Tools for clarity, survival, and awakening. Includes recommended reading, viewing, resilience resources, and mythic maps for navigating an unstable world.
Meditation on Ruin, Power, and the Architecture of the Human Mind May 6, 2026
May 6 is a date of memory. In the final days of the Third Reich, the monumental dreams of empire collapsed into smoke, rubble, and silence. It remains a useful date for remembering how rulers who try to immortalize themselves in stone often leave behind only ruins—and warnings.
Monuments Against Time: Nero, Hitler, Trump, the Ruins of Consciousness & Now: Inside the Third Reich — Albert Speer, Arch of Triumphant [Hitler inspecting a model]
Monuments Against Time: Nero, Hitler, Trump, the Ruins of Consciousness & Now: The Arc of the Deal — Donald wants a Napolean-liek Arc De Trump — Indian Times — Jan 1 2026
Reading Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer, one is struck by how deeply Adolf Hitler believed architecture could defeat time.
Hitler did not merely want to govern Germany. He wanted to monumentalize himself. He dreamed of immense boulevards, colossal halls, triumphal arches, and vast domes—an imperial capital meant to outlive criticism, opposition, and death itself. His architect, Speer, understood this perfectly.
Speer also described a chilling idea he called ruin value—the belief that buildings should be designed so that, even after centuries of decay, their remains would stand like the ruins of ancient Roman Empire. Hitler admired Rome because its arches, forums, and domes still projected authority long after emperors had vanished into dust. He wanted future ages to look upon the remains of his Reich and imagine permanence.
That dream was already ancient.
Nero too understood architecture as theater of immortality. After the Great Fire of Rome, he began building the vast Domus Aurea—the Golden House. It was a palace of spectacle, extravagance, and imperial self-glorification. But while the golden halls rose, political reality collapsed. His reign ended not in triumph, but in ruin. Nero died by suicide.
Hitler followed a similar arc, though on a scale of destruction the ancient world could scarcely imagine. His grand boulevard, his triumphal arch, his monumental Great Hall—most never rose beyond paper, stone, and fantasy. The empire proclaimed to last a thousand years collapsed in twelve. He too died by suicide as the world he had set ablaze closed around him.
Now, in 2026, we again encounter the old pathology in Donald Trump.
Golden ballrooms. Monumental gestures. Ceremonial architecture. Personal branding made physical. Public grandeur fused with private vanity.
This is not merely taste. It is political psychology.
When rulers become obsessed with monumental architecture, they are often trying to convert inner instability into outward permanence. Stone becomes propaganda. Size becomes legitimacy. Spectacle becomes substitute for moral authority.
Yet there is an irony far greater now than in the ages of Nero or Hitler.
Hitler looked backward toward Rome because Roman monuments had survived centuries. Stone still seemed eternal.
But modern humanity has crossed a threshold neither Rome nor the Third Reich fully understood.
We live in the nuclear age.
In our age, no arch survives certainty. No dome defeats thermonuclear fire. No boulevard outlives planetary self-destruction. Under nuclear blast, the largest ballroom becomes dust as quickly as the smallest home. The fantasy of permanence has become technologically obsolete.
That is the dark absurdity of our time.
The more powerful civilization becomes, the less capable monuments are of saving it.
That is why the deepest struggle of the twenty-first century is not architectural, military, or economic.
It is psychological.
In Sapience: The Moment Is Now, this is the insight embodied by Yong Xing-li.
In that dystopian future, Yong is among the richest men alive. He possesses the wealth to build towers, monuments, pleasure palaces, or entire cities devoted to spectacle. He could entertain himself to death, as so many oligarchs, emperors, and modern billionaire CEOs have done before him.
He does not.
He turns toward something almost invisible.
He devotes himself to understanding consciousness itself—how human beings perceive, imagine, fear, obey, fragment, and awaken. He understands that unless consciousness evolves, every advance in technology, every accumulation of wealth, every expansion of power only increases humanity’s capacity for self-annihilation.
Yong understands what Nero never grasped, what Hitler could never grasp, and what many of today’s rulers still do not grasp:
The greatest monument humanity will ever build cannot be made of marble, steel, gold, or stone.
It must be built within the human mind.
Without mastering consciousness, humanity will not merely destroy cities.
It will succeed in destroying its future.
That is the real ruin value of our age.
Not what remains standing after collapse—
but whether enough human beings awaken before collapse arrives.
Hitlers crazy plan for Berlin: The World Capital Germania
Archetypal Animation created by Genolve.
Music: Ruins of Permanence 03:10 Stability (also Genolve): Slow tempo dark ambient with low strings, distant brass, soft choir, piano accents, and deep drones. Sparse percussion, minor harmony, no flashy solos. Mood is solemn, haunted, reflective, then quietly transcendent
Boring Apocalypse: Trapped in a Slow Collapse connects directly to this essay because the collapse of civilizations rarely arrives all at once. Empires often decay gradually—through normalization, spectacle, distraction, institutional erosion, and collective denial. Monumental architecture can become part of that psychology. Grand projects create the illusion of strength even as deeper systems weaken beneath the surface. What appears permanent in stone may actually be masking a slower political, moral, and civilizational unraveling.
This podcast also connects to Loyalty Over Truth: From Qin Shi Huang to Trump in the Wisdom Guardians series. This year, Wisdom Guardians is focused on ruthless rulers throughout human history—a critical thread in Sapience: The Moment Is Now. In the novel, Yong Xing-li, aided by four human-like intelligence AIs, undertakes a deep exploration of how ruthless rulers shaped human consciousness across civilizations. Ra—one of Yong’s AIs—guides him through the Hall of Ruthless Rulers. Qin Shi Huang is among the first figures encountered on that journey, and I am currently working on Nero.
Because of narrative space, only one ruthless ruler could be fully embedded in Sapience itself: Herod the Great. Wisdom Guardiansallows me to explore the rulers that could not fit inside the novel. Understanding how these figures manipulated fear, loyalty, myth, memory, spectacle, and obedience is essential because that historical knowledge becomes part of the larger project of transforming human consciousness.
Sapience: The Moment Is Now (Kindle)
The link to Sapience: The Moment Is Now matters because that is where readers encounter Yong Xing-li more fully—who he is, what he is trying to do, and why. In a future shaped by ecological stress, political fracture, technological acceleration, and the recurring psychology of ruthless rulers, Yong understands that humanity’s greatest danger is not merely external conflict but untransformed consciousness itself.
His work is therefore not to build monuments, accumulate spectacle, or consolidate power. It is to understand how consciousness can evolve on a scale never before achieved. Yong knows that unless human beings learn to master fear, projection, domination, and self-deception, humanity may ultimately succeed in doing what no empire before it could fully do: kill itself off on Earth.
Release All the Epstein Files: This three-panel fleece hoodie wraps you in a calm, reflective mood that is perfect for a protest! Amidst the hostile government takeover, indeed, beneath it all, lies the rot of lies, abuse, criminality, and billionaires who believe they live above the law. This soft, slightly heavy fleece with a roomy hood and kangaroo pocket that invite you to linger will ground you to this moment and inspire the change we all seek (except the guilty) until…
The Epstein Survivor Hoodie belongs here because this essay is ultimately about what happens when power begins to believe it is exempt from accountability. Across history, ruthless rulers often surround themselves with systems of privilege, loyalty, and protection that encourage the belief that wealth, status, and proximity to power place them above ordinary moral limits. That same psychology does not remain confined to architecture or political spectacle—it can spread into institutions, social norms, and cultures of impunity.
The hoodie therefore serves as more than apparel. It is a reminder that societies are judged not by the grandeur of their monuments but by whether they protect the vulnerable, tell the truth about abuse, and hold the powerful accountable. That question sits at the center of this essay: whether human beings will continue repeating old patterns of domination, or whether consciousness can evolve enough to break them.
Before power captures institutions, it captures perception.
Democracy does not collapse in a single dramatic seizure. It erodes when citizens no longer share a coherent reality. When people inhabit different informational worlds, self-government becomes nearly impossible.
This is not accidental. It is engineered.
And it begins in the mind.
In psychology, apperception describes how new information is absorbed through existing mental frameworks. We do not see the world as it is. We see it through the models we have already built. Every experience is filtered, interpreted, and woven into prior belief.
When those mental models are distorted, reality itself becomes pliable.
The defining political struggle of our era is not merely about laws or elections. It is about perception.
What happens to democracy when perception itself is privatized?
The Manufacturing of Reality: Social Media Is Training Us to Obey
We Already Perceive Only a Fractionof the Manufactured Reality Swirling Around Us
Modern physics offers a humbling insight: human perception is inherently partial.
Quantum mechanics reveals that observation affects what is observed. String theory proposes that what we experience may be a thin “brane” floating within a far larger “bulk” of dimensions beyond our sensory reach. Whether one takes these models literally or metaphorically, the lesson is clear: reality is deeper and more complex than our immediate awareness.
We are always navigating a thin perceptual membrane stretched across something vastly larger.
Healthy societies expand that membrane. They cultivate curiosity, humility, and cognitive flexibility. They encourage citizens to refine their models of reality as new information emerges.
But what happens when the informational environment becomes saturated with noise?
Instead of expanding perception, we flood it.
Twenty-four-hour media cycles. Algorithmic reinforcement. Outrage as currency. Endless scroll. Contradiction layered upon contradiction.
When the signal-to-noise ratio collapses, people do not become more discerning.
They become fatigued.
And fatigue narrows perception.
The Manufacturing of Reality: Image from Another Reality Is Leaking into Ours
Lenin: Capture the Narrative First (The Manufacturing of Reality Is Old)
Vladimir Lenin understood that revolutions are won in the realm of narrative before they are secured in the realm of governance.
Control the story, and you control interpretation. Control interpretation, and you shape allegiance.
If every event is filtered through a single ideological lens, complexity disappears. Alternative explanations become suspect. Dissent becomes betrayal.
Once perception is reorganized, resistance feels irrational. The new order feels inevitable.
The first victory is cognitive.
Hitler: Replace Reality with Myth (The Manufacturing of Reality Is Repetitive)
Adolf Hitler refined this strategy by fusing mythic identity with grievance.
Hero. Enemy. Betrayal. Destiny.
These are archetypal structures. They bypass analytical reasoning and move directly into emotional circuitry. Facts lose relevance because belonging becomes paramount.
Myth simplifies a chaotic world. It offers clarity where complexity feels overwhelming. It offers identity where economic instability erodes dignity.
When myth overtakes shared reality, institutions weaken. Courts, legislatures, journalism — these depend on a baseline agreement about what is real. Remove that baseline, and democratic structure becomes hollow.
The Manufacturing of Reality: Hitler’s Bunker (Remind you of anyone today obsessed with death, destruction, and bunkers?)
Trump: Saturation as Strategy (The Manufacturing of Reality: Still Happening Now)
Donald Trump operates in a different media ecosystem — one defined not by centralized propaganda but by fragmentation and saturation.
The strategy is not uniformity.
It is overload.
Constant statements. Contradictions. Provocations. Breaking news layered upon breaking news. The informational field becomes so dense that evaluation becomes exhausting.
When everything demands attention, sustained attention collapses.
Exhaustion becomes compliance.
This is not merely personality or spectacle. It is perceptual warfare in an age where attention is the most valuable commodity.
The Manufacturing of Reality: Little King Trump
Economic Stress Narrows the Mind, an Essential Ingredient in the Manufacturing of Reality
Economic precarity intensifies this dynamic.
Research on scarcity shows that when individuals are preoccupied with financial insecurity, cognitive bandwidth shrinks. Immediate survival crowds out long-term reasoning. Abstract policy debates lose urgency compared to rent, food, healthcare.
Under chronic stress:
Simplified narratives feel stabilizing.
Strong leaders feel clarifying.
Identifiable enemies feel grounding.
The mind narrows because it must.
A narrowed mind is easier to guide.
This is not a moral failing. It is a cognitive reality.
And it makes perceptual manipulation more effective.
The Manufacturing of Reality: Always Involves Corruption and Income Inequality
The Loss of Interior Expansion
There was a time in Western intellectual history when alternative cosmologies emphasized interior awakening. Early Gnostic traditions, later marginalized and pruned from orthodoxy, suggested that reality is layered — and that human beings possess the capacity to awaken beyond surface appearances.
Whether one accepts those metaphysics literally is beside the point.
Psychologically, such traditions cultivated depth. They encouraged inward exploration alongside outward structure.
Much of Western civilization instead consolidated around more hierarchical metaphysical models: authority centralized, truth mediated, salvation externalized. Over centuries, this narrowed the manuscript of the mind.
In a universe that physics now describes as multidimensional and probabilistic, our cultural habits often remain rigid and binary.
We stare at the brane and forget the bulk.
The Manufacturing of Reality: Inner Space
The Privatization of Perception, Critical Ingredient in the Manufacturing of Reality
Today, perception is no longer shaped only by culture, family, or local community.
It is curated.
Algorithms — owned and operated by private corporations — determine what rises into visibility and what sinks into obscurity. They optimize for engagement, not coherence. For emotional activation, not contemplative depth.
The result is fragmentation.
Different citizens inhabit different informational universes. Shared reference points dissolve. A common civic narrative becomes difficult to sustain.
Democracy requires an informational commons. It requires enough overlap in perception that disagreement can occur within a shared frame.
When perception itself is privatized, the commons erodes.
The danger is not disagreement.
The danger is epistemic isolation.
The Manufacturing of Reality: The Art of Confusion
Noise Versus Signal, You Must Know the Different to Avoid Getting Caught Up in the Manufacturing of Reality
The deeper cost of this manufactured reality is not simply political instability.
It is human diminishment.
When attention is perpetually captured, individuals lose access to their own interior signal. Reflection is replaced by reaction. Depth is replaced by immediacy.
Discoherent noise overwhelms the perceptual membrane.
And when that happens, people forget who they are — and what they are capable of becoming.
Democracy is not sustained by outrage alone. It is sustained by citizens capable of sustained thought, capable of soft focus, capable of seeing beyond the immediate stimulus.
In martial arts, instructors speak of using “soft eyes” — widening the field of vision rather than locking onto a single threat. Soft eyes allow you to perceive the whole field.
Hard focus is useful in crisis.
But permanent hard focus leads to blindness.
A society trapped in permanent hard focus — outrage, fear, reaction — loses its depth perception.
The Manufacturing of Reality: Ordinary People Trapped In a Rage Machine and Economic Deprivation
Expanding the Perceptual Field
The defense of democracy is inseparable from the defense of consciousness.
This does not require ideological conformity. It requires cognitive expansion.
Strengthening apperception rather than surrendering it. Restoring signal amid noise. Reclaiming interior depth in a saturated world. Widening the brane.
Power trains the mind before it takes the state. It reshapes narrative before it reshapes law. It narrows perception before it narrows rights.
The counter-movement must therefore begin in perception as well.
Slow down the feed. Diversify sources. Engage opposing arguments without caricature. Create spaces for sustained conversation. Practice soft eyes.
Because the most radical act in an age of manufactured reality may be this:
To expand your awareness rather than contract it.
Democracy depends on citizens who can tolerate complexity without fleeing into myth. Citizens who can endure uncertainty without surrendering to authoritarian clarity. Citizens who recognize that their perception is partial — and who remain willing to refine it.
We inhabit only a fraction of reality.
The question is whether we will allow that fraction to be engineered for us.
Or whether we will widen it ourselves.
Before power captures the state, it captures the mind.
The preservation of democracy begins by reclaiming it.
The Manufacturing of Reality: Visualization of Mind and Thought as Resonance and Waves
The Manufacturing of Reality: Feature Archetypal Animation
Music: Pulse of the Feed 03:10 StabilityMid-tempo (80–95 BPM) cinematic ambient electronica with pulsing synth bass, soft glitch percussion, airy pads, and sparse piano motifs. Minor-key harmony with subtle tension, occasional filtered risers, no flashy solos. Mood: investigative, uneasy, reflective—building toward clarity and resolve.
Stephen Miller’s War on Democracy is the muscle behind Russell Vought’s Project 2025 and the Billionaire/Epstein Class greed to get more profit and add more gold to their already heaping piles of gold locked up inside their mansions.
When we examine how democracy is being dismantled in plain sight, the role of Stephen Miller cannot be overstated. A central architect of the MAGA block’s assault on truth, governance and civil society, Miller is steering policies that resemble decapitation of institutional safeguards, rule of law and human rights.
Stephen Miller’s War on Democracy
The Blueprint
Quotas and raids Miller directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to carry out a minimum of 3,000 arrests per day — a massive escalation from earlier targets. Axios+3Newsweek+3Forbes+3 He explicitly pressed ICE to carry out raids at places like the parking lots of Home Depot and 7‑Eleven, targeting informal work sites of immigrant day-laborers. The Independent+2The Daily Beast+2 The effect is chaotic, sweeping and arbitrary — legal and undocumented persons both face the dragnet in what can only be described as helter-skelter.
Brutality and callousness Reports reveal a demoralised ICE leadership, fearful of internal e-mail and message monitoring, and under heavy pressure from the White House via Miller to achieve ever-higher numbers. The Independent+1 These policies echo the darkest impulses of state violence — deploying quotas, forcing enforcement agents into mass operations rather than case-by-case due-process.
Democracy under assault Miller is not acting alone. His ally, Russell Vought, is reshaping federal bureaucracy via the Project 2025 agenda, which threatens separation of powers, the independence of agencies and checks and balances. Democracy Now!+2American Civil Liberties Union+2 The raids, quotas and bureaucratic decapitation serve a larger vision: dismantle the rule-bound state and replace it with an executive-driven, majoritarian apparatus accountable to an insurgent loyalist base.
The irony of the base losing everything Meanwhile, the very MAGA followers who cheered the dismantling of “pork government spending” are losing the pillars of social support they depended on — healthcare, rural hospitals, infrastructure, emergency agencies, social security. The “cuts” go into servicing the billionaire class and consolidating power, while those who pledged loyalty lose their safety net. Miller and Vought are key instruments in this re-allocation of power away from democratic public institutions and toward oligarchic rule.
Stephen Miller’s War on Democracy
Why This Matters
When enforcement quotas replace discretion, when law becomes spectacle, when bureaucracy is hollowed out — democracy doesn’t just weaken, it dies.
Miller’s raids create fear and chaos in blue-states and cities where immigrants live; the strategy sows political polarisation, erodes local autonomy, and fuels authoritarian tactics.
Vought’s budget and bureaucracy overhaul steals the tools of accountability and oversight. Together they are the dual heads of the decapitation: Miller hits the people, Vought hits the system.
The spectacle of tyranny is dressed up in patriotism, law-and-order rhetoric, and “we’re taking back control” talk — but the control goes right into the pockets of power, not the public.
Stephen Miller’s War on Democracy
The Takeaway
Don’t be fooled by the bombast. This is not just immigration policy, nor just budget cuts. This is the targeted destruction of democratic reality: of institutions, rights, norms and the story of self-governing people. Miller is a tool of hate, and Vought is the kingpin of dismantling — they are dismantlers in the truest sense: erasing the pillars of freedom while their base bleeds out. It’s time to wake up.
Stephen Miller’s War on Democracy
Why America is Lost
This is why America is already lost… and may not ever be coming back. Our culture is very, very ill. This video does a very good job telling why.
Stephen Miller’s War on Democracy: Archetypal Animation
That’s all that stands between us and a future where democracy remains a living, breathing reality — or one where it becomes a hollow shell, ruled by those who’ve mastered the art of manipulation. Forty days is not much time, yet it’s enough to decide whether “We the People” still means anything, or whether those words become a historical relic, muttered in classrooms and campaign speeches but stripped of their power in practice.
This isn’t melodrama. It’s math.
Last year, over 90 million Americans didn’t vote. Ninety million voices silent while decisions about their lives, freedoms, bodies, wages, and futures were made without them. That silence wasn’t accidental — it was engineered. And in the next 40 days, the same forces that fed that silence are working overtime to do it again.
The question is: will we let them?
