown like we can see in this Mad Max movie is being done on purpose. 

In fact, this is being done by elites in this country that are making more money on the selling out of the country which is resulting in more of a national suicide rather than the country falling due to a lack of resources. 

What makes this observation even more absurd is that the resources in the United States aren’t at all like Bartertown whatsoever where things are scarce, at least they don’t have to be. 

You see the resources inside of the United States are not only plentiful, but they’re abundant. This is what makes this modern day situation so insane because the problems we’re facing as a nation are all man made by corrupt Communist/Fascist morons that are intentionally NOT allowing the use of those resources, but are rather selling the access to those resources over to our enemies. 

So what we have here is a clear battle between two modern day ideological positions that cannot coexist here in the United States. 

No, this is not the typical Republican vs. Democrat or Conservative vs. Liberal political cycle. If you’re viewing this fight through those lenses you’re not even recognizing what this fight is about in the least. 

This fight is between global authoritarian Communist/Fascists vs. People who simply believe in their country and individual sovereignty. That’s the fight, period. 

In other words, you either want to support a globalist totalitarian state with the current regime in the White House along with the trajectory they have us on with 40 year record high inflation, the onset of WWIII, economic destruction, suppression of free speech, domestic terrorism, etc. or you would rather have liberty, freedom, health, wealth, growth, and abundant opportunity.  

It really is that simple in terms of this ideological battle. Two men enter, one man leaves. 

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The Visigoths

The Roman Empire was huge. 

At its peak it had amassed in its size to be about 1.9 million square miles of territory stretching through Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. 

However, because Rome had grown to be such a massive empire it didn’t come without problems. In fact, Rome was plagued by many relentless barbarian attacks. 

When you couple this with the fact that Rome had become so large and spread so thin it found itself becoming less and less stable over time. As a quick observation this sounds eerily similar to the modern day United States under the control of the current corrupt Globalist system.   

However, due to its sheer size it was more difficult to transport needed resources from one area to another. Additionally it took much longer for communications to reach from one far end of Rome to the other with this sometimes taking weeks to send and receive messages. 

In the 4th Century AD a clan known as the Visigoths had separated from the Ostrogoths and would repeatedly run raids on Rome leading to the establishment of kingdoms in Spain and Gaul. (Source: Britannica) 

Essentially the Visigoths were attacked by the Huns and were driven southbound towards the Roman Empire. At this time the Visigoths were allowed to enter into Rome, but were given certain conditions and demands upon their entry that were agreements set forth in exchange for their stay.  

As it turns out the Visigoths didn’t care much for the conditions and this would ultimately lead them to revolt where they plundered the Balkan Provinces. 

On August 9, 378 they defeated the army of the Roman emperor Valens out on the plains of Adrianople killing the emperor although for four more years the Visigoths would continue to wander searching for a place to settle after their tumultuous and violent journey into Rome. 

In October of 382 Theodosius I would end up settling the Visigoths in Moesia (Modern day Serbia), but it didn’t come without a major task that he would impose upon them and that task would be that the Visigoths would be responsible for defending the frontier. 

This would work for a little while as the Visigoths would remain there in Moesia until 395 where under the leadership of Alaric the Visigoth they would leave and move southbound towards Greece and then would make their way over to Italy. 

Here at this point they would end up repeatedly invading the territories from 401 onward. Ultimately their depredations would collectively reach a climax and result in the sack of Rome in 410. (Source: Britannica) 

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Now unless you’ve been living under a rock or going out of your way to practice that very irritating trait of apathy with everything going on in the world then you would already know that we’re dealing with a modern day invasion that is not unlike the invasion of the Visigoths back during the Roman Empire. The great Steve Bannon astutely points this out on a regular basis and I would have to agree with him 1000%. 

We are literally watching the so-called elite globalists and communists inside of our country going out of their way to rapidly push our United States Republic in the direction of the Roman Empire. 

In fact, in just the last few days down at Eagle Pass, Texas a border patrol agent reported having caught 17,000 illegal migrants which doesn’t include the gotaways, or the numbers being processed at the port of entry. 

According to this agent this was the largest influx of illegal immigration in the past three years and just this past Tuesday (December 5, 2023) he reported having seen the highest number of encounters in a single day numbering around 12,000 migrants invading the country. (Source: LiveNow From FOX)

If this doesn’t interest you, or isn’t exciting enough news for you to sit there and digest, then consider the following numbers of illegal Chinese nationals that were arrested here in 2023. The numbers illegally coming into the states hit a whopping 24,000 being apprehended compared to the fact that fewer than 15,000 were caught coming into the United States over the previous 10 years according to The New York Times. (Source: The New York Times) 

Once again, this doesn’t include the gotaways and several people are saying now that several tens of thousands of Chinese national fighting age men are in the country illegally and this doesn’t even factor in the numbers of young men piling in from the Middle East. With numbers like these it’s easy to understand that none of this is by accident, nor is it anywhere close to being normal. 

This is a full blown invasion just like the Visigoths when they rolled into the Roman Empire and there’s absolutely no doubt about this. This is especially obvious when looking at the Geo-political instability concerning everything with China, the Middle East, and the corrupt CCP puppets that reside right inside of our own White House right this very minute. 

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The Wrap Up

So when we take just a few extra minutes to connect the dots here both you and I can see where our areas of concern should be right here and now. 

Going back to my opening point where I stated that people refusing to accept reality is the biggest irritation to me this is why… 

Because when you consider the aggressive behavior of the CCP in the South China Sea towards Taiwan and then look at the record numbers of illegal Chinese nationals invading our country, how could you NOT be concerned? 

When you look at what’s happening with Israel and Palestine and the record numbers of illegals invading and entering our country how could you NOT be concerned? 

When you look at the BRICS nations organizing to De-dollarize meanwhile our own federal government is talking about a Centralized Digital Bank Currency (CDBC) how could you NOT be concerned? 

When you have a corrupt manchurian candidate sitting in the White House whose own son has a laptop condemning his corruption and grifting with the CCP with actual hard evidence of bank statements and a money trail, how could you NOT be concerned? 

When the Visigoths entered into Rome it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for the Roman Empire. 

If you are willfully refusing to accept the reality that we are at war on our own soil then I’d encourage you to reread the opening Sun Tzu quote that I led today’s episode off with at the beginning. 

If you don’t accept this harsh reality then when the enemy does move on you then they will drop like a thunderbolt. 

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Now I’m not here to simply point out the problems and leave you feeling like a nail that has gotten smashed over the head over and over again by a hammer of despair. No, I don’t want you to feel demoralized because that’s exactly what the Inimicus wants, but that is NOT what I want. 

As you know I always like to point to solutions and the actions that you and I can take daily lead to big positive outcomes while also keeping the enemy on their back heel…and eventually forces them into retreat. 

Keep in mind that unlike the good citizens of Rome during the time of the Visigoths where communication would take weeks to travel for a simple call for help here right now in 2023 communication is instant and at the touch of a button directly on that device you’re using to read and/or listen to this podcast and blog. 

With that in mind, put that communication power to use by spreading the information with a touch of a button right on that device you’re using to read or listen to this episode. 

