zazen

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.

I’m seeing Democrat women saying they’re not gonna sleep with men ie a sex strike due to the election. This only exacerbates the problem. This tweet dives into why the Democrats are in a bit of a pickle: ”The democrats have been so successful in teaching their base to hate young men that now, if any one of them smarts up and starts even asking how to appeal to them, trained man-haters will quickly step up and bark about how men are horrible, masculinity is horrible, anything young men like is horrible, employing their Pavlovian collection of snarl words for the purpose. They hate young men more than they love their platform. They hate young men more than they want to win. They hate young men more than they love anything else in the world, including themselves. Democrats can't pivot. They can't. Because their base won't let them. Since a woman will almost always vote for whoever her man votes for, the democrats have nailed their destiny to the political clout of single women who hate men. Well, newsflash, single women who hate men tend to have abortions instead of kids. So where are the future generations of democrats supposed to come from? The third world? Nice try, but you can't import them unless you win elections in the meantime. Their tactics worked so well for a short period of time because their political base was frothing with hateful energy while the men were still half asleep. But now that their opposition is waking the fuck up, they have nowhere to expand their appeal to. This is why I recommend to my fellow right-libertarians and conservatives... never interrupt your enemy while they/them are making a mistake. Goad them. I'm sure you can think of lots of fun ways to do that.” The right will out-demograph, out-birth and out-grow the left. Demographics, is destiny.

For Democrats their weak point isn’t in distribution, it’s in the product - in what’s being sold. Democrats control nearly every mainstream channel from cable networks to the press. Hollywood, academia, corporate media etc. The inconvenient truth is that everyone hears what Dems have to say, they’re just not buying it. Dems and the liberal establishment pour millions into propaganda and crafted narratives and people see through it. The message simply doesn’t resonate. They’ve become so detached from the lives of ordinary people, busy in virtue signaling - that the working class and backbone of America are tuning them out. Their so inclusive that they exclude one of the biggest demographics out there, which means they are now excluded from running the country. Liberals haven’t noticed that an 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. You had the Cheneys backing and campaigning along side Kamala! If they realised this they wouldn’t be in such a melt down and perhaps maybe even consider that malignant forces are being challenged and possibly defeated - if Trump and his team can even do such a thing. The Establishment ie The Democrats love wars, but not the warriors it sends out.

Yea, that's why I wrote far left and far right. That's a great video above btw, I highly recommend the forum check it out to get a better understanding of what just happened vis a vis the election result.

The disillusionment of the youth towards the system has two responses. The far left want to deconstruct the construct that failed them, to create a utopian one, the far right want to re-construct a romanticised past they believe will meet their aspirations. Reactionary subcultures that come up trying to change the dominant culture that failed them become toxic as they throw out the good along with the bad. The far left discard the good of the past, the far right the good of any progress. Nihilism, resentment and rebellion against those that told them to expect beauty, where they found ugliness results in limbically hijacking them. Tired and enraged at the world, people will cope by becoming mental refugees seeking refuge from their mind, rather than an evolution of it. To cope with a complex world, people will stop trying to think through its complexity. Far right conservatives do this when they revert to the past and tradition as a shortcut to thinking, as do the far left liberals when they use freedom to free themselves of thinking of the consequences of any of their actions. Both are too spent and lack the balanced state needed to create a new but balanced world. As the pace of change accelerates, people will seek that which never changes as a sanctuary amongst the whirlpool of complexity and change the modern world subjects them to - tradition and religion. The concern is that people use sanctuaries to sanction themselves from their own evolution. An exhausted mind and soul in a dazed world, seeks relief from the mind and soul rather than holy revolution of it. The far lefts fire of rage burns any tradition to its ashes, including the wisdom that lit and established those traditions. The far right hold onto the ashes of tradition and religion without the fire of understanding that lit and established them. The inverse of the slippery slope of freedom the far left love, is the slippery slope of prohibition and control by the far right. Excess of which leads to rigidity, repression, resentment and rebellion, making it less robust as it’s a system that needs to be enforced rather than encouraged. The pendulum swings left to right and doing so in each direction as it gathers momentum to swing the other way.

I’ll check out it. I like Destiny. One of his takes on the whole immigrants voting in swing states to solidify Democrat power was that no one’s forcing them to vote blue and that they could vote Republican. But then he never considered that Democrats would provide more incentives to them such as migrating relatives and offering perks etc in order to get them to vote blue. This was the fear from the Republican side - that if they had another 4 years of excess immigration which got turned into Democrat voters in key swing states, it would become a uni-party like California. As we have seen, elections are tight and hinge on these few states.