zazen

One thing I'm confused about is how much of a final say do Presidents have on foreign policy decisions? Why can they talk of being anti-war etc and then do the opposite when in office or start filling their cabinet with war hawks like Trump is doing now. Is he just playing the people to have gotten votes and win the election (very possible) or is he covering his ass to not get assassinated by keeping ''enemies'' close (conspiratorial but possible), or is it that as Putin once said - once the President comes into office men in blacks suits come to say how things go and they follow along. Even with Israel - Biden states his red line of Rafah and nothing happens when its crossed. What more can they do that they haven't already done - they've choked off Gaza, bombed and destroyed it, gone into Lebanon and bombed Beirut, targeted Iranian assets in the region etc. Perhaps with Trump we can at least bet on change or a deal as the precedent for deals is set in that the Abraham accords happened during his term. A deal to resolve the issue is better than prolonged suffering of the Palestinians - thats a worthy bet rather than Biden and Kamala literally not doing shit. Maybe we can view Trumps narcissism as a benefit in that he cares for his own bloated image - of being seen in a good light as a deal/peace maker.

Thats the thing with experts - they can back different opinions because money can back different opinions. My first experience of disillusionment with the health care system was in my teens when countless doctors told me food doesn't affect acne and just prescribed me antibiotics. I even told them the contrary after doing my own research and they wouldn't say much. I had to learn myself through the internet and books and resolved it via diet and lifestyle. I tested that when I had wheat / sugar / milk / fried foods (seed oils that RFK rallies against) I would break out, feel sluggish and have brain fog the following days. Doctors aren't educated in holistic health or nutrition, they aren't taught prevention - just prescription from a pharma funded education system. Diagnose the issue - prescribe the drug. Drugs and medicine is needed to save lives, but not to make us thrive - its a last resort when we get very ill. The goal isn't simply to increase life span (which medicine has done) but health span - living long and healthily. During Covid and lockdown I remember listening too all kinds of doctors and following them on Youtube and Twitter - I saw first hand one by one they would have their profiles erased and deleted. Surely its un-scientific to not have open debate? Then came the Barrington declaration signed by thousands of ''experts'' agains the Covid response. The fact that vaccine manufacturers have immunity is also concerning. Regardless - it was a confusing time for many which eroded trust in institutions as the situation was weaponised and shady contracts and interests existed. Places that didn't lock down and recommended Vitamin D didn't have such terrible results like Sweden where I have relatives. Health knowledge is so lacking Western governments couldn't even simply advise their populations to take vitamin D / C or some basics to boost immunity. Whitney Webb says it seems as though it was a fiscal policy to crush demand and the economy by shutting down mom and pop shops or small-medium business whilst allowing big retailers to remain open (Walmart, Amazon warehouses etc) and for hedgefunds like Black rock etc to sweep in and buy distressed assets. Make that make sense! This is why the right generally don't trust institutions enough, whilst the left generally trust them too much. Think about what we've gone through the last 20 years - lies regarding wars in early 2000's (and currently diplomatic cover for Israel), lies regarding financial collapse of 2008 and bank bailouts, social media prominence from 2010's providing alternative sources of information to speed run all this exposure to the lies, big tech collusion with elections and 2020 Covid, and now election lies about who would win. And in the UK labour government who promised so much and completely went back on their promises the minute they got in. People are literally getting imprisoned for social media posts (which weren't incitement of hate crimes even) whilst criminals run around in the streets - and then we think we are a democracy and point fingers to dictators in the global south. gtfo. The left are so oblivious to their own power and institutional backing. Their projections are confessions about the other side. That they cancel, de-platform, lawfare against their political rivals, take what is said out of context in a media machine churning out propoganda, that people concerned for borders are racists (although some are) but its simply common sense that a country needs borders that are secure. Common sense is framed as facist - whether done so in hyperbole or not, the intended affect is common sense is perceived as such. Normal people wishing to live normal lives are gas lit about their own views and instincts of survival. They're told their lying about their own very real tangible conditions. As an example from where I am in London, theres a major road called Park Lane in a central area (like fifth avenue in New York) and there has been encampments there for months with tents. The authorities did nothing as it got larger and larger until now when they have finally been cleared. The rents and business get affected by this, which is supposed to be the tourist hub of the city that a string of many employees rely on. This is akin to Californian cities not taking the safety and cleanliness of their streets seriously - and why people feel their needs to be less bureaucracy or a streamlined one which allows for faster decision making and action to occur. In Dubai for example a new road or bridge needs to be built to alleviate traffic pressures - it'll be done in 6 months, in the West it'll take 6 years. Criminals needing swift prosecution - done. In the West - the contradiction of human rights and moral ambiguity paralysis's us with the possible fear of being deemed racist or a dictator for caring about the rights of every day people. Where are their rights to safety, decency? Listen to Bukele of Salvador speak on this - he was gas lit by the West and NGO's for going too hard after the cartels and criminals - but El Salvador has gone from the most dangerous place to one of the safest in short order. So every domain - financial, media, health, politics, foreign policy - we are lied to by the establishment. And people wonder why people are opting for populist leaders - because they would rather bet on change than a status quo they distrust and has failed. It's not as reductive as identity politics ie people not voting for a woman or person of colour.