I want you to understand the power that you wield as an individual because it’s immense. Remember that the entire point of this podcast and blog is to serve as a map for helping you and those around you to be Zenith during chaotic times and to be that Zenith you MUST understand that everything starts with you and the actions that you choose to take daily as an individual. 

Those actions lead to certain results, but without those actions there is NO result. Therefore, the power you wield matters. 

Unlike the citizens of Rome not having the immediate power of communication the way you do now they also didn’t have the ability to wield immediate financial and economic warfare the way you do now with the touch of a button. 

The fact that you don’t have to ride, or send a trustee on horseback with a bag full of gold to a person in need these days is quite a powerful difference. 

After all, if I use this platform as an example I have had some financial donors and some paid members to give to this platform. As this happens I’m then able to take that financial donation and to allocate it towards more content creation, more advertising, and it frees me up to do more networking for collaborations with others so the platform can grow and the message can spread. 

Whenever someone joins this Substack as a paid member the support drives the existence of the messaging because it supports my efforts in making all of it possible. Without that support I wouldn’t be able to invest the time and energy to research, write, record, edit, and market to spread the message of freedom. 

In short, you have personal power that is immense and I’m here to remind you and to encourage you to utilize that power because the hour is late in our country. Getting depressed and demoralized about everything that is going wrong is NOT the solution. 

Taking the bull by the horns and focusing on your individual action plan to make and impact to defeat the Inimicus is the ONLY SOLUTION and it works. 

Remember that two men enter, one man leaves and let’s make sure that it’s the Emissaries of Freedom that walk out of Thunderdome victorious over the Communists. 

Be a man or woman of ACTION.

Be an Emissary of Freedom. 

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.

One way you can do this right now is by joining me and giving me a like here on Public SQ. This platform is directly tied to the support of a freedom first movement by allowing you to line up your purchasing power with businesses that share your values.

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“Billy sometimes courage is just being able to recognize your own weakness and to do something about it”--Billy The Kid, The Series

I was thinking the other day about the complexity of the human body, or more specifically the human mind and spirit. 

I often get inside my head with such thoughts and I really couldn’t tell you why other than to say that I’ve always been this way and that I’ve always been an introspective individual. 

As I was thinking I began thinking about the mystery and phenomenon of the act of thinking. Whatever thought would enter into my mind really wasn’t the point, but the main point was rather the miracle and amazement that there are thoughts inside all of our minds in the first place, at least for many of the people who are listeners to this podcast and blog. 

I say that because I’m convinced that you as a listener and reader to this show are some of the smartest group of people on the planet and I don’t say that lightly. I get emails, questions, ideas, and shared content from many of you on a frequent basis so I know this to be a fact. 

Regardless, I was thinking about the miracle of all of us having the ability to produce a thought. This is such a mystery. 

Now do yours and my thoughts come from the brain? 

Perhaps, but I tend to think of the brain as merely being a physical conduit for the transfer of thoughts. I believe the brain has a lot to do with this, but I also believe that our deep thoughts come from somewhere else. I happen to believe that our genuinely good thoughts are actually a miracle coming from our souls, but I digress. 

So why am I diving into this deep philosophical matrix with you today as it relates to the origin of thought? 

This is incredibly important because even though the origin of thoughts may cause many of us to debate on where they come from, the one thing that’s critical to point out is the evolution of those thoughts. 

In other words, you can have a thought, or what can also be described as an idea, a perspective, or a viewpoint, and it may remain right there inside your head, or you might choose to speak it into existence. 

So the next evolution of the thought would have to come in the form of speech or writing. This is why invention and certain qualities of life that we all enjoy are a miracle because they all began as a thought. 

Now that you understand that, take a moment to ask yourself why would it ever be a good idea to allow the suppression of thought? In other words, if the invention of everything that exists within society began as a thought or idea, then why would we allow the suppression of ideas or thoughts in the form of suppressing free speech? 

Highway Hypnosis

I remember years ago when I was in college and took up a summer job working in pest control for Sears. 

It was a different experience because as a newbie coming into the job in those days I was assigned to do a ride along with a veteran that had been on the job for a while. 

For a summer job it wasn’t a bad deal at all as once I met the requirements for training I was issued my own vehicle which consisted of a small pickup truck that would contain all the materials I needed to administer any number of  treatments for pest control. 

Furthermore, it required a lot of driving which made having the work truck a real blessing in terms of transportation. Regardless, it was a challenge because I had a daily lineup of appointments that I had to service and at times those appointments would be spread out all over Athens, Georgia and even beyond so there were days when that truck literally became my office quarters. 

I remember when I was on the ride along with the guy that was training me at the time and one time we were on a long drive coming back to the office at the end of a long day and had about an hour or more long drive ahead of us. 

As we were settling into the drive late into the afternoon there was a moment when the ride got quiet. We were both exhausted from having been out on the road all day and it was in the middle of the summer in Georgia so we were fatigued from having been out treating homes in the heat as well.

As I watched the road ahead coming at me through the windshield with little to no sound and no distraction I felt myself starting to get drowsy and realized that I was fighting the urge to fall asleep. 

It was like the long drive of staring at a monotonous view of a dull highway was trying to lull me to sleep. 

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It was at this point that the veteran must have taken notice and suddenly allowed the vehicle to drift a bit to the right so that the wheels would roll over the rumble strips on the road resulting in the loud noisy vibration of the tires which caused me to immediately sit upright. 

It was at this point that he asked me if I had ever heard of the phenomenon known as highway hypnosis. At that point in time had not, but I kinda understood what he was getting at after having that little experience on the drive. 

To give you an example of this unusual phenomenon imagine that you’re driving along a desolate road and you see the road sign telling you that your destination is like 60 miles away. The next thing you know you’re shocked to see another sign telling you that your destination is only 30 miles away. 

At this point you know you didn’t fall asleep at the wheel, but what happened to those 30 miles? How did it seem that those 30 miles went by in only a brief moment? 

You may have even experienced driving through town and finally coming to a stop light not realizing how you arrived on the opposite side of town due to having little memory of your journey across town. 

You might wonder if you were watching the road the whole time? Did you use your turn signal? Did you stop at all the stop signs? If you really think about this I’m sure you’ve lived this unusual experience a few times throughout your lifetime. 

When you go through this experience known as highway hypnosis there are some warning signs to note regarding this phenomenon that may include the following. 

* Sleepiness

* Loss of focus and a cloudy mind 

* A dazed feeling

* Slow reaction time

* Loss of time

* Heavy eyelids and constant fighting to keep your eyes open (Source: Healthline)

So this is exactly what I had experienced during that time in the ride along with the Sears pest control guy. This wouldn’t be the last time, but it was one of the first times I could remember having the experience identified as highway hypnosis. 

The reason I chose to tell you about this phenomenon of highway hypnosis is because to me this experience isn’t unlike the societal construct of mind numbing education and media messaging that much of society has gotten spoonfed now for many decades. This has taken place due to the gradual decline of institutional rot that has largely gone unnoticed, much like those highway roadsigns in my moment of highway hypnosis, until now. 