Democracy on the Brink: How Authoritarians Win Before a Single Ballot Is Cast
We often imagine authoritarianism arriving like a thunderclap — jackboots in the streets, constitutions burned, leaders seized in the night. But in reality, it arrives more quietly. It seeps in like a fog, softening resistance, numbing outrage, dulling the will to act. And it does this long before a single ballot is cast.
Democracy on the Brink: Authoritarian T-shirt — Wear It to Your Next March | The Quip Collection
There’s a playbook — one that’s been used over and over, from the fall of ancient republics to the rise of modern strongmen. And every tactic in that playbook is aimed not at armies or institutions, but at your mind.
Distraction: Flood the public square with endless scandals and meaningless controversies until people tune out. The more chaotic the noise, the harder it is to focus on what truly matters.
Division: Pit neighbor against neighbor, turn every difference into a battlefield, and fracture the collective power that democracy depends on.
Despair: Feed the narrative that nothing changes, that power always wins, that your vote is just a drop in the ocean. A hopeless citizen is a silent citizen.
Disinformation: Twist reality itself until truth becomes a matter of opinion. Once shared facts disappear, democracy — which depends on them — dissolves too.
These are not side effects of our political dysfunction; they are the strategy. And they’re devastatingly effective. As I argue in Sapience: The Moment Is Now, authoritarianism doesn’t just conquer governments — it colonizes consciousness. It shapes how we perceive reality, how we relate to one another, and how we decide whether to act at all.
The Most Powerful Weapon Authoritarians Use: Your Inaction (Apathy In Action)
If this sounds grim, that’s because it is. But there’s also hope buried in this truth — because it reveals the most powerful weapon authoritarians have is not violence or propaganda. It’s your inaction.
Democracy on the Brink: Distracted and Sad Super Hero | August 2023 Blog
The 90 million people who stayed home last election weren’t lazy. They were conditioned. Conditioned by decades of messaging designed to convince them that their voice didn’t matter, that “the system” was too corrupt to fix, that politics was something best avoided. And this conditioning starts young.
We are raised in a culture that equates obedience with virtue, that trains us to outsource our agency to systems and experts, that markets passivity as peace. Advertising tells us to consume instead of create. Political rhetoric tells us to hope instead of build. And a 24-hour outrage economy tells us to scroll instead of speak.
Democracy on the Brink: Obey
This is psychological warfare — and it’s working.
But here’s the paradox: inaction is exactly what makes the system seem unchangeable. The less we participate, the more power consolidates. The more power consolidates, the more hopeless participation feels. It’s a feedback loop — one we have the power to break, if we choose.
What We Can Still Do — Right Now to Help Democracy on the Brink
Here’s the good news: this story isn’t over. Forty days is enough time to change its ending.
Democracy on the Brink: VOTE Lawn Sign | The Quip CollectionAnd the Update Sign Based on Hurricane Trump’s Whims [Find it at The Quip Collection, Reckoning Line, Resistance]
History isn’t written by those who watch — it’s written by those who show up. And showing up is simpler, more powerful, and more contagious than most people realize.
Here’s how:
Vote — and help three others do the same. Make sure you’re registered, make a plan, and then go beyond yourself. Text friends. Talk to neighbors. Offer a ride. Turn voting from an individual act into a communal one.
Counter disinformation. Lies spread fastest when they go unchallenged. Don’t let them. Speak up in conversations. Share credible sources. Correct falsehoods gently but firmly. Truth still matters — but only if we defend it.
Interrupt apathy. Change how you talk about politics. Don’t focus only on candidates — focus on what’s at stake: democracy, freedom, dignity, future. Remind people that the point isn’t perfection; it’s progress.
Be visible. Yard signs, protest flags, social posts, conversations at the grocery store — they all matter. Visibility signals to others that they’re not alone. That’s why I created my latest sign reminding people that 90 million didn’t vote last year. It’s not just a statistic — it’s a rallying cry.
And if you need tools, check out the Sapient Survival Guide. It’s built to help ordinary people navigate the psychological battlefield we’re all living in — and to remind you that resistance isn’t just about politics. It’s about reclaiming your agency.
Also, right here, part of the Sapience Shop, is The Reckoning Line. Here you will find clothing, decals, yard signs, face masks, protest flags and posters, plus a whole lot more to make your voice heard. And every voice activated, inspires another who is staying silent to stand up, speak up, and rise against this authoritarian take over.
The Reckoning Line
The Reckoning Line
Where silence breaks, truth sharpens, and courage takes its place.
This collection stands at the edge of illusion and awareness—a space for those who see through the chaos and choose to respond with clarity and conviction. Whether through bold statements, symbolic designs, or quiet defiance, each piece is a marker on the line we must all walk when the moment calls us to reckon—with ourselves, with history, with the future.
Every democracy reaches a moment like this — a moment when the future narrows to a single, urgent choice: surrender to fear and fatigue, or stand up and participate.
Ours has arrived.
We are not powerless. We are not voiceless. But we are at risk of believing we are — and that belief is the most dangerous weapon in the authoritarian arsenal. The antidote isn’t grand gestures or perfect solutions. It’s small, consistent acts of defiance. It’s refusing to be silenced. It’s daring to believe that collective action still matters.
Carl Jung wrote that the “shadow” — the darker impulses in ourselves and society — must be faced and integrated, not ignored. That’s what democracy demands of us now: to face the shadow of manipulation, apathy, and fear, and transform it into purpose.
Democracy on the Brink: The Devil Definitely Believes that He Is God | From Sept. 2023 blog
We have 40 days. Forty days to prove that democracy is not a relic of the past, but a living promise to the future. Forty days to reject the fog and see clearly. Forty days to stand up, speak out, and show up.
The future is still ours to write — but only if we write it together.
📚 Explore & Act
Read:Sapience: The Moment Is Now — for a deeper dive into the psychological and historical roots of our current crisis.
Equip:Sapient Survival Guide — tools and insights to stay grounded and active in the age of manipulation.
Signal: Check out the “90 Million Didn’t Vote” yard sign and resistance gear — because sometimes, the simplest act of visibility sparks a conversation that changes everything.
Wait, There Is More
After all the whining, sniviling, and downright lying MAGA did about the 2020 election, cumulating in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, what if it turns out that MAGA stoled the 2024 election… that Trump did not win and that Kamala should be our President today?
Does this sound far fetched?
Listen… and learn.
Democracy on the Brink — Nathan Taylor, Executive Director of Public Engagement for Election Truth Alliance, joins us to discuss discrepancies in the 2024 election and how to bolster election integrity Election Truth Alliance Website: https://electiontruthalliance.org/2024-us-election-analysis/
Democracy on the Brink: Listen to X (who Elon call his minime) tell Tucker how Elon Musk used Star Link (which he calls SpaceX… ‘casue when your name is X, everything is called X, right?) to Do Whatever They Want to Help Trump Win the 2024 Election… “They’ll never know…” … evil laughs….
Democracy on the Brink: Why I Might Be Too Late
Why it might be too late for America to not collapse:
Ex-Republican Exposes DARK FORCE Behind Trump Support | The Weekend Show
It’s late August—summer’s ending, school is starting. It’s tempting to believe everything is fine, fresh, new again. But look closer—does it really feel that way?
We pretend it is just another ordinary day in another ordinary year. But beneath the surface, the world is anything but ordinary. Everywhere, instability hums like a low-grade fever—sometimes spiking, sometimes subsiding, but never truly gone.
The Illusion of Stability: Another Ordinary Day in Our Glass and Concrete Cities
We have learned to live inside this fever. We scroll, we consume, we distract ourselves. Yet the cracks widen. Sometimes truth seeps through. Other times it slips back into the fractures, disappearing from awareness as if it were never there.
Carl Jung once warned that ignorance is the greatest evil. Only humans can ignore the obvious—turning a blind eye to suffering, a deaf ear to reason, shutting out both common sense and compassion.
The Illusion of Stability: Thoughtful Person in Library
Only man is capable of doing this for only man has grown the ability to scan his inner world and meld the areas of inner illumination with his outer reality, creating something new, something in-between both realms of being.
This ability allowed Homo sapiens to surpass every other being on the planet—a marvelous triumph of consciousness. But every gift carries its shadow. The price of awareness is responsibility, and humanity’s refusal to shoulder that responsibility—for self, for others, for the Earth—threatens to become our undoing.
Meanwhile, our collective ignorance fractures the very reality we depend on to survive. The Earth groans, societies splinter, and yet we look away.
Here are four signs of the instability we are trained not to see:
1. The Climate Clock Keeps Ticking. Wildfires rage in regions once thought untouchable, while floods submerge towns that had no time to recover from the last disaster. Heat records fall, not one by one but in clusters, like dominoes tipping toward collapse. Scientists no longer speak of prevention—only adaptation. And yet adaptation itself is rationed: those with wealth can buy higher ground and air-conditioned bubbles, while the poor are left to suffocate.
2. Democracy in Name Only. The machinery of democracy grinds on—debates, rallies, soundbites—while its spirit withers. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and judicial overreach hollow out the promise of representation. Citizens go through the motions of voting, but the choices are narrowed, the outcomes predetermined. It is democracy as theater, staged to reassure, not to empower.
3. War as a Weaponized Distraction. While much of the public’s attention is turned inward toward partisan spectacle, war grinds on with devastating persistence. Ukraine is still under relentless attack by Putin, and in the wake of Trump’s hollow claim that he would end the conflict on “day one,” more Ukrainians have died than the total number of Gazans killed since October 7. Both wars are sustained by extremist perpetrators who wrap their brutality in flags, each side fueling destruction while claiming legitimacy. These conflicts are not isolated—they are global shockwaves, reminders that authoritarian power thrives on perpetual violence and distraction.
4. Truth Under Siege. In this climate, truth itself erodes. Facts are not debated but discarded. Entire populations live inside alternative realities, curated by algorithms that prioritize outrage over understanding. Books vanish from schools, journalists are silenced, and propaganda spreads faster than fire. A society that cannot agree on what is real becomes easy prey for those who would weaponize the lie.
The Illusion of Stability: The Price of Consciousness Is Responsibility
Conclusion
We are told this instability is temporary, that “normal” will return if only we wait. But what if instability is the new normal? What if the illusion of stability is itself the most dangerous lie of all?
History teaches us that empires rarely collapse in a single day. They erode slowly, quietly, until one morning the scaffolding of belief gives way—and everyone insists they never saw it coming.
The fever is not breaking. The fever is the condition. The question is whether we keep sleepwalking into collapse—or whether we awaken in time to remember what it means to be human: to protect each other, to defend truth, to honor the living earth that sustains us. Collapse is not inevitable—it is accelerated by our apathy, our surrender, our refusal to see. The ground is shifting beneath our feet.
The only real question is whether we will keep drifting with it into ruin, or finally take responsibility for turning toward life.
If this topic intrigues you, I write about these ideas and other in depth in my book Sapience: The Moment Is Now–man’s mythic balance between his gifts and his shadow. Also, check out my new graphic novel: Sapient Survival Guide.
Sapient Survival GuideSapience: The Moment Is Now
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What happens when history is erased, the past is politicized, and the present burns?
The world changed on August 6, 1945—and since that day, every August 5 has become a kind of psychic limbo. A reckoning. The last breath of innocence before the mushroom cloud.
That’s how I always feel on this date. Like we’re holding our breath in a forgotten waiting room of history—blind to what came before, numb to what unfolds now. The silence before the sirens. The moment before the blast.
Today—August 5, 2025—we are back in that limbo.
But this time, the sky is not split by one bomb.
The destruction is slower, more dispersed, less cinematic—yet no less final.
This time, it’s heatwaves that break records. Rivers that dry to dust, then overflow in torrential floods. Forests that burn unchecked, fueled by massive rains that feed new vegetation—only for it to dry, then ignite, as heatwaves and droughts return like the ticking hands of a doomsday clock.
It is rights that vanish. Books that disappear. Truth that crumbles like ash.
This time, the bomb isn’t dropped.
It’s embedded. Woven into the system. And we are its architects.
I. The Myth of the Clean Bomb
The atomic bomb was sold to the American public as a necessary evil. A weapon that saved lives by ending the war. That version of reality still persists—scrubbed clean of children’s shadows burned into concrete, of survivors coughing up blackened blood, of generational trauma encoded in irradiated cells.
The lie of the clean bomb persists because it serves empire. It allows America to remain the hero of its own myth.
And that myth is still being weaponized.
Only now, it’s turned inward—against its own people.
Today’s warfare is economic, psychological, algorithmic. Yet the logic remains unchanged: justify atrocity with a false binary—us or them, freedom or chaos, purity or infection.
Today’s “them” are immigrants.
They are scapegoated for the damage inflicted by the billionaire class—that paltry 3% who not only own the means of production, but also control the distribution of goods, truth, and even hope. They’ve spent decades engineering a system where they get more—and everyone else gets less. Less pay. Less power. Less time. Less life.
And now, as the American Empire fractures under the weight of its own excess, the billionaires are panicking.
The moral calculus never changes. Only the delivery system. And the scapegoats who bear the cost of the sins committed by the ultra-rich—men who molest truth as easily as they molest children.
Protected by wealth. Worshipped by media. Shielded by spectacle.
II. The Climate as the New War Zone
While politicians posture and billionaires build bunkers, the planet keeps the receipts.
July 2025 was the hottest month in recorded history—for the third year in a row. Massive wildfires are displacing thousands across the Pacific Northwest and Mediterranean. Crops are failing in Africa and Latin America. Major cities are approaching wet-bulb conditions too dangerous for human survival.
But it’s not just weather. It’s the slow-motion collapse of the world we were promised. A world built on endless growth, fossil-fueled prosperity, and the illusion of safety for the “civilized.” That world is burning down, and too many still think we can shop our way out of the flames.
The climate crisis isn’t just about carbon. It’s about power. Extraction.
It is a system that treats the Earth like a warehouse and people like units of productivity.
It is war by another name—waged on the body of the planet and the psyche of the people.
As the temperature rises, so does the campaign to make us forget.
The Project 2025 blueprint isn’t just about rolling back regulations or gutting federal agencies. It’s about destroying institutional memory. Banning books is not just censorship—it’s conditioning and control. Erasing queer history, Black history, labor history, climate truth—it’s all part of the same project: obliterate the past so the present can be reprogrammed.
And it’s working.
What happens when a nation forgets not just Hiroshima, but Tulsa? Not just slavery, but Flint? Not just the Dust Bowl, but Paradise, California?
Such a nation becomes unmoored. Untethered. Easily manipulated. Easily distracted by pleasure, products and propaganda.
Memory is not nostalgia. Memory is resistance. When we forget, we become malleable. Controllable. Willing to call cruelty “order,” or fire “progress.”
IV.What Is Worth Remembering
Today, on August 5, I am remembering not just the blast—but the silence before it. The illusion that everything was fine.
That’s where we are now—algorithmically embedded and entombed in illusion. Trained in the art of forgetting. Forgetting that we are space-time beings of staggering magnificence—sentient sparks capable of perceiving, feeling, and dancing with the mystery of life. One of the rarest awakenings in the known universe. And yet… here we are: sedated by spectacle, indentured to the machine, clocking in for our slow extinction under corporate rule.
It is a myth has never relied on fact. It relies on meaning. And meaning is forged in remembrance.
So let us remember:
That humans made the bomb—but we also made peace.
That fire can destroy—but it can also purify.
That forgetting is dangerous—but remembering is defiant.
Let us remember the land before it cracked. The sky before it choked. The soul before it was bought by billionaires and oligarchs.
Let us remember that we are not separate from the story. We are the storytellers.
And right now, the story is breaking.
But so are we.
And maybe—just maybe—that’s where the fire of renewal begins… like the mythical firebird.
The Price of Forgetting: From Hiroshima to Heatwaves: Call to Action:
🌍 This week, remember something real. Tell someone a story about your ancestors. Read a banned book. Visit a site of historical pain and power. Because remembrance is not passive. It is protection. It is protest. It is a portal.
🌀Supplement: Echoes of Empire — From Galactic Collapse to American Decline
In my book Sapience: The Moment Is Now, I trace how empires have risen and fallen across human history in patterns eerily familiar to those imagined by Isaac Asimov in his Foundation series. Asimov’s Galactic Empire, like Rome, like Britain, like America today, collapses not from a single blow—but from accumulated rot: arrogance, bureaucracy, inequality, and the silencing of truth.
What Asimov understood—and what history confirms—is that humans rarely respond to collapse with wisdom. We cling. We deny. We search for scapegoats. We double down on failing systems out of fear of the unknown.
Empires don’t just fall because they’re conquered. They fall because they forget what they were for. Because the story that once united them becomes hollow—and the people stop believing.
Sapience explores this moment as not just political, but mythological. The American Empire is in decline, and the question is not if—but how we respond. Do we fracture into chaos, or awaken into something wiser?
That, as Asimov might say, is the true test of a civilization’s soul.
Foundation — Official Trailer | Apple TV+
🌀Supplement:The Now Scroll
My Now Scroll minis are myth-infused micro-essays or 3-minute soul jolts that confront the collapsing empire in real time. Each one distills a powerful truth at the intersection of myth, psyche, and political reality, using poetic insight and piercing clarity to expose the deep structures of control—whether it’s cults, fascism, or the subtle ways we co-create our own enslavement.
They aren’t just commentary—they’re living scrolls that remind the reader to stay awake, to question the spectacle, and to reclaim their inner authority in a world designed to numb and domesticate human consciousness. This one is relevant to today’s blog.
🌀Supplement:Sapient Survival Guide
Part mythic handbook, part political manifesto, part psychological field guide—this 62-page survival document is a razor-sharp reckoning with the world as it is… and a rally cry for what it could be.
The Sapient Zombie Survival Guide is not your average prepper’s pamphlet. It’s a call to those who still feel, still think, still care—those not yet devoured by the hollow hunger of authoritarianism, consumerism, or despair. It charts the psychic terrain of a country in collapse, exposing how propaganda, greed, and mythic forces have turned millions into the walking dead.
But it doesn’t stop there.
This guide arms readers with 10 survival strategies rooted in ancient wisdom, archetypal truth, and modern resistance. It invites the reader to awaken—not just politically, but mythically—and to ride the dragon of consciousness through a world set ablaze.
With poetic fire, biting satire, and unflinching honesty, this publication lays the foundation for the volumes to come—The Houses of Wreckage and The Dragon Riders’ Guide—offering not just survival, but transformation.
Part mythic handbook, part political manifesto, part psychological field guide—this 62-page survival document is a razor-sharp reckoning with the world as it is… and a rally cry for what it could be.
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“What fools these mortals be.” — Puck, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
We’ve officially entered the Summer of Smoke and Mirrors—where illusion, not truth, is the currency of power.
June 2025 marks more than just the turning of seasons. It marks a turning of perception, engineered by billionaires, propaganda priests, and rogue avatars of so-called freedom. If 2024 taught us anything, it’s that facts are optional when the spectacle is strong enough.
This isn’t new. But it is accelerating.
Midsummer Myths and Modern Mind Games
In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, lovers are bewitched into madness, mistaking dream for reality. The forest becomes a playground of misperception. Sound familiar?
In today’s world, the enchanted forest is digital. The fairies wear algorithmic wings. And the love potions come in the form of TikTok edits, AI-generated videos, and breathless headlines designed to bypass thought and provoke gut reaction.
We’re not just being lied to. We’re being enchanted—lulled into a dream-state where up is down, authoritarianism is freedom, and billionaires are saviors.
Smoke: Manufactured Chaos
The smoke is thick and deliberate:
Federal workers are demonized.
Educators are censored or silenced.
Immigrants are painted as invaders.
Science is treated like a witch’s spellbook.
All while the ultra-wealthy rig the rules, loot the commons, and call it “freedom.”
This is not just disinformation—it’s strategic mythmaking. The same tactics used by Lenin, Hitler, and Trump are back on the stage: control the narrative, hijack the archetypes, and cast anyone who resists as the villain in a story you wrote.
