Fucking fantastic article Mark. Question for you though, can you really call someone a friend when you are not able to truly discuss the issues that surround us with them? Lately I've been running into the same issue and feel that those who claim the title of "progressive" are really just petulant children who threaten to hold their breath til they turn blue if they don't get their way. How can any sane adult be friends with people like that? It's easier to talk sense to my 22 month old daughter than it is with a "progressive" who has a masters degree, the sheer dumbing down of American society is something that will be studied throughout the ages by future historians as what not to do if you want to keep society health and functioning.
But I keep faith that some of them can still be saved, or at the very least restored to some degree of sanity that won't destroy the world. That’s not hubris; the past three years have proven to me that some spells can still be broken. And, as I’ve said before, it’s always preferable to break spells (and robots) instead of people.
I have fallen out of friends with several people over the past few years who caught the TDS a little too hard and could no longer suffer disagreement with their enlightened ideas without descending into screeching tantrums. It is what it is. I kept the good ones. The rest I suppose can enjoy being eaten by their pets, imported or domestic, when the time inevitably comes.
It's been a rough couple of years, in that regard. But also eye-opening. Weirdly enough, COVID helped us see a lot of people more clearly, including those closest to us.
A friend of mine recently acknowledged that they acted like an asshole during COVID. This is the exact same epiphany some alcoholic friends and family members had before starting their various roads to recovery.
It’s up to each one of us to judge whether any particular person is worth keeping around, but I try to err on the side of grace if a person seems sincere.
Agreed, Meth Bear. And although I haven't received any similar apologies yet, I suspect a few might be forthcoming this year. That's the first step to rebuilding trust.
The door's always open to anyone who had a genuine change of heart. But I am not accepting any "can we just forgive and forget" or "we were both wrong" shit. Repentance is praiseworthy, but bullshit-non-apologies are bullshit.
I empathize (there’s that word again) with Mark on this issue. I’ve lived in Asia since 2016, but return home most summers to visit friends and family, aside from a hiatus during Covid travel restrictions. They’re all educated professionals, devoutly on Team Blue. These are the people I grew up with. They are all basically raving lunatics now when anything political (which unfortunately covers almost everything these days) comes up. I initially tried engaging them on sensitive topics, but quickly realized “what CNN tells me is true, everything else is far-right extremist misinformation” is an impenetrable fortress.
So my options are basically (1) continue banging my head against the fortress walls and alienate everyone I grew up with, including my entire immediate and extended family, (2) stop speaking to these people and never visit home again, or (3) steer clear of sensitive topics, sit silently in the corner when they get to raving like lunatics, and continue enjoying activities we do together like fly fishing and mountain biking.
Option 3 is really the least worst option, as terrible as it is. My opinions are generally known, so it’s not like I’m betraying my conscience. They know my silence is not agreement. It’s just not worth it to keep arguing about everything, and I don’t want to sever all contact with my entire family and most old friends. Fortunately I have friends where I live who generally share my worldview (plus engaging in stimulating exchanges on Substack), and I only have to navigate option 3 for a few weeks out of the year.
So it’s just not as simple as “why are you still friends with these idiots?” I empathize with others like Mark stuck in this maddening position.
In the past, the ordinary pleasures of friendship were enough to cover the cost of letting them spout idiocies unchallenged. These days, that price tag is starting to seem extravagant. We were lucky on Christmas Eve, in sense that we didn't have to pay it. But the year ahead is going to be a rough ride, and I can't afford hold my tongue any longer.
Yeah, I’m not especially looking forward to my next trip home. I honestly went into last summer thinking the narratives had so thoroughly collapsed that everyone would have returned to their senses. But no such luck. They wouldn’t deny indisputable facts, but they’d just minimize everything and treat each MSM distortion as an isolated innocent mistake.
Lab leak? Who cares? Hunter’s laptop? Respect the man’s privacy for fuck’s sake. Covid vaccines didn’t stop any of us from getting Covid? It would’ve been so much worse if we were unvaccinated and we still somehow saved other people’s lives by getting vaccinated. Ukraine policy an unmitigated disaster? But but Putin is Satan!! Trans madness? Just let them express their true selves! Hey, stop talking, Maddow’s on!
I absolutely have worn out my "BLOCK" button, divesting myself of anybody & everybody who leans left. You cannot have a rational conversation with irrational people. You can't have a pleasant conversation with people whose idea of "accord" is for the holder of an opposing viewpoint to prostrate himself before them and praise their wisdom on all topics.
As one of my older bosses once told me "I understand why old people are grumpy. At some point, you realize that you don't have many years left. Once you realize that, you have to take the POV that life is too short to take shit off of stupid people". Thank you, Dennis, wherever you may be now
Like you, I have option 3 on the table anytime I'm around Team Blue friends. But there's a creeping malaise involved in that option, the unsaid and repressed, the elephant in the room that gets bigger and bigger each time and which will eventually be unavoidable. Especially when a friend or family member drops dead. My brother is on that path, currently, with aggressive turbo cancer. He has no idea and is not open to it either.
I'm sorry to hear that, Navyo. I imagine the pain of that must be unbearable at times, especially if he has closed his minds to all potential causes and options.
Thanks, Mark. We've been very close all our lives. He's a product of the 60s and a progressive through and through. In many ways, he's a clear thinker and very loving, yet he bought the pandemic hook, line and sinker to the point of his 'assisted suicide' in its most perverse and unconscious version. So maybe not as clear as I thought. But he and I have put to rights any judgments and accept each others' life journey as it is.