If you think about it, the largest institutions here in the states are responsible for a great deal of actions that must be carried out across our individual lives and we have grown to just go along with the messaging, recommendations, and mandates of these institutions without ever thinking twice about them for a very long time now. 

For instance, when it comes to the education system in our country the performance of the financially literate functioning citizen has degraded significantly over time due to a gradual rotting of the education system and breaking up of the family structure.  

For instance, according to Statista the percentage of adults with a high school graduate level of education in 1960 was at 41% while college graduate level was at 7.1%. Compare this to 2022 where you had 91.1% of adults with a high school graduate level of education and 37.5% with a college level graduate education or more. (Source: Statista)

Now having established the education level and the vast differences in terms of the percentage of adults with high school and college graduate level education nowadays versus in 1960 then why has consumer debt grown by 25% in the past five years and even doubled since the turn of the century? (Source: The Center Square)

I know what you’re thinking, well Brandon with the advancement of education there are many more people who have mortgages now compared to the 1960’s. You might be correct there, but these statistics omit mortgages and the entirety of this debt is coming from personal credit card debt that has exploded to be 40% of the median household income as recently as 2018. (Source: The Center Square)

So why am I telling you this? 

Well, what is it that I’m always advocating for in regards to being a Zenith? 

I’m always talking about how to understand your environment and in doing so these statistics clearly demonstrate how much as a society we have lost our understanding of fiscal responsibility as individuals and what the concept of wealth creation really means. 

After all, if we did understand it then as a society why would we be experiencing all of this financial turmoil both at the household level, as well as at the level of the federal government? 

After all, it seems that both the federal government and individual households love to keep running up their own debt to the detriment of both themselves and the country at large. As a society we are simply not enforcing fiscal discipline and the lived experience of our daily lives is bearing this out with the out of control personal debt, as well as the 40 year record high inflation which is a marker on the out of control debt of the federal government and the dangerous printing of money by the federal reserve. 

At this point it is obvious that the latter of those directly fuels the former, but it seems as a society that we’ve been unwilling to hold and enforce accountability for either of these causes of the debt bubble. 

Given that both of these realities concerning both the exploding personal debt combined with the exploding federal government debt means that we are headed for a cataclysm that will cause a great financial crisis unlike anything this country has ever experienced if I had to make a prediction. 

The reason this has happened is because the population has suffered from its own version of highway hypnosis.  As a society we have lacked the knowledge, focus, and alertness to understand the environment and to do what was necessary in order to prevent this coming crisis from ever being the significant issue of moral hazard that it has become in the first place. 

This journey of the gradual growth of the personal and federal debt crisis has been due to the fact that society has been undergoing a numbing towards the development of the individuality construct.  

So what do I mean by this? 

In my observation this numbing of the individuality construct is where society has been hustled into exchanging their individual sovereignty for the trust and convenience of receiving goods and services that the major institutions within our society provide. 

By gradually giving over more and more of our trust and sovereignty we end up giving up more and more of our individuality because we have fed a corrupt and massive institution for far too long without ever having fed an alternative competitor to serve as a buffer to keep the major institutions more honest.  

When it comes to the education system this is now obvious as the math clearly demonstrates that nowadays people aren’t more financially literate throughout our society at large. If there were more financial literacy then there would have been more aggressive accountability for both the out of control spending caused by our federal government, as well as the majority of our personal households throughout our society as well. 

The Experience Machine

If you’re not familiar with the The Experience Machine concept it is a thought experiment that presents a scenario involving you having the option to experience a perfect life without having to face any consequences. 

The scenario involves there being a machine that exists which gives you the option and ability to plug into a virtual world to experience anything you desire without the consequences. It is said that in this scenario you would not be able to tell the difference between the simulation and the real world much like we would associate with the Matrix nowadays.   

However, eventually the thought experiment poses the question of whether you would be willing to plug into the Experience Machine for the rest of your life?  

Given this thought experiment I can personally see the warning of this with what Huxley wrote about in Brave New World. 

Once again, on the surface such an Experience Machine may sound like a good idea, but then again to me this would only work on people who couldn’t care less about their individual sovereignty and also lack a personal depth in terms of grasping the significance of what it means to have a purpose driven life that fuels the spirit.  

The Wrap Up

Without purpose people lack hope and without hope there is absolutely nothing. 

I opened this episode talking about the miracle of how each and every single one of us possess the ability to produce our own thoughts. Without this ability then we are incapable of contributing to anything in life. 

After all, what would be the point of life if we couldn’t push our thoughts into existence? 

To take this even further, what would be the point of not being able to experience the consequences of your thoughts whether those thoughts transitioned into reality with either a good or bad outcome? 

In fact, the reason that the world is burning right now is because society has been lulled to sleep falling into its own version of highway hypnosis for quite some time and now society finds itself wondering how we all ended up in this world that is currently falling apart. 

The education system has been a numbing agent, the media has been a numbing agent, the rat race of life has been a numbing agent, and the explosion of the digital age may be the biggest numbing agent of all. 

After all, The Experience Machine may be a hypothetical thought experiment, but the idea of it points to a technological advancement that offers the experience involved in the thought experiment in the first place. 

When you combine this with the steady growth of gaming, virtual reality, and the coming specter of AI is The Experience Machine about to graduate to reality no longer having to be pondered as a thought experiment among intellectuals bouncing around ideas about the human experience? 

I believe we’re all in this War With The Inimicus and we’ll eventually find out, but for the time being this is why you’re here. 

My guess is that you’re choosing to be a sovereign being and wouldn’t plug into that Experience Machine to live a fake life. I’m guessing you’d rather create the experience you desire from the thoughts that are derived from God and your own soul so that you can create the experience of life yourself rather than ceding that purpose over to some artificial collection of plastic, metal, and circuitry.

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.

One way you can do this right now is by joining me and giving me a like here on Public SQ. This platform is directly tied to the support of a freedom first movement by allowing you to line up your purchasing power with businesses that share your values.

In order for BOTH you and me to influence and strengthen our society we must not stay idle so please make sure you hit the subscribe and share buttons here below.

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“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I have for a long time realized that I was a fighter. 

So what do I mean by that? 

When I use that word fighter I don’t just mean carrying out the act of a physical fight although I’ve had a few experiences with physical fighting in my lifetime both in the game of life and in sports as it pertains to martial arts and to training. 

However, when I use that term fighter a fighter can take on many different forms and I’m going to spend a portion of this episode explaining the importance of this concept, as well as proving this concept to you by demonstrating how both you and myself must fight during the current war we find ourselves in.  

Some people might hear this and in a typical and emotional knee jerk reaction they may scoff, or pearl clutch themselves in the moment thinking Well Brandon’s just being antagonistic by saying that he’s a fighter. 

That previous statement would be a completely false one and even further it highlights a complete lack of empathy, it displays willful ignorance, and completely demonstrates an out of touch viewpoint concerning objective reality. 

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Being a fighter doesn’t automatically translate to one being antagonistic or inimical. Now that last word inimical is an interesting word so what does that mean? 