Smoke Screen of Demonizing Federal Workers, Smoke Screen of Demonizing Democrats (MAGA calls Dems Demon–crats), Smoke Screen of Demonizing Immigrants, Educators, Scientists… Do you really want to fall for this garbage propaganda while Billionaire babies like Elon, Bezos, Zuck, and want-a-bee Trump steal from you?
Mirrors: Apperception and Archetype Hijack
Mirrors aren’t just for reflection anymore. They’re used to bend perception.
If you repeat a lie enough, it reflects as truth. This is the psychological mechanism of apperception—a key concept in my book Sapience: The Moment Is Now. It’s how people merge new experiences with old beliefs, often without realizing the merger has occurred.
Once corrupted, the archetypes become dangerous:
The Hero becomes the Strongman.
The Storyteller becomes the Propaganda Priest.
The Watcher falls asleep at the gate.
What Archetypes Rule Your Mind? Have they been corrupted by the MAGA mind virus?
What Can You Do in the Forest of Illusion?
Wake up. Train your mythic imagination. See through the glamour.
Ask yourself:
Who’s writing the script I’m following?
What archetype is being presented—and what’s being hidden?
Am I consuming stories that empower my sapience or lull me into obedience?
The Summer of Smoke and Mirrors: Beware the Zaries — The Bad Faries — We all have a little of both inside of us… the infected ones have let the Zaries rule their inner garden of thought, feelings, and the story they tell themselves of what has happened to them along the way…
This Summer, Be a Watcher. Not a Pawn.
This isn’t just about politics—it’s about consciousness. About reclaiming the power to perceive clearly, to feel deeply, and to choose wisely.
It’s time to pierce the smoke. It’s time to shatter the mirrors. It’s time to awaken.
Do You Know Who Is Staring Back at You from Your Inner Abyss? We all have an inner abyss… without it… there would be No conscious awareness…
Second Dragon Rider Animation — Music: Inhuman Rampage – DragonForce — [4] Dragon 3:44 | Created by Genolve
Take Home Message: Just like in an enchanted forest, it’s important to navigate this digital landscape with care. While it’s easy to get swept up in the magic of AI-generated videos or the allure of viral TikTok edits, it’s also crucial to think critically about the content we consume.
Remember, not all that glitters in the digital forest is gold. Some of it might just be cleverly designed to provoke a reaction. So, let’s keep our wits about us and enjoy the magic responsibly.
Because good people need a guide when the undead wear suits, wave flags, and drool power
Introductionon How to Survive
How to Survive… In the first weeks of the Trump regime, I called it: The MAGA Zombie Apocalypse. Back then, it felt like satire—a dark metaphor for a rising tide of authoritarian groupthink. But five months into Trump 2.0, the metaphor is no joke–we are living through not only the MAGA Zombie Apocalypse, but the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse.
This point was made most powerfully by Noble Prize Winning economist on May 21, 2025: Paul Krugman.
The Last Word | May 21, 2025 with Paul Krugman | What we are talking about is sadistic zombie behavior… these are ideas that should be dead but it keeps shambling along eating people’s brains… (to listen to what I am referring to… click this link and fast-forward to minute 23 of the video)
And Paul Krugman is not the only award-winning economist raising alarm bells on what Trump and his renegade regime is doing to America’s economy and the global economy.
The images above are from Richard Wolff‘s latest video warning of the impending dangers of Trump’s unhinged ideas. This links to his video. Below is his bio.
A lifelong professor of economics, Richard D. Wolff is a well-known critic of contemporary capitalism and the leading proponent of an alternative economic system based on Worker Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDEs). He is the host of Economic Update, and has been interviewed on several popular television programs that include: Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill Moyers’ Moyers & Company, The Charlie Rose Show, and Up with Chris Hayes. As the founding director of Democracy at Work (d@w), Wolff’s publications that advocate for making the workplace democratic include articles in Truthout.org, The Guardian, Common Dreams, as well as his recent book: Capitalism's Crisis Deepens The videos you'll find here also advocate for WSDEs as a key part of moving forward from the current model of capitalism to a new and better economy. For more information, please visit our websites: http://democracyatwork.info http://rdwolff.com
Another award winning economists who is raising Red Alerts on Trump and his MAGA regime is Jeffery Sachs. Both Wolff and Sachs are saying the same thing and that is the USA is an empire in decline. The new rising empire is rising even faster because of Trump and his shenanigans.
Jeffery Sachs Official YouTube Page || There are a lot of Deep Fakes on YouTube since the rise of AI, so I am linking you to his official site. You can explore his discussions and interviews for the topics that interest you most. Sachs is one of the most knowledgable and powerful speakers of Truth at this moment in time.
Who is the new empire?
Why it is China. Why else are political figures (on both the left and right) demonizing China? They need a boogeyman because they don’t know how to fix or stop America’s decline as the dominate super power in the world.
Listen to the experts. I am just the messenger of their insights and warnings of this moment in time.
Zombie Ideas Are the Vectors of the Zombie Plague
But, we are not there any more and no matter how hard Trump and his MAGA zombies wish it to be… America is not going backwards in time (this universe just doesn’t work that way). However, what we do have going on now is a full-scale infection of zombie ideas. Listen to Noble Prize Winning Paul Krugman describe to Larwance what a zombie idea is. In economics, this is an actual term used to describe destructive economic decisions. Paul Krugman doesn’t mince words, nor does he call what Trump and gang are doing populism. He hits much closer to the core of what is happening right now to ordinary, working class Americans. He calls it the work of sadistic zombies.
This isn’t just “authoritarian drift,” it is: sadism.
Sadistic MAGA zombies don’t just crave power—they relish in cruelty. They cheer at book bans, scream at school boards, and fantasize about revenge. They’ve been taught to believe that empathy is weakness and democracy is rigged. They’ve been fed a diet of fear and conspiracy until all that’s left is a shell of resentment wrapped in a red hat.
And while this madness unfolds in public view, a darker vision looms—one I explore in my book, Sapience: The Moment Is Now. It’s a near-future world where the zombie virus of unchecked greed and ignorance has finally run its course. Nation-states collapse under the weight of climate disaster and political rot. Mother Nature strikes back with rage: fire, flood, famine. But the super-elite? They’re safe. Sequestered in their billion-dollar Multis—fortresses of luxury, profit, and surveillance. Built on our backs. Funded by our suffering. They don’t just survive the apocalypse—they monetize it.
How toSurvive the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse
So the question remains: how do good people survive this sadistic MAGA zombie apocalypse?
How do we navigate a world where cruelty is a badge of honor, truth is malleable, and the future has been auctioned off to the highest bidder?
Survival is no longer about hiding from the undead. It’s about refusing to become one.
Survival Guide
1. Don’t Try to Convert the Infected
In Sapience, I explore how mass manipulation hijacks apperception—the brain’s power to weave new experiences with old mental models. MAGA zombies have had their apperception hacked. They see cruelty as strength, lies as truth, and their oppressors as saviors.
You can’t decode a mind that’s been corrupted by a system that rewards delusion. So stop trying to “wake them up.” You’re not dealing with the uninformed—you’re facing the intentionally misinformed. Conserve your energy. Strengthen your own reality instead.
How to Survive the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse is Important: Page from Soon To Be Released Graphic Novel
2. Fortify Your Moral Immune System
In a world unraveling—where sea levels rise while civility sinks—what protects us isn’t bunkers or bitcoin. It’s moral clarity. Sapience argues that individual awareness must evolve faster than the systems collapsing around us.
Survival means knowing what you stand for when everything else falls. Read real history. Nourish empathy. Reclaim archetypes of wisdom, guardianship, and creative rebellion. Build an inner compass the zombies can’t corrupt.
How to Survive the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse is Important: Fortify Your Moral Immune System
3. Find Your Survivor Tribe
The collapse is not coming—it’s here. As I describe in Sapience, nation-states crumble into irrelevance while the ultra-elite shelter in fortified Multis, profiting from engineered scarcity and division.
Meanwhile, the rest of us must rely on each other. The uninfected. The awake. The aware. Find your people. Your “Wisdom Guardians,” as I call them. Artists, truth-tellers, scientists, street-level organizers, and kitchen-table philosophers. Form pods. Trade skills. Share hope. The future will be rebuilt by tribes of sapients who remember how to feel and think at the same time.
How to Survive the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse is Important: Find Your Tribe
4. Use Humor Like a Machete
Zombies don’t laugh. That’s your advantage. In Sapience, I argue that imagination isn’t a luxury—it’s a survival mechanism. Satire, sarcasm, irony: these are weapons against despair and disinformation.
Laugh at absurdity. Call it out. Use your wit to dismantle the systems that want you numb. If authoritarianism is a theater of cruelty, then humor is your standing ovation for sanity.
How to Survive the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse is Important: Zombies don’t laugh.
5. Stop Playing Their Zero-Sum Game
The MAGA horde, like the billionaires they worship, believes in scarcity. If they have rights, we lose ours. If they get help, we suffer. In Sapience, I trace this zero-sum thinking back 5,000 years—to the roots of empire, hierarchy, and manufactured division.
Survival means refusing to play this game. The future depends on a different model—abundance through awareness, not extraction. We build systems that care. We dream bigger than the dystopia sold to us.
How to Survive the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse is Important Stop Playing Their Zero-Sum Game — National General Strike is our most powerful tool. We have seen this before. If the German people would have mobilized and strikes in 1931-2, they could have ended Hitler before the Holocaust.
This is a future blog, but it describes in detail the use of fear, violence, and corruption in cowing the masses into obedience to the tyranny of Trump & Co. Sapience: The Moment Is Now takes an even deeper dive into how tyrants gain power and control over the masses in the chapters about Ruthless Rulers. I also explore modern man’s long history of being ruled by ruthless men in my Podcast Series: Wisdom Guardians (on YouTube & Spotify)
The sadistic MAGA zombie apocalypse isn’t just metaphor. It’s psychological warfare, ecological collapse, economic sabotage, and civil decay—all rolled into a carnival of chaos. In Sapience, I call for preparedness not just in supply—but in spirit.
Yes, stock the pantry. But also stock your consciousness. Build mental models that help you adapt, imagine, and act. Prep not just for survival—but for post-collapse purpose.
How to Survive the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse is Important Prepare Like It’s Real—Because It Is
What Are We Losing & Where Can We Hide?
Not many Americans can afford to move to another country. However, there might be some places in the US that can weather the coming chaos, economic collapse, tariffs, etc. etc. better than other places.
I asked ChatGPT this question.
And I asked it to factor in the impact of MAGA’s Big Beautiful Bill, Trump’s Big Beautiful Tariffs, and Elon’s Big Beautiful Cuts of the Federal Work Force.
Wait, you say, what exactly do these fired federal employees have to do with my economic wellbeing and security? Will we really miss them? Surely, federal employees weren’t doing anything that affects me?!
This is a massively important question — because most Americans don’t realize how deeply their everyday lives rely on federal workers and civil service infrastructure, often until it’s too late.
When Elon Musk and Donald Trump — directly or indirectly — push policies or appoint people who gutted, defunded, or demoralized the federal workforce, the effects don’t look like chaos at first. They look like delays, breakdowns, confusion, and crises without answers.
These cuts of federal employees are not only being done by Elon’s DOGE teenage team of hackers, but also Trump-era cabinet secretaries who are doing everything they can to hurry up attrition, hollowing out, or outright hostility to entire departments to get them to resign. These efforts combined with Elon Musk’s privatization fantasies and support for anti-government ideology, have real, painful consequences — especially during a high-stakes summer.
Here’s a powerful rundown of what Americans will miss, lose access to, or suffer from due to this sustained war on the federal workforce and public service infrastructure:
🌀 Weather and Climate Disasters: You’re on Your Own
Fewer NOAA and National Weather Service meteorologists, leading to delayed or downgraded storm warnings.
Less support from FEMA during floods, wildfires, hurricanes, or tornado recovery — especially in rural and low-income areas.
Climate data suppression or manipulation, making disaster preparation harder for local governments.
Slower response times to wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and heat waves, which are growing more frequent and intense due to climate change.
Fewer trained staff at FEMA to process aid, rebuild communities, or coordinate rescue operations.
Weather forecasting delays and reduced storm tracking accuracy as NOAA scientists are driven out or not replaced.
Public lands left unguarded during fire season due to cuts to the U.S. Forest Service.
🥵 Extreme Heat Protections (OSHA, EPA, HUD)
No federal heat standards enforced for workers in warehouses, fields, and construction — putting lives at risk.
EPA gutted so fewer checks on urban heat islands, air pollution, and water safety.
Public housing remains unprepared for heatwaves, with no upgrades to AC, insulation, or cooling stations.
✈️ Travel Chaos (TSA, FAA, National Parks)
Fewer TSA workers = longer lines, more delays, and heightened security risks and greater risk of air traffic issues..
FAA staff shortages = more flight delays and greater risk of mid-air incidents.
National parks overwhelmed, under-maintained, and under-patrolled — risking both safety and ecological damage during peak summer visitation.
Passport and visa delays due to underfunded State Department staffing and backlogs.
Slower response times for air safety violations or airline consumer complaints.
🍔 Food Safety Risks
Cuts to USDA inspectors and FDA staffing mean:
Fewer food recalls.
Slower response to contamination.
More tainted food reaching grocery shelves — especially in meat, dairy, and produce.
🧒 Programs for Kids & Families (USDA, HHS, Education Dept.)
Cut summer lunch programs for low-income kids who rely on school meals.
Delayed child care subsidies and family health services from HHS.
No staff to administer educational grants or summer learning programs — deepening the gap for marginalized students.
🔥 Public Lands and Firefighting
Fewer park rangers, firefighters, and wildland emergency responders.
Reduced protection for forests, wildlife, and endangered ecosystems.
Delays in wildfire prevention programs, increasing the risk of massive summer fires.
🌽 Farmer & Food System Support (USDA, EPA, Labor)
Fewer inspections for food safety, pesticides, and agricultural fraud.
No support for small farmers as subsidies and conservation programs go unstaffed.
Farmworker protection enforcement drops, putting vulnerable workers in harm’s way.
🏥 Health Access and Medical Oversight
Cuts to CDC staff and public health departments hamper outbreak tracking.
Medicare/Medicaid call centers and case managers are overwhelmed.
Less oversight of toxic workplace exposures (via OSHA or EPA), which rise in summer heat.
😷 Public Health & Science (CDC, NIH, FDA)
Slower outbreak response and tracking of new COVID, flu, or RSV variants.
Cancer trials delayed, new treatments slowed.
Fewer food and drug inspections, leading to more recalls and risks.
💼 Small Business and Economic Aid
Delays or shutdowns in:
SBA (Small Business Administration) loan approvals.
USDA rural development grants.
Housing programs (HUD) and energy assistance.
🏛️ Justice & Democracy (DOJ, DOL, USPS, Census Bureau)
Delayed civil rights investigations, police oversight, and workplace discrimination cases.
EEOC, DOJ Civil Rights Division, and labor board staffing gutted.
Slower investigations into:
Police abuse
Discrimination
Corporate exploitation
Undermines voting rights enforcement in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
Labor rights violations ignored due to DOL staff losses.
USPS delays worsen, affecting medication delivery, ballots, and rural access.
Census follow-up workers slashed, hurting planning, school funding, and representation.
💻 Tech and Infrastructure Cracks
Fewer cybersecurity experts defending federal systems.
Disrepair in federal IT systems, IRS help lines, Social Security portals, and more.
Musk’s influence has led to privatized chaos at agencies like NASA and the FCC — where public-good missions have taken a backseat to private profiteering.
🌐 Digital & Infrastructure Access (FCC, NTIA, DOE, DOT)
Broadband expansion stalls, leaving rural and tribal communities offline.
Clean energy grants delayed or canceled.
Transportation projects halted or badly managed due to DOT understaffing.
👵🏽 Elder and Disability Services
Social Security Administration understaffed, leading to:
Long wait times for claims.
Missed payments.
Errors with disability benefits and Medicare.
Veterans Affairs delays for medical care and claims processing.
🚱 Environmental Protection Gutted
EPA enforcement weakened under both Trump and Musk-aligned deregulation.
Polluters operate with impunity in many regions.
Less testing of water, air, and soil — disproportionately harming vulnerable communities.
🚸 Education and Child Protection
Cuts to Head Start, school nutrition programs, and summer youth employment.
Backlogs in child abuse investigations (in coordination with HHS).
Less enforcement of IDEA (special education law) — hurting children with disabilities.
🎯 Bottom Line:
Federal workers are the invisible backbone of a functioning society. When figures like Trump and Musk wage ideological wars against “the deep state,” what they’re really doing is crippling the systems that keep everyday people safe, housed, fed, informed, and protected.
👨👩👧👦 In a Nutshell:
Americans will lose rescue, relief, safety, dignity, and time this summer — not because the government is inherently broken, but because it’s been systematically sabotaged from within. Cuts aren’t just budget line items — they’re broken bridges, burning forests, spoiled food, unpaid claims, and unanswered calls when you need help most.
Economic Hardship Map Due to Trump, MAGA, MuskCuts & Tariffs — Knowledge Is Critical in How to Survive
Factoring in impacts of the cuts to Federal Workers, Republicans Big Bad Beautiful Bill, Trump’s Rollercoaster Tariffs, rounding up and deporting immigrants (who are the economic backbone Americans stand upon), among other nonsense and authoritarian tendencies of Trump and his cronies, ChatGPT made this map.
It shows the worst, bad, good, and best states to weather the coming economic weather that promises to be very destructive to everyone living in the USA.
Everyone, except for the billionaires who are counting their billions once again thanks to the Republican Prime Directive to Make the Rich Richer!
And this pain that is coming is not short-term. It is how the billionaires are turning You and me into a permanent fixture of their glorious money machine. Unless we rise in numbers they can’t ignore, we are doomed to a lifetime of repetitive cruelty (dubbed efficiency).
It is efficiency only meant to benefit them! DOGE was the first bite…We the People are the next!
How to Survive the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse is Important: Best and Worst Places to Weather the Zombie Apocalypse: Knowing
🔥 Conclusion: The Path of the Sapient
We are not merely surviving an election year. We’re fighting a mind virus. We’re fighting despair. We’re fighting a worldview that delights in the suffering of others. But we have what they don’t: compassion, clarity, and creativity.
As we navigate the toxic fallout of this mind virus—engineered by empires like the House of Trump, the House of Koch, and the House of Musk. These modern dynasties feed on chaos, feed on fear, and feast on the unraveling of the common good.
They offer fiery distraction, oily decay, and cosmic delusion, packaged as strength, wealth, and genius. But their apocalypse is not inevitable.
What they lack—and what we fiercely hold—is sapience: the rare, revolutionary capacity to stay human in the face of inhumanity. They burn and extract. We create and rise.
Yes, the MAGA zombie apocalypse is real—an infestation of cruelty, delusion, and decay. But so is the Firebird: that fierce symbol of rebirth rising from ash, wings carved from imagination and resolve.
We are not here to be consumed. We are here to outlast. To outlove. To outthink.
There is no magic savior coming. But maybe that’s the point.
In a world devoured by cruelty and delusion, choosing to remain fully human—aware, kind, imaginative—is the ultimate form of rebellion. In a world designed to dull us into obedience, simply choosing to be awake, compassionate, and creative is an act of defiance.
In Sapience: The Moment Is Now, I argue that it’s time to awaken the archetype of the Sapient Human: one who sees through illusion, transcends despair, and creates meaning even in rubble.
The sadistic MAGA zombies may be loud. They may be real. They may be many. But they are not the future.
This isn’t just resistance. This is transformation.
The sadistic zombies are drooling from their new found power. The dynastic Houses of Economic Power are roaring as the ticker tapes measuring their richness ticks up and up and up.… like one of Elon’s rocket ships! But they are not the future.
And, we have all seen what happens to Elon’s rocket ships to Mars!!!
You are!!