Yes, that’s certainly a difficult one. We’ve had a highly unusual pattern of cancer deaths, heart attacks, fertility issues, etc., in our circle as well. The culprit is obvious to me, and I’ve expressed my views on Covid vax dangers, but it falls on deaf ears.
I mean, people in my circle got vaxxed while pregnant and then vaxxed their toddlers. To acknowledge the true extent of Covid vax dangers would be to admit putting loved ones in serious danger. They know something’s wrong, but admitting it would be too ego shattering. And they can rely on MSM to maintain the comforting illusion. Climate change is the culprit!! I don’t know what it’s going to take to break that logjam.
Pharma is fully capable of pushing fake safety narratives for decades before being forced to acknowledge the truth. They kept Singulair’s “despair” side effect hidden until the drug went generic. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/09/health/fda-singulair-asthma-drug-warning.html?searchResultPosition=7. But people still trust these psychopaths for some reason until there’s no other choice. Yeah, that’s an exasperating issue for sure when hanging around Team Blue.
The concept of putting your own child at risk over being ego-shattered is beyond me at this point, although I see it's true. It reminds me of the sheer evil behind this.
The most overwhelming and expensive propaganda campaign ever perpetrated upon humanity. These assholes know exactly what they’re doing. And many people are completely defenseless. Especially in “educated” progressive circles.
Same here exactly and i've also chosen option 3...
As the choices here are either assent, dissent and be met with vehement denunciation and charges of race and gay hate, or silence, I think option 3 is wiser than letting this stuff come between you and the people you love.
Smartphones are the crack pipe and this concentrated blend of American Calvinism and identity Maoism are the crack rock, with the result being our thinking classes have fried their brains and all become a single raging zombie horde.
Maybe some day this will pass, but certaintly not as long as the Orange Beast still roams the land...
This was absolutely spot freaking on. Knocked it out of the park. We have a parasitic and psychopathic bankster class that has turned this country into an economic zone to loot and plunder, using the Marxcissistic public officials and activists they've bought at a bargain, and concealing the nature of their crimes under a smokescreen of moral language that they hijack like a guerilla terrorist. We absolutely have to break the spell, at least for as many folks as possible, before it escalates to the next phase, which is coming upon us soon. You're doing God's work, Mark! Great job!
One of the rare, beautiful pearls that was uncovered amidst the last few years of slime, was the emergence of some phenomenal writers - of which you are one! So thank YOU!
Spectacularly well done. Compellingly written, flows expertly, includes both savvy insights and dark bitter laughs. Sorry about your friends. They're not really your friends. They'll sell you out in a hastened heartbeat when the time comes.
See above re: friends. I agree for the most part that the trust differential is backwards from the way our progressive friends see it. The best I can do is never lie to them (which I never do). The fact that the ones who still speak to me never put me in a position to is... interesting. I suspect some of them may be harboring heretical thoughts themselves, and I like to nurture those if and whenever I can.
Unfortunately my own fair city has, I'm pretty sure, declared itself a sanctuary city. Sigh. My mother used to say we'd live to see all that's happening, happen. She also used to intone "charity begins at home" and was musing on that when a few lines later you used it, too! Excellent. I think too many people honestly believe they _are_ good. Like, for real. No one is good. I'm actually not a 5 point calvinist, or any pointage, but it's true about all our fallen natures. I don't care what "80% of world Christianity" thinks (according to a frequent commenter on another substance), the Bible is getting clearer by the second as pertains to prophecy. I just don't see how anyone at this point can say, as my reform/millennial brethren do, that no one can know blah blah blahdidah about such things. And then they seem to relish the idea that the _entire church_ has to be martyred in order to be shown worthy of entrance into heaven. Argh!! They are so..... I don't know. But what you relate is maddening, and as I said my parents primed me to expect all of it. I really hoped they were wrong, but nope. My 22 year old daughter is one of those observational types, a writer too, and is valiantly fighting off the despair of feeling like there's not much future for her. She's completely atypical in that she's completely normal in every regard and could pass as a child of the 1980s. All of it makes me angry, and then God says "look at Me, eyes on Me, right now" and if I obey perspective returns and I settle back to patiently waiting. Maybe consider getting armed if you aren't already?
PLEASE get saved Bisone!! I want us to hang out on the other side! You tell great tales, and God will surely be happy to put your pen to work in His service!
Thank you, Miss Teacup. Your parents sound very wise. And one thing I've noticed is that wise people hew to axioms not out of convention but because they can see the plain truth of things. "Charity begins at home" is actually a statement of humility, when we think about it. The best answer to that progressives seem able to contrive is way more fiddly and full of sneaky escape hatches. Even something like "Think globally, act locally," contains an element of hubris; who am I to believe I can think on a global scale, which includes billions of unique minds and competing interests?
"My 22 year old daughter is one of those observational types, a writer too, and is valiantly fighting off the despair of feeling like there's not much future for her"
I also know some people her age, and who are also struggling. It's a rough age to begin with, and the Covidians certainly didn't help. But she sounds like she's got a good, strong family. That's the best any of us can hope for, apart from God's own hand.
I won't say if I'm armed or not. But as far as getting saved is concerned, I am open to it.
I wish I'd been more openly appreciative of my parents' wisdom while they were still here/could understand, but the first thing I'm going to do when I see them again is give them big hugs and lots of love. We humans are so foolish. 😔
Well, gosh dang it DON'T WAIT. John 3:16-18: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
That's it. Tell God that you are fully aware of your sinfulness, that there's nothing you can do about it yourself, that you actually do need to be rescued, and could He please do that? Would he forgive you and come to dwell within your heart?