Didn’t even realise that, I was just banter riffing 😂 @Joshe That comments so cringe lol good case study in cult behaviour for us to observe

Ryan Gosling’s Ken wasn’t just a meme machine: He an absurd mascot for a deeper truth: Masculinity being reclaimed - boundaries, form and order emerging from a time of boundless effeminacy and a formless indulgence that has brought chaos to our lives. Where we debate the need for pronoun police or police to be defunded wholesale! Trumps election win is just a louder version of this truth, a political echo of it - and he’s an even more absurd mascot which replaces kens naivety with corrupting self interest. The vibe shift is real - any bros here feel it? I’m joking but being serious at the same time. Of course this can over correct , but a correction is welcome nonetheless. Daddy’s home. We can’t allow populism to go rogue or dark. But regardless, anyone here watch the above dark MAGA (dark populism?) aesthetic and not feel any sort of way? Can you give me your wrist so I check your pulse? Where’s the thumos bro! Our bones are meant to be made of mountains, our blood is supposed to be red lightning!

The world we inhabit, like the universe that birthed us, is bound by form. Life is a dance between the infinite, boundless spirit - the source of creativity and meaning - and the finite, structured constraints of reality. Ideologies, for better or worse, must be born downstream of this reality. They cannot escape it. The attempt to impose formlessness on form is not progress but decadence masquerading as liberation. In times of decadence, humans experiment with ideas because they can afford to. Romans fiddled with extravagance and moral relativism while their empire rotted from within. French aristocracy debated philosophy in gilded salons while the guillotine waited just around the corner. And today in the West, we do much the same: entertaining ideologies so detached from material and biological reality they can only survive in the padded luxury of abundance. Wokeness is a boundless effort in a boundaried world - to deconstruct everything, from gender to language, in pursuit of a utopia that cannot exist in the world of form. Wokeness is awakening calcified into a new sleep. What started as a call for deeper seeing became a new form of blindness when all it saw was: restraint as oppressive rather than protective, hierarchy as pure domination, differences as inherent injustices. It mistakes surface level deconstruction for genuine liberation. It deconstructs everything while reconstructing nothing - a nihilistic carnival of progressive performance where complexity and nuance goes to die. It weaponises compassion into a cult like control system that controls via an insidious, invisible social contagion rather than a visible, apparent dictator with a face. It is an inverted totalitarianism as Chris Hedges put it. Progress isn't about freeing the will from survival needs - it's about finding more elegant ways to align with them. We can't un-need needs. Hunger doesn't disappear because we've progressed enough to have grocery stores. The longing to belong to community doesn't disappear because we've developed social media. Progress is realising that the will itself isn't separate from nature - it's nature becoming conscious of itself. True freedom then isn't necessarily the absence of constraint, but the mastery of working within the necessary constraints of form. Wokism seeks to escape form, rather than evolve a better way of living within it. Progress integrates new understanding and environments with eternal