Read Sapience: The Moment Is Now as distraction and psychological armor in mastering How to Survive the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse
🧠🧟♀️ Download How to Survive the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse — This is YOUR Sapient Zombie Survival Guide
This is your field manual for surviving the coming storm. And stay tuned… the Graphic Novel is coming—armed with satire, art, and deeper strategies to fight the mind virus and keep your soul intact.
How to Survive the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse
A comprehensive guide on How to Survive the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse
Companion Guide: Colosseum Of Power (see below). The first graphic novel of this series began as a Codex to the Forces in power tearing our democracy to shreds. I decided to focus on the billionaires first, them move on to the architects (such as Curtis Yarvin) and dismantlers (such as all the Yes men and women in Trump’s cabinet). Together, the billionaires funding the architects and dismantlers create the Codex to the forces ushering in Totalitarianism and Authoritarianism (two opposing and contrary ideals to democracy). If we are to survive as a democratic system, ‘We the People’ need to put checks on mega corporations, tax billionaires, and pass legislation that will never again let a man like Trump near the levers of power ever again. Part of this process means holding all the people who have participated in the dismantling of democracy accountable for their actions: put Pete Hegseth on trial for war crimes, put RFK on trail for letting the measles epic get out of control and closing down cancer research… you get the idea.
Companion Guide to How to Survive the Sadistic MAGA Zombie Apocalypse
First Guide to the Houses of Wreckage destroying our democracy:
The Colosseum of Power is a symbolic portrait of the modern arena where politics, wealth, and media collide. In stark images and visual storytelling, the great Houses of influence circle the spectacle at the center while the foundations of democracy strain beneath them. Part allegory, part political reflection, this compact book invites readers to look beyond the arena lights and see the structure holding it all up.
Blog Summary: Oligarchy, The Fall of Democracy in the U.S. & The Fall of Man Worldwide
This blog explores the perilous trajectory of democracy in the U.S. and humanity’s collective descent into crisis. It begins with Adam Mockler, a pro-democracy YouTuber, who highlights President Biden’s Farewell Address as a wake-up call. Mockler discusses an alarming spike in Google searches for “oligarchy,” revealing widespread ignorance among U.S. citizens, even as a slim majority unknowingly voted for one. He contrasts Russia’s oligarchic emergence and its eventual control by Putin with the U.S. situation, urging viewers not to “obey in advance” but to recognize that corrective actions are still possible.
The blog transitions to economist Richard Wolff’s video Last Warning, where Wolff delivers a sobering analysis of the economic systems driving the U.S. and the world toward collapse. He outlines the rise and fall of empires, focusing on the American Empire’s peak from 1870 to 1970 and its decline since. Wolff paints a grim picture of stagnant wages, skyrocketing debt, and systemic denial, comparing modern America’s plight to 1929 Germany—a desperate population driven to extremism. He warns of the dire consequences of repeating history, particularly the risks of escalating conflict with China, which shows every sign of becoming the next dominant empire.
The blog concludes with insights from the author’s book, Sapience: The Moment Is Now, which delves into the psychological roots of humanity’s denial and inaction. Drawing from chapters on how corruption entered human civilization and led to its downfall, the author provides a framework for readers to build the inner strength needed to confront reality. The message emphasizes the importance of empathy, cooperation, and actionable solutions, rejecting blame and violence as paths that would only hasten humanity’s demise. Together, Mockler’s contemporary analysis, Wolff’s economic perspective, and the author’s psychological insights offer a roadmap to facing and addressing the crises at hand.
Adam Mockler Breaks Down What an Oligarchy Is
Adam Mockler’s Transcript
Google Search Skyrocket on What Is an Oligarchy
0:01: All right I want to break down something incredibly important today there's one word that's been skyrocketing in the Google search engine over the past week as Americans across the country try to wrap their heads around its meaning. And I'd like to really do a deep dive on it today. So just to lay the groundwork we all know that Elon Musk is expected to use office space in the White House complex once Trump takes office in a few days. And this isn't because he was elected by anybody. It's because he bought his way in he spent $200 million of his own wealth on Trump's campaign. He rented a headquarters in Pennsylvania so he could go knock doors himself. He also held a giveaway $1 million giveaway for people who voted in red counties. And this was all after he basically blew $44 billion on Twitter as it hemorrhaged money. I guess he didn't blow the money because look where it got him into the White House. Now that also connects with the corporations and billionaires who are bankrolling Trump's inauguration. Some of the richest people in the country have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Donald Trump's Presidential Inaugural Committee. Just listen to this for one second Obama's Inauguration in 2009 was worth $53 million. Trump's inauguration is going to be four times that amount (i.e., $212 million) because people like Jeff Bezos, a founder of Amazon, people like open AI CEO Sam Ultman or Mark Zuckerberg or the Uber CEO or Ken Griffin, who's a hedge fund manager, Elon Musk, they are all donating a massive amount of money to Trump's inauguration fund. And you can probably see where I'm going with this, but I do want to say that rich people meddling with politics has been a thing since the Inception of America.
1:39 It's not always inherently bad people like George Soros have used their money for good. But in this scenario, it's getting quite scary. For example, Bezos the world's second richest man said: "Trump seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation and if I can help him do that I'm going to help him."
Bezo said: "We do have too much regulation in this country," says the world's second richest man.
Their message is clear when Trump takes a presidential oath of office on January 20th. His job is to work for them. This dude (Trump) ran a campaign as a populist who's going to help the American people. Yet he has all of these rich people at his inauguration with $1 million tables. And that's why this article was brought to my attention. Searches for what is an oligarchy Spike after Biden's warning.
2:23 Biden gave his Farewell Address about two days back. And he just straight up said it we are turning into an oligarchy. I'll play the clip in 1 second, but after that we saw a massive spike in the Google search Trends. So this website right here is named Google Trends. It's run by Google and you can see how people search things, what rate they searched at. What is an oligarchy is what I have typed in right here in the interest over time. It spikes from about zero to one or zero to 100 after Biden gave his Farewell Address. You can even see the dark blue states are states where there were extra searches. And we're seeing a lot of searches in red States. So in Indiana you see 89 out of 100 uh in Alabama, 91 out of 100 in Georgia and 86 compared to the interest before [Biden's address] being at about one for a while it was at zero no one was searching for it.
3:12: Then in late December [a little more search activity is shown] and the top related result is down here is Joe Biden. So Joe Biden's Farewell Address directly opened a lot of people's eyes.
What Is an Oligarchy?
So I'd like to dive a little bit deeper into what an oligarchy is. I know I've talked about a lot on the show. I've drawn parallels to Russian oligarchs and the way that people entrench their power with wealth, but I'm not sure if I've ever done a full video laying out the definition, and then building on top of that to show everyone the situation that we're in.
So make sure you drop a like [and] subscribe [and] watch this video till the end, and if you're going to share any video with your family or your Maga family members, it's probably should probably be this one.
3:45: I'm not even going to be talking about Trump as much in this video it's just about the broad state of American politics.
So what is an oligarchy?
Well, Britanica says "Oligarchy governmentby the few, especially despotic power exercised by a small and priv group for corrupt or selfish purposes. Oligarchies in which members of the ruling group are wealthy or exercise their power through their wealth are known as plutocracies."
4:10: So, you could also say that we're slowly turning into a plutocracy but oligarchy is a term that Britanica and use so we'll just keep digging in on that. There's also this article that talks about how Putin conquered Russia's oligarchy. They used to be run purely by an oligarchy but Vladimir Putin said to the rich people either you're loyal to me or you go to prison.
4:30: Isn't that basically what Trump said about Mark Zuckerberg? I mean Mark Zuckerberg very clearly began going along with what Trump was saying after Trump said: "He may put him in prison." Trump was even asked "Do you think it's because of your threats against Zukerberg that he's now a Republican?" Trump said: "Yeah, probably."
4:44: So let me read this really quickly: "In the summer of 2000-21, [some] of the richest men in Russia exited their bulletproof limousines and entered the Kremlin for a historic meeting. In the previous decade, these men had risen seemingly out of nowhere amassing spectacular fortunes as a country around them descended into chaos through Shady deals, outright corruption, and even murder. These rapaciousoligarchs, as Russians have come to derisively call them, had seized control of much of Russia's economy and increasingly its fledgling democracy. But now their nation's newly elected President Vladimir Putin wanted to tell them face-to-face who was really in charge."
5:20: Quote, I want to draw your attention to the fact that you built the state yourself to a great degree through the political or semi-political structures under your control. So there is no point in blaming the reflection in the mirror. Putin offered the oligarchs a deal: Bend to my authority stay out of my way and you can keep your Mansions, super yachts, and private jets and multi-billion dollar corporations. Corporations that just a few years before had been owned by the Russian government.
5:48: In the coming years the oligarchs who reneged on this deal and undermined Putin would be thrown into a Siberian prison or be forced into Exile or die in suspicious circumstances.
6:00: Now, this is obviously an extreme example. The US is not Russia and people who are saying that we are already Russiaare sort of just obeying in advance. A lot of my commenters are like: "Oh Adam... it's so cute of you to think that we're ever going to have another election again. That is a form of obeying in advance just admitting that that we're never going to have an election before Trump even takes office means in a way you are obeying in advance, and you're just giving up. You're being that cynical!
6:19: We need to keep fighting. We are not Russia, and I know people in the comments are going to be like: Adam, we basically are Russia. We're not we're not Russia yet. Trust me.
6:27: These individuals have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people. The White House said in a recent statement announcing sanctions against over a dozen oligarchs connected to Putin, quote: "They sit a top Russia's largest companies and are responsible [for] providing the resources necessary to support Putin's invasion of Ukraine. So, [in] the so in Russia's case, we can safely say that oligarchs are a small group of unelected individuals who have concentrated their power by wielding their disproportionate amount of wealth, and they use their wealth to entrench their power within politics outside of the formal election systems.
Elon Musk & Office Space in Trump’s White House
7:02: Can I just go back to this article Elon Musk is expected to use office space in the White House complex. The richest man in the world has bought his way into the White House, and now he gets an office space not because he was elected, he wasn't even born in America. He was not elected by anybody. The location suggests that Mr Musk, who owns companies with billions of dollars in contracts with the federal government, will continue to have remarkable access to president-elect Donald J Trump.
7:28: Can I just go back to what what Bezos said. Quote: "He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation and if I can help him do that, I'm going to help him. We do have too much regulation in this country."7:37: This is the second richest man in the world saying: "Hey, this regulation is making it... uh, really hard for me to get rich and exploit my workers."
7:46: Bro -- you're already rich what type of regulations do you want to remove other than things that will just hurt American citizens?
7:54: So let's watch this video of President Biden during his Farewell Address, now that I've laid out the groundwork. Now I can play this video of president Biden, and we can all be on the same page. I know that you guys know what an oligarchy is but there is something to be said that most Americans had to search this after Biden's farewell address and that this spiked.
8:09: So let's listen to this that's why my Farewell Address tonight I want to warn the country of some things that give me
great
Back to President’s Biden’s Warning to All Americans — Red, White, Blue, Brown, Green
8:13: "I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern this is a dangerous con and that's a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra wealthy people. The dangerous consequences [is] if their Abuse of Power is left unchecked today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights, and freedoms. [It also threatens] a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. We see the consequences all across America, and we've seen it before more than a century ago. But the American people stood up to the Robert Barons back then and busted the trusts. They didn't punish the wealthy. [They] just made the wealthy pay the by play by the rules everybody else had to just play by the rules that everybody else has to play by. "
9:11: And let me remind you guys, President Biden is very careful with his words. If I have one criticism of his presidency, [it] is that he was probably too risk averse at certain points. There were certain times when he didn't want to rock the boat regarding Russia or he didn't have the strength needed on the international stage to keep Russia in check, and I think Biden had a great domestic presidency.
9:30: I mean I think he passed some historic legislation. He is a great human being, but the least I can say is I think there are certain moments where he he he was a little bit too risk averse. And that showed on the world stage but right here, he is being very careful with his words. He would not say the US is turning into an oligarchy if he didn't mean it. He's not just Trump. Trump will bloviate and he'll throw out any word whenever it suits his interest.
9:54:Trump will literally say anything to anybody. Biden is not like that. Biden is very careful with what he says [and] does because he understands that what he does sends a message.
10:06: So let's finish off with this article President Joe Biden in his farewell address to the nation on Wednesday warned that American democracy is being threatened by a burgeoning oligarchy. Oligarchs are a subset of the very very wealthy and this is an important distinction right here. Being rich doesn't necessarily make you an oligarch.
The 1% Is What Oligarchs Are… and Even a Subset of That Super Elite Group
10:19: "An oligarch is someone who influences politics outside of the formal system," explained by Brooke Harrington who studies this exact thing at Dartmouth University. She spoke with the five-minute fix in 2022 when US sanctions were targeting Russian oligarchs at the outset of the war in Ukraine. Quote: "It's someone who isn't an elected representative or Cabinet member but who has the ear of the president." And she said this before Elon Musk was really Maga. I mean in 2022 Elon Musk had bought Twitter, but he wasn't like full onon full-throated Maga yet.
10:50 She then pointed to the late Sheldon Adon a billionaire Casino Tycoon and Republican Mega donor who did work on US Israeli relations and now Sheldon's wife Miriam is one of Trump's biggest donors and even got the presidential medal of freedom after Trump's first term... that is an example of an American oligarch. Elon Musk almost certainly fits the definition today. No matter where the definition is coming from, whether you're getting it from Marian Webster or even Wikipedia, it doesn't matter Elon Musk almost certainly fits the definition.
11:23: The tech billionaire has taken calls with foreign leaders. He stopped a government spending Bill in its tracks by sending out a few tweets or X's or whatever the hell [that thing is now], and [he] seemingly hasn't left president-elect Donald Trump's side since the end of the campaign. He's an unofficial leader in the Republican party. Some Democrats have derisively called him Pro co-president but he is he is literally the co-president, and this is an oligarchy in every sense of the term.
11:45: Why Trump tends to attract oligarchs this part is important. Harrington argues there have always been American oligarchs like I said at the beginning of the video, rich people have always been putting their thumb on the scale most of the time. We don't want that we can have a separate conversation about money and politics in general, but what we're seeing is new. This is a different scale from George Soros donating to Obama's campaign in 2008. This is different and I also will say I think Trump will change what the presidency in America means or what it looks like. I genuinely think that in 20 years, being president will mean something completely different.
12:19: After Trump's term in 2028 the presidency will not mean the same as what it means in 2024. I can make another video about that but Trump has a lot to do with it and a lot to do with why the oligarchy is growing. Many in the business community view him as a purely transactional president. He's a very transactional person and that you get what you give, and so oligarchs and potential oligarchs are growing in influence [abd] in number.
12:44: And as he prepares again to take [and has taken] office, several Tech Titans are making an almost dizzying amount of business moves that could be easily perceived as being for Trump. [For example] META, Mark Zuckerberg, [is] ending factchecking on a social media platforms and removing tampons from certain bathrooms... undoing things about pronouns. I mean it's all just posturing, right?
13:01: Jeff Bezos who founded Amazon and owns the Washington Post, spiked a comma Harris endorsement from the post editorial board. The Tik Tok CEO will be [and was] at Trump's inauguration on Monday, a day after the platform is expected to be banned. Actually, they'll all be at Trump's inauguration including the heads of Google, the head of Apple they've all donated millions of dollars to Trump's inauguration because, quote: "We're witnessing Tech CEOs scrambling [to] curry favor, and the Trump Administration has not not even begun," said Maximillian Potter a journalist with the group protect democracy.
13:34: Trump also appears to be integrating his wealthy allies into the government not unlike his first term where many of his cabinet members were millionaires or billionaires. Musk, the richest man in the world, and millionaire biotech entrepreneur V Ramaswami will lead an initiative tasked with cutting government spending and waste with republicans in Congress following their lead [Ramaswami actually quit from DOGE and is running for mayor or governor of someplace now].
13:55: And here's what I was saying earlier and I want to make an entire other video about this, but an oligarchy can be hard to stop once it's in motion. I genuinely think that after this Trump term, the office of the presidency will mean something different. It has long been the case that big money controls politicians, as I said, but Musk and other billionaires growing influence on the system could be a product, a direct result of Americans dissatisfaction with how responsive or the lack of responsiveness from the government over the past few years.
14:23: Trump and the billionaires with whom he's aligned himself are seen among his supporters as Outsiders who will disrupt the status quo in Washington. Whether we like it or not quote: "Democrats have become associated with the elite with political correctness. There are times when Democrats are a little bit too finger Waggy--no don't do that don't do that..." uh explaining that the party came across during the campaign [and] is more interested in the causes of higher educated, uh urban communities than the rest of America. I don't know if I agree exactly with that perception, but yes, people did think Trump was for them due to a multitude of reasons.
14:55: Russia is the poster country for oligarchs. There oligarchs are fully embedded in politics. They are directing culture, serving in high-profile governmental jobs... [and] can I just go back to this article one more time, this dude [Musk] is going to have an office in the White House, in the White House.
15:11: Quote: "There are no laws against a president in a super wealthy cabinet using their power to benefit their own class. There is nothing that compels them to look beyond their privilege to address the needs of the citizenry. In other words it's going to be up to voters to hold leaders accountable for putting the rich first. And in order to show voters that their interests are being put second, we're going to have to push back relentlessly. We're going to have to dominate The Narrative and that's where you and I come in every single day we're going to be pushing back on this channel.
15:36: So I'll end off with that drop a like subscribe. I love you guys. I'll see you in the next one and peace out!
Richard Wolff’s Last WARNING
“Most People Have No Idea What’s About To Happen” | Richard Wolff Last WARNING ⚠️ | DENIAL
Richard D. Wolff is an American economist and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is known for his critiques of economic inequality and his advocacy for worker cooperatives as a way to empower individuals and address systemic issues within the economy. Through his books, lectures, and public appearances, Wolff explores topics such as economic democracy and alternative economic models.
Richard Wolff’s Transcript
A System in Very Deep Doodoo
0:00 Before I start I have to ask you to understand that old adage that if you don't like the message, please don't take your anger out on the messenger. I am going to be describing to you as best I can what the situation is with the United States's economic system, which has a name... it's called capitalism, and it is to give you a hint of where we're going. It is a system in very deep doodoo.0:30 It is in the greatest difficulty that I have ever seen in my life. And you can tell from my white hair that I've been around a while. I never expected to see what I am experiencing and I imagine for many of you, it is the same unless you are committed to something my psychotherapist wife explains to me as the problem of denial. Not a river in Egypt but an inability to confront what it is that's going on because it's frightening. It's a very human thing to do. It's like a little child who puts his or her hands in front of her face when there's a scary dog in the neighborhood because she still imagines at age three... that if you don't see it it isn't there. And if you don't see what's going on around us then perhaps it isn't there.
1:20And that is something which our political leaders and our cultural leaders and our economic leaders that's one thing they all have in in common with very few exceptions namely a commitment to denial.
Why Is the American System in Very Deep Doodoo? Because of Denial
1:41 So my presentation today is going to try to break through all the mechanisms of denial that surround us in order to tell you what I think is going on. I'm not infallible. I make mistakes like everybody else but this is the fruit of a lifetime of observing US capitalism, which I was born in the United States in Young, Ohio. I've lived and worked here all my life. I have never seen anything like the situation we are in now.
2:12 To give you the framework and then jump in [to my observations], I think that the history of the world is a sequence with interruptions, but a sequence of Empires: the Greek, the Roman, the Persian, the Egyptian, the Chinese. I mean I could go on, and they all have something in common they are born usually out of the demise of another Empire. They evolve and change over a period of time running from a few decades to a few centuries, and then they die. They pass away.
Empires Fall — They Live & They Die
Empires fall — they live & die
2:36 The most recent one perhaps the most and best studied was the British Empire, which depending on how you want to count goes from around the 16th century to the end of the 19th... more or less so three or four centuries.
2:56 Depending on how you come and out of the disintegration of the British Empire, literally punctuated by the war the independence war that swirled around Boston right where you are, a part of that Empire broke away. And in an important lesson, the Empire denied that this was building, even though it was building across the entirety of the 18th century. [The British Empire] denied it, and then in 1776 the denial blew up in its face as the colonists here in this part of the British Empire, by the way a relatively small relatively unimportant part of the Empire, wanted its independence.