If you are sincere in your desire to become His adopted son, to have Him as your Lord He will absolutely save you. You will enter into God's family, and life will take on a cast so different from what you know it'll blow your mind. I don't know how else to put it. It sounds kind of hokey almost, but it's profound and the most real thing I've ever experienced. The love aspect is wild, just very deep and reassuring. Get Mrs. Bisone on board, too. God wants her as well. Don't wait. TIME IS SHORT. You have seen enough to convince you. Don't let Satan have you. All that b*****d cares about is keeping God from having you. God wants a big, big family but we each must choose. Free will. He won't force anyone into union with Him against their will. He will draw you, He will knock. But every refusal to open becomes more entrenched with repetition.
I feel very excited for you! And for anyone reading this who might wonder if this is for them, too. It is!! Blessings my friends.
"California state health insurance to cover sex changes for illegal immigrants. Nearly 700,000 illegal immigrants between 26-49 will qualify. Analysts say the expansion could cost taxpayers an estimated $3.1 billion."
But on the other hand, "money printer go Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr." They don't care. They don't believe in debt, la la la. Unfortunately, debt believes in all of us. And, my, what sharp teeth it has.
Yes. Some are saying that in 2024 debt will finally bite back. This is from “Investors warn on government debt levels in crucial election year”, Financial Times, January 8, 2024:
“Investors are warning governments around the world over ‘unmoored’ levels of public debt… Government debt issuance in the US and the UK is expected to soar to the highest level on record in the coming year… ‘Deficits are ‘out of control and the real story is that there’s no mechanism for bringing them under control’, said Jim Cielinski, global head of fixed income at Janus Henderson.
I wonder if they hear themselves, sometimes: "...no mechanism for bringing them under control."
It's an astonishing claim, when you think about it. We can apparently establish worldwide biomedical tyranny with a pen stroke, but there exists no earthly mechanism to stop deficit spending. Nope. Nada. Might as well try to slay a Jabberwock.
In my 2024 predictions I expect illegal immigration to go exponential this year, and the government will do nothing about it unless liberal professional women start feeling unsafe. Dems can't lose lpw...unless Biden is going to get 90-100mil votes regardless...
I'm not even sure *that* will turn back the tide. Liberal professional women tend to be in the hardest grip of toxic empathy. If they feel unsafe, they'll most likely hunt for scapegoats on the Right, as per usual.
Thanks, Mark! It's even MORE distressing knowing that our own tax dollars are literally BRINGING these people in, from far and wide and paying for their entire upkeep. They get around $6k upon entry and then a debit card that's refilled with $2200 a mo. I worked for 40 yrs, paying into "the system" and I don't even get that much a month! There's at least one recruitment camp/clearing house at the Darrien Gap, ran by our either our own military and/or the federally funded NGOs. I've followed a couple of independent journalists who have actually made the same "journeys" these invaders have. The Chinese, especially, have host houses and hotels mapped out along the way that they post on social media to make their trip a bit easier and they can even visit with their own brethren and even team up along the way! Nothing like having friends to travel with! 😌 It all makes me sick. 😫
If we survive, and the history books look back on this era, the moral insanity you describe above will be hard for future generations to conceive of. "What do you mean they were broke, but handed out money to foreign criminals? Even if that was possible, why not give that magic money to their own people?"
I've thought a lot about how future history books (if they exist) will portray our current times. "They demanded billions of people take an experimental injection, with unknown side effects, for a respiratory illness with a 99.97% recovery rate?" Simple logic and common sense seem to be completely lost on our current administration.
Great narrative. It does not seem accidental the coalition between border security (or lack thereof), federal programs allowing illegal immigrants to work and a lack of verification of SSN by employers. I married into a family of illegal immigrants. Half of my high school was illegal immigrants. I was trained to be an ESL teacher. I am now divorced and I do not teach. Every legal immigrant (and most illegal immigrants) despise all the immigration, because it provides direct competitors at their workplace, and for the housing and childcare that they would seek out. Ditto for working class native folks. The whole point of uncontrolled immigration isn’t to “purify the sins” of the white guilt laden suburbanites (although some give themselves moral superiority for those beliefs). The point is to provide wage deflation for those on the low end of the wage scale. What makes the American system work is the income mismatch between capital and labor. The wider that gap gets the more it benefits capital. Every construction company, every retailer, every wholesaler, every plumber, every roofer, every mechanic, every non techno-utopian-corporatist-governmental-fascists white collar job is affected by this immigration. This is no different than 1920s Ellis island. The gilded age was paved with cheap and hungry labor. We have the elite capital class that feeds off the suckling teat of the money printers and that makes shit more expensive which makes labor more expensive which means we can’t have that, so we need more labor supply. The US would be facing an acute worker shortage, especially at the low end, if it were not for the immigrants. We have a decreasing average age of death, we had a bunch of early retirements because of COVID and would have a shrinking labor force if not for these policies. These “influxes” are engineered from the top. It is not difficult or expensive to build a wall. If there were 10,000 of me would could do it personally with no heavy machinery other than pickups and backhoes. America’s special sauce has always been large corporate interests fucking everyone in the ass, American or otherwise. Why would the billionaires not get their way? We want to print money and still only have to pay Leticia $10 an hour cause she need to know her place. These fuckwads want us dead.
Well what a not at all sussspiciousss coincidence. Hello from England (or the ex-country on the northwest edge of what used to be Europe) but is now a multi-culti diversity hell-hole with more cameras than any place on earth to "keep us safe". If you were born here you give; if you weren't, you receive - and you know its better to give than to receive, right?
