“The Spectacle is not a society of images, but social relations among people mediated by images.” – Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
It is well known that people argue vociferously over U.S. politics. They have always argued, but we are now so deep into maniacal disagreements that something significant has changed. People scream at each other or refuse to speak. Curse each other out.
Today, “reality and illusion” exchange places every nanosecond. It is life the horror movie and we are swinging on the stars without a reasonable leg to stand on. A knowledge of history and its context, once learned by reading books and rational discourse, is a thing of the past. This is not nostalgia speaking, just a statement of fact. It is common knowledge. The internet and digital technology have us lost in the clouds where we save data that won’t save us.
Anything anyone can say about the demagogic Donald Trump is true, whether it comes from his critics, his supporters, or those who look on in amazed horror and fascination that such a gross, vituperative, and openly violent creature is the president of the United States of America. He has made crystal clear the nature of a rogue state.
He is the face of explicit imperialism and dictatorial domestic rule, a brutish thug whose core maxim is might makes right and fuck you if you don’t like it. Crude barbarism from a country that so often has preferred to operate “nicely and tacitly” under the hood of the rules-based order.
Because he seems fictional, his serves his factual function. Because the medium is the message and he is the medium, his policy messages distract from the function he serves as the surrealistic open face of U.S. imperialism. He is the double-action hinge that swings the two-faced political system open and closed.
As a super-rich comical Reality-TV showman, he never could have twice been elected to the presidency unless digital screen media and the internet had not replaced paper culture. He is screen culture personified. And the digital internet media – it must be emphasized – are controlled by the telecommunications corporations working with the government to control the people’s minds and quash dissent. They are the future created to eliminate any semblance of “democracy” by digitalizing everything. They are the government spies and totalitarian partners in the dystopian future that is closing around us unless popular organized rebellions miraculously arise to challenge them.
The small number of independent voices that exist on the internet are operating under the constant threat of censorship and shutdown. Such could happen in a flash. Artificial intelligence (AI), just like Shakespeare-for-Dummies or Smart Phones, is a misnomer so extreme its propaganda function is Trumpist in its effectiveness. We are living under the CIA’s internet MKUltra mind control for everyone.
Who can deny Trump’s uniqueness?
Who can deny the shock he sent through the political establishment when a decade ago he, with his comical orange-mopped visage and punk-boy demeanor, popped grinning out of his jack-in-the box, only to have the entrenched politicians and corporate media aghast. They tried to push him down and lock the lid with their patently false Russiagate lies (no evidence for which was admitted under oath by prominent Democrats in 2017 and documented in detail by Jeff Gerth in 2024 in the Columbia Journalism Review) aimed at getting Hillary Clinton elected, but many desperate voters, sick of the Democrats’ deceptions and desperate for a savior, cranked the handle and he popped back up again, and then again eight years later. It’s impossible to keep an evil American politician down.
Whether those voters have grasped the magicians’ trick and how they have been conned by the ruling class, time alone might tell. I doubt it.
But who can deny that Trump is a phenomenon? Those who voted for him might have been echoing Virgil’s words: “Aurum in stercore quaero” – “I am looking for gold in the dung,” only to find shit in the gold. Power and politics have since ancient times been about the sacred. The Gold King Trump is no exception. Because the sacred and the secular cannot be distinguished in the myths that fuel our politics, we are caught in a religious war between the ruling factions. It is why there is today a strong whiff of the demonic in people’s inability to talk calmly about any of this.
When God is dead for so many, the sacred nature of politics becomes apparent as people argue over whose god should rule, even as the real battle is between the have and the have nots. That the U.S. has been waging endless wars under Republican and Democratic Presidents for so many decades should be, but isn’t, proof of that.
It is equally true that Trump is an extremely dangerous authoritarian whose hold on reality is more tenuous by the day; it shouts from his mouth with every utterance. Only a burlesque like the 1896 French play Ubu Roi (sometimes translated as King Turd) by Alfred Jarry might begin to grasp the full extent of the danger and grandiosity of his infantile, grotesque, and criminal behavior.
The key question to be addressed is how and why he has emerged from the idiocy of Reality-TV to be twice elected to the presidency in a reversal of the more traditional candidates. It is clearly not an accident.
“In Freud’s succinct formula,” writes Norman O. Brown in Life Against Death, “excrement becomes ailment; but it remains excrement, as Midas, with his auri sacra fames (accursed hunger for gold), discovered when he became hungry.” Trump is the first digital Internet party animal to serve as head of state and scramble all expectations. His overt excremental vision with its filthy lucre atop his golden head is akin to the billion dollar lotteries that call to the worst in everyone. Get rich or eat shit. Obey or die. Make Steroidal America Healthy Again. The American Dream as a nightmare.
This is because Trump is a spectacle, an image, a hologram conjured out of the dark underside of the swamp of the Unites States’ brutal, ruthless, and violent history. That is why he serves as the double action hinge that swings the self-contradictory idiocy of the revolving door of what passes for political debate and democracy in the U.S.