3:37 And a war was fought, which to the surprise and nd a war was fought, which to the surprise and chagrin of the British Empire and George III sitting on his throne in England, the British lost. Not to be forgetful, let me remind you that in 1812 they tried again,and they lost again.
3:56 And with that set in motion the disintegration of the British Empire, which ended in World War I [as well as the Ottoman Empire].
4:02 Out of it emerged the American Empire.
4:09 American capitalism across the 19th century resolved certain key internal contradictions holding them back most notably the bizarre coexistence in this country of a capitalist Northeast and Midwest and a slave South that was resolved by the willful destruction of slavery by the capitalists.
4:29 Remember the Civil War is the expropriation without compensation of the single most important wealth of the south in this country the slave.
4:41 The slave was emancipated, and thereby the White Master impoverished. The very Stark disregard for the sanctity of private property and capitalism having destroyed its competitor with enormous violence took off.
5:04 Starting in 1870, the United State's capitalism had a century of economic growth the most amazing thing is if you look at the statistics, crude as they are especially in the early years, the United States grew uninterruptedly for that Century.
5:19 Roughly 1870s to the 1970s, every decade real wages of workers were high higher than the decade before. Even across the Great Depression, profits grew even faster.
5:37 So you had this bizarre situation, quite rare in the world of a capitalism that was able to give Rising profits to its capitalists and Rising wages to the mass of its workers with of course the exception of those workers with the bad luck to not have been born white.
6:00 Very important [to let] that they sink in [a] while. Why? Because if you do something like this, if you have a century of economic growth under an economic system like capitalism, it isn't So surprising that you think of the United States as exceptional... because in that regard it was. If you're religious, perhaps you think God likes Americans better than he or she likes other people. If you're not religious, you will attribute it to who knows what... entrepreneurship. My professors used to like to say, "Whatever in the world that's supposed to be?"
6:33 But it was exceptional, and Americans, whatever there other orientations, took on the notion that we live in an exceptional place.
6:46 And they then really ran with that ball, and [they] began to imagine that this exceptionality was somehow inherent. And so, it would last forever. It was upward and onward... the American economy! And it would carry our culture around the world to become the world's culture.
The American Economy, Onward & Upward Forever & Ever… OH NO!! Help!!!
7:05 Our political system would be the model. Our military would push away those backward people who wanted to resist. It became, and I use this word carefully, crazy.
7:26 And of course when the signs began to emerge that this Empire, the United States Empire, after a 100 Year rise up, was beginning to show the signs of decline, of peaking, of breaking... it's not surprising that the leaders of such a system with such a history would be deep into denying what had happened.
7:52 Not seeing what was exploding around them over the last few days, Americans have been confronted yet again with the level of violence committed every day somewhere in this country by the police against the Citizens.
8:13 And again there are people who want to blame it on this or that particular policeman or woman who will not see that this is a social phenomena.
8:26 It has been going on for a long time and it is getting worse. This the same issue. It's the same denial.
8:34 Okay... what exactly is being denied? Let's begin, and I apologize I'm going to begin with economics, but that is what I know best.
8:41 That is what I have studied all my life. And so if I'm going to be useful to you, I want to share at first what I know best.
8:58 Over the last 40 years, roughly 1980 to now, we have seen (and all economists of all political persuasions understand this and see it).
9:03 We all use basically the same numbers, and with a few exceptions of course, always we come to the same conclusion over the last 40 years: There has been a radical redistribution of wealth from the bottom and the middle to the top.
9:23 And the more top you get [the better]... the top 10% have done really well, the top 5% even better, the top 1% even better than that, and the top one tenth of 1% the best of all!
9:37 And you know them because in our society we adulate them. I'm talking about Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Warren Buffett or fill-in the blank. You know them! Our culture [cult-ure] makes sure you know them!!
As the Rich Get Richer… and the Rise of Wage Slaves
AS THE RICH GET RICHER… UNDER RIGGED TAX CODES THAT BENEFIT CORPORATIONS & THE RICH… THE POOR GET POORER & THE MIDDLE CLASS DISAPPEARS
9:49 They became much richer. The top 10% became [even] richer. All across those 40 years. This was partly because... and this is very important that you understand this.... it was partly because we changed the tax laws in this country.
10:08We relieved taxes from corporations and the rich, and we switched them [taxes] onto the middle and bottom.
10:14It was done by Republicans. It was done by Democrats. It didn't matter who was in The White House or who was controlling the houses of the Congress.
10:25The Democrats did it a little less quickly. The Republicans were a bit more intense.
10:33Speed varied... content did not. Even more important than the changes in taxes was the phenomenon of the relationship between capital and labor--that is corporations and business on the one hand and the mass of people, employees, on the other.
10:52 As I've told you, real wages went up for a century--1870s to 1970.
10:58Why 1970, do I pick that? Now I can tell you because that's when real wages in America stopped rising!
11:06Absolutely epic making change!!What is a real wage? It's the amount of money you get adjusted for the prices you pay. So for example, if your wages go up 10%, you might feel good, but if all the prices you have to pay went up by 10%... you're no better off with a 10% bigger money wage than you were without it because the prices have adjusted.
11:32 We all know that in economics, so we don't use money wages, we use what's called real wages. Wages understood in terms of what it can afford you to buy: Goods, services, food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, education, medical care... whatever.
Americans have not made a real wage… a living wage… since 1978
11:43 Real wages rose. In other words, the money wages workers had from 1870 to 1970 rose more than the prices did. So they really got more stuff that they could afford to buy.
Trapped in the Illusion of Never-Ending Capitalistic Growth
Americans are trapped in an illusion of never-ending growth, which capitalism did from the 1870s to 1970s… but then it stopped
12:04 In the 1970s, that stopped and it has never resumed. The American working class today earns, in terms of what it can afford to buy, the average American worker earns now what he or she did in 1978.
Americans today receive the same real wage, a living wage, that they did in 1978
12:25Try to wrap your head around no more real wage increase. For a country that had enjoyed steady real wage rises for a century, this is a traumatic event.
Back to Denial
12:33 How is it handled in the United States?
12:36 Denial.
How has this been handled in the US?
Denial
12:39 I won't embarrass you by asking how many of you know what I just said, to be the case. How many of you have dwelt in your mind on what it might do to a population used to a rising wage when it is no longer available.
12:52 There was no discussion at the time or since. No debate in this country... what do we do about all of this?!
13:05 The closest you got were vague gestures in which somebody says: "Gee the middle class seems to be fading away..." as if this were I don't know some sort of cosmic effect or maybe the result of sunspots or allergies or who knows what.
13:24 But an analysis either of why it happened or of what its consequences were No, no, no... nothing serious.
No analysts of why this happened or the consequences of it has ever been done.
US Women Sent into the Workforce, Enmasse, Due to Denial
13:29 Well let me tell you what some of the results were.
13:35Number one, [and] by far the most important socially, the women of the United States left the home, where they had been sequestered for the earlier parts of American history and had to go out and do wage labor on mass.
13:48 The only ones who had been doing that beforehand were black and brown women. They long been doing it cuz they had to and the poorest among the whites.
13:55 But now suddenly, all women, all the wives and mothers had to go out. There was no other way to sustain the fantasy of growth of the American dream of what had been experienced in the previous Century.
14:13The second most important effect Americans began to realize that the only way they could participate in further growth of consumption, the way they had been led to believewas somehow inherent in the American Experience besides sending their wives out to work, besides following a career as a worker in a factory you could now go back to work and be a greeter at Walmart's but beside that--you could borrow money.
14:50 In the 1970s, the banks of the United States decided that the consumer... to whom they had never lent money before... they would now lend money to.
15:03 In other words, the credit card, which until then had been
American Express in the hands of rich people and businessmen, would now become socialized.
15:08 Everybody's wallet would be crammed full of plastic cards... live off them.
15:15 And so, the American working class from around the 1970 to the present accumulated debt. We are a debt ridden society in the way we never were before.
America is a Debt Ridden Society
Pioneers of Debt, Depression, and Denial
15:28 We became Pioneers not in covered wagons going west, but in what we could cram plastic in our wallets. All the growth of consumption in the last 40 years has been based on women's labor women's earnings and debt.
15:46 Families have become much more complicated institutions. To survive we have the highest divorce rate in the world. We put our families under levels of pressure that would be impossible for anyone to sustain.
15:56American women consume more psychotropic drugs than any other population on the planet!
American women consume more psychotropic drugs than any other population on the planet… Why?
16:02Why? Because they are druggies?
16:08 No! Because we put them under impossible pressures, which blew up the family, since the mother was what held the emotional life of so many families together, and she was now as exhausted as the husband.
16:20 Coming back from her hours of work, the Empire's Foundation is beginning to crack.16:27 Well, you keep assuming more debt, which the American working class did.
16:33 It borrowed. It had borrowed with government support for its house. That's how mortgages developed.
16:39 For those of you who don't know, mortgages were never given to working class people to buy a home until the Great Depression.
The Great Depression & Greedy Corporations
Mortgages were never given to working class people to buy a home until the Great Depression.
16:46 To get us out of the Great Depression, the government took the step of guaranteeing the mortgages so the banks could lend without a risk.
16:53 Otherwise they wouldn't have. Cuz they never did. The American homeowner Society is a product of the government not of private Enterprise, which was too greedy and too frightened to ever do it.
Private Enterprise was too greedy & too frightened to make loans to ordinary American citizens, so the government did it.
17:05 Home loaning, then the car had to be paid for with loans because the working class couldn't afford it.
17:12 Then the credit card, so you could buy everything!
Why the US Government Had to Step In
Government helped banks prop up the people with home mortgages, car loans, and then the credit card.
17:17 And then in the last 20 years, a new indebtedness, the college student.
17:23 So by now, the family is dying, floating in levels of debt it cannot support because the underlying wage didn't go up... just the debts.
17:31 And it doesn't take a PhD in economics, although I have that, for you to understand that if the underlying wage doesn't go up... you can't keep accumulating debt because the time will come... and it's called 2008... and that's why that song is so appropriate: Cracks in the Empire!
It doesn’t take a PhD to understand that if a person keeps accumulating debt that the time will come when the debt bubble bursts.
That Bubble Bursting is call 2008
Side Trip
I’m not sure which song Wolff is referring to… I am interested which one… but I found these two.
Colin Dodds – Debit Credit Theory (Accounting Rap Song
Cracks in the Empire — Diamond Dan
Back to Richard Wolff
Cracks in the Empire
17:42Cracks... In... The... Empire... this system is so committed to inequality that not only did it grow over the last 40 years as wages stopped rising... of course, where would would workers income go they couldn't grow their wages were flat but they were becoming more productive all the time.
18:00 The last 40 years are the computer, the robot, artificial intelligence... all of that workers productivity goes up [but] workers wages are flat.
18:13Wages are what the employer gives you.Productivity is what you give the employer.18:19 If what the employer gives you is flat and what you give the employer keeps rising... guess what you have:inequality.
Flat Wages = Inequality
If what the employer gives you is flat & what you give the employer keeps rising… guess what you have?Inequality.
18:25 You're taking all your growing out put and giving it to one small class of people employers are 1 2 3% of our population, if that.
Employers are 1, 2, 3% of our population, if that… but they get all the wealth.
18:38 They get it even across Covid-19 pandemic.
Employers benefit from rising productivity even across COVID-19.
18:38 Inequality got worse. And what did we do to the working class after we gave them 40 years of losing everything... their families falling apart, their position in American society, their growing wealth (a kind of affirmation that somehow you're doing better) [but] all of that's taken away.
19:04 Then we hit them with COVID, then we hit them with an inflation and now we're hitting them with rising interest rates.
After 40 Years of Losing Everything…. the Middle Class Is…
40 years of losing everything… their families falling apart, their position in American society, their wealth… then we hit them with COVID, inflation & rising interest rates.
19:10 Let me frighten you, if I may... if what I've said hasn't done that job already.
19:16 There is an example in history of another working class over a small number of years being hit with economic blows on a scale of what's Happening Here.
19:21The example is Germany, and here's how it works in the second half of the 19th century as the British British Empire is declining the United States is not the only competitor looking to replace the British... there is another one, Germany.
Here’s How Another Highly Productive Middle Class/Working Class Society Handled Losing Everything
There is an example in history of another working class over a small number of years being hit with economic blows on a scale of what’s Happening Here… Now… in America.
That example is Germany
19:40World War Idefeats Germany. Britain with its allies defeat Germany... throw them out of the competition, wipe them out, impose at the end a reparations they couldn't possibly pay.
19:51 The German working class, which had been built up across the 19th century to believe it was creating a whole new globe. In German it's called Das Deutsche Reich.
Throughout the 19th Century, Germans were made to believe they were buildingDas Deutsche Reich.
20:03 That's like the German Empire, and it had... you know, territories in Asia, territories in Africa, and so on. All that was smashed when the unthinkable happened in 1914 to 1918.
20:19Germany was defeated. The empire was taken away. Literally, the British took the colonies in Africa away from the Germans and made them British colonies.
20:27 Everything for them [Germans] destroyed. It was a trauma for the German working class.
20:33 It ended in 1918 with defeat. Within four years late 22 to early 1923, literally a century ago, Germany then experienced the worst inflation in modern times anywherein the West.
20:48 In a period of 9 months, the German currency went from six Deutsche Marks to the dollar to 4 trillion Deutsche Marks to the dollar.
In a period of 9 months, the Deutsche Mark went from 6 Marks to the Dollar…
…to 4 Trillion Deutsche Marks to the Dollar
21:01 Prices doubled over weeks at a time, every hour of the day, any savings accumulated by a German family, and they were very frugal, were wiped out.
21:13 [During this time, after] six generations of saving money, [they] had enough money put away to buy a quarter pound of butter. They were done.
21:19 And five years after that, in 1929, the Great Depression hit Germany. It was too much. You cannot hit a working class, even the German working class, which was the best educated, most productive and, most progressive working class anywhere in Europe.
21:38 No contest. Even that... it was too much. And in 1932, those German people overwhelmed by what they had been put through, turned around and supported a little Austrian with a black mustache Adolf Hitler...and you know the rest of the story...
It was too much. And in 1932, those German people overwhelmed by what they had been put through, turned around and supported a little Austrian with a black mustache.
Here We Go Again… This Time in America
21:56 We're just living out... here we go... the same sad scenario: denial, not explaining to people the foundation of what they're assuming, not talking honestly about its disappearance, the cracks what it means when your Empire has that fun ride up... [then] begins to be replaced by the much less fun ride down. We're in very deep trouble,
Here we go… the much less fun ride down… in denial all the way!
22:27 The last half century, we have benefited enormously by the fact that there's one international currency money: It's the US dollar.
22:35 It's as good as gold because it literally functions like gold.
22:41 That's over. Ukraine simply speeds up the process. China, Russia, now Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, and many more countries are signing up for another International currency.
22:56 It shouldn't come as a big surprise whose currency that is... it's the currency of the People's Republic of China.
23:10 China shows all the signs of a rising Empire, matching all the signs of a declining Empire here.
The Day of the US Dollar Ruling Are Over
The days that the US dollar rules the international currency is over.
23:18 You may not like that information. You may be upset by it... that's your business. But to pretend it isn't there... let me give you just some numbers...
23:30 I'm an economist we do that. One of the things we do as economists is we look at the size of an economy to gauge relative economic power. And the number we use it's crude, like all numbers, but it gives you an idea it's called GDP. It stands for gross domestic product.
23:49 It's a measure of the output of goods and services in one calendar year.
23:54 So it helps us if we look at it and we measure it. And it's measured for every country on this Planet. It gives us an idea of the relative size.
GDP
GDP is how economic power is measured worldwide.
24:00 Okay... let's now do a comparison of three countries Russia, China, and the US to get a sense of their economic wealth their economic power.
24:13 Their economic footprint, if you like, in the world to give you an idea of... and if you didn't know this, think about what that might mean. So I'll start with Russia.
24:26 The GDP of the most recent year for Russia it's about 1.5 trillion dollars. The GDP of the United States last year was $21 trillion dollars.
24:49 Do you understand Russia has never been and is not now anything like a serious economic competitor of the United States. It never was. It never came close.
24:54 It may have had some nuclear weapons to worry about. It may have had political influence but like an economic unit?
24:59 Only people [who] systematically denied the simple statistic I just gave you could believe that
25:09 Russia has $1.5 trillion GDP. The United States alone [has] 21 [trillion GDP]
25:13 You know who has a bigger economic footprint than Russia? Italy
25:18 United States is allied with Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and, many other countries against Russia.
25:25 If you put them all together, it's like 30 maybe 35 trillion dollar against Russia with one and a half... what are you talking about a war? 25:37 This is a war between David and Goliath, and you're not going to be happy with who is playing which role. Think about it.
Russia GDP $1.5 trillion dollars
US GDP $21 trillion dollars
25:47 Now China... what's the GDP of China? Ready -- $17.5 trillion.
China GDP is $17.5 trillion dollars
25:47 $175 trillion... that's a competitor, not Russia.
25:53 China that's the Empire emerging, not Russia. China.
25:59 And why? Easy to explain. Over the last 25 or 30 years annual growth of GDP, how fast is the economy growing. Here in the United States is 2% maybe, slightly more 2.5 to 3%, somewhere in there. Let's be generous 2 to 3% US average annual growth.
26:19 China's average annual growth is 6 to 9%. End of conversation.
26:27 That's why China went from being one of the poorest countries in the world to being the competitor of the United States, one of
the richest.
26:32 You know what it's like? It's a story a little like the colony in North America being a place for Furs, and then becoming the new Empire
26:44 So that the roles between Great Britain and its Colony were reversed.
26:49 Now Britain is our Colony, as any honest appraisal of the relationship between these two countries would immediately acknowledge.
26:57 In Britain, one of the most common jokes you can hear is that when the United States tells Britain to jump, the response of Britain is: How high?
In Britain, one of the most common jokes you can hear is that when the United States tells Britain to jump, the response of Britain is: How high?
27:05 China has overtaken the United States in dozens of fields, particularly the highest Tech ones.
27:17 Young people around you are using TikTok... that's Chinese, as a social media. What's going on?
27:23 The United States doesn't know what to do. Having not learned the lessons, having not understood what denial means... for a long time they denied because to see the rise of China is to take a step in the direction that might make you confront what's happening to you and that's a taboo.27:42Finally, the United States figures it out and what does it do as if it learned nothing from its history. It tries Warfare.
How the US Deals with the Fact that Its Capitalistic Systems Are Declining & China is Rising
The signs of denial are all around…
27:55 It tries to slow down, to stop, maybe even to reverse history... just like Britain did. Mr Trump declared a
28:03 Mr Trump declared a trade war against China. You remember... it's not that many years ago he applied sanctions, he applied tariffs, he did everything he could to stop to reverse it.
28:14 None of it worked. It was one big fat failure.
Big Fat Orange Failure… and that Was 4 Years Ago!
None of what Trump did worked 4 years ago… It was one big fat failure.
28:23 Now, we are in a war, we the US and its allies, with the most important ally China had, Russia.
28:29That's what's going on in Ukraine. It has got nothing whatever to do with that sad country suffering this war. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
28:42 The truth of Ukraine, all the rest is propagandistic Foolery on both sides.
28:49This is about weakening the Ally of China,which Russia is.
The Truth About Ukraine from an Economic Perspective
28:55 When the war started, Mr. Biden predicted the Russians couldn't last a few weeks
29:01 With this Armada of countries and weapons and wealth, and new name it, he referred to what they were doing as the Mother of All Sanctions, which it was greatest sanction program ever apply, [that] Russia wouldn't last.
29:15 The ruble would be valueless within weeks.
29:24All of that 100% wrong. The Russian economy bubbling along pretty well took a dip right after came back most of the way.
29:30 You know why? Because the sanctions mainly stop buying.