Well, you pretty much described, defended and authored exactly how I feel on the subject of toxic empathy, or pathological altruism. They are one and the same, and need to be destroyed on sight. How to go about ridding these psychoempaths of their foolish but deadly beliefs I do not know. Perhaps the only way is for them to suffer the noxious experience of lack of gratitude by these foreign terrorists. But even that might not work. Regardless, I'm all for the remedy to be Option #3.
Unfortunately, that lack of gratitude might kill them before they have a chance to change their minds. That's part of the reason I wrote this. I want to help change those in whatever way I can, before it's too late.
Hate replacement theory, hate those who would propagate it, especially I know it is weird in France & Quebec (I'm French culturally) and so pour moi it never fails to annoy me. I don't mind non-whites, I'm even fond of them, but it seems that it is always the most violent people of cultures incompatible with our own who are sent here.
But that said, it just makes me cling harder to my culture, and make me want to do more posts and articles on mythology, serial-novels and essays on literature than before.
The harder they attack our culture and peoples the more we must cling to them. The left won't win and cannot win. Period.
The preservation of mythology, and of good stories in general, is no minor task. In fact I think the loss of our mythopoetic truths played a huge role in what got us into this mess. If we are to survive and prevail, we'll need to remember them.
Absolutely true, and we need to keep them alive, and keep replicating, re-adapting and otherwise keep making new epics. It's what motivates me as a writer, as I must keep the spirit of Scotia & Marianne alive.
It saddens me how few people read where I am, and how few people are actually as you said in touch with the spirit of their culture and the mythopoetic truths of their own heritage.
Great article- from Canada so not the same border issues but for a small population we have our own crisis of fake asylum seekers and totally unsustainable legal immigration - while we are squeezed more daily thru taxes to pay for it all while our cost of living skyrockets along with crime and our living standards sink. Fucking depressing.
Or Mississippi/Alabama, parts of Texas & Louisiana.. maybe Arkansas. Are warmer.
Warsaw Pact Countries: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania.. or Russia .. if you're devout Christian and can handle languages
But most any place is better than Manhattan/NYC. Most other blue shitholes went belly up a long time ago.. New York was a nice enough place until recently .. nice memories make it worst of the worst
One has to love car culture, ie driving everywhere, and to be able to drive to live anywhere but NYC. As for the Warsaw countries: may be it will work for some people. Sometimes it is better not to know the language or the culture because at any place, people know how to be mean. I am stuck to my job. And it seems like I am injured (take a wild guess how), so starting all over is not possible. At least at the moment.
If Japan sociologically could get away with this or China or any other demographically challenged country (see Europe) they would because a shrinking population is such a death knell. Because our mythos of diversity allows the money printers to exploit our empathy (as you point out) they will. If the money printers in Japan and China (of which they are the OGs) could get away with importing masses of Africans and Filipinos they would, to drive down wage growth and grow future consumers to enslave. Qatar, UAE and Bahrain have no problem importing Filipino, African and Indian slave labor so they will. The wealthy money printers need more bodies to make their system work, and will exploit whatever sociological weaknesses exist. This has ALWAYS been true. Cotton could have been picked by waged workers, but where is the profit in that? We could pay living wages to Amazon workers but then where is the profit in that? Closed borders mean stable labor supply which means wage growth, tisc tisc...
Yes. It really is quite the wicked scheme they're running (and also quite an old one). But there are a few new wrinkles that its current authors didn't count on. Namely, the outsourcing and/or collapse of domestic industry means a vast number of these newly imported "slaves" will ultimately be non-productive in their new digs.
We are already seeing this happening in the cities. There are no factories for them to staff or plantations for them to farm. There are still plenty of Starbucks for now, I guess. Molon Latte! But most will end up on the dole, in the streets or both. That's why I suspect they might have a different master plan for many of these people, once the native police forces have been "defunded" or otherwise defanged. Early NYPD retirements have *soared* these past three years. They know no one has their backs, especially the DAs.
But if you can properly bribe and hypnotize a group of otherwise helpless people?
It's terrifying. Honestly, that's why I hope and pray for a collapse sooner rather than later, because the collapse is inevitable at this point, and I'd rather it happen before they get their illegal alien-staffed KGB and all the other pieces of their control grid fully into place.
Haven't even finished it, just got to the Rule by Retard part and laughed so hard at that I damn near peed my pants..... hilarious Mark. K, back to the article.
Fucking fantastic article Mark. Question for you though, can you really call someone a friend when you are not able to truly discuss the issues that surround us with them? Lately I've been running into the same issue and feel that those who claim the title of "progressive" are really just petulant children who threaten to hold their breath til they turn blue if they don't get their way. How can any sane adult be friends with people like that? It's easier to talk sense to my 22 month old daughter than it is with a "progressive" who has a masters degree, the sheer dumbing down of American society is something that will be studied throughout the ages by future historians as what not to do if you want to keep society health and functioning.
My short answer is something like, “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
I’m also a big Star Wars fan — or I was, at least, before progs took a blowtorch to that redemption myth as well.
https://markbisone.substack.com/p/the-big-flip
But I keep faith that some of them can still be saved, or at the very least restored to some degree of sanity that won't destroy the world. That’s not hubris; the past three years have proven to me that some spells can still be broken. And, as I’ve said before, it’s always preferable to break spells (and robots) instead of people.
Ooh! Break spells, not people.
I like it!