Inimical means hostile, or unfriendly. In fact, the title of today’s post is War With The Inimicus which means that word Inimicus is Latin for Enemy or Foe. 

So if I claim to be a fighter then how is it that I’m not being antagonistic? I’m not antagonistic because it is not my nature to be an enemy or a foe, at least not without reason. In fact, for that to happen I have to be put into that position. 

As Rambo might say for that to happen They must draw first blood. 

I’m going to elaborate on this further, but for the moment let’s put this into some context with the current environment that we all find ourselves living in during this Fourth Turning in history. 

In a brief explanation of current events in today’s world we see what Aldous Huxley and George Orwell pointed towards with each of their theories as to what would be the cause of the fall of mankind.  

On that note Huxley pointed out in Brave New World how society would devolve into an unequal and technologically advanced future where humans are genetically bred, society at large is socially engineered and indoctrinated, and people are pharmaceutically anesthetized in order for an authoritarian order to uphold a ruling order stripping society of all individual freedom and perhaps even down to the human soul itself.  

As if that synopsis of Huxley’s Brave New World isn’t terrifying enough it’s even scarier when we take a look around at how this is actually happening throughout society at large today. 

To add onto this George Orwell also had a vision of a dystopian future that those of us who are awakened are also witnessing playout here in 2023 in real time. 

In Orwell’s book 1984 the story revolves around Winston who happens to be a citizen living in a miserable society known as Oceania. Winston is trying to rebel against the Party and it’s ruling overseeing authority known as Big Brother. Winston also happens to work for the Ministry of Truth in order to alter the history of Oceania in order to fit the government’s narrative. 

If you don’t see how this has literally already happened under the Biden regime you’re willfully ignorant and completely ignoring reality as the “Committee of Public Information” (aka Ministry of Truth) was put forward by the regime under the leadership of Alejandro Mayorkas and the boot licking bureaucrat that was assigned to lead this department under Mayorkas was Nina Jankowicz. (Source: The Hill)

Jankowicz had referred to herself as a Russian disinformation expert and that should say enough with all the lies that have been brought into the light about Russian disinformation and Russians being responsible for stealing the 2016 U.S. elections. At this point that narrative is completely laughable as we’re clearly seeing the result of a stolen election everyday that the Biden regime stays in office, but I digress. 

So the way I look at this is that we are already living through the beginnings of a sort of hybrid version of Huxley’s Brave New World combined with Orwell’s 1984 in today’s modern society. What’s even stranger is the seemingly fast development of the dystopian parallels of these two imaginary societies compared to our own real life modern day society. 

After all, I remember having a certain feeling years ago after having read Orwell’s 1984 telling  myself that what he explained was way too insane to actually happen in real life where big brother would be watching every move you made, where the government would criminalize thought, and that 2+2 would be equal to 5. It turns out that I was wrong.  

We can easily check off all three of these as they are criminalizing speech, redefining words to suit their narratives, and want to set themselves up with a government authority to be the “Ministry of Truth” with Jancowicz’s attempt to kick off the “Committee of Public Information.” 

This doesn’t even factor in the coming dangers and unpredictability of how AI will be used within the context of society for technological surveillance, as well as military, policing, and the creation, controlled type, and flow of information. 

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“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”― Thomas Jefferson

In 1919 World War I was in the rearview mirror of the country and there was a determination throughout the country to embrace the time of peace and to get on with the flow of life. 

What better way to do this than with sport that we have often referred to here in the U.S.  as the country’s “National Pastime.” During this time some of the most iconic figures in the sport of baseball would end up coming on the scene to transform the culture and to serve as the era of some of the most legendary names the sport has ever known. 

However, in the country’s attempt to enjoy the National Pastime in 1919 there would end up being a dark cloud that loomed over the popular sport and that cloud would shed light on the shortcomings of human nature while also teaching us about the scams and corruption that can come about through the desire for money. 

Even though the American citizen was ready for a change in the pace of life with having just gotten through a global war, the 1919 World Series was about to create some news headlines that would shock the world and forever change the view and direction of the National Pastime along with the mood of the country. 

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The 1919 World Series Scandal

In 1915 Charles Comiskey set out to buy the best players to build up his Chicago White Sox team. One of those players is the iconic American legend Joseph Jackson, or who you may more commonly recognize as the great Shoeless Joe Jackson. 

Shoeless Joe Jackson was the best hitter of the time and allegedly earned the nickname Shoeless when having played a game in his socks due to his shoes having been too tight during one of his early games in Greenville, South Carolina. 

In 1919 nobody would bet against the Chicago White Sox. During this time baseball was more than a sport, but rather a way of life. 

However, when it came to the business of baseball Comiskey was one that ran that aspect of the game in his own way and his way wasn’t always a way that was popular among his players. Comiskey was a tight fisted businessman that was notorious for making his players promises regarding their agreements related to their compensation and would frequently not follow through. Sounds familiar with many of our modern day politicians, right?  

Even worse, Comiskey was known for directly intervening in some circumstances by not allowing a player to play, particularly if a player was on the verge of earning promised wages based on hitting high benchmarks previously agreed to that would be related to that player’s game performance. In short, Comiskey would do anything to save a buck. (Source: History Channel)

To offer some additional understanding and to further illustrate Comiskey’s cheap nature in 1917 Comiskey had promised his players a bonus if they won him the pennant. They did so and he held up to his end of the deal by rewarding them with a case of cheap champagne and the sports writer Ring Lardner reportedly said that the champagne tasted like piss.  

Now given this knowledge of Comiskey it wouldn’t take long for his players to understand this and it would ultimately lead to his team’s demise. 

Just prior to the World Series first baseman Chick Gandil and fellow teammate Eddie Cicotte met up with a well known gambler and bookie at the time by the name of Joseph “Sport” Sullivan. Yes, believe it or not gambling was a huge part of the culture of sports at the time just as baseball was a huge part of the culture at large. 

Now right here I wanted to interject to point out a very interesting thing that I discovered regarding a conflicting narrative that occurred with this meeting depending on which historical series of events you choose to believe involving what took place with this meeting. I’m about to point to a complete contradiction between two different sources regarding the events that took place among Eddie Cicotte, Chick Gandil, and Joseph Sullivan. 

On one hand, if you read the account of this meeting according to Wikipedia the framing of this meeting was that Joseph “Sport” Sullivan was the one that approached the players Gandil and Cicotte to make them an offer of $10,000 per player if they could get about eight players in on a plan to throw the series against Cincinnati. According to Gandil this was a shock to him as he had always seen Sullivan as a gambler, but never took him to be a fixer.    

However, according to the History Channel’s account of this Gandil was the one that sought out Sullivan and offered up the idea where he and several of his disgruntled teammates would organize a plan to throw the game if Sullivan could come up with enough money to make it worth the effort. 

It was then said that Sullivan would end up offering $80,000 if the players would hold up their end of the deal. Although the Wikipedia version along with many serious baseball fans would want to reject the idea that the players actually initiated the scandal, the reality was that many games were fixed during that time regarding the history of the sport…and other sports as well. 