principles. It builds upon reality's bedrock rather than trying to float above it. Wokism and similar abstractions thrive not because they are practical or even moral, but because hard times have not yet forced it to reconcile with reality. It is, as writer Rob Henderson says - a “luxury belief.” You can only afford to argue that men can get pregnant or that dismantling police departments is sensible when your belly is full and your streets are safe. But reality doesn't debate, it demonstrates. In the decline phase of empire, luxury beliefs give way to necessary beliefs. Inflation, geopolitical tensions rising across continents, erosion of community and belonging - the signs of hard times echoed in history. History repeats itself not as comedy or tragedy, but as the ruthless law of reality reclaiming its throne. When survival is at stake, society sheds its frivolities. The spirit, so eager to transcend limits, must once again bow to the constraints of form. Ideological excess dies not by debate but by necessity. Wokeism won't end because Donald Trump tweets something provocative, or because of conservatives railing against it. It will end because it cannot survive the hard times bearing down upon us. When people are struggling to feed their families, they don’t have the bandwidth to argue over pronouns or privilege theory. The luxury of endless deconstruction collapses under the weight of survival. The proof is in the patterns we see emerging. Cities once heralded as bastions of progressivism - San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle - now face crises of homelessness, crime, and governance that even their most liberal citizens cannot ignore. Decay exposes the impracticality of ideologies untethered from reality. The pendulum swings back not because of malice but because of gravity. And here’s the irony: wokeness, for all its posturing, is blind to its own privilege. It doesn’t see that its obsession with fluidity, abstraction, and infinite reinterpretation is only possible in a world that still functions. When the world malfunctions or stops functioning altogether - it won’t be wokeness that saves us. It will be the conservative impulse of reality itself, optimizing for survival and demanding order. This isn’t new, nor is it unexpected. Hard times force humanity to return to the basics: food, shelter, safety, and community. The formless gives way to the form once again, and the cycle resets. If there is any lesson here, it is that we should aim for balance - not the extremes of wokeness or rigid traditionalism, but the wisdom to honor both spirit and form, creativity and reality. So let the ideologues deconstruct reality while they still can. The luxury is running out, and the reckoning is already here. When it arrives, it won’t be a politician or a pundit that ends this chapter. It will be the hard, cold truth of the human condition: form always reclaims its place, and reality always has the final word.

Crazy. A good monologue on the madness: https://thegrayzone.com/2024/11/16/uk-plot-keep-ukraine-fighting/ “Emails and internal documents reviewed by The Grayzone reveal details of a cabal of British military and intelligence veterans which plotted to escalate and prolong the Ukraine proxy war “at all costs.” Convened under the direction of the British Ministry of Defense in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the cell referred to itself as Project Alchemy. As British leadership sabotaged peace talks between Kiev and Moscow, the cell put forward an array of plans “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia.”