And robots! Don't forget robots... 🤖💥
I'll leave that to those who meet them. :)
I have fallen out of friends with several people over the past few years who caught the TDS a little too hard and could no longer suffer disagreement with their enlightened ideas without descending into screeching tantrums. It is what it is. I kept the good ones. The rest I suppose can enjoy being eaten by their pets, imported or domestic, when the time inevitably comes.
It's been a rough couple of years, in that regard. But also eye-opening. Weirdly enough, COVID helped us see a lot of people more clearly, including those closest to us.
A friend of mine recently acknowledged that they acted like an asshole during COVID. This is the exact same epiphany some alcoholic friends and family members had before starting their various roads to recovery.
It’s up to each one of us to judge whether any particular person is worth keeping around, but I try to err on the side of grace if a person seems sincere.
Agreed, Meth Bear. And although I haven't received any similar apologies yet, I suspect a few might be forthcoming this year. That's the first step to rebuilding trust.
The door's always open to anyone who had a genuine change of heart. But I am not accepting any "can we just forgive and forget" or "we were both wrong" shit. Repentance is praiseworthy, but bullshit-non-apologies are bullshit.
Get ready for a tidal wave of those, too. Learning to parse the legit ones from the bullshit is gonna be a real headache.
I empathize (there’s that word again) with Mark on this issue. I’ve lived in Asia since 2016, but return home most summers to visit friends and family, aside from a hiatus during Covid travel restrictions. They’re all educated professionals, devoutly on Team Blue. These are the people I grew up with. They are all basically raving lunatics now when anything political (which unfortunately covers almost everything these days) comes up. I initially tried engaging them on sensitive topics, but quickly realized “what CNN tells me is true, everything else is far-right extremist misinformation” is an impenetrable fortress.
So my options are basically (1) continue banging my head against the fortress walls and alienate everyone I grew up with, including my entire immediate and extended family, (2) stop speaking to these people and never visit home again, or (3) steer clear of sensitive topics, sit silently in the corner when they get to raving like lunatics, and continue enjoying activities we do together like fly fishing and mountain biking.
Option 3 is really the least worst option, as terrible as it is. My opinions are generally known, so it’s not like I’m betraying my conscience. They know my silence is not agreement. It’s just not worth it to keep arguing about everything, and I don’t want to sever all contact with my entire family and most old friends. Fortunately I have friends where I live who generally share my worldview (plus engaging in stimulating exchanges on Substack), and I only have to navigate option 3 for a few weeks out of the year.
So it’s just not as simple as “why are you still friends with these idiots?” I empathize with others like Mark stuck in this maddening position.
In the past, the ordinary pleasures of friendship were enough to cover the cost of letting them spout idiocies unchallenged. These days, that price tag is starting to seem extravagant. We were lucky on Christmas Eve, in sense that we didn't have to pay it. But the year ahead is going to be a rough ride, and I can't afford hold my tongue any longer.
Yeah, I’m not especially looking forward to my next trip home. I honestly went into last summer thinking the narratives had so thoroughly collapsed that everyone would have returned to their senses. But no such luck. They wouldn’t deny indisputable facts, but they’d just minimize everything and treat each MSM distortion as an isolated innocent mistake.
Lab leak? Who cares? Hunter’s laptop? Respect the man’s privacy for fuck’s sake. Covid vaccines didn’t stop any of us from getting Covid? It would’ve been so much worse if we were unvaccinated and we still somehow saved other people’s lives by getting vaccinated. Ukraine policy an unmitigated disaster? But but Putin is Satan!! Trans madness? Just let them express their true selves! Hey, stop talking, Maddow’s on!
It’s all so maddening and tiresome.
I absolutely have worn out my "BLOCK" button, divesting myself of anybody & everybody who leans left. You cannot have a rational conversation with irrational people. You can't have a pleasant conversation with people whose idea of "accord" is for the holder of an opposing viewpoint to prostrate himself before them and praise their wisdom on all topics.
As one of my older bosses once told me "I understand why old people are grumpy. At some point, you realize that you don't have many years left. Once you realize that, you have to take the POV that life is too short to take shit off of stupid people". Thank you, Dennis, wherever you may be now
Like you, I have option 3 on the table anytime I'm around Team Blue friends. But there's a creeping malaise involved in that option, the unsaid and repressed, the elephant in the room that gets bigger and bigger each time and which will eventually be unavoidable. Especially when a friend or family member drops dead. My brother is on that path, currently, with aggressive turbo cancer. He has no idea and is not open to it either.
I'm sorry to hear that, Navyo. I imagine the pain of that must be unbearable at times, especially if he has closed his minds to all potential causes and options.
Thanks, Mark. We've been very close all our lives. He's a product of the 60s and a progressive through and through. In many ways, he's a clear thinker and very loving, yet he bought the pandemic hook, line and sinker to the point of his 'assisted suicide' in its most perverse and unconscious version. So maybe not as clear as I thought. But he and I have put to rights any judgments and accept each others' life journey as it is.
Yes, that’s certainly a difficult one. We’ve had a highly unusual pattern of cancer deaths, heart attacks, fertility issues, etc., in our circle as well. The culprit is obvious to me, and I’ve expressed my views on Covid vax dangers, but it falls on deaf ears.
I mean, people in my circle got vaxxed while pregnant and then vaxxed their toddlers. To acknowledge the true extent of Covid vax dangers would be to admit putting loved ones in serious danger. They know something’s wrong, but admitting it would be too ego shattering. And they can rely on MSM to maintain the comforting illusion. Climate change is the culprit!! I don’t know what it’s going to take to break that logjam.