So here you have two conflicting accounts on what happened during that meeting that would kickoff one of the most corrupt sports scandals in the history of all sports. So I wanted to take a moment to point this out as this is common when reading about certain historical events. 

However, just like with anything in life we want to be Zenith and one way to do that is understanding the Zeitgeist and circumstances of that time in which we are examining. So on that note, given the fact that gambling was prevalent throughout the sports culture, given the fact that Comiskey was a cheap tight fisted businessman, and understanding that the potential payout of $10,000 per player was a solid amount of money that exceeded many annual salaries of the players to me it is much more logical that the players were the ones who were probably more proactive in organizing the scandal. 

This doesn’t even factor in the knowledge that Gandil also had a shady history involving instances of theft and was also known as a brawler. Regardless, gambling at that time was just as much a part of baseball as popcorn and the 90 feet that exists between the bases. 

Additionally the owners would turn a blind eye to the gambling as it was something that was difficult to prove not to mention the fact that addressing it would attract a negative press. 

The possibility that certain White Sox players might throw the series prompted another gambler and ex-ballplayer named Sleepy Bill Burns to approach Gandil and Cicotte offering them and additional $100,000 to fix the series and now there were two sets of gamblers involved with the White Sox players with a total of $180,000 to sweeten the pot. (Source: History Channel)

Both sets of gamblers went to the one guy that could financially back such a deal in Arnold  Rothstein. It was said that Rothstein, a notorious gambler and crime boss, would bet on anything except for the weather and that’s only because that was the one thing he couldn’t fix. 

However, once the word had gotten out to the gambling world that the Sox would throw the games the gamblers came out in full force to lay down their bets on Cincinnati to win. As a result all of this started spinning out of control and the $100,000 promised by Burns never arrived and $80,000 fronted by Rothstein dwindled down to only $10,000. 

The $10,000 that remained went straight to the pitcher Cicotte as the pitcher was the only one needed in order to secure the fix. 

The White Sox dropped the first two games of the series, but the third game wasn’t in the bag. The third game was back in Chicago and Dickie Kerr was up for the next game as the starting pitcher. 

However, I need to point out here that Kerr was the only player that wasn’t in on the fix. In fact, Kerr’s performance in game three was magnificent and his performance on the mound kept Cincinnati from scoring. In addition to this a quick turn of events with Gandil saw him do an about face hitting a single to center field scoring two runs ultimately leading to their 3 to 0 victory over Cincinnati. 

Because no money had come in to the players they were at this point as disgruntled with the gamblers as they were with their owner Comiskey. The gamblers got the message and paid $20,000 to Gandil to distribute the money among five players. 

The next two games would result in Cincinnati winning, but as game six approached it was time for Dickie Kerr to return to the mound once again. As the series was approaching its end the compromised players found themselves in a difficult position. 

On one hand if they came clean about the scandal they knew their careers would be destroyed and if they tried to reshape the deal with the gamblers they were probably scared that the retaliation would be brutal as many of the gamblers were known to break a few legs. 

The Sox pushed the series to the eighth game, but the series would ultimately end right there. The aftermath of this series would prove to be as drama filled as the series itself. 

The Exposure

Now you’ve got to understand that the problem with exposing the fix is that you would lose the faith of the people and the fans. 

Chicago sports writer Hugh Fullerton was disgusted about what was going on and as a result wrote a series of articles exposing what he knew about the fix and no Chicago newspaper would touch it or give it any level of meaningful attention.  

Fullerton was attacked for his work in trying to shed light on the corruption involved in the 1919 series. Other papers wrote very watered down versions of what Fullerton attempted to bring to light. 

Despite this, baseball boomed again in 1920. However, the entire 1920 season was an assault on the players that wanted to play an honest game and there was a growing sense that something had to be done about the gambling influence on the game of baseball. 

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In September of that year Bill Veeck Sr. The President of the Cubs blew the first whistle. The Cook County Grand Jury eventually called for an immediate investigation into baseball corruption. 

Within hours Eddie Cicotte was called by the Grand Jury and he broke immediately along with Joe Jackson. Jackson showed a lot of remorse and left the courthouse trailed by disheartened fans where a young boy cried “Say it ain’t so Joe, say it ain’t so.” 

Rothstein traveled to Chicago with his lawyer and lied to the Grand Jury. Comiskey was also feeling the pressure and realized the only way to save the club and his reputation was to destroy all evidence of the fix which would result in the termination of a trial. 

Comiskey was a powerful force in Cook County and miraculously all the transcripts of the player’s testimonies had disappeared from the Cook County courthouse. There was now no evidence. 

However, baseball’s American League President Ban Johnson despised Charles Comiskey and resented his power and was determined to find someone to testify to put the White Sox on trial. He ended up going all the way to Texas to bribe Sleepy Bill Burns to testify against the White Sox. 

Charles Comiskey wouldn’t allow this to happen to his team and ensured that the trial would be rigged. Each day the courtroom was packed with fans and no ball players would testify and no gamblers were ever indicted over their role in the scandal. 

The eight indicted ball players would be found not guilty. However, the image of baseball was tarnished and there was a public relations effort to elevate the image of the sport. In the events following the trial even though the players were found not guilty and avoided having to pay the penalty by the rule of law they still had to pay the penalty to the sport of baseball as they would end up being banned from professional baseball for life. 

When all the smoke cleared the one player that wasn’t involved in the scandal Dickie Kerr would two years later have a contract dispute based on his payment and agreement with Comiskey. Comiskey refused to pay Kerr and Kerr would also join the rest of the shamed Black Sox group in being banned for life from professional baseball. 

The frustrating reality of this is that even a clean player and innocent man suffered an equal fate of exile from professional baseball due to the corrupt actions of others. 

Baseball was almost forsaken by Americans if it hadn’t been for one iconic talent that came on the scene shortly afterwards. George Herman Ruth was a talent so great that fans went back to the ball fields to witness this talent firsthand for themselves. 

It is said by many that Babe Ruth was the hero that saved baseball and that the vision of a sport returning back into the hearts of Americans was restored by the legend of The Great Bambino. 

Now this was a very quick historical breakdown of the 1919 World Series scandal, but I wanted to point to the level of corruption that went on behind the scenes with all of the levers of power that were involved. Comiskey was a prime example of one who had direct interests in making sure he would avoid any accountability in such a scandal, particularly since he wielded tremendous power and influence at the time. 

I wanted to shed light on the details of this scandal to give you some insight on how certain corruption can come about among certain parties within a system who share mutual interests. 

Granted this was a prime example of how certain players within a system would conspire to engage in some unethical activity because they were both angry and motivated with the circumstances they found themselves in. 

In a way the players were involved in the formation of their own version of a sort of mutiny towards their upper management. Granted this rebellion of the team probably wasn’t the most productive, and some would even say it wasn’t the most ethical approach either, but the pushback towards Comiskey and the status quo was for a reason. 

At the end of the day the player’s efforts to achieve better pay, better treatment, and to stick it to the man proved to be unsuccessful, or were they? 