Russia is an exporter of oil & gas… when the West stopped buying China, India, and Suadi Arabia bought more…
29:35 Oil and gas, which is Russia's Lifeline, that's what Russia is an exporter of oil and gas. I'm exaggerating but it's the basic story.
29:42 [While] Europe said we wouldn't buy it anymore, and that would have crippled Russia, except Russia found other buyers.
29:48 It's not a complicated story. China bought more. India bought tons more. Saudi Arabia is reorganizing its economy. Pakistan is making important agreements with the Chines
30:00 And the Russians on... The World Isn't, guess what?
30:06Controlled by the United States.It's over. It's all around you. The United Nations took a vote on Ukraine, the majority of countries did not agree with the United States.
30:19 They either voted on the side of Russia or they abstained they refused to participate. It's over.
Will they help or not?
30:25 But you live in an environment which needs to deny it. The divisions in our society become worse with each passing day.
30:33 Because they're grounded in a reality that isn't changing inequality
Systemic Denial Persists in the USA
30:39 As I'm speaking to you... [it] is continuing to get worse.
30:45Corporations are working as hard as they ever did to pay no taxes. The mass of people are suffering on a scale that is unspeakable.
30:51The inflation we're still [in]... at prices are going up roughly twice as fast as Wages30:56 That's a destruction of the working class.
31:03 Prices are going up twice the rate of wages. This is impossible. You can't do this without explosions. Now the explosions are happening in our country.
31:16So they explode, how? By taking it out on one another... crime,
bitterness, resentment, a politics of scapegoating.
31:28 I mean how else explain Preposterous Notions that become serious?
31:35 This is a country, United States, of 325 to 330 million people.
Prices are going up twice the rate of wages. This is impossible.You can’t do this without explosions.
Immigrants Are Not the Problem People… MAGA Is Lying to You to Keep You Deaf, Dumb, Blind and Very Obedient to the Oligarchs
31:41 The biggest estimate I've ever seen of undocumented immigrants in our country says 10 million. Okay... there's no way 10 million of the poorest people there are, immigrants from Central America, are the cause of the difficulties of a capitalist economy of 330 million people.
31:58 That's silly. That's on a level, you know, that an elementary school kindergarten kid wouldn't come up with something as off the chart as that.
There’s no way 10 million of the poorest people there are, immigrants from Central America, are the cause of the difficulties of a capitalist economy of 330 million people.
You Are Desperate… I Understand… but Denial Won’t Help You
32:04 You're desperate.
32:10 I understand that. You've been suffering, you have, you have a right to be angry and upset, no question you do.
32:17 You have been screwed in this system, having been led to believe by those 100 years that the opposite was waiting in store for you.
32:23 Instead, you're being being slapped and whacked and deprived with no end in sight.
32:32 I teach at the University. I'm surrounded all the time with people in 18 19 into their 20s. They are not happy this generation.
32:40 They don't see good jobs. They don't see good Futures. They don't see any of it. They were led by their
32:48 They were led by their parents and this culture to expect what they now know they're not going to get.
32:53 And they want some answers too. The most recent Gallup poll indicates that a majority of Americans polled, randomly, [who were] 35 years of age and younger, when asked would you rather live in a capitalist or a socialist economy? the majority say
33:14 The majority say socialist.
33:19 You know after half a century of ideological pressure against everything social that I grew up in, I'm a product of that, this is amazing.
33:25 That the point of view could be twisted like this and when you talk to students as I do about this all the time, I quickly learn the polling is correct.
33:32 But it's not that they like socialism, they haven't a clue what it is.
33:39 Those votes that polling is [revealing is] because they are angry at Capitalism. They know that that system is not for them. socialism I mean let's try that but
33:48 It's not that they like socialism, it's that they don't like capitalism, but that has to be faced. I'm not making these
33:54 I'm not making these numbers up. You can't come away from what I've just said with an imagination that all is well in this Empire.
33:59 But I'm not done. Now, we're blaming Russia. What?
34:06 Russia invaded. I've been a victim of war in my own family. My own life. I'm against war. War is no way to solve problems.
34:13 The Russians shouldn't, could have done something else, should have done something else. I get that, but like with every war you have to ask why did it come to this?
34:20 Russians have suffered from war as much as any other country in the last century.
34:25 They're not going to go into a War easily and quickly. They're not like the United States upon which no war has been fought in the last century.
34:33 Both world wars killed more Russians than anybody else.
34:38 They know. So why? You have to ask why? We don't.
Why So Much War
WHY?
34:45 So let me end with military. Since the end of World War II, the United States has invaded small countries repeatedly, violating norms-rules based international order.
34:59 It invaded Korea. It invaded Vietnam. It invaded Iraq. It invaded Afghanistan. It lost all of them.
35:07 The wars were lost: Korea, Vietnam, they all were lost.
35:13 The Communist Party of Vietnam took over that country. The Taliban took over Afghanistan. I could go on.
35:18 They lost. They didn't win. They lost and if you look at the line between the Russians and the Ukrainians it has moved Westward.
35:28 There is there is no question of who's winning and who's losing.
35:35 Only in the minds of people committed to denial are these things going on.
35:41 I'm not asking you to endorse either side in this war. I'm not asking you to endorse China or the Chinese system.
35:47 I'm just asking you, and I do this with all my public speaking, I'm asking you look at the reality you have in front of you.
35:53 Don't be afraid.
35:59 The danger lies in denial, not in facing it, and if we face it there is a lesson to be learned from the British Empire.
36:05 After two attempts to militarily force the United States back into the British Empire, after those two efforts had failed the British Empire stopped trying and decided instead to try to work out a relationship with the United States, which it did, not the greatest job but did a pretty good job.
36:30 The biggest waffle came in the US Civil War. When the British seriously considered siding with the South.
36:38 They didn't, but they came close. After that though... once they could see who won there, they went with the winner.
36:43 A very courageous move [said with humor] Once the war was over.
36:50 But maybe we have to learn that we have to live with the People's Republic of China. It has virtues.
36:55 We could learn from them, just as they could learn from the United States. And that [could] be a better plan than what they're doing now.
37:03 American 7th Fleet is in the China Sea. There is no Chinese Fleet on our border.
37:08 We are there. We are threatening them. We always have.
37:14 This is a country that is now our economic competitor. Its Global political reach is extraordinary.
37:21 And it has four times the number of people we do, and now that they're close, mostly allied with India, you're talking about the two largest countries by population on this planet.
37:32 You better come to terms with them.
37:39 Because the prospect of defeating that in a war... that's a war everybody loses.
We Must Stop the Denial or We Are Toast
We have to stop the denial & face what is going on… or we are all toast…
37:46 You don't have that option unless you're crazy. We have to stop the denial and face what is going on otherwise we are going to get ourselves into one mess after another.
37:58And who's going to do it? The corporations that are profiting from this system?38:04Unlikely.38:10The rich who have become richer for 40 years, are they likely to question the system that has rewarded them that way?Unlikely.38:16 You know who's going to do it, if anybody does, it's the mass of the people, the employees of this culture, or if you allow me the old language: the working class... because it's their ass that's on the line.
38:28They're the soldiers and they're the taxpayers who keep the system going and that's probably whydenial has won over honest confrontation with our reality. Marx once said that the
38:44 Marx once said that the capitalist class will in the end destroy itself the question for all of us and all of you is: Will we let that system take us down with it?
Will we let “the system” take us down with it?
Dr. Richard Wolff from a Different Angle
Trump’s billionaires will accelerate American decline. Dr. Richard Wolff explains how.
DOGE Debunked: Billionaires Are Robbing You and Calling It ‘Efficiency’ w/ Prof. Richard Wolff ||| “What we are seeing here is pure IDEAOLOGY”.. not REALITY. Republicans have always hated taxes, so they pandered to extremists groups–Nazis, White Supremacists, anti-abortionists to form a base just powerful enough to get them elected into positions of power
Min 9:41: “We are watching a billionaire government doing what’s good for them… for the business class they represent… for the super wealthiest among them and their Savaging working class families.“
D. Mann — Sapience: The Moment Is Now
Chapters on How the Corruption Entered Human Civilization Leading to Humanity’s Fall Over the Climate Cliff… a fictional future that doesn’t seem so fictional now… pages 138- 147
The Corruption
Mother called the artery clogging disease that kills civilizations the Corruption. It cuts up cohesive cooperation with selfish self-interests. Money often lies at the root of the Corruption. Money is the shiny, bright object, often presented as a bribe or a false promise of prosperity (but only if…), that lures people to do bad things. The Corruption entices good, peaceful people to do bad things, things that benefit only a few people, not the good of all people living in a system who rely on cooperation to survive.
As the Corruption goes to work eroding cooperation, cohesion, and unity, the shared lines of a civilizations conscious awareness begin to clog with the hard plaque of fear, anger, and pain. People get hurt. People don’t know who to trust. People grow cynical. This toxic brew fosters an internal inferno where even more sticky and toxic plaque gets forged and deposited over the first layer of hardening, rigid consciousness. This second layer of plaque is uniquely human for it can transcend or descend the guard rails of instincts. The toxic plaque deposited over fear, anger, and suffering is hate, greed, envy, and revenge.
When enough civilizing lines of cohesion get clogged or a main artery becomes blocked, the inner crisis quickly manifests into physical reality. Such a blockage initiates destructive metabolism or catabolism. This is a systematic death within the Mental Model that destroys all systems the people living within the civilization depend upon to survive. Left without any means of keeping themselves alive, the people must flee or die. It is a catastrophe. It is the ouroboros who has eaten its own body up completely.
This is why mother travelled into the Western arteries of consciousness. This is why she met her father. This is why her parents were working on a book combining their knowledge and wisdom. Being a person herself of two radically different cultures and tribes of men, Rain understands from Grandmother’s stories the Ojibwe know how-to live-in harmony with their inside world and outside world. They have always known and still know. But they were subjugated and sidelined by the overwhelming virulent collective force emanating from Europe.
This is where one of the most virulent strains of the Corruption migrated at a time white Europeans figured out how to cross the ocean and were intoxicated by their own technical know-how and abilities. A competitive edge that would have devasting consequences for the rest of the world; consequences that would put the world squarely in the jaws of fate, the Ouroboros.
Whiny, Violent, Petulant Thing
Rain understands from Father’s and Mother’s stories that the Corruption started long ago in civilizations developing in and around the Fertile Crescent. Due to the abundance of civilizations evolving there, once the Corruption killed one civilization, it had already infected another civilization—violence, fear, and pain are its vectors. Each time it jumps; it mutates and grows more virulent, more noxious, more pernicious, and deadlier.
The Corruption did not just infect civilizations in the Fertile Crescent. Wherever human cultures grew lopsided, cultivating violence, fear, and pain, it had emerged. But it was the Cradle of Civilization where the Corruption grew most virulently, where it mutated for more than 5,000 years. Where it grew into a disease of consciousness capable of creating catastrophes that only grew bigger and more terrible with time. Where man applied his mind to make weapons of mass destruction, instead of making sure everyone in his civilizations were fed, secure, and sheltered.
The Corruption is the disease that will stop the collective heartbeat of humanity on Earth. White European culture is the tip of the spear that made the Modern world, of course, but this Thing now holding all life for ransom… it is something far deeper… something far more pervasive… something existing inside all humans, of all times, of all places, and of all cultures.
This is why Mother travelled into the darkest and most dangerous realms of human consciousness. And it is why Father studied history and religion. And it is why Yong Xing-li knew the final stages of the Transformation were essential to prevent the world from turning right back around and heading over the Climate Cliff.
This Thing is a whiny, violent, petulant, and very thin, polluted stream of human consciousness. It was, as Mother discovered, not just Western Civilization responsible for the ruin of the planet… Western Civilization simply controlled and imposed by brute force the economic systems that would come to define the Modern World. And the Modern World would readily agree to play by these rules because economic supremacy provides a legitimate, nonviolent means to rule the world!
The Long Game
In this game, everyone willingly agrees to cede power and authority to the person or entity who amasses the most money. By winning the money game, a person or an entity can claim the number 1 spot on the playing board… which is round, not flat, is 71% water, and has an oxygen rich atmosphere. A person or entity in the number 1 spot gets to define the parameters by which everyone else must play the money game, that is… until they get knocked off by someone or something that amasses more money.
The money game is the survival game but with a twist of malevolent satire. It is played on the Field of Mind, which exists anywhere a human can walk or go. People call the money game: Economics. It is a long game. And to play it well requires intelligence, acumen, wit, comprehension, reason, acuity, alertness, cleverness, insight, intuition, talent, and ability. It is a game defined in the early days of civilization, and it was complicated then. In the 5,000 years since, it has only become more complicated and harder to play.
Those who lack mastery or ability to play the game resort to brute force, deception, and violence. These are quite frankly weak, incompetent people who are willing to do anything to win. Incompetent people can only win by cheating, but cheaters are a dime a dozen if the rules of the money game are thrown to the wind. So, the most arrogant, greedy, and crafty incompetent people devised ways to subjugate the Model of Mind used by every modern economic and political power system to cheat at the money game, so they always win.
Pyramid Model of Mind
Masters of Time Fail to Master the Mind
The most powerful Model of Mind is the Pyramid Model, of course. It was conceived long ago by peaceful people who loved life, loved their land, loved their homes and children and culture. People who were mastering their minds and coming together to live in bigger and bigger groups growing into civil societies.
Civil societies grow to become civilizations. It is something that happens naturally like flowers growing in a field or rainbows appearing in the sky whenever rain and sunlight mix. They are the inevitable next step once Homo sapiens grew beyond the embryonic sac of instincts when they learned how to sing to themselves. Civil societies just happen because being civil to each other is how humans survived this long. And when a civil group of people start cooperating more broadly with other civil groups of people, they grow into civilizations.
Many civilizations all over the world conceived of the Pyramid Model of Mind. And many used it to mold their civil societies into a unified collective that can act as a single being. Such unanimity creates the living entity called civilization, which is what Mother came to believe civilizations really are, creatures. The more undivided in belief and behavior, the greater coherence of collective action can be conducted as a large group of people acting as one, like a God or a super being or a monster.
It was the ancient Egyptians who perceived first of the opposite side of growing into a great and glorious civilization. They perceived of a looming and growing danger capable of destroying a civilization no matter how great or glorious it had become. Because of this awareness, they took great care in mastering and perfecting the Pyramid Model of Mind, not just as a mold for their society, but as a way of protecting themselves from the Ouroboros, and then as a way of transforming their collective consciousness when they realized there was not a way to avert their fate once they passed a certain level of civilization.
They were the first to master the Pyramid Model of Mind, and they were the first to decapitate it. What they did not realize then was the Ouroboros is thought, specifically the circular thinking required by civil societies so individuals can specialize. Repetitive thought opens the door to a sort of sleepwalking through life; no longer did a person need to worry about getting food, water, shelter, or how to avoid being eaten—their civilization insulates them from all of that. All they needed to worry about was doing their specialized task really well and following along in the mainstream of their civil society’s norms and behaviors.
Playing Thinkers for Fools
And here is where the Ouroboros plays the thinker for a fool. People who can play the money game reasonably well enough to live and willingly obey the rules become sitting ducks for people who lack access to or mastery of the money game. These are also the people most susceptible to the venom of the split aspects of the Ouroboros—the White snake and Black snake, the Narcissist, and the Psychopath. These are people who flip the rules of civil society into their opposite form and turn the transformative power of the Pyramid Model of Mind into a penitentiary.
It is people corrupted by the Ouroboros who play the systems of their civil societies in reverse. Rather than looking out for the good of all, they look out only for the good of one, themselves. They are attracted to power like a magnet is attracted to nails. And wherever they land within the structure of their society, they punch holes in it like an earth auger. Get enough of such people in a civil society, and they eat away at the fabric of cooperation and civility like a colony of very hungry termites. They do this by infecting others with fear and doubt. They go around blaming and shaming others for their own fears and failures. They play the blame game to create a smoke screen: Blame the other guy for the very things they are guilty of doing or want to do! All the while, they are stealing from, impoverishing, and generally putting the lives of people who wish to live in peaceful, cooperative societies in danger, sometimes grave danger.
Decapitating the Pyramid
Get such a person lodged in the upper rungs of the flow of power in the Pyramid Model of Mind, and you get a person who not only knows how to use the rules of civil society to trap and imprison another person, but you get a person who has access to the very systems responsible for maintaining a civil society. This is very dangerous. Because corrupted men in powerful positions quickly find ways to divert the flow of power to themselves. Then, they consolidate power, wealth, and prestige at the very top, where there is only room for one, themselves. And that is when they strike like a snake, decapitating the flow of power.
This is how the Pyramid Model is decapitated and turned into a prison rather than a system of transformation. Dictators, tyrants, and terrorists tend to decapitate the pyramid it at the soldier level, using violence, fear, and terror to control everyone living below them or to imprison forever or kill those who do not agree with them. They call their new, improved economic game communism, totalitarianism, and despotism. Monarchies, oligarchies, and democracies tend to decapitate the pyramid social order at the scribe level, who in modern societies are intellectuals who use their thinking skills to confuse, baffle, distract, or outright deceive ordinary people from what is really going on. They call their new, improved economic game capitalism. And there are hybrid decapitations too such as commie-capitalism.
Decapitated Pyramid Model of Mind
Just before the Fall, not only was there an abundance of ruthless corrupted rulers eager to rule decapitated hierarchies, but there was an abundance of people who wanted to be ruled by them. What they share is a rigid, aggressive mindset that disliked subjectivity and imagination, and one that is extremely superstitious and views others through simplified stereotypical biases. It is a mindset obsessed with projecting idealized images of their own grandeur, power, and toughness. It is a mindset that takes credit for all the good things that happens and blames others for the bad. It is a cynical and destructive mindset to the point of feeling hostility towards anyone who does not believe exactly like them. Anyone thinking outside of their bubble of belief is assumed to be insincere, self-centered, and dangerous, which is really all the things that they themselves are but refuse to admit, and so they blame the other guy.
In short, these are humans standing in toe-deep water of their consciousness; everything beyond that on their islands of one is believed to be wild and menacing, not to be trusted. Lacking access to and understanding of their own most basic instinctual drives and emotional impulses, they cast their worst nightmares onto everyone else, becoming especially concern with sexual on-goings of others, never taking responsibility for their own short-comings and inability for self-reflection. These are fearful humans, sad humans, pitiful humans who fall victim to the Dark Triad over and over and over again, which is really a Dark Tetrad because there is a fourth hidden, malicious personality that was propagating like hot cakes just before the Fall.
The Dark Triad is the embodiment of narcissism or psychopathy in a human being, and when narcissism and psychopathy are contained inside one human skull, you get the third embodiment, which is a Machiavellian demon being. If sadism is added inside this same skull, you get one of the most disturb personality disorders to have evolved among humans: the Dark Tetrad. These are people who openly tell others that trolling the Internet is their favorite activity; a full-time Internet troll finds pleasure inflicting pain on others and the Internet is their favorite playground.
But given real power over other people, the Dark Tetrad becomes the most venomous vector of the Corruption. It can awaken and activate these same qualities in other people, twisting and contorting their public performances into violent, selfish, gruesome displays of ignorance. This is essentially what personalities are, the performance of a person’s consciousness in public. Through a person’s personality, it is possible to tell how mature or immature consciousness has developed within an individual human being. A mature consciousness can navigate between the extreme opposites arising from inside and choose civil, life promoting action; an immature consciousness cannot. Such a person is susceptible to the pull of extreme points of view, and no matter what side a person takes, uncivil, non-life promoting action results.
With the modern world increasingly revolving around a tiny screen people carried around with them 24/7 connected to a global audience with the ability to be anonymous, uncivil performance became a contest too tempting for most people to resist. Anyone having a bad day could blow off short-term frustration, disappointment, or anger with hostile, pithy comments. And if they get a lot of likes from other frustrated, disappointed, angry people in the world who like them are having a bad day, a culture that cultivates hate arises that soon turns into an addiction, an excuse to not take responsibility for one’s own anger, limitations, bad decisions, and consequences for the bad choices and actions they, and only they, made and acted on.