Pharma is fully capable of pushing fake safety narratives for decades before being forced to acknowledge the truth. They kept Singulair’s “despair” side effect hidden until the drug went generic. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/09/health/fda-singulair-asthma-drug-warning.html?searchResultPosition=7. But people still trust these psychopaths for some reason until there’s no other choice. Yeah, that’s an exasperating issue for sure when hanging around Team Blue.
The concept of putting your own child at risk over being ego-shattered is beyond me at this point, although I see it's true. It reminds me of the sheer evil behind this.
The most overwhelming and expensive propaganda campaign ever perpetrated upon humanity. These assholes know exactly what they’re doing. And many people are completely defenseless. Especially in “educated” progressive circles.
Indeed. That's somehow the tragedy of it.
Same here exactly and i've also chosen option 3...
As the choices here are either assent, dissent and be met with vehement denunciation and charges of race and gay hate, or silence, I think option 3 is wiser than letting this stuff come between you and the people you love.
Smartphones are the crack pipe and this concentrated blend of American Calvinism and identity Maoism are the crack rock, with the result being our thinking classes have fried their brains and all become a single raging zombie horde.
Maybe some day this will pass, but certaintly not as long as the Orange Beast still roams the land...
This was absolutely spot freaking on. Knocked it out of the park. We have a parasitic and psychopathic bankster class that has turned this country into an economic zone to loot and plunder, using the Marxcissistic public officials and activists they've bought at a bargain, and concealing the nature of their crimes under a smokescreen of moral language that they hijack like a guerilla terrorist. We absolutely have to break the spell, at least for as many folks as possible, before it escalates to the next phase, which is coming upon us soon. You're doing God's work, Mark! Great job!
Thanks, Dan. The moral smokescreen is probably the thing that pisses me off the most. Like Lt. Aldo Raine, I prefer my Nazis in uniform, lol.
Well said. Breaking the spell seems to be the most important and fundamental step.
I read it in one go, almost holding my breath. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. This needs to be shouted out for the world to hear.
Thank you for the restack, Riff!
One of the rare, beautiful pearls that was uncovered amidst the last few years of slime, was the emergence of some phenomenal writers - of which you are one! So thank YOU!
Hear hear.
Spectacularly well done. Compellingly written, flows expertly, includes both savvy insights and dark bitter laughs. Sorry about your friends. They're not really your friends. They'll sell you out in a hastened heartbeat when the time comes.
Thanks, Tom.
See above re: friends. I agree for the most part that the trust differential is backwards from the way our progressive friends see it. The best I can do is never lie to them (which I never do). The fact that the ones who still speak to me never put me in a position to is... interesting. I suspect some of them may be harboring heretical thoughts themselves, and I like to nurture those if and whenever I can.
Unfortunately my own fair city has, I'm pretty sure, declared itself a sanctuary city. Sigh. My mother used to say we'd live to see all that's happening, happen. She also used to intone "charity begins at home" and was musing on that when a few lines later you used it, too! Excellent. I think too many people honestly believe they _are_ good. Like, for real. No one is good. I'm actually not a 5 point calvinist, or any pointage, but it's true about all our fallen natures. I don't care what "80% of world Christianity" thinks (according to a frequent commenter on another substance), the Bible is getting clearer by the second as pertains to prophecy. I just don't see how anyone at this point can say, as my reform/millennial brethren do, that no one can know blah blah blahdidah about such things. And then they seem to relish the idea that the _entire church_ has to be martyred in order to be shown worthy of entrance into heaven. Argh!! They are so..... I don't know. But what you relate is maddening, and as I said my parents primed me to expect all of it. I really hoped they were wrong, but nope. My 22 year old daughter is one of those observational types, a writer too, and is valiantly fighting off the despair of feeling like there's not much future for her. She's completely atypical in that she's completely normal in every regard and could pass as a child of the 1980s. All of it makes me angry, and then God says "look at Me, eyes on Me, right now" and if I obey perspective returns and I settle back to patiently waiting. Maybe consider getting armed if you aren't already?
PLEASE get saved Bisone!! I want us to hang out on the other side! You tell great tales, and God will surely be happy to put your pen to work in His service!
Thank you, Miss Teacup. Your parents sound very wise. And one thing I've noticed is that wise people hew to axioms not out of convention but because they can see the plain truth of things. "Charity begins at home" is actually a statement of humility, when we think about it. The best answer to that progressives seem able to contrive is way more fiddly and full of sneaky escape hatches. Even something like "Think globally, act locally," contains an element of hubris; who am I to believe I can think on a global scale, which includes billions of unique minds and competing interests?
"My 22 year old daughter is one of those observational types, a writer too, and is valiantly fighting off the despair of feeling like there's not much future for her"
I also know some people her age, and who are also struggling. It's a rough age to begin with, and the Covidians certainly didn't help. But she sounds like she's got a good, strong family. That's the best any of us can hope for, apart from God's own hand.
I won't say if I'm armed or not. But as far as getting saved is concerned, I am open to it.
I wish I'd been more openly appreciative of my parents' wisdom while they were still here/could understand, but the first thing I'm going to do when I see them again is give them big hugs and lots of love. We humans are so foolish. 😔
Well, gosh dang it DON'T WAIT. John 3:16-18: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
That's it. Tell God that you are fully aware of your sinfulness, that there's nothing you can do about it yourself, that you actually do need to be rescued, and could He please do that? Would he forgive you and come to dwell within your heart?