After The Great Bambino exploded onto the scene the love of baseball was restored in many of the hearts of the American fanbase. As a result Babe Ruth would prove to be such a huge talent and draw to the sport that he was a very well paid player. This example of fair pay and fair treatment of a player based on performance for the sport of baseball would prove to start spreading to the rest of the players throughout the league.  

So why did I go to the trouble to give you such a detailed breakdown of the history of the 1919 World Series scandal involving the Chicago White Sox? 

Well aside from the fact that history serves as a roadmap for knowledge and the documented experience of human nature I also wanted to use this documented experience of the 1919 World Series corruption to draw some very siginificant parallels to the current modern day environment we find ourselves in as a country with our own severely corrupt set of players inside our own government. 

Granted I’m not trying to demonize the eight ball players of the Chicago White Sox because I fully acknowledge their reasons for their actions and they were also in the business of entertainment unlike politicians who are generally in the business of power and corruption. 

However, I still want to use the White Sox scandal to draw some parallels between what was going on with the scandal of that series when compared to the scandals involved with the politics of money that we’re seeing right in front of us today.  

Comiskey wanted to cover up a scandal that would destroy his ball club and his own influence and reputation. Mirroring this behavior it’s eerily similar to see exactly how Joe Biden has done the same thing today with his corrupt influence and the cover up of his unlawful dealings as well. 

Just like Comiskey wanted to make sure the trial of his ball club would never take place Joe Biden was caught on camera specifically calling for the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor into his son’s corrupt dealings with Burisma while using U.S. loan money as the hostage for creating the leverage when doing so. (Source: Meeting Council on Foreign Relations) 

Drawing another modern day parallel when looking at the 1919 World Series Scandal you had the formation of a mutiny among players trying to stick it to a corrupt owner due to being abused and taken advantage of, however the fallout of it would end up costing all of those players their careers. In a way I wouldn’t compare the America First populist movement to the players involved in the scandal completely, but there is a parallel to be drawn here.  

Like Comiskey abused his players, America First patriots have been abused for years by powerful politicians such as the Clintons, the Bush family, the Obamas, and now the Bidens. Those corrupt leaders are all very similar to Comiskey having grifted off of the sacrifice of American citizens for years causing a loss of hope within the country and what it represents today compared to its original founding. 

Similar to Comiskey those politicians only care for their own wealth and power and they would sacrifice their players (aka the United States citizens) in a heartbeat in order to enrich themselves with endless foreign wars, with the out of control abuse of the Federal Reserve, with the medical industrial complex, and with the slide towards Totalitarianism through the potential rise of Centralized Digital Bank Currencies (CDBCs).  

Just as the mutiny of the players led to a public exposure of the corruption of gambling and the corrupt cover up of that scandal by Comiskey it also almost led to the American public giving up on the sport of baseball altogether. If it wasn’t for a spark from a major player in Babe Ruth baseball might have been nothing more than a flash in the pan right after the World War. 

However, like Babe Ruth came into the sport as a transformative historical figure to spark the energy inside the hearts of Americans the same can be said in historical context for the transformative power of the dynamic personality of  Donald J. Trump. 

Now when I make that statement you have to listen to what I’m saying. You may be a baseball fan and not care for Babe Ruth. You may despise Babe Ruth for all I know, but you cannot deny the transformational role and impact he had on the sport of baseball.

Likewise, you may or may not care for Donald Trump, but like Babe Ruth you cannot deny his transformational role and impact on both the cultural and political game in our modern day society. 

Going back to the comparison of the America First Patriots and the parallel to draw with the White Sox players I would more compare the America First citizens to the likes of Dickie Kerr in this particular instance. This comparison is obvious because Kerr was a clean player doing his job and despite there being a game that was fixed against him he rolled up his sleeves and got the job done for two big wins in the 1919 World Series with his grit and determination. Despite him being a clean player and having won big against all the odds he was still pushed out of the sport of professional baseball. 

Although I link the America First Patriots to the likes of Dickie Kerr in this comparison I am also empathetic to the grievances of the eight players that took what many would say was a more unethical approach by getting involved with the fix. 

The Wrap Up

The parallels of this moment of history compared to the events of today in terms of the tactics, strategies, and personalities involved stood out to me as a lesson on how the careful observation of history can be a learned and valuable tool. 

Even though the comparison I’m making here involves a baseball scandal in one instance and a global and political scandal in the current instance, all the turmoil, the motivations, and the personalities have the same impacts on the respective situations.   

Drawing parallel links between a greedy dishonest Charles Comiskey and a Joe Biden, an outside superstar that exerts a seismic impact on the game with personalities like Babe Ruth and Donald Trump, and finally the innocent hard working players that were hurt in the interim transformation of the system like a Dickie Kerr and the America First Patriots are all grounded in the same observable reality. 

The reason I went to the effort to make this comparison is because in history there are events and personalities that have profound impacts on the world and the environment of the times at which they occur. The problem is in our modern day society people have become so ignorant of history in general that they cannot even recognize that major events in history are happening right in front of them when they are experiencing them in real time. 

This is the goal and very reason I did this particular episode. After all, there is a major shift happening across the world right now that will literally reshape the direction of humanity until the next major turning in human history.  

However, it’s my view that we as a citizenry can continue to make poor decisions collectively allowing the status quo to continue to drive us off a cliff, or we can engage in our own mutiny for freedom against the system with the goal of going in the direction of a promising new path. 

That path can either be the path of following a poor plan that left the eight men out as we saw with the downfall of the Black Sox, or it can be to follow a new and successfully proven direction like Babe Ruth and Donald Trump were able to demonstrate with their mighty influence and actions on the broken systems that challenged each of them.

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“Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.”― Hannah Arendt

If you’re a regular listener to this show I’m about to sound like a broken record.  

However, I need to make sure the new visitors here are aware of the prevailing message on this podcast and blog and that message involves the importance of being able to understand the environment as I’ve already mentioned here in the opening. 

Being able to understand the environment means you and I must always be working to hone our skills of pattern recognition, understanding the motivations of others (particularly with the enemy), and arming ourselves with as much knowledge as possible so that we are capable of achieving a deeper understanding of our environment especially when things get dangerous and intense. 

As you’re well aware the situation in Israel was a complete tragedy and my guess is that it was completely unnecessary as these things usually are when people in positions of power are doing what they are supposed to be doing to prevent such things. However, since the current Biden regime has been in office here in the states that is obviously not the case. 

Regardless, I’m not going to address the Israel situation directly today, but I wanted to use it here in the opening as an example of the consequence of our society as a whole failing to recognize our political and cultural environment. You see over the years we’ve had a drop off and failure in our job description as United States citizens and that job description is what is known as Civic Duty. 

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You see it’s my observation that with the unrelenting advancement of technology that every generation of young adults has become less and less capable of recognizing and understanding their environment. 

Look, I enjoy some aspects of technology and obviously use it to create this podcast and blog. However it’s virtually the only way to get a message out to the masses quickly, affordably, and with the ease of others using their agency to share the message among their networks in this day and age. 

