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https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec21/sleepwalking12-21.html

Sleepwalking Into the Abyss in 2022

The most sacred liturgy of American culture is to always be positive and optimistic. The greatest taboo is breaking this sacred duty to say something upbeat and optimistic; it is acceptable (barely) to make awkwardly negative observations, but only if you immediately follow up the negative comments with a treacly, double-serving of sugary optimism: for example, inflation is transitory, the economy is growing strongly, wages are rising, etc.

And so we sleepwalk into 2022, ill-prepared to deal with reality which most annoyingly continues responding to systemic dynamics no matter how much sugary optimism is spread around.

The endless servings of sugary optimism serve several purposes:

1. They create an appealing illusion that systemic problems can be solved without materially changing the status quo or demanding any sacrifices.

2. They mask the inconvenient reality that the status quo is incapable of solving systemic problems because doing so would demand sacrifices of those skimming the vast majority of the benefits of the status quo, i.e. the wealthy and powerful.

3. They mask the eqnormous sacrifices being imposed on the bottom 90% to keep the status quo unchanged, i.e. benefiting the few at the expense of the many.

4. The demand to always be sugar-high optimistic is a handy tool to bludgeon critics who point out the systemic failure of the status quo as alarmists, doom-and-gloomers, etc.

In other words, you're only allowed to point out a critical systemic flaw if you also parrot a completely unrealistic, impractical "solution" that fits the sugar-high optimism requirement: fusion: unlimited energy for everyone forever! Modern Monetary Theory: free money for everyone forever! And so on, in an endless gush of detached-from-reality "solutions" that all magically solve all problems without changing anything in the power structure of who benefits from the existing arrangement or demanding any reduction in our waste is growth Landfill Economy.

We no longer solve the hard problems because they require changing a system that benefits the wealthy and powerful to the exclusion of everyone else. Only the debt-serfs and tax-donkeys suffer, but since they're passive and powerless, who cares?

The sugary optimism also masks the destructive nature of the easy fixes that are so beloved by the political class: debt, inflation and narrative control. All are politically and economically painless at first, and but the systemic consequences eventually erode the entire status quo, which collapses in a putrid heap of lies, artifice, fakery, profiteering, delusion and deception.

Making everyone feel warm and fuzzy by borrowing and distributing "free money" works wonders more or less like a sugar-cocaine speedball. The cost of the new debt is spread over years in the future, and a Federal Reserve beholden to those reaping the profits from debt (banks, financiers, the wealthy) is always ready to lower interest rates to ease the pain of servicing debt as a means of enabling ever-greater borrowing going forward.

What could be better? Borrow and spend now, pay in installments stretching far into the future. Alas, the advance of time is inexorable, and the future soon becomes the present. And despite the declining rate of interest, all that rapidly expanding debt is now sucking the income well dry, leaving insufficient income to borrow more or spend more.

Oops. Don't you hate it when the system works so well and then it suddenly implodes due to its self-reinforcing, self-destructive structural incoherence? A system dependent on debt for "growth" is self-liquidating, meaning that the debt eats the system alive by siphoning off income while malinvestment, waste and speculative gambling destroys the "capital" funded by the debt.

Inflation is equally beloved by the political class for the same reasons: it's painless at the start and everyone loves the illusion that assets are rising without anyone actually creating any additional value or productivity--it's all magic. Just print a few trillion dollars and pump the "free money" into stock buybacks and speculative bets, and voila, everyone who already owns assets gets richer without doing anything but being a genius.

All the fun stuff eventually generates real-world inflation and inflates assets into insane bubbles that eventually pop at the least opportune time, right when everyone watching their wealth swell like clockwork starts beleiving not just in their own genius but in the perpetual-motion machine of Fed-printing and rapidly expanding debt.

Those expecting assets to bubble higher forever and real-world costs to deflate have it backward: it's the assets which have inflated that will deflate back to starting levels of valuation and it's real-world inflation that will gather momentum and shred the economy and political structure.

Those depending on earned income will see the purchasing power of their earnings drop precipitously while those who were counting on their vastly enlarged unearned "wealth" in asset bubbles to fund their lifestyle and lavish retirement will experience 80% declines in the "wealth" they presumed was permanent.

It will be a great shock to the political class, but controlling the narrative to protect your interests won't actually stop the systemic momentum careening over the cliff. Demanding that everyone disavow problems doesn't actually solve the problems.

Alas, expedient speedball fixes to systemic problems only create new instabilities while fueling the instabilities of the problems left unsolved. Sleepwalking in a fantasy-dream of free money forever, free energy forever and endlessly expanding asset bubbles of "wealth" will take us to the edge of the clioff and then into the abyss.

What would be truly optimistic would be to surrender our dependence on asset bubbles and malinvested debt to prop up an unstable delusion of effortless "wealth" and an unsustainable waste is growth Landfill Economy.  

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http://endoftheamericandream.com/they-are-working-relentlessly-to-transform-our-society-into-a-dystopian-big-brother-hellhole/

They Are Working Relentlessly To Transform Our Society Into A Dystopian “Big Brother” Hellhole

The past two years have fundamentally transformed just about every nation on the entire planet, and there will be no going back if the elite have their way.  For more than a decade, I have been warning about the rapid growth of the “Big Brother” control grid all around us, but in 2020 and 2021 things have gone to an entirely new level.  The pandemic has given them the perfect excuse to impose lockdowns, mask requirements, vaccine passports and mandatory injections all over the globe.  They have used fear of the virus to get the vast majority of the world population to accept measures that they never would have accepted during normal times.  As a result, now they can monitor us, track us and control us like never before.