If you are sincere in your desire to become His adopted son, to have Him as your Lord He will absolutely save you. You will enter into God's family, and life will take on a cast so different from what you know it'll blow your mind. I don't know how else to put it. It sounds kind of hokey almost, but it's profound and the most real thing I've ever experienced. The love aspect is wild, just very deep and reassuring. Get Mrs. Bisone on board, too. God wants her as well. Don't wait. TIME IS SHORT. You have seen enough to convince you. Don't let Satan have you. All that b*****d cares about is keeping God from having you. God wants a big, big family but we each must choose. Free will. He won't force anyone into union with Him against their will. He will draw you, He will knock. But every refusal to open becomes more entrenched with repetition.
I feel very excited for you! And for anyone reading this who might wonder if this is for them, too. It is!! Blessings my friends.
Amen.
"California state health insurance to cover sex changes for illegal immigrants. Nearly 700,000 illegal immigrants between 26-49 will qualify. Analysts say the expansion could cost taxpayers an estimated $3.1 billion."
January 8, 2024
Madness.
But on the other hand, "money printer go Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr." They don't care. They don't believe in debt, la la la. Unfortunately, debt believes in all of us. And, my, what sharp teeth it has.
Yes. Some are saying that in 2024 debt will finally bite back. This is from “Investors warn on government debt levels in crucial election year”, Financial Times, January 8, 2024:
“Investors are warning governments around the world over ‘unmoored’ levels of public debt… Government debt issuance in the US and the UK is expected to soar to the highest level on record in the coming year… ‘Deficits are ‘out of control and the real story is that there’s no mechanism for bringing them under control’, said Jim Cielinski, global head of fixed income at Janus Henderson.
Indeed.
I wonder if they hear themselves, sometimes: "...no mechanism for bringing them under control."
It's an astonishing claim, when you think about it. We can apparently establish worldwide biomedical tyranny with a pen stroke, but there exists no earthly mechanism to stop deficit spending. Nope. Nada. Might as well try to slay a Jabberwock.
In my 2024 predictions I expect illegal immigration to go exponential this year, and the government will do nothing about it unless liberal professional women start feeling unsafe. Dems can't lose lpw...unless Biden is going to get 90-100mil votes regardless...
I'm not even sure *that* will turn back the tide. Liberal professional women tend to be in the hardest grip of toxic empathy. If they feel unsafe, they'll most likely hunt for scapegoats on the Right, as per usual.
I suppose too they will still be freaking out about abortion access, even if only the migrants are going to want to sleep with them.
Thanks, Mark! It's even MORE distressing knowing that our own tax dollars are literally BRINGING these people in, from far and wide and paying for their entire upkeep. They get around $6k upon entry and then a debit card that's refilled with $2200 a mo. I worked for 40 yrs, paying into "the system" and I don't even get that much a month! There's at least one recruitment camp/clearing house at the Darrien Gap, ran by our either our own military and/or the federally funded NGOs. I've followed a couple of independent journalists who have actually made the same "journeys" these invaders have. The Chinese, especially, have host houses and hotels mapped out along the way that they post on social media to make their trip a bit easier and they can even visit with their own brethren and even team up along the way! Nothing like having friends to travel with! 😌 It all makes me sick. 😫
If we survive, and the history books look back on this era, the moral insanity you describe above will be hard for future generations to conceive of. "What do you mean they were broke, but handed out money to foreign criminals? Even if that was possible, why not give that magic money to their own people?"
I've thought a lot about how future history books (if they exist) will portray our current times. "They demanded billions of people take an experimental injection, with unknown side effects, for a respiratory illness with a 99.97% recovery rate?" Simple logic and common sense seem to be completely lost on our current administration.
Great narrative. It does not seem accidental the coalition between border security (or lack thereof), federal programs allowing illegal immigrants to work and a lack of verification of SSN by employers. I married into a family of illegal immigrants. Half of my high school was illegal immigrants. I was trained to be an ESL teacher. I am now divorced and I do not teach. Every legal immigrant (and most illegal immigrants) despise all the immigration, because it provides direct competitors at their workplace, and for the housing and childcare that they would seek out. Ditto for working class native folks. The whole point of uncontrolled immigration isn’t to “purify the sins” of the white guilt laden suburbanites (although some give themselves moral superiority for those beliefs). The point is to provide wage deflation for those on the low end of the wage scale. What makes the American system work is the income mismatch between capital and labor. The wider that gap gets the more it benefits capital. Every construction company, every retailer, every wholesaler, every plumber, every roofer, every mechanic, every non techno-utopian-corporatist-governmental-fascists white collar job is affected by this immigration. This is no different than 1920s Ellis island. The gilded age was paved with cheap and hungry labor. We have the elite capital class that feeds off the suckling teat of the money printers and that makes shit more expensive which makes labor more expensive which means we can’t have that, so we need more labor supply. The US would be facing an acute worker shortage, especially at the low end, if it were not for the immigrants. We have a decreasing average age of death, we had a bunch of early retirements because of COVID and would have a shrinking labor force if not for these policies. These “influxes” are engineered from the top. It is not difficult or expensive to build a wall. If there were 10,000 of me would could do it personally with no heavy machinery other than pickups and backhoes. America’s special sauce has always been large corporate interests fucking everyone in the ass, American or otherwise. Why would the billionaires not get their way? We want to print money and still only have to pay Leticia $10 an hour cause she need to know her place. These fuckwads want us dead.
They do want us dead, yes. That's why they're importing the means to kill us.