Yes, this is obviously a positive, but as I’ve always pointed out we live in an era of information warfare. Due to the reality of the big tech oligarchs controlling the type, flow, and dissemination of information it also impedes generations as people will dangerously succumb to false information throughout a society very quickly if the tech oligarchs and the Administrative State Media (ASM) aggressively push a false, or misleading narrative that catches fire and spreads throughout society. 

This makes combating false narratives much more of an uphill climb which is why I’m constantly working to compel this audience to spread the show links and to share this show with family, friends, and acquaintances because your actions do matter. 

With that being said I want to take a moment here to offer some prayers of strength, comfort, and the hopes that the Israeli people get the situation under control and out of the way of danger looking ahead. I also want to offer the same for all other innocent parties and that they will find their path out of harm's way as fast as possible.

I’ve always found myself being perplexed as to why people do not engage and become more active in the information arena. I don’t know if it has more to do with fear or apathy, but neither one is a good excuse especially if you just take a moment to look at the world around you to see what’s happening. 

Using Israel as an example their citizens were completely caught off guard by that attack and Hamas had stormed into the country allegedly catching Israeli Intelligence off guard. I find that hard to believe as Israeli Intelligence has always been the best in the world when it comes to thwarting the plans of terrorists. 

Regardless, even though I’m extremely skeptical that Israeli Intelligence was caught off guard, let's run with the assumption that they were, just as their citizens were caught off guard to examine our own situation here in the U.S.. 

So concerning our own situation here in the states we have literally had the greatest invasion of illegals flowing into our southern borders as we’ve ever had in our nation’s history. The numbers that have come into our country since Biden has been in office are nearly 4 million and that’s a conservative estimate given that the date of the New York Post article I’m sharing this from was published back in September.  Plus it doesn’t factor in the statistical element that U.S border patrol refers to as gotaways which estimates an additional 1.5 million possible illegals. (Source: New York Post)

Given these overwhelming numbers of people spilling into the country there are currently an estimated 10,000 young male Chinese nationals with ties to the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) that have crossed the border at the point of this report that was released by the Homeland Security Republicans. (Source: Homeland Security Republicans)  Keep in mind that this report was published back in June 2023 and I’ve heard that number has now increased to about 30,000. 

Additionally this doesn’t take into account the numbers that are flowing in from the Middle East. Given what is happening in Israel at the moment that should be very concerning to all of us. 

Desensitization

I just recently read a short story that happens to be a true story and it completely sums up the importance of being able to observe and understand the environment. 

If you’re not quite grasping what I’m talking about when I mention the word environment I don’t mean the environment in terms of the climate, but rather YOUR environment including the surrounding ecosystem that you and your family have to live and operate under every single day of your life. 

This environment is essentially the world you must live in and that environment has steadily become more and more controlled by your government, by technocrats, and oligarchs that want to dictate to you how you and your family should live literally every aspect of your life. In short, this in my view is completely evil. 

Anyways, the story I want to tell you about apparently took place back in 2018 inside a bar in Copenhagen. 

In this bar sat a unique bottle of vodka on a shelf on display among 1200 other bottles of vodka at the bar. However, one day a thief stole this unique bottle of vodka from the bar, but the bottle was found at a nearby construction site unbroken and empty a few days later. 

The amazing thing that the thief apparently failed to notice, or cared too little to notice, was that the bottle was literally made of 6.6 lbs. of gold and silver and it came with a diamond encrusted cap. 

Being the Russo-Baltique vodka this bottle of vodka is considered to be the world’s most expensive vodka bottle with an estimated value hitting around $1.3 million. 

Apparently the bottle was uninsured and was loaned to the bar by a Russian businessman. After recovering the bottle the bar owner vowed to fill the bottle up again with the same vodka that had previously been in the expensive gold and silver bottle and to put it back up in the bar for display. 

After going to the trouble to steal the only bottle out of 1200 other bottles on display, this thief literally took the most expensive and rare collector’s bottle on the planet only to drink the vodka.( Source: Unbelievable Facts)

Now look I’m by no means advocating for being a thief because I believe that is a horribly wrong thing to do, but if someone is going to commit the crime with the risk of facing such consequences you’d think that even a thief would understand their environment enough to recognize a gold and silver plated bottle with a diamond for a cap as more of a steal than a quick buzz for the evening. 

So why did I choose to tell you this story? 

Well aside from it being a bit humorous and true it is also emblematic of the times we’re living in with so many people in society being completely incapable of recognizing certain things that are going on in the world that are completely obvious to me, and probably to you as well if you’re a regular listener to this show. 

However, I’m still amazed at how so many people just don’t get what’s going on in the world. I know that the devil is a great deceiver, but even I’m often left scratching my head with some people wondering how it is that they get through their daily lives without having what seems to me should be a basic skill set of obvious good judgment. 

So what exactly am I talking about? 

Well if you look at the news cycle you’d probably agree that aside from including a raging infection of propaganda that it’s also pumped full of activity on a daily basis. 

I mean in my 46 years of living I’ve never seen the daily news cycle like our current news cycle. It’s a relentless barrage of activity that is full of distraction and noise along with being mixed with what is actually the real storyline that they work to distract you from as they also attempt to direct the preferred narrative of the day. 

I was having a conversation with a friend just the other day about this very thing. We were discussing the situation in Israel and how many of these terrorists are already here in the states due to the fact that we no longer have a southern border. 

By the way, that failure to recognize that we no longer have a southern border along with the failure to recognize that it’s a major problem is one of the big examples I’m referring to when I mentioned I’m left scratching my head with people that don’t recognize this as a major problem. 

Well getting back to the conversation even though this friend is a young man he’s very intelligent and is what I would consider to be a true outlier when looking at the young generation he happens to be a part of today. 

However, he pointed out something that was very interesting in our conversation. He was referencing the overwhelming news cycle and made the point that over time he has become desensitized to it. 

This really got my attention because I completely understood where he was coming from, but then I realized that even though he has a solid understanding of the environment he was also admitting to the fact that he had recently, in a way, become somewhat numb to the events of the day. 

Thankfully he does have enough intellectual curiosity in order to grasp the severity and reality of the situation that we’re all facing here in the states with the many threats that are looming out on the horizon. However, his comment really raised a red flag with me and is the reason and motivation for today’s episode. 

Keeping that in mind in case you weren’t aware, desensitization therapy is a method of exposure therapy that is employed to help people overcome certain severe phobias, anxiety disorders, and fears. 

Essentially there are two ways that this therapy is applied in practice. 

There is In-vitro where the client imagines exposure to the thing that stimulates the phobia. 

The second is In-vivo where the client is actually exposed to the thing that stimulates the phobia. 

The In-vivo method has been proven to be much more effective in terms of the treatment goals of individuals. (Source: Simply Psychology)

The way this is applied is that there is first a hierarchy of anxiety that is established with an individual by rating a series of fear induced scenarios. These scenarios are then rated from what may be seen as causing the lowest level of anxiety to the highest level of anxiety. 