Although he seems to be a real person, it is apparent when looking at him that he is a flatulent, orange tie-dyed AI image that can sort of talk English like AI Siri and issue threats to Iran, Russia, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Palestine, Columbia, Greenland, and any other damn country, university, corporation, or person he wishes, and all sorts of people will fall on their knees in deference to this Reality-TV hologram. Although he walks and talks and gives orders to kill, his image swallows all reality, as it is meant to do, even as he wages wars, invades countries, bombs, kills at will, cracks down on dissent, and openly assumes the role of dictator.
If his spectacular image didn’t exist to serve to mediate the contronymal debate and relations between people and parties of all political persuasions, he would not be president. His image is father to the man. It fascinates (bewitches) because it is so obviously ridiculous, but its fascinating effects strengthen its powerful hold on the control of the political system.
He is the overt manifestation of the covert killer instinct – “hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer” in the words of the English writer D. H. Lawrence, describing the American character.
Because Trump says and does openly what has often been done insidiously by American presidents, going back to the founding of the nation, he shocks by his audacity. He commits crimes as if he were smirkingly firing some contestant on his former Reality-TV show. While Ronald Reagan could routinely call Nicaragua a “totalitarian dungeon,” and use the Contras to try to overthrow its legitimate government, Trump, while using similar language about Venezuela, simply bombed the country and kidnapped its President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, when asked if he felt there were any limits on his global power, he said, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
These are, of course, the words of a madman posing as a head of state. It is Reality-TV bleeding into reality.
Less than a year ago before he began his second term, he was praised by many on the so-called “right” and “left” as a man of peace, one who would bring all our troops home and stop wars. “Those who are praising him now say he is a changed man after ‘time in the wilderness’ these last four years (one is reminded of Nixon’s wandering wilderness days from 1960-1968),” I wrote at the time; adding that they should hold their applause. For only one consumed by pipe dreams would buy such bullshit. Would a changed man have Elon Musk as his right-hand man or have as Vice President JD Vance whose career has been backed by Palantir Technology’s Peter Thiel? Trump has made it very clear that digital technology is the key to his rule, and these men are at the heart of it. They are not men of peace.
As I write, the U.S. is bombing Syria and Somalia and Trump has threatened to hit Iran “very hard,” which could happen very soon. He has no intention of ending the proxy war with Russia via Ukraine. He has no intention of ending any war. He is an open-faced imperial narcissistic thug threatening everyone at home and abroad.
His renaming of The Kennedy Center to glorify himself, while having led to no deaths, is symbolic of his narcissistic mania. No matter what he says or does – bomb countries, kidnap leaders, lead the world to nuclear war, persecute innocent immigrants, assume domestic powers unheard of heretofore, etc. – not one high official in his administration publicly objects or resigns, as they prefer to kill their consciences for power and gold. For all the macho talk emanating from the administration, it seems clear that it is staffed with moral cowards.
For Trump is a Double Action Rogue’s Hinge and Head Gangster of a Gangster State. The words of the English playwright Harold Pinter in his 2005 Nobel Award speech about America’s violent imperialism still ring true, but with a twist:
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.
The somewhat secret sinister U.S. actions of the past are now under the demagogue Trump carried out so unambiguously and so in-your-face that the imperialist nature of the floundering U.S. empire is obvious. As a result, it gives legitimacy to the Democrats’ more cultured and refined approach that has been the dominant method previously. Trump attacks, kills, mocks, insults, ridicules, anyone and any country he wishes. He speaks in the overworld just like a Mafia boss in the underworld. His language, assertions, and actions are so shocking, surreal, and constant that they have become normalized and expected. Everyone is flabbergasted by his actions, even as he crushes dissent in so many ways.
If we are lucky enough to survive this psychopath now that the masks have come off, he will paradoxically have served his temporary function of swinging the gate open for our traditional rulers to return again. They will crack down on our freedoms as they have done since 2001 and do their killing more mannerly.
Nicely, the way most people prefer it.
According to the rules based order. As in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Serbia, etc.
You know: Traditionally.
Dear friends, I’ve posted a new article on my blog written by a Trotskyist author, discussing what truly happened in Venezuela. It explores how the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro were essentially Bonapartist states that failed to break away from the Venezuelan oligarchy and bourgeois sectors, and how neither leader was able to genuinely improve the living standards of the people.
Karl Marx once wrote an article criticizing Simón Bolívar, arguing that Bolívar wasn’t truly committed to economic equality for all Venezuelans. Bolívar admired Napoleon Bonaparte’s economic and political system, which, according to Marx, influenced his leadership style. This is why many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are seen as oligarchic, corrupt, Bonapartist-style dictatorships. No wonder most citizens of South America and The Caribbean are so poor
https://chavez-and-maduro-were-not-marxists.blogspot.com/
Just listened to a number of discussions. The common theme was, why do a few selfish as hell individuals in every country screw up everything for the citizenry and as well for themselves? Why do we have people in positions of influence who are clueless and corrupt? Why do we as citizens accept this idiocy? Why are we not having conversations about living more sanely, more equitably, more humanely?