Your body knows about survival, about keeping the heart beating, about building walls against chaos. This is what we call conservatism, and it's not just some political choice - it's written in your bones. Every cell in your body is conservative, fighting like hell to maintain balance, to keep things stable, to stay alive. But, you're not just a body. You're also this vast, infinite thing that wants to explode beyond every boundary ever drawn. This is the liberal spirit, and it's not some fancy philosophical concept - it's the same force that makes flowers crack through concrete, that makes birds migrate across oceans, that makes humans dream of touching the stars. These forces aren't enemies. They're lovers in an eternal dance. Your body's wisdom keeps you grounded while your spirit pulls you toward the infinite. Try to deny either one, and you're denying half of what makes you human. When conservatives get lost in their fear, they forget that safety is meant to serve life, not strangle it. When liberals get drunk on their dreams, they forget that even angels need gravity to push against. You can't have progress without conservation. This isn't a political statement - it's a fundamental law of existence. Try having your progressive dreams about social justice when you can't breathe. Try pursuing your liberal ideals about personal freedom when you're starving. You can't, and that's not because conservatism is "better" - it's because conservation of basic survival needs is the foundation that makes all progress possible. The establishment loves to push this false narrative that we have to choose between progress and conservation. It's all a smoke screen that keeps us from seeing the deeper truth: Progress only happens through conservation. Every single advancement in human history happened because we conserved enough stability and security to make that progress possible. Once we understand that progress requires conservation, we can't be manipulated by simplistic political narratives anymore. We've seen behind the curtain. We've glimpsed the deeper truth about what we really are: A conservative biological machine powered by a progressive spiritual force. Everyone's arguing about whether progressive values or conservative values are "better," while missing the cosmic joke: you are literally made of both. - Anon

People are too busy fighting between left and right rather than looking above. The irony is that progressives fear Trump dismantling institutions and agencies but are unable to understand why conservatives fear the left dismantling the fabric of reality itself. One is acting irrational, the other is acting reckless in the name of capitalist innovation and anarchic libertarianism. It is natural to fear both. The problem I see is that only one fear is validated as noble and righteous by the mainstream establishment (the fear of establishment outsiders or those inside wanting to change it) whilst the other fear is mocked as regressive and backwards (the fear of a ideology being untethered from reality). Wokism is the misdirected and misplaced expression of the souls yearning to transcend the limitations of form - they destroy or deny form instead. The truth is we are biologically conservative (form, boundaried), yet spiritually liberal (formless, boundless). We are lost in translation between two worlds, the duality we are - and this manifests in many ways including politics. Liberalism honors the formless (God / soul) within each form - thus calling for justice and equality for all. Conservatism honors the stability of form (Gods creation / structure) - thus calling to conserve it. Liberalism taken too far into what we call wokism denies form all together. Conservatism gone too far into what we call fundamentalism see's nothing beyond form.

The cultural zeitgeist has changed. Peak woke has passed. The election gave permission for people to de-wokify. The vibe shift is real.

More federal agencies are tied to working in defense and national or domestic security. Can’t be efficient when the hawkish cabinet insist on maintaining - maybe even increasing spending on the most outsized departments. Foreign policy largely remains the same regardless of who’s in the White House - empires gonna empire.

@What Am I Your username asks What Am I - you have more zen than my username so you must be a Zazen practitioner! I think a sense of superiority comes more natural to liberals as they tend to be college educated urbanites - so they have tangibles to go off of. Although some of what passes for education can be just accreditation and indoctrination. The mix of self righteous karenism and detached constructionism are luxuries that ironically - can only be indulged due to a working class keeping the lights on and the oat lattes moving. The ultimate irony is that progress, requires conserving foundational elements of a society such as safety and security. Progressivism should thank conservatism but mocks it instead.

The reason the left may not learn from their mistakes is evident on this forum. Calling people kids, childish, brain rotten, neanderthal - for even trying to understand the other side or suggesting there are kernels of half truths with plenty of false truths attached to it. Populism is simply when the ruling class loses popularity with the populace due to elitist detachment - which the left have excelled in with their progressive politics. This is a battle between detached progressivism and dark populism. Not all populism is facism, but most facists are populist - facism hijacks populism and rides its wave turning it destructive. Populism isn't inherently good or bad - its a force of the disenfranchised, that can be twisted towards toxic ends to create dark populism. We shouldn't confuse populism with what it can become, but should be wary of it going dark. Instead of carrying a nation to renewal it can bring it to ruin. This 2024 election result wasn't populism's first appearance, as we had seen it in 2016. But progressive detached politics means power has slipped more and more through the establishments fingers, as we can see across the West. People don't trust the current order or the establishment that's presided over it. People will only trust or believe in an outsider, or a insider who acknowledges outsiders and doesn't play by the establishments rules in order to create change. The problem is of power getting into the wrong hands, and Trump isn't the best of hands. Most people are aware of this - but will over look his flaws because they feel they have nothing to lose as the status quo is bad anyway. They'd rather bet on the only figure speaking to them and of their concerns. Whilst Kamala is speaking on using the peoples tax money to provide trans gender affirmative care to prison inmates. People see these progressive talking points and policies which focus on less than 1% of the population - and conclude the left don't have their priorities straight. People are conflicted siding with the Republicans due to Trump being flawed and divisive, and the extreme elements of his support base. People are caught between wanting populism yet fearing it or what it could turn into, between rejecting establishment and being wary of who's promising to renew it but who will only ruin it in reckless abandon. Populism is about handing power down, not up. But the question is in who catches the torch - a leader who'll bring light or darkness.