For instance, if one has a fear of spiders the lowest level of anxiety may simply involve the patient merely thinking about a spider. Next, a higher rated fear inducing scenario might involve the patient looking at an actual photo of the spider. The following scenario may involve the patient looking at a real life spider inside a closed box. From here the scenarios continue to increase in intensity and progress until the final stage is reached where the patient allows a live spider to crawl on their arm. 

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Now given how this works let’s jump back to the discussion that I had with my friend that talked about being desensitized with the current news cycle. 

With this in mind imagine you had a time machine in 2019 and you could have simply made the leap into the future to right now in 2023. If you did so and you caught a glimpse of the current insanity of the widespread violence, the Communists on the news networks, the Communists on your social media feeds, the destabilizing governments across the world, the collapse of the financial markets, UFOs, etc. you would probably be scared out of your mind and I wouldn’t blame you a bit for feeling that way if you did. 

However, the reality is that you don’t have a time machine, but you’ve already experienced and are currently experiencing all of these anxiety-inducing events on a daily basis right now and then some. Now understanding that reality you might be scared or concerned, or you may be someone who has become numb to the constant barrage of bad news that hits your smartphone and TV every single moment of every single day. 

It’s because of the latter that you aren’t as sensitive to the storylines and events that are taking place right here and now. Granted I’m not minimizing the impact you personally may or may not experience with the overwhelming news cycle of the day. 

However, I am saying that because you didn’t just step out of that time machine from 2019 that you aren’t as impacted by the highest rated fear inducing scenario for that very reason. 

Because neither you, my friend, or myself have had to face the instantaneous shock of our current harsh reality by stepping out of that time machine from 2019, as crazy as this may sound, we were spared the grueling experience of the highest ranking fear induced scenarios hitting us all at once with the barrage of the news cycle. Instead we have been more gradually fed and had to endure a slower steadier escalating dose of harsh reality over the past four years. 

As a result, for many this constant barrage of the news cycle has served to be the equivalent of many individuals developing a response similar to an individual receiving a version of the In-vivo desensitization therapy. 

The 10 Minute Squat, Apathy, and Destruction 

Tom Platz is an iconic American bodybuilder that placed third in the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition back in 1981. He went toe to toe with some of the greatest in that sport with the likes of Lee Haney and Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

I remember when I was in my early 20’s starting out in the fitness industry I was at that time into bodybuilding and powerlifting. 

I remember stumbling across an article with Tom Platz that talked about his infamous 10 minute squat workout. Now this feat is out there, but from what I remember the workout had a certain protocol to follow and it intrigued me to the point that I was crazy enough along with a good friend of mine to attempt it. 

If I can remember correctly the workout involved taking your bodyweight equivalent and loading it up onto a barbell to do back squats. The protocol also said that once the bar was lifted off the rack that the lifter wasn’t supposed to unload the bar from the shoulders until the ten minutes was completed. 

In the process of squatting the lifter could stop, but just couldn’t unload the bar. In other words, the weighted bar would remain on the shoulders even if the lifter had to pause from doing repetitions of squats during the 10 minute duration. In my industry this is what is known as time under tension (TUT).  So in my case at the time I weighed about 195 lbs. so I  loaded the bar with that weight. 

My friend would keep an eye on me as a spotter and there was a third member of this group that held a stopwatch to time the workout for the attempted 10 minutes. 

Neither my friend or myself  had ever attempted anything close to this type of volume at that time and as a young bodybuilder my mind was more focused on the attempt of this insane feat than it was with worrying about the outcome. I blame that on being young and ignorant, but I digress. 

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So as I came out of the rack with the weight on my shoulders I began squatting. I did repetition after repetition. I got to 8 reps, then 12 reps, then 15 reps, and I continued to do a few more and I noticed that I was experiencing the most uncomfortable form of physical stress that I had ever encountered in a workout up to that point in my life.  

I was sweating like crazy, my heart was about to pound literally out of my neck, and my legs were trembling so bad that I felt that even if I had stopped right then that they may not ever stop trembling for the rest of my life. 

The load became unbearable as the time under tension lingered on. I realized that I had lost count of my reps and that I didn’t even care because the physical exertion and discomfort were so great my mind couldn’t focus on anything else. 

Finally, I took a couple of struggling steps to place the bar back onto the rack with my friend’s help. As I did my legs gave way and I collapsed to the floor lying flat on my back. I think I might have even briefly blacked out. 

As I eventually got back to my feet and found out my time I was shocked to learn that I had only made it somewhere above the three minute mark, nearly a full seven minutes shy of the ten minutes that the workout had called for. My friend would succumb to a similar fate on his attempt as well. 

You see, being young and inexperienced enough with the likes of a workout of this caliber we didn’t consider building a program to gradually work up to being able to achieve that 10 minute squat workout. We completely ignored the concept of progressive overload and went straight for the mountain top. 

Instead we were anxious and wanted to hurry in order to make the attempt to do the workout so that we could join the ranks of Tom Platz in his famous squat workout. You see we believed we had the knowledge to do so because we had the workout’s protocol. 

However, what we DID NOT have was what squat progression and series of workouts that were involved that Tom used to eventually be able to work his way up to being able to achieve the famous 10 minute squat workout. 

You see, we were anxious to jump at the chance to make history ourselves with Tom’s workout, but we didn’t stop to think about what we should have done which was to temper our excitement and adopt a realistic and intelligent approach to steadily progress our strength and endurance so that we could achieve that 10 minute squat threshold. 

You see that part of planning and action is something that we never even cared to consider. We were totally apathetic in looking at any longer term plan that would have allowed us to build ourselves up in order to conquer that 10 minute threshold. As a result we completely destroyed our legs and we walked around sore for a week unable to do much of anything else. 

By being apathetic to the sacrifice it would take to acquire the necessary understanding and true adaptation for success we instead crumbled and faced the destruction of immense soreness and all out body fatigue. 

The Wrap Up

The reason I shared that story of the 10 minute squat workout experience was to illustrate the importance and danger of being apathetic about the necessary process that is required to achieve success when trying to tackle a problem, or to overcome a challenging obstacle. 

We’re all human and it’s perfectly normal to become more desensitized over time to the necessary processes of actions that are needed in order to overcome difficult challenges. Ah there’s that word desensitized again. 

Because we were numb to the process and overly excited about the destination we were apathetic about doing what needed to be done and as a result we destroyed our legs and failed to complete the workout as it was intended. 

That overwhelming experience of the time under tension proved to be too much for us as we fell short of being prepared prior to what was to come at us with the grueling 10 minute squat. 

You see much like my failed experience with my approach towards the daunting 10 minute squat workout this is no different in my view in how our society has failed its attempt at maintaining a handle on the environment with our responsibilities that are associated with our Civic Duty. 

Because many of us have steadily been desensitized from the consistent trickle of the Crime Syndicate of Narrative our population has developed both an In-vivo like response of desensitization, as well as a segment of the population that has also succumbed to demoralization. 

The reason for today’s article/podcast is to warn those that have become more desensitized of the dangers in allowing that to regress downward to the next step of apathy which will ultimately lead to total destruction. 

Understanding history wasn’t the only thing that taught me this because my legs let me know that with a loud and clear message with the 10 minute squat.

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