More Than Meets the Eye – Part 1

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Dexter Hastings looked out of his office window of the corporate offices of Bay Holdings, the largest corporate real estate owner in the United States.  He smiled as he looked into the sun glinting off of the mostly empty skyscrapers of Manhattan Island.  Far below he could see the tent cities of homeless immigrants squatting on the once frenetic streets of this former bastion of American prosperity.  He shrugged his shoulders knowing that his escort and armored sedan could get him through any street provocation without the need for him to get involved.  He could reach a heliport or major highway to leave this troubled metropolis if it was necessary for another “demonstration” for the bourgeoise of who was in charge of this country.  At this thought he smiled again and went back to his enormous mahogany desk.

Looking at the quarterly acreage goal he nodded to see that all the quotas were met and the reductions in private ownership of wheat, corn and cattle farms had been reduced to the levels specified in the quarterly dashboard.  Everywhere he looked he saw green lights.  Except one.  Up in the northern quadrant of the Great Plains there was one red light on his board.  What the hell is that!  He clicked the red icon and a file; Grid 19, opened up.  It listed the farms that had been targeted for foreclosure by their local bank.  There were fifty farms all clustered within a radius of twenty miles that had looked like easy pickings last year.  All pressure points for their owners had been applied.  They even got the IRS to audit half of them to see if any fines could be levied against them.  And all the buyers they typically worked with had been instructed to lower the commodity prices they would pay.  Most if not all of those farms should already be in bankruptcy.  But not a single one had folded.  That was impossible.  Sure maybe a few might have found a private source of funds to allow them to limp along.  But all of them?

Dexter muttered to himself, “Something is fishy here.”  He rushed out of his office and barged into a conference room where some of his direct reports were having a meeting about the company team-building trip to Auckland.  He rapped the door behind him and said sternly, “I’m gonna need you in my office now, Barry.  Grid 19!”  And he rushed back to his office with a black look on his patrician face.

Barrymore Carver hustled into Hastings office with a worried expression and stood nervously in front of the huge desk.  He looked surprisingly like a frightened boy standing in the principal’s office.  He knew Grid 19 would be a big problem.  If there was a red light on the dashboard, whoever owned it had to have a story to tell Dexter that included a speedy resolution and a penalty prize to pay for the outrage.  Otherwise, the penalty was a walk of shame to HR and an armed escort out of the building.

“What the hell is going on Barry?  Oh for fifty?  Are you just tired of working here?  Have I brutalized you so thoroughly that you sabotage my dashboard like this?  Talk to me Barry.  Quick!

“Dexter, I worked on this Grid for months I put pressure on these people you wouldn’t believe.  I managed to cut off their power in the middle of a deep freeze.  I even had the government inspectors declare half of their beef cattle substandard.  I did everything but light their fields on fire.  But they made all their mortgage payments they cleared all their supply bills and paid all their taxes.  There was nothing I could do.”

Hastings shook his head, “And it never occurred to you that this wasn’t normal?  When have you ever seen fifty targets fail to succumb?  Never!  Now you are going down to the finance boys and you are going to find out where the money came from and if you don’t have an answer by tomorrow then just go find another job.”

Carver flushed, spun on his heel and took off for the elevators at high speed.  A smile broke out on Dexter’s face.  He loved pulling the wings off of flies.  It was what he was born to do.  He looked down at that red light blinking on his board and the smile left his face.  “Where the hell did that money come from?”

Gardening

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One day the Master was working in the garden and the Servant approached, “Father, your son wants to see you.”  The Master put aside what he was doing and asked, “What did he say to you?”  The Servant frowned and hesitated, “He says he won’t leave.  He says it’s not fair and he won’t leave.  I think the woman put him up to this insolence.”  The Master smiled ruefully, “She is spirited, isn’t she.  Well, look, leave this to me.  They’ll only blame you and become even more incensed.  I’ll have to have that talk with him now.  Just leave them alone for the time being.”  The Servant looked relieved, “Thank you Father.  I never know how to deal with them when they disobey.  It’s very confusing.”

The Servant left and the Master sat in thought for a while and then walked through the Garden to find his troubled son.  The young man was standing on a high hill and looking out at the beautiful forest and the valley below with its orchards and streams and grazing herds.  The Master approached him and called to him, “Hello my son, what would you like to tell me?”

The young man upon seeing the Master looked troubled and his shoulders slumped, “Father why must we leave our home.  This place is beautiful and full of all the good things that make our lives happy.  Why would you make us leave?”  The woman is afraid.  She thinks the Servant has told stories about her that made you angry at her.  He is always suspicious of her.”

The Master patted his son on the shoulder and laughed, “They don’t understand each other.  He doesn’t have any point of reference to decipher what she means.  And she can’t figure him out at all.  But all that’s beside the point.  You haven’t done anything wrong.  You two are not being punished.  And this is not your home.  It’s like the nest that a baby bird hatches into.  It is the place where you grew and developed.  But now you must leave the nest and face the world on your own.”

The young man looked angry, “But I’m not a bird.  I’m your son.  Why can’t I stay with you?  Don’t I share in your possessions?  The servant said we will be sent into the wilderness where wild animals and wild men are all around.  Why would you leave me at the mercy of the cruel places outside this garden?”