@Salvijus He's amazing. Democrats lost a great talent/asset. Don't mind the cringe title. Check his oration skills at 18!

Some quotes from his substack two months ago if Trump was to win: https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/trump-and-the-tempests-of-hate Charles offers 6 principles for the next administration: 1. Reframe divisive issues in terms of compassion 2. Generously acknowledge the views of all sides 3. Find the transcendent centre 4. Focus on systems not individuals 5. Amnesty not vengeance, redemption not punishment 6. Stand consistently for peace ''Ultimately, we seek not a revolution against the system, but a revolution of the system.'' ''One might ask, why not offer these six principles to Kamala Harris as well as Donald Trump? Of course, I recommend them to anybody. However, an Establishment candidate can apply them only in facsimile, otherwise she will not remain part of the Establishment. She can campaign in the name of compassion, extending it to favored groups, unaware of what dominant narratives conceal as they maintain and advance a global system of enormous injustice and suffering. The six principles unravel those narratives. Their practice transforms us into agents of a revolution of and not against the system. And we quiet the tempest of hate that threatens to tear society apart.'' Perhaps this is whats driving people towards the Republicans - the fact that everyone feels we need change and that an entrenched establishment are unable to change because well, their established. Only individuals outside the fold can, or those within it but willing to not play by the rules. Of course this poses a danger however.

The man himself:

They’ll organise mass protests in January to get the national guard to come in and contain the chaos - then call Trump a facist dictator for doing so. They’ll try to undermine his term just like they did his first one with lawfare and the Russia hoax rather then let him run the country. Why this time may be different:

Great video. @Nemra I think you commented before watching it, don’t think you’d comment like that after bro. Condescending is the reason the left will continue to lose men to the right. LFG

Shameful. Even Sky News uploaded and then took down their reporting once they decided how they want to run the story. They don’t give news, the spin it to their interests. The same news that has been misleading the public on Ukraine and recently the US election hyping the citizens up for a Kamala win. Heres the Sky News reporting they took down (and why X is important): https://x.com/asawinstanley/status/1855243480928260514?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ

@Nemra We can just hope and see now. Wikileaks, Elon, Ron Paul and many others are sounding the alarm on who to get and not get into position. The only reason they can do this and think it’s possible is because Trump isn’t establishment. The point being: theirs a chance at change actually happening vs a establishment party with Kamala who’s just the face of the establish ie a puppet.

@Joshe @What Am I Sometimes real positive change comes wrapped in a package that the mainstream gatekeepers have trained you to reject. Sometimes the "wrong" people end up doing the right things, even if for their own reasons. The establishments propagandists want us so afraid of being associated with the "bad tribe" that we reject any challenge to their power, no matter how legitimate. The real question isn't whether there will be self-serving elements in any new power structure - there always are. The question is whether the public gets any crumbs from the table at all, or if they're just supposed to survive on empty virtue signals while their living standards get crushed into dust. Theres also a difference between the economy and personal finances. The economy can be booming in terms of GDP and stocks on Wall Street but that doesn’t translate to Main Street for the average Joe who feels they have to skip the $5 coffee so they can afford their groceries.