Rather than work to understand unconscious, underlying motivations and beliefs that feed their inner demon and allow it to take control of their thoughts and actions, people increasingly ignored the root causes of their irritations and anger. More and more people preferred to attack other people who they have never met and will never know or who they have dehumanized, so they feel no responsibility for their wellbeing. And because children like to run in packs, such individuals attract the following of other disaffected people around the world… no longer did losers run in packs of 2 or 3, now millions belonged to a growing cohort of people increasingly uncomfortable in the real world requiring real interactions and real relationships that take real time to grow and that also require taking responsibility for oneself.
Just before the Fall, there was a tidal wave of fake news, trolling, and hate culture exploding on city streets and propagating on the world wide web. This paved the way for the spread of the Totalitarian mindset. It took root in the minds of ordinary people everywhere in the world. People who had conditioned themselves not to take responsibility for anything, and so when “Big Daddy” comes along saying: “I will take care of everything for you!” … losers, haters, trolls of the world bow down and follow because they have trained themselves to be followers.
Mindsets are different than Models of Mind in that they form inside the overarching shape of a civilization like dust or pollen do in the natural world. Mindsets float about and coat ideas emerging within a civilization covering them with a fine layer of goo. Mindsets can obscure good ideas with thick layers of mucky thinking. And they can make ordinary ideas rigid and inflexible. They can also make bad ideas very sticky so that they clump together to create very, very bad ideas, lopsided ideas, extreme ideas, dangerous ideas that fail to see where the real danger is emanating from… and usually, in the world man made, it is coming from inside.
Mindsets require people capable of communicating the key features, traits, qualities, and ingredients of the mindset for they are basically scripts to stories that people are supposed to follow. This is why you can always recognize the difference between a mindset and a mental model because mindsets prescribe, advise, direct, urge, command. Mental models only provide a shape that an individual can choose to stay within or not, and if they choose to stay, it is up to them and their quality of mind how it is filled.
Because of this difference, mindsets must always have creators and purveyors of the mindset. And then, to work, mindsets need followers. The more charged with emotions a mindset is made; the more people are attracted to them. Once fused together, like a shepherd to his sheep, a preacher to his parishioners, or a cult leader to his cultists, it is very hard to separate people from their mindsets.
The Totalitarian mindset is one of the most aggressive, cruel, mean-spirited, spiteful, malicious, nasty, callous, pitiless, savage, cold-hearted, hostile, and beastly mindset ever hammered out inside the human mind. And it was spreading faster and infecting more people than ever just before the Fall.
Game of Isms
Another way to spot a mindset is if it ends with an ism. The Modern world operating underneath decapitated pyramids, aka corrupted hierarchies, ruled by corrupted men was speckled like a face full of pustules of isms just before the Fall.
Isms are thinly veiled attempts to legitimize the corruption that the people on top use to ride roughshod over the rights, opinions, and feelings of the people they have imprisoned in their decapitated pyramid. For people exhausted from just trying to survive, adhering to an ism is easier than going against it if it has gained enough momentum to become the prevailing wind in a system or civilization.
However, what a corrupted person really desires is that people believe in the ism and commit to it before they really understand what they are committing to. Corrupted people work hard to make an ism especially appealing to the hard-working people in a decapitated pyramid. Such isms promise good things to people who follow its teachings or script. These isms have a way of spreading far and wide before an antidote is found for them. By then, it is too late to inoculate the people who have succumb to such isms. Reality itself cannot dissuade a person from the false promises, covenants, and guarantees people believe they will receive if they follow the ism obediently and precisely.
The sad truth is anything that gets infected by an ism, even if it begins as a very good idea, tends to grow to be more stringent, drastic, exhaustive, and insane. This is because isms tend to grow ever more reactionary, fanatical, and revisionary over time. Isms decay like this because their core ideologies must continually warp to keep people trapped in the shallowest regions of their mind, and this is exactly where the Totalitarian mindset want people to be.
Just before the Fall, the Totalitarian mindset was disguised by every make and model of an ism a person could dream up. It came in every shape and color, every creed and system of belief or narrative. Some isms cast longer and darker shadows than others. But all must spin spell-binding stories out of one ism or another—liberal socialism, radical conservatism, crazed conspiracism, or the more standard models of communism and capitalism.
Saving A Dying World
It is decapitated pyramids, cynically called functional hierarchies, that came to rule the survivors of Earth under totalitarian minded CEOs and Multis. Yong Xing-li was unique because he had mastered the economic game using his intellect. But he also possessed compassion, caring, and patience, which is the essence of heart and heart is the home of wisdom.
Yong Xing-li understood it is the combination of intellect and heart that wins the long game of economics. His understanding combined with his intelligence and innate empathy secured Yong Xing-li the number 1 economic spot in the world. But it was a dying world. Rather than capitalize on death, Yong Xing-li used his economic position to do something about it, to change the fate of the world ruled by civilized humans.
In a way, Yong Xing-li is the closest thing the world had to Buddha or Jesus Christ at a time the world needed a savior more than ever. But like Jesus, he was killed for his passion to save people. Yong Xing-li’s mastery of the long game did not make his task easier. In fact, it probably made it a lot harder.
Rain remembers Father often saying with a downcast smile, “If Jesus was alive today and trying to do what he did 2,000 years ago, nobody would care, nobody would listen to him, nobody would follow him, and he would probably end up in prison or institutionalized because everybody thinks that only they, and they alone, know how to fix and rule the world.”
Rain knows now why father always said this with a sad, downcast smile. She not only knows what father knew, but she feels it too. Just like father, mother, grandmother, and Yong Xing-li she feels the suffering of people in a world brought into being based on greed, hate, and violence; a world most people had no hand in making but have been forced to submit to serving.
Conclusion: A Call to Action
As we confront the convergence of political, economic, and psychological crises, this blog underscores the urgency of understanding where we stand and how we got here. Adam Mockler reminds us of the immediacy of our democratic struggle, urging us not to accept the current trajectory as inevitable. Richard Wolff provides a sweeping historical and economic perspective, showing the fragility of empires and the devastating consequences of denial and inaction. Finally, Sapience: The Moment Is Now offers a way forward, emphasizing the power of empathy, cooperation, and self-awareness to confront these challenges head-on.
We stand at a crossroads. Blame and division will only accelerate our decline, but there is hope in recognizing our collective responsibility and capacity for change. The choice before us is stark: to repeat the mistakes of the past or to rise above them, working together to shape a sustainable and just future. The time for action is now.
If you are a writer intending to publish independently and seeking help with some of the final details of the publishing process… BEWARE… the sea of the Google is ripe with sharks and cockroaches seeking to take your money and steal you blind. Time to wake up… if you want to keep your hard earned cash in your bank account.
Report A Scam
First things first, scammers are like spam… you find them everywhere and they have a long, long, long shelf life. This is because once the Federal Trade Commission, law enforcement, FBI, or even anti-scammer superheroes like Scammer Payback, Midnight, and Neon shut them down in one place or operating under one name, they pop back up somewhere else using a different name, different spoofed phone numbers, different IPs addresses.
But, just because they are everywhere like cockroaches does not mean we swallow their shitty deeds and take it. We report it. We publicize it. We help each other learn their tactics, their scam operations, their maneuver and we learn how to recognize, evade, and report their scum bag lifestyles. And protect those who are more vulnerable from them.
Here are some places you can report a scam:
Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Visit ReportFraud.ftc.gov to provide information that can help the FTC investigate the scam.
FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3): File a complaint if you've been a victim of spoofing or phishing.
Internal Revenue Service (IRS): Report unsolicited emails that appear to be from the IRS to phishing@irs.gov. If you've lost money due to an IRS-related incident, you can also report it to the Treasury Inspector General Administration (TIGTA).
Local police department: File a police report with the fraud division of your local police department.
Also, check out these places:
fbi.gov -- Spoofing and Phishing -- FBIHow to Report. To report spoofing or phishing attempts—or to report that you've been a victim—file a complaint with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).consumer.ftc.gov What To Do if You Were Scammed | Consumer AdviceThat's a scam. Report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. Scammers can be very convincing. They call, email, and send us text messages trying to get our money or sensitive personal information — like our Social Security or account numbers. And they're good at what they do. Here's what to do if you paid someone you think is a scammer or gave them your personal information or access to your computer or phone. If you paid a scammer, your money might be gone already. No matter how you paid, it's always worth asking the company you used to send the money if there's a way to get it back.
irs.gov -- Tax scams -- how to report them | Internal Revenue Service | Feb 6, 2024 — Phishing scams Phishing is a scam typically carried out through unsolicited email and/or websites that pose as legitimate sites and lure unsuspecting victims to provide personal and financial information. Report all unsolicited email claiming to be from the IRS or an IRS-related function to phishing@irs.gov . If you've experienced any monetary losses due to an IRS-related incident, please report it to the Treasury Inspector General Administration (TIGTA) and the Federal Trade Commission.
aura.com -- How To Track Down a Scammer (and What To Do Next) - AuraJul 24, 2023 — The Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC has an online portal for reporting scams. Visit ReportFraud.ftc.gov to give them more information so that they can conduct an investigation.
thelawdictionary.org -- How To Report A Scammer To The Police - Black's Law Dictionary-- It is generally best to file a police report on a scammer, reach out to your bank, and file a complaint with the appropriate federal agency as soon as possible after you have been scammed. To file a police report for a scam, you will need make a call to or visit the fraud division of your local police department.
You can also try contacting the company you used to send money to see if there’s a way to get it back. For example, if you paid by debit card, you can try using a chargeback to get your money back. I used a credit card. Because I was hell bent on publishing my book faster than the scammers could string me along… my husband and I reported the scam to our credit card company and they reeled back the money the scammers thought they had stolen. Read below their terrible realization as they realized I wriggled off their hook!
If you’ve been scammed, it’s important to act quickly to minimize damage. You should immediately stop all contact with the scammer, including not responding to any emails, messages, or calls.
My Amazon Publishing Scam Story
On April 8, 2024, I ended up on this website while search for Amazon self-publishing instructions and website. This site appears above the real Amazon website and instructions. Having never published a book before, I did not know what I did not know. The chat bot immediately engaged with me before I could scroll down to the very bottom of the website. The chat bot introduced itself as Jennifer Grace. This was 1st contact with the fraud they were about to pull on me.
Scammer Website!
Let’s Pick This Website Apart
The URL below is the Scammer’s Website. Notice how long the URL below is… this is not normal for legit websites to be so long.
Also, look at the logo. It uses Amazon’s color and shape, but it is not the Amazon logo. They just want to get it close enough and hope you ignore the fact that it is a cheap fake as you fall into their scammer net that is pretty and shiny, baited with all the ways they are going to help you be a BEST SELLING author. They are counting on your enthusiasm and dreams to make you ignore the warning flags waving frantically at you as you take the bait and fall hook-line-and sinker into their trap. They will play on every writer’s secret dream to be the next JK Rollings! The scammers will actually use this line on me later.
Bookwriting... really?! Dudes... you are suppose to be helping writers not hurting them.
And that chat box down at the lower right hand corner… WATCH OUT… because they are watching YOU and they know you have stumbled into their web.
A “friendly” girl named Jennifer is going to pop up and start talking to me. She will quickly hand me off their Marketing Supervisor… who is the same girl but with a new name: Abigail… what a pretty name for a spider. She is going to take my money and pass me off to a Scammer Closer... who she tells me is an Amazon Global Publishing Project Managers… I fail to hear her evil laugh as she quickly pushing me off to David… the Closer!
Let’s back up because the scammers gave me a lot of information here that I am going to share with you so you can begin questioning a scam sooner than I did.
Jennifer Grace immediately handed me off to Abigail Noel who is the 2nd contact. Abigail talked fast and was very flattering (very nice and flattering people are buttering you up — this is always a warning sign!!).
She moved me swiftly from chatting over the chat bot to a phone call coming from (877-806-0660) [Beware of numbers beginning with 877… these tend to be scammer numbers!] Once on the phone, Abigail continued her flattery and fast talking. I specifically asked her if they are part of Amazon, and she told me that they are. I said that I did not know Amazon had a sub-division that assisted writers with finishing up their manuscripts. Abigail allowed me to continue in this delusion and this is the moment that the fraud began and everyone I would communicate with thereafter contributed to my mistaken identity that Amazon Global Publishing worked for Amazon. In fact, they were counting on this to hook me for the scam part of the fraud they had just pulled me into.
Believing that I was interacting with a sub-division of Amazon, Abigail gave me a quote for how much it would cost, and then offered me 40% off, creating a limited offer and a sense of needing to make a decision now or lose the benefit.
Following is part of the text they sent me after my initial contact with them, though part of our conversation has been removed, especially when I tell Abigail that I didn’t know Amazon offered publishing services to writers and she assured me that Amazon did. She did not make sure I understood this was Amazon Global Publishing, which has no affiliation with Amazon and is in fact poaching client writers from Amazon proper. I highlight two points in my initial contact with individuals at this fake Amazon where the scam is initiated, then continued.
[amazonpublicationhouse] Re: Chat with Visitor 47486888 [aka… “I just snagged a very Stupid but YUMMY Fish for Dinner boys!”]
Inbox
support@…se.zendesk.com [Very creepy Zen going on here]
Apr 8, 2024, 2:03 PM to me
Chat started: 2024-04-08 05:07 PM UTC [Coordinated Universal Time] This is another trick they employ so you don’t know where the Hell on planet Earth they are working from! And another WARNING SIGN!!!
(05:07:20 PM) *** Jennifer Grace joined the chat *** [The evil worm coming to pull in dinner for the scamming crew]
(05:07:23 PM) Jennifer Grace: Hello there 🙂
(05:07:25 PM) Jennifer Grace: How are you doing today?
**(05:07:30 PM) Jennifer Grace: Are you intending to get your book published on Amazon? [Jennifer says Amazon; not Amazon Global Publishing… the scam begins here]**
(05:08:14 PM) Jennifer Grace: Well, this is not a BOT – Feel free to ask any question 🙂
(05:09:47 PM) Visitor 47486888: Oh — I was looking for self guide to do this myself, but what is the price for a book coming in at 297 pages text, plus about 10 to 15 references. I also have my own art and cover (though do not know how to put the words on the title yet)
(05:10:18 PM) Jennifer Grace: Alright, we can certainly help you with that
(05:10:27 PM) Jennifer Grace: May I have your name please 🙂
(05:10:56 PM) Visitor 47486888: Deborah … though I plan to use a pen name for the book [Ah… I just bit the hook!!! LOL…]
(05:11:09 PM) Jennifer Grace: Nice to have you here, Deborah 🙂
(05:11:23 PM) Jennifer Grace: Let me quickly connect you to Our Senior Book Expert [LOL!!!! Senior Scammer Scum is more accurate]
(05:11:30 PM) Jennifer Grace: who’d be able to guide you properly with the process and pricing as well
(05:11:35 PM) Visitor 47486888 is now known as Deborah … aka, among the scammers all huddled together in their pathetic ugly room in India: “Stupid New Yummy Target”. [YES, scammers have elaborate systems tracking everybody who stumbles onto their paid, promoted pages! You a just a number to them… a stupid fish they are hoping to reel for dinner!]
(05:11:38 PM) Deborah: OK
(05:11:55 PM) Jennifer Grace: Meanwhile, may I have your email and phone number? in case we get disconnected
(05:12:43 PM) Deborah: Sure — email is xxxx@gmail.com phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx (cell) [Never, ever give your personal information to people you don’t know… they will keep calling and email on new spoofing lines until HELL freezes over!!!!!]
(05:12:56 PM) Jennifer Grace: Thanks for the details 🙂
(05:13:02 PM) Jennifer Grace: Connecting you right away!! [Yeah right, girrrl, you are connection to yourself!]
(05:13:15 PM) *** Abigail Noel joined the chat ***
(05:13:22 PM) Abigail Noel: Hello Deborah!
(05:13:27 PM) Abigail Noel: Nice to have you here 🙂
(05:14:03 PM) Abigail Noel: I’ll provide you with the cost details shortly.
**(05:14:08 PM) Deborah: I ended up here accidentally… [Zen Desk puts … here, but there is text missing here… I know I said that I did not know Amazon had this servie and Abigail lead me to believe that Amazon did have it, the real Amazon, not this fake one] …but let’s see what you might be able to help me do and how much** There is NOTHING ZEN about this Creepy Desk!
(05:14:21 PM) Abigail Noel: I see you have a 297 paged book
(05:14:26 PM) Deborah: yes
(05:14:31 PM) Abigail Noel: May i know whats it about as in whats the genre?
(05:15:11 PM) Deborah: I have formatted it per amazon instruction… and the genre is Science Fiction-Fantasy with some historical fiction thrown in [Yeah… I just keep feeding them information to hang myself with…]
(05:15:23 PM) Abigail Noel: Thats amazing! [Buttering up… because I am dinner!!!]
(05:15:44 PM) Deborah: 12 years in the making! It’s time!!
(05:16:09 PM) Abigail Noel: Would it be requiring professional editing? Or would basic proofreading be sufficient?
<<Something was left out here… not such a perfect recording machine this creepy Zen Desk!!>>
(05:17:50 PM) Abigail Noel: Oh wow!
(05:17:52 PM) Deborah: Proofreading is sufficient… I have edited it extensively over a long period of time… I get 100% with Word very basic grammar/spell check… but I’m sure there are still some errors… [Abigail is going to ignore what I just said and proceed to sell me shit.]
(05:18:15 PM) Abigail Noel: We’ll take care of it we have inhouse professionals who can take care of this!
(05:19:04 PM) Abigail Noel: Let’s dive into the process, Deborah, this way you’ll get to know how we work and I’ll provide you with the package as well
(05:19:20 PM) Deborah: One other thing that may not make this possible for you to do… is I really feel it needs to be published on 4/24/24… [This is so fortunate!!!!]
(05:20:05 PM) Abigail Noel: That can definitely be done [YEAH Right!!!!]
(05:20:18 PM) Deborah: Ok — great! [Bad idea girl!!!!!!!]
(05:20:31 PM) Abigail Noel: Once your order is placed, we will proceed by collecting your manuscript and other relevant details including image files. Your dedicated project manager will get in touch with you via email and calls.
(05:20:54 PM) Abigail Noel: As part of Amazon’s Mandatory Guidelines, we will run the proofreading phase on your manuscript, which includes:
[Let’s just get it clear… Amazon does have guidelines, but if you are self-publishing, you are on your own. They don’t even have a Help Desk to call, nor email. They don’t care if you, speck of creative flare that you are, sink in their vast, competitive sea of online shopping… because they don’t NEED you. Once you publish on their platform, you appear at the bottom of Amazon’s Marianas Trench of their online sellers and buyers world. Whether you can find a way to float up a little higher in the vast maze of algorithms and paid ads is totally up to you!!!]
•Ensuring consistency in your writing, word choices, style, and compositional spacing
• Eliminating jargon and repetition
• Revising inappropriate verb tenses
• Checking for subject-verb agreement
• Inserting transitional phrasing
• Evaluating the continuity/flow of your thoughts
• Ensuring support of statements
• Providing correct formatting of citations/references, and footnotes according to industry style guide formatting
• Providing critical assessment and feedback of your manuscript throughout your document’s comments section.
This step identifies any roadblocks such as plagiarism, spelling, and grammatical errors that might cause the book to be flagged by Amazon or removed from its list after publication.
[This is all complete Bullshit… they don’t do shit except think of how to scam more money out of you now!!!]
(05:22:09 PM) Abigail Noel: Your book is already formatted, however to ensure that it aligns with Amazon Standards of 2024 [Hahaha… scammers want you to feel stuck… they want you to feel dependented on them… fortunately, I had already tuned her out because I knew my book didn’t need this shit… I was focused on 4/24/24] we’ll run the formatting phase on it, after your approval, we will start the Book conversion process and set the layout and formatting of the book including marginalization, spacing, fonts, dimensions, index of authorities, etc.