But we're not dead yet, and evil has a a way of self-destructing. We will win. But there will be a heavy toll, if we don't act fast.
Well what a not at all sussspiciousss coincidence. Hello from England (or the ex-country on the northwest edge of what used to be Europe) but is now a multi-culti diversity hell-hole with more cameras than any place on earth to "keep us safe". If you were born here you give; if you weren't, you receive - and you know its better to give than to receive, right?
It's the mathematics of madness, yes. That it arrives wearing a moral cloak really pisses me off.
Well, you pretty much described, defended and authored exactly how I feel on the subject of toxic empathy, or pathological altruism. They are one and the same, and need to be destroyed on sight. How to go about ridding these psychoempaths of their foolish but deadly beliefs I do not know. Perhaps the only way is for them to suffer the noxious experience of lack of gratitude by these foreign terrorists. But even that might not work. Regardless, I'm all for the remedy to be Option #3.
Unfortunately, that lack of gratitude might kill them before they have a chance to change their minds. That's part of the reason I wrote this. I want to help change those in whatever way I can, before it's too late.
Hate replacement theory, hate those who would propagate it, especially I know it is weird in France & Quebec (I'm French culturally) and so pour moi it never fails to annoy me. I don't mind non-whites, I'm even fond of them, but it seems that it is always the most violent people of cultures incompatible with our own who are sent here.
But that said, it just makes me cling harder to my culture, and make me want to do more posts and articles on mythology, serial-novels and essays on literature than before.
The harder they attack our culture and peoples the more we must cling to them. The left won't win and cannot win. Period.
The preservation of mythology, and of good stories in general, is no minor task. In fact I think the loss of our mythopoetic truths played a huge role in what got us into this mess. If we are to survive and prevail, we'll need to remember them.
Absolutely true, and we need to keep them alive, and keep replicating, re-adapting and otherwise keep making new epics. It's what motivates me as a writer, as I must keep the spirit of Scotia & Marianne alive.
It saddens me how few people read where I am, and how few people are actually as you said in touch with the spirit of their culture and the mythopoetic truths of their own heritage.
Great article- from Canada so not the same border issues but for a small population we have our own crisis of fake asylum seekers and totally unsustainable legal immigration - while we are squeezed more daily thru taxes to pay for it all while our cost of living skyrockets along with crime and our living standards sink. Fucking depressing.
Move
https://markbisone.substack.com/p/colossus-of-troy/comment/46930712
That's partly why I'm asking for my readers' help.
Where to?
Montana, Idaho, N/S Dakota, maybe Alaska if cold doesn't bother you..
Or Mississippi/Alabama, parts of Texas & Louisiana.. maybe Arkansas. Are warmer.
Warsaw Pact Countries: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania.. or Russia .. if you're devout Christian and can handle languages
But most any place is better than Manhattan/NYC. Most other blue shitholes went belly up a long time ago.. New York was a nice enough place until recently .. nice memories make it worst of the worst
It is not as easy as it sounds.
One has to love car culture, ie driving everywhere, and to be able to drive to live anywhere but NYC. As for the Warsaw countries: may be it will work for some people. Sometimes it is better not to know the language or the culture because at any place, people know how to be mean. I am stuck to my job. And it seems like I am injured (take a wild guess how), so starting all over is not possible. At least at the moment.
Seems you could set up as home school/tutor anywhere.
If Cruise Ships come back (?) They were always hiring F&B.
Economy is most likely never coming back.
Neither is NYC.
Don't wanna be a Jew in 30s Germany who waited too long to leave.
If Japan sociologically could get away with this or China or any other demographically challenged country (see Europe) they would because a shrinking population is such a death knell. Because our mythos of diversity allows the money printers to exploit our empathy (as you point out) they will. If the money printers in Japan and China (of which they are the OGs) could get away with importing masses of Africans and Filipinos they would, to drive down wage growth and grow future consumers to enslave. Qatar, UAE and Bahrain have no problem importing Filipino, African and Indian slave labor so they will. The wealthy money printers need more bodies to make their system work, and will exploit whatever sociological weaknesses exist. This has ALWAYS been true. Cotton could have been picked by waged workers, but where is the profit in that? We could pay living wages to Amazon workers but then where is the profit in that? Closed borders mean stable labor supply which means wage growth, tisc tisc...
Yes. It really is quite the wicked scheme they're running (and also quite an old one). But there are a few new wrinkles that its current authors didn't count on. Namely, the outsourcing and/or collapse of domestic industry means a vast number of these newly imported "slaves" will ultimately be non-productive in their new digs.
We are already seeing this happening in the cities. There are no factories for them to staff or plantations for them to farm. There are still plenty of Starbucks for now, I guess. Molon Latte! But most will end up on the dole, in the streets or both. That's why I suspect they might have a different master plan for many of these people, once the native police forces have been "defunded" or otherwise defanged. Early NYPD retirements have *soared* these past three years. They know no one has their backs, especially the DAs.
But if you can properly bribe and hypnotize a group of otherwise helpless people?
Remember the fate of Alex's droogs in the film?
It's terrifying. Honestly, that's why I hope and pray for a collapse sooner rather than later, because the collapse is inevitable at this point, and I'd rather it happen before they get their illegal alien-staffed KGB and all the other pieces of their control grid fully into place.
Haven't even finished it, just got to the Rule by Retard part and laughed so hard at that I damn near peed my pants..... hilarious Mark. K, back to the article.
Thanks, Baba. Although the subject is ultimately very dark, I think we're lost if we don't learn to laugh in the face of darkness and devils.
Absolutely agree.