In many areas, it has already gotten to a point where you can’t even live a normal life without a “vaccine passport” or some other proof that you are up to date on your injections.  In New York City, people have been getting arrested just for ordering food without showing proof of vaccination.  As a result of such authoritarian measures, the vaccination rate in the city is up to about 85 percent, but that still isn’t good enough for those in charge.

So now they are going to be sending vaccination teams around to “encourage” those that have not been vaccinated to get their shots.

Oh, and if you give in they will hand you $100 for being a good little servant of the system.

Sadly, it sounds like door to door vaccination teams will soon be coming to the UK as well…

Door-to-door teams armed with Covid jabs will be sent to the homes of unvaccinated Britons in plans being considered by Ministers to reach the estimated five million people yet to be inoculated.

Discussions between the Department of Health, NHS England and No 10 over the past week have looked at a nationwide drive to send vaccine teams to areas with low uptake rates as a crucial way to avoid lockdown and other restrictions.

But at least the injections have not become mandatory in the United States and the UK just yet.

However, an increasing number of nations are starting to move in that direction.  Ecuador just mandated the injections for everyone that is at least five years old, it appears that Germany could make them mandatory early next year, and Austria is actually hiring people to hunt down “vaccine refusers”.

Yes, our world really is becoming one huge science fiction movie.

In Canada, the government was actually “secretly tracking 33 million phones” in order to gauge “the public’s responsiveness during lockdown measures”…

Canada – which has a population of 38 million – has admitted to secretly tracking 33 million phones during the Covid-19 lockown, according to the National Post, citing Blacklock’s Reporter which first noted the disclosure.

The country’s Public Health Agency (PHAC) did so to assess “the public’s responsiveness during lockdown measures,” according to the report.

But the Canadians still have a long way to go in order to top the insanity in New Zealand.

Not too long ago, an anti-euthanasia group asked the Ministry of Health if a patient that is in the hospital with COVID is “eligible” for euthanasia…

In November, anti-euthanasia group #DefendNZ asked the New Zealand Ministry of Health (MOH) questions about the practice of the nation’s End of Life Choice Act (EOLC Act). One of these questions was, “Could a patient who is severely hospitalised with Covid-19 potentially be eligible for assisted suicide or euthanasia under the Act if a health practitioner viewed their prognosis as less than 6 months?”

The response that the group got back was extremely alarming…

Doctors receive a government fee of $1,000 plus expenses for each person they kill through euthanasia.

The MOH confirmed that such patients with COVID could be killed by lethal injection under the new euthanasia law. This includes patients who are considered to be dying from COVID or those who have extreme suffering from its effects. The MOH stated, “A terminal illness is most often a prolonged disease where treatment is not effective.”

If you live in New Zealand and you get COVID, you will want to be very careful to clarify what someone means when they ask you if you want to “go to sleep”.

Of course all of the rules, regulations and mandates that have been imposed upon us are not for the elite.  They appear to be operating under their own special set of rules, and this should make all of us very sick.

I really like how Emerald Robinson made this point in her most recent article…

Meanwhile, my colleagues in the corporate media spent their time in 2021 telling you that you could fly on a packed airplane but that your church was closed. That you couldn’t walk into your favorite local restaurant but Target and Walmart were always open for you. That your schools were shut down but left-wing political rallies were safe to attend. They treated CDC “guidelines” as law. They repeated with a straight face that your civil rights were basically suspended indefinitely — unless you were a member of Congress or Bill Gates. The overwhelming majority of my so-called colleagues in journalism spent the entire year celebrating this state of affairs. The stench of their treachery to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights will never be washed away.

Our freedoms and liberties are being systematically destroyed all around us, but many Americans don’t seem to care.

Instead, they just continue to allow fear of the virus to push them into doing very irrational things.

For instance, a riot almost erupted in Brooklyn on Friday when officials started to hand out “free at-home COVID-19 tests”…

Cops had to step in Friday as a crowd mobbed a Brooklyn corner where the city was giving away free at-home COVID-19 tests.

Tempers flared as the larger-than-expected crowd descended on Flatbush and Church avenues, one of five spots in the Big Apple where city health officials were doling out tests amid a surge in demand over the holidays and lack of supply.

People were so desperate to get those tests that the police had to be called in.

It reminded me of scenes that we would see on Black Friday in the pre-pandemic days, but in this case people were ready to fight to get their hands on free COVID tests.

Have we really sunk this low?

I was really hoping that the pandemic was starting to subside, but now this new Omicron variant has caused a tremendous wave of fear.

And politicians will inevitably respond to all of this fear by imposing even more authoritarian measures.

I have been shocked by how easy it has been for much of the global population to accept the authoritarian measures that have been imposed so far.  If they are not willing to stand up to tyranny now, what will happen when much greater tyranny comes along later?

These are such dark times, and I believe that they will get even darker in 2022.

The fiery grip of tyranny is getting a little tighter with each passing day, but much of the population of our planet does not seem to think that this is a problem.