Moving on, an Expert Typesetter enhances the composition of the text for a better readability experience in Digital Format and also to enable the book for Printing.
We will then put together the final publish-ready version of the book in Digital and Paperback formats and share them with you for your review and approval.
(05:22:31 PM) Abigail Noel: After you provide us with your final approval on the publish-ready version of the book in print and digital, our publisher will publish your book on Amazon and Kindle. This entails a unique ISBN and barcode registration for your book and creating unique author and book profiles on Amazon and Kindle, which we’ll ensure are optimized so we can attract your book’s relevant target audience organically.
(05:22:39 PM) Abigail Noel: With me so far, Deborah?
(05:22:41 PM) Deborah: These would be checks that are sent as suggestions, correct? I have a very specific voice and tone that needs to be maintained.
(05:23:22 PM) Abigail Noel: Rest assured, we’ll make sure to preserve the true essence of its originality
(05:24:18 PM) Abigail Noel: Once we have your approval on the final publish ready version, before its publication, we will also search engine optimize your Amazon profile in order to attract an organic audience and make your book rank higher in the recommendation list of people interested in your genre.
Meta data is information about your book (title, genre, author bio, publisher, etc.) that helps retailers and readers categorize and find your book. The stronger your metadata, the easier readers can find your book. our meta data experts will perform a spell check, basic edits, and keyword optimization to give your book its best shot at make the sale. You’ll also receive a proof of your approval.
(05:24:32 PM) Deborah: I’m nervous… but I’m also overwhelmed a bit as this is first book… so if this is affordable, I will serious consider help
(05:24:42 PM) Abigail Noel: Lastly, we set up the exclusive Print on Demand Function for you. Amazon will take care of all your printing and shipping orders.
This is our process, let me know if you have any questions.
(05:25:38 PM) Abigail Noel: I understand and we’re here to be your helping hand Deborah, it can be quiet nerve wreaking but rest assured our packages are budget friendly and we strive to help authors in the best possible way
(05:26:48 PM) Deborah: Yes — I want the digital and print on demand for sure. I also have a resource page for the end… that I am cutting down… this provides links to resources I have used to help me create the texture and background for the characters… as well as be as accurate as possible to historical dates
(05:28:34 PM) Abigail Noel: Thats wonderful! Insightful and detail-oriented, the perfect blend.
(05:29:51 PM) Abigail Noel: If you don’t have any questions, shall I get your package generated?
(05:29:58 PM) Deborah: Trying… for sure… provide contents and offer new ideas
(05:30:46 PM) Deborah: Yes — what does this cost? That could be my biggest hurtle
(05:31:26 PM) Abigail Noel: Alright, Deborah! Kindly hold with me while I get your package generated
-Basic Proofreading (According To Amazon Standards) [RED ALERT!!!!]
-Ensuring the Layout, Formatting, and Typesetting are as per International Publishing Standards
-Finalization of the publish-ready version of the book
-Global Publishing on Amazon
-Unlimited revisions until you are 100% satisfied
-100% ownership rights
– Creation of Author Profile and Book Page on Amazon
– Book Categorization in relevant categories as per the Genre
– Keyword Research and Optimization to improve the Book’s discoverability
– Search engine optimization of Author profile on the publishing platform
– Attract your targeted audience with keywords and categorization
[Total Bullshit… they give your a made up price and put it on sale because all little fishys love to bite on sales!]
(05:33:49 PM) Abigail Noel: How does that sound to you, Deborah?
(05:34:59 PM) Deborah: That sounds really amazing… can you hold on as I need to run this by husband … back in a minute [And it is soon to become a really nasty nightmare, girl… RUN!!!]
(05:35:11 PM) Abigail Noel: Certainly, I’m right here!
(05:37:15 PM) Deborah: Okay… we are on a pretty tight budget… but this is a big thing, I think the book will find her readers, eventually… I am exhausted… so he agrees, let’s do it [Abigail don’t care… she just wants to swallow as much money as you give her and leave you high and dry to die]
(05:38:51 PM) Abigail Noel: That great to hear! Let me ring you up and assist you in getting started
(05:39:40 PM) Deborah: okay — you can call cell xxx-xxx-xxxx or home xxx-xxx-xxxx [OH YEAH… they’re going to be calling both of these non-stop pretty soon once they realize you realized they are SCAMMERS!!!!!!!]
(05:39:49 PM) Abigail Noel: Ringing you right up!
What Zen Desk does not record is that Abigail got my credit card number wrong three times because she kept inputting a wrong number into her system [Stupid scammer!]. On the fourth try, using my husband’s name she finally got it right and the charge of $750 went through.
Without a moments break, she handed me off to David Luiz[Apparently this dude likes scoccer because the only David Luiz who appears in Google searches is the one who plays for Brazil, but I don’t know this yet because I want to believe they are going to help me… what a foolish girl I am!] who was supposed to be my Project Manager (but really, he was primary fraudster and scammer from here on out). David’s main concern was singing me up onto this sketchy system called Basecamp. He was more concerned with this than understanding the scope of my book, work already completed, and areas that I wanted help. [Basecamp is super scary SHIT! If someone wants you to join Basecamp…RUN!!!!!!]
The “Basecamp”!! | Red Alert to Amazon Publishing Scammers
Signing into Basecamp didn’t work at first either, and David shunted me off to an IT specialist who finally got me into this system. Following are the Welcome Messages.
Basically, David wanted to get my cover art (which is my original work and something I have not released to anyone as of this time) and my manuscript (an endeavor that took 12 years to write).
The next day, I got a cover design back. This seemed the only thing that they may have been competent in doing; however, by April 19, when I realize this is a scam, I do not use anything they provided. In fact, they never provided a PDF that I could use to load into the Kindle self-publishing system. They only sent pretty mockups, which was decent, not great and not sent as I file that I could use.
It took David until April 11 to answer questions I had sent to him on April 9th. I thought this odd, but figured he was busy. Throughout this whole time, a timeline was never created, and I had no idea who was working on what part of my book, just a mysterious 11 unidentified people who supposedly got every message sent through Basecamp.
I finally get edits on April 12. I am shocked and dismayed that the editor has only gotten to page 40 of 297 pages. Abigail has promised me they would meet my April 24 deadline, though it is clear David is hedging on this.
I look through the edits. Most are stylistic edits (stupid edits). And what concerns me further is there are glaring errors in the edits made that if published would make me look like I didn’t know who I was talking about and lost track of my characters. I point out to the mystery editor in a nice way.
I send it back the next day.
I do not receive any thing until 4/16/24, and this is only a new mockup of my cover after I request a darker color on the back. Again, it is sent to me in a file I cannot use. Just a nice mockup of what my book might look like.
Two more days past before I received the next set of edits draft back. Again, I am shocked and dismayed that this “editor” had only accomplished editing 40 more pages since 4/12/24… this is absolutely dismal progress for a “professional” editor. In my time as an editor, I would have been fired for going this slow. Even more annoying is the editor continues to make the same serious mistakes I thought we had addressed and come to an understanding of from the first draft. But in the next 40 pages, this serious mistake (along with others) continues to be made. I am also in serious doubt that they can make my 4/24/24 deadline.
But Wait… The Scam Gets Worse!!
Then, the fraud-scam grows bigger.
On April 18, 2024, David calls me breathless and tells me that out of 5,000 authors they are working with this month, I have been pick for sponsorship of Extensive Publishing. David tells me I will get two editors, be featured globally on Amazon sites as well as 40 additional non-Amazon sites, and a bunch of other garbage that he makes sound really exiting. He tells me this all cost $12,000, but some mysterious sponsor is going to chip in 70%, so I only need to pay an additional $3,600.
I told David I was on a run and could not possibly pay until returning home.
When I returned home and called, as I promised, David was not available (probably scamming someone else), but Abigail was. David messaged me on Basecamp, but I did not get a Zen Desk readout of his call and promises. The invoice does not list any of the promises David has made to me, nor do I finally notice does it list a physical address. In fact, no communications I have received thus far lists a brick and mortar building though I know David and Abigail are working someplace with other people because when I have talked to them, I hear other people talking in the background.
‘Bout Time Girl!!!!
My suspicions begin to rise. [‘Bout TIME, girl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
On April 19, 2024, David interrupts a call with my daughter who is getting ready to fly down for personal reason that are scheduled on Monday. I hang up on my daughter to take his call. He tells me that my manuscript is done, which I immediately find utterly unbelievable considering the super slow progress up until this point.
I have been kind to the editors believing berating them for dumb mistakes will not further the process, but I am not impressed by any of the edits made up until this April 18, 2024. When I open this latest draft, I am dumbfounded. The book is not over 640 pages!!! Edits are barely worthy making and more mistakes. Also, it has been sent as a PDF and David wants me to hand write my comments!!!!!
I am not pleased, but still believe I am working with Amazon.
Then, my daughter flies in and my husband and I pick her up at National. I tell her they story of the past 24 hours, and she tells me: “Mom, you’ve been scammed.”
When we get home, I finally search for amazon global publishing scams (as I should have done on April 8), and I find this article: How Scammers Are Using Amazon and Amazon Trademarks to Rip Writers Off — POSTED BY VICTORIA-STRAUSS FOR WRITER BEWARE® ON JUL 7, 2023
I finally threw away my blinders of enthusiasm and excitement and realized that this very tiny team of “experts” were preying on me to get my money that now totals $4,150 US dollars. Money, I did not have in excess to spare, especially after 5 years (now going on 6 years) of not working after being fired from my job with a religious non-profit for whom I had put in over 86 hours of worked writing proposals for the past year, many of them funded. But, this didn’t matter to the narcissistic CEO who preferred to run the nonprofit using fear of being laid off or fired if the employees did not do what she wanted when she wanted it done. This experienced combine with the trauma of being the person who had to make the decision to remove my father from lifesaving care sent me into a major depression that sent me to a pit of suicidal depression, but that is straying from the story of the scam.
Leaving My Pride on the Floor & Dealing With Reality
Confronted with my husband’s doubt and my daughter’s absolute belief I had been scammed, and finding Victoria Strauss’ article, I admitted to myself and my family I had fallen for a scam, and we called our credit card and report the fraud on April 19, 2024. They immediately begin a charge back process for the 4/8/24 charge of $750, but the $3,500 charge has not yet posted as of 4/19/24. However, by 4/20/24, this charge posted, and we reported the fraud and charge back (refund) process on this amount too.
My family and I are incredibly fortunate that our credit card could get both charges cancelled and refunded to our credit card. However, we now must begin the process of closing this card as the scammers have it and the security codes. The intangible thing that they also have is all of my original work: the manuscript I sent to them on 4/8/24, the cover art that I drew, and all the artwork in the novel, which I also drew.
With the 0.05% chance that they could publish my work before I did and claim it as theirs, I threw all my effort into getting onto Real Amazon’s website and figuring out on my own Real Amazon’s self-publishing process, which really isn’t that hard, even for beginners who have never done this before. I worked on my paperback first and submitted it on 4/22/24. Amazon is very forthright that once you hit submit it can take 72 hours for it to go Live. I was just a tiny bit over the 72 hours and could only hope that my paperback went Live on my birthday as I have been pushing for and working for hard for the past year.
And it went Live on 4/24/24 at 11:38 a.m.! I was so happy. I managed to submit my Kindle formatted manuscript on 4/24/24 and learned that the Kindle process provides more checks that proved very helpful, so next time, I will format and submit Kindle first. My Kindle version went Live on 4/26/24, which is when I submitted my hard cover manuscript and made changes to my paperback from things I had learned doing the Kindle version. As of Monday, my hard cover is Live now too.
Throughout this whole time, my husband and I were helping our daughter get through a rough moment. And as of the moment of my awareness of being scammed, I stopped responded to calls, text, and emails coming from Fake Amazon. How they responded in the wake of realizing I cancelled payment and refused to return or answer calls, texts, or e-mails illuminates they are indeed a scamming fake corporate shell operation.
I do not respond to any posts in Basecamp, calls, or text thereafter. And there are many, which I am going to list for this in itself indicated fraud and scam practices given how many numbers they desperately are trying to contact me one.
Amazon Global Publishing Website Dissected
I never got down to the end of the very long webpage. Yes, this is all one page… you have to scroll, scroll, and scroll to get to that little, tiny disclaimer in the black at the very bottom of this site… in really tiny font. In addition, throughout all my verbal communications with this scamming team, they always just said Amazon. If they were getting serious, they might say Amazon Publishing. I see now, this was all very deliberate. And since successfully publishing my work on Real Amazon, I see how they went to great links to get their graphics to look vaguely like Real Amazon, but different enough that they might be able to get away with it. That is Real Amazon’s problem, not mine.
Scammer Panic: Amazon Publishing Scammer Story
The most interesting part of this story is what happens after we stop the payments and I stop communicating with them. Here is how they responded.
Desperate Effort to Re-engage with Me After I Cut Off All Communication on 4/19/24:
On April 23, I blocked 877-806-0660 (the number we had been communicating through). This is the number Abigail first called me on and the number David, my alleged Project Manager, used thereafter to call me. I would soon realize that this little team of two or three or a whole country, had many other numbers they used to talk with “people” (or should I say victims).
Phone numbers associated with this group:
307-429-0934 Sheridan, WY April 24 4:21 pm (it is David)
307-429-0934 Sheridan, WY April 24 4:45 pm (it is David)
And the Creepy Text Messages:
410-683-5026 Cockeysville, MD April 25 2:23 pm (it is Abigail)
307-429-0934 Sheridan, WY April 25 4:24 pm (it is David)
410-683-5026 Cockeysville, MD April 25 5:50 pm (it is Abigail)
410-683-5026 Cockeysville, MD April 25 5:51 pm (it is Abigail)
877-384-2440 Unknown April 26 11:59 am (it is David)
877-384-2440 Unknown April 26 11:59 am (it is David)
And pathetic voicemail messages:
Leaves Voicemail:‚ÄúHi Debra, this Terry speaking your project How are you doing ? It’s been a long Reach out to you on the kidding and connect Fortunately There are a couple of things that need To discuss If you could you please ring me up whenever you are free or just so let me know so I can give you a call back Looking forward to take care, I hope Your Going with the smooth as well Whenever you available, you can just call me back and we’ll connect How I take care of goodbye‚Ķ
(I’d like to point out David forgot his fake name he was using with me and called himself Terry)
410-683-5026 Cockeysville, MD April 26 3:15 pm (it is Abigail)
410-683-5026 Cockeysville, MD April 26 3:15 pm (it is Abigail)
More Creepy Texts & Voicemails:
410-683-5026 Cockeysville, MD April 29 1:01 pm (it is Abigail)
877-384-2440 Unknown April 29 4:24 pm (it is David)
877-384-2440 Unknown April 29 4:25 pm (it is David)
877-384-2440 Unknown April 29 4:26 pm (it is David)
Leaves Voicemail: ‚ÄúHi Deborah, this is David speaking your project manager. How are you doing? I hope everything is great at you and I’ve been trying to reach out to you all. But unfortunately, getting to connected all there are a couple of things that need to be discussed so On the top of everything you payment has been actually home Refund it to To your card No Finance actually been reaching out to me to get an update but unfortunately I have nothing to say then but I’m looking forward to get connected with you so just give me a call back whenever you’re free so we can‚Ķ‚Äù
(At least, he remembers the correct FAKE name this time)
484-750-6086 Digital Service April 30 1:50 pm (it is suspicious)
410-683-5026 Cockeysville, MD April 30 5:42 pm (it is Abigail)
877-384-2440 Unknown April 30 7:34 pm (either David or new guy Ronald from finance)
877-384-2440 Unknown April 30 7:35 pm (either David or new guy Ronald from finance)
307-241-5560 Wheatland, WY April 30 9:23 pm Ronald from finance
307-241-5560 Wheatland, WY April 30 9:24 pm (it is Ronald who also called my home phone)
307-241-5560 Wheatland, WY April 30 9:23 pm (it is Ronald)
Sent Creepy text (and I bet your booty it’s really David-Terry-Rashi pretending to be Ronald):
I’d like to point out that these later calls do not correspond to the established pattern between David and Abigail that communicated strictly beginning after 12 noon EST time and about 5:00 pm EST. On my last call with David (the one where he scammed me on paying $3,400) I asked him what time zone he is working in. I think I surprised him with this question for he hesitated with a Hmmm… then, said Mountain Time, which is not where Amazon headquarters would be operating from (that would be Pacific Time). The 9 pm calls correspond nicely with someone calling from the Philippines or Indonesia, which is exactly 12 hours ahead of Eastern Standard time. So, this Ronald guy would have just arrived and started work at his International Scam Factory. He would have made calls at 9:23 am, 9:24 am, and sent a text at 9:23 am Philippine time using a Spoofing (fake number) to disguise the call as coming from Whealand, WY.
E-mails & Creepy Basecamp Messages Received After I Reported the Fraud to Credit Card:
Creepy Texts and Emails Received After Money Was Pulled Back:
Hell no Abigail… you want me to tell you how to scam someone else better! Bitch!
Copy of Above:
abigail |<abigail@amzglobalpublishing.com>
Mon, Apr 29, 1:07 PM (1 day ago)
to me
Fake, fake, fake, fake
Greetings Deborah,
I hope everything is going well with you.
I recently heard from David about the chargeback situation. I completely understand if you’re hesitant and have been avoiding our calls. However, I would really appreciate it if you could share what prompted you to change your mind. I’m not asking you to reconsider working with us again, but just understanding why you’re avoiding us would mean a lot.
David mentioned that he’s planning to reach out to you to resolve this issue, but he also mentioned today that you’ve been avoiding us. It would mean a great deal to me if you could shed some light on the situation. I recall how enthusiastic you were about working with us before, and how satisfied you seemed with David’s assistance. If you could simply let me know what’s changed, we can finally put this matter to rest.
Best Regards, Abigail Noel
Sr. Publishing & Marketing Consultant
David — April 29 & 30: [HaHa… David!!!]
April 30:
Copy of above email
Urgent: Action Required to Avoid Sponsorship Loss [HaHa… David!!!]
Dear Deborah,
I hope this email finds you well.
I’ve been trying to reach out to you through multiple channels for over a week now, but unfortunately, I haven’t received any response from your end. This concerns me greatly, especially considering the current status of your project.
It’s very unlike you to become unresponsive all of a sudden, especially given the strong bond and professional connection we’ve developed throughout our collaboration. I find this behavior both strange and unprofessional, and I hope we can address any concerns or issues together. [Laughing out loud So hard… David is trying to Shame me back into giving him my money… LOL!!!]
As you may be aware, there was a sudden chargeback raised on your payment in the middle of our project, resulting in a full refund of the amount paid. While there was sponsorship involved in your package, our policy dictates that outstanding dues must be cleared promptly to avoid any adverse consequences.
I want to emphasize the urgency of this situation. If your dues remain unpaid by the end of today, the sponsorship associated with your package will be forfeited, which could significantly impact the progress of your work. I’m sure you can understand that this is not an outcome I wish for.
I have attached the payment details below for your reference.
Click here to make the payment
I sincerely hope you can take a moment to clear the outstanding dues to avoid any disruptions to your project. Please know that I am here to assist you every step of the way, and I remain committed to ensuring the success of your project.
Looking forward to your prompt response.
Best regards, David
[Yeah, duh David, are you finally realizing I am not your tasty little fish you get to eat tonight?!]
Anti-Scammers Super Heros!
I’d like to give a shout out to individuals with skills in the US who are fighting back against these scammers. If you have not heard of them, check out their channels and consider supporting the work they are doing to keep us safe from the scumbags working in huge corporate-like operations mostly based in India, but also Pakistan and the Philipines.
Thank You Scammer Payback!!!
Thank You Midnight!!!
Moral to the Story
So, the moral of this story, is if your Project Manager speaks with an Indonesian, Pilipino, Indian, Pakistani accent, which mine most certainly did… you are probably not working with a real publishing firm, not even a vanity publisher. You are working with scammers who are going to pull out all the stops to fraud you out of your money. Beware.