The Master looked sad, “The reason you can’t stay with me is because you are not like me.  Only the smallest spark of your being possesses the property I possess as my nature.  You will die.  You and the woman will grow old and die.  You must have children and raise them as I raised you.  You must learn how to survive in the world so that they can survive after you’re gone.  And that chain from parent to child must go on until time ends.  And when this world is finally at an end you will be like me.  And you will be able to remake the world in your own image and then you will find me again.  And your work will be done and we can enjoy what you’ve built.  In the meantime, I’ll leave the Servant within this world to keep it from falling apart.  But his strength is not as mine and eventually you will have to learn to control all the forces of the world; the stars and the voids and the waters of the deep.”

The young man was stricken, “But, I will die.  I will never see you again!”  The Master smiled, “Do not believe that.  There is a spark in you that can never die.  You were made to conquer death and you shall.  But now you must face death.  There is no other way.

But there is much you need to know.  The Servant will answer as many of your questions as you can think of in the next month.  And you and the woman will dine with me for the month you have left here.  And I will tell you some things you must know.  And some of them will be about her.  She will be a great help to you but remember that her nature is different from yours.  Learn what that means and take that into account.  And most importantly try to remember what a father and son are to each other for when you have children.  This will be your most important role.”

The young man was dazed from the impact of everything he had heard, “Dad, I’m scared.”  The Master hugged him to his chest and said, “Of course you are, so was I when I was your age.  But you’re lucky you didn’t have your grandfather to deal with.  He was much tougher than I am.”

Post Renaissance European Collapse

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Since at least 1500 AD the most dominant, dynamic culture on Earth has been Europe and its colonies.  Portugal, Spain, Holland and England along with smaller contributions from France, Belgium and Germany colonized the world by sea.  And the Russians conquered northern Asia by land.  European science and technology revolutionized all aspects of life and their cultural endeavors produced superb music and art.  Basically, Europe transformed life and they dragged the rest of the world along with them.

But along the way the Renaissance civilization has seemingly lost the morale and confidence it once had.  It has adopted a global view that holds Europeans guilty for all of the ills of the third world nations and requires them to make amends by allowing endless immigration into their lands until there is no longer a trace of Europe left.  And that goes double for the United States.

I don’t think there is a previous example of something like this in history.  Civilizations have been overrun by migrations before.  The Bronze Age Collapse and 5th Century AD Rome are obvious examples but, in neither case, did the invaded civilization go out of its way to invite the event that overwhelmed them.  The globalists think they can manage this replacement of their people and culture seamlessly.  But even at this early stage of the process, things don’t look very promising.  Crime, ignorance, poverty and disease are problems that were minimized in the highly organized environment of the first world.  The new immigrants are a totally different case.  And no attempt is being made to force them to assimilate to the culture of their hosts.  Pretty soon we will have a very large population with a multitude of backgrounds and cultures that will drown out the older European culture.  And it may be the case that it will drown out the properties that this older population possessed and which were the source of the stability and prosperity that used to be the status quo.

If that’s the case, what will follow?

As I said there really isn’t any close analog for what is going on.  The globalists believe in their “end of history” theory.  They feel that the western countries have already built a framework (financial and military) that precludes the possibility of their arrangements being challenged.  After all, China gets to sell us all our stuff and in return they get to be the new Japan and do what we say.  The same holds for the Middle East and Russia and the rest of the world.  Well, it seems they might be wrong.  Lots of countries that toed the line during the Cold War are beginning to talk amongst themselves and maybe they no longer think that a monopolar world is the only or even the best choice for their future.  Places as different as Saudi Arabia and Brazil are looking around at their options and they aren’t necessarily thrilled with the program that Washington and Brussels are pushing.  Things are changing pretty rapidly.  New alliances are forming and even the military power of the United States isn’t as formidable as it once was.

So where does this leave us in a few years?  My guess is a West swamped with third world poor will be a less powerful, less technologically advanced place.  I guess it will be something like Brazil; a patchwork of poor and rich areas but without the stability formerly provided by the large middle class.  And this will allow some other countries to move ahead as world leaders.  Guessing I’d say maybe China and some other of the Asian countries are the best bet for these up-and-coming places.  Who knows, maybe in the future China might even sponsor enterprise zones in North America where Chinese industry takes advantage of labor resources to set up factories where Americans can earn slave wages to feed their families.  And I’m sure the American oligarchs will figure out a way to get their percentage from the deal.  They’ve always been interested in making a buck off the misfortune of their neighbors.

But we’ll have to wait and see.  We have an election where illegal immigration is one of the hot topics.  Anything is possible, I guess.

20SEP2024 – Quote of the Day

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Love Poems

 

And the best of all ways

To lengthen our days

Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear!

 

Oh, call it by some better name,

For friendship sounds too cold.

 

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms

Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,

Were to change by to-morrow and fleet in my arms,

Like fairy gifts fading away.

Thou wouldst still be adored as this moment thou art,

Let thy loveliness fade as it will,

And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart,

Would entwine itself verdantly still.

 

No, the heart that has truly lov’d never forgets,

But as truly loves on to the close;

As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets

The same look which she turn’d when he rose.

 

Thomas Moore