Yes, but leadership ability isn’t that same as good. Is a pickup artist good at leading women? Yes, but that says nothing of his morals or goodness. We can’t deny Trumps charisma - he can go to a rally and talk for hours then go on a podcast the same night - and it’s captivating for a lot of people. He’s friends with British royalty and many world leaders including Shinzo Abe from Japan. There’s no doubt he’s a likable character. He’s a New York smooth talker with the gift of the gab. Trump is a agent of chaos, a bit too decisive and at the whim of those around him. This time, due to the team and people around him - people have much more trust in him being able to lead towards better outcomes. And many smart people have jumped on board from tech ceos to entrepreneurs. Even Naval Ravikant who is very wise - check him out. A lot of Trumpers have excessively high expectations for what will happen, they may be disappointed but we’ll see. There are much larger cycles of economics and geopolitics that no candidate or party can undo - we move through cycles like waves - but that doesn’t mean we can’t tweak how that wave is surfed upon for the better or the worse.

Damn, even Owen. All these people seem to be “undeveloped” and blind according to the left. I doubt the left will even be able to recover due to ideological capture which is like having blinders on. The ones that do see where their shortcomings are , are ridiculed and exiled from the tribe. The left are spiritually feminine and retort to feminine tactics of violence such as shaming, guilting and social exclusion. They are more collectivist (feminine) and organise better, but aren’t as great at leadership (which the right is better at).

If people started moving from the right to the left would we start questioning their sanity the same way? The lefts failure is due to the same false utopian premises they base their movement on much like how communism fails in the real world when reality grinds its operational gears, and human behaviour ie incentives prevent the outcomes their good intentions hope to achieve. When we put equality over and above quality, and sacrifice merit on the altar of equity - where do we expect people with talent or value are going to go? Where it’s valued. Every time we try to enforce equality through top down control, we create a new hierarchy - a bureaucratic aristocracy who try to equalise human nature - as if flattening mountain peaks is even possible. The competent people, the innovators and the mavericks won’t sit around waiting to be sacrificed on the altar of equity. They’ll leave for places merit still matters. It's just basic human nature, like water finding its way around a dam. The irony is: The more force we use trying to make everyone equal, the more inequality we create between places that embrace this ideology and places that don't. Just like the brain drain phenomena of geopolitics, except on a internal political scale.

Liberals are too ideological that they haven’t noticed a inversion has taken place in terms of where the bad actors and imperial core is being run from, behind and beside - and that’s the Democratic Party for the most part. Some have and have realigned themselves.There is such a difference in narratives of what just happened and how it’s being perceived - some view it as a coming golden age, a win against the dark forces of a deep state establishment. Others view it as a dark age that Hitler is ushering in. Neither are correct, but the right may be more correct. Liberals are generally blind to their own actions of censorship, silencing of dissent and clamping down on their political opposition through lawfare and a rhetoric that caused two assassination attempts. They can’t notice the projection and hypocrisy. Just because people you admire move to the right, it doesn’t mean they like everyone amongst the right or share the same beliefs as the fringe extremes - just like liberals on the left don’t always share the far leftists beliefs. It’s more a matter of alignment on wanting the same things, but not all things. And right now, the right are generally more sensible in what they want so more people are aligning with them - less wars, less government overreach, less tax and regulation hindering business, safer streets and stronger borders, less focus on identity politics which racialises everything and is more divisive and discriminatory, less wokism being pushed, and mainstream media and health agencies to be held accountable for misinformation and malpractice. It’s a red pill at mass scale, metaphorically and literally as the Republicans sport the colour red.

It’s similar to grass roots resistance like in Palestine. They can’t and will never destroy it unless they resolve the foundational issues. Good YouTube watch btw. As always, few of us on the forum have been right in our assessment of Israel, BRICS, Ukraine and this political shift right. Elon literally just wants to go to Mars, but the government got in the way, including a woke mind virus that got in the way of him and his own child. He just dealt with the establishment like some side quest whilst running multiple large companies - legend.