Why do we accept seeing photos of dead young children who have worked in mines so to make some parasite wearing a necktie very wealthy?
The question, the statement about some philosopher, some economist, some political figure of the past becomes a divergence from seeing quite clearly the very present. This by the way is why what we call education, a complete failure and waste of life!
Why after roughly 20-22 years of the indoctrination (education) system are we still stupid and still do not know ourselves; who we really are not what we have accepted and have become?
Why quote someone? Speak from your personal experience! Speak from your guts, your navel, your fears, your wants, your heart?
We do not need to hide from others or run from ourselves when we all are more alike than different?
You’re right, this situation where a small minority accumulates wealth and enjoys a comfortable, pain-free life, while the majority endures hardship, has been happening since the rise of states thousands of years ago.
I think former US Senator Robert Byrd, who had an interest in alternative history and conspiracy theories, once said that the history of the world is essentially a 5,000-year-long, nonstop war waged by the global plutocracy against the majority of humanity through various political systems.
That’s why I have evolved into an anarchist-nihilist, misanthropic pessimist, pessimist-philosophical, political-misanthrope and realist-depressive. I no longer support any state or any government, whether left, center-left or right. I have stopped reading all the articles and news on alternative progressive pages, because I consider that they are all wrong, they are pro-government and support people who, when they come to power, steal the resources of the state. The state itself is a temptation to steal, like a delicious pizza next to someone who is on a diet and very hungry.
This world is really doomed, that’s why Schopenhauer said as pessimist as he was that every thing is getting worse and worse and there is really no solution for this hell of non-stop pain and suffering
“Dad, how many pounds of potatoes does an american citizen has to eat before he dies.” -Matt Dillon, Tex
I completely relate to the feelings and concerns expressed by people like Edward Curtin, Paul Craig Roberts, Chris Hedges, anarchist activists, and the Trotskyist writers and leaders of The World Socialist Website (David North, Andre Damon, Jerry White, Joseph Kishore), as well as writers like Alan Woods from “In Defense of Marxism” (Marxist.com), and passionate anti-Israel activist Caitlin Johnstone. I also connect with YouTube voices such as Judge Napolitano, Max Blumenthal, Thom Hartmann, Scott Ritter, and many others who are keenly aware of what they see as the global “Axis of evil” — the U.S. oligarchic class and the super-wealthy elites — aiming to turn the world into a single, utopian-dystopian Spartan-style oligarchic state.
I believe they might succeed in turning the world into a single oligarchic dictatorship, as the masses are mind-controlled robots, unable to challenge tyrannies and oppressive oligarchic regimes.
The gloibal elites will have no problems at all in fulfilling their objectives with the support of the mind-controlled masses. the global elites behind this benefit from the fact that the majority of people—rich, poor, and middle class—live disconnected from politics and news. They lead a hedonistic lifestyle focused solely on working to fulfill physical and mental pleasures, nothing more. The mind-controlled masses place absolute faith in the ruling classes, laws, legal codes, constitutions, governments, religion, and moral codes. This is why people remain so calm and relaxed in a world teetering on the edge of another apocalypse..
This is why Antonio Gramsci and Bertolt Brecht criticized people who live a private life, away from politics, like many Americans. I’m from Tennessee, and most people here seem like consumerist and religious robots, uninterested in whether Trump, global elites, or others aim to shape the world into a kind of Spartan utopia that benefits only a few, while the majority remain wage-slaves—taxed, billed, overworked, unhealthy, and lacking personal mental or physical growth. Much like many average Americans, they live conformist lives with no real pleasures. In my area, people work like machines, and I can’t understand how they accept a life without joy, without parties, cruises, theme parks, or opportunities for college, music lessons, karate classes, language courses, gyms, dance clubs, concerts, and more.
I honestly can’t understand how a person could enjoy so much torture and pain, like it seems the majority of the working class in America has. They’ve almost religiously accepted the difficult, painful lives they lead.
One of the main reasons I’ve been an active political activist since 9/11 is because I refuse to conform to this crappy life of being treated like garbage—a wage slave taxed to death, billed to death, and overworked to death, just like 80% of the US population.
I’ve noticed that since the fake-called terrorism coup d’état against the living standards of Americans after 9/11, people across the country seem to have fallen into third-world levels of poverty, living lives filled with pain and little else.
Since many Americans seem to embrace pain and poverty, I think they won’t mind Republicans, Democrats, Trump, and others turning the world into a one-world oligarchic nightmare.
Dear friends, I’ve been reading from Nietzsche’s book “Will to Power,” and found some very thought-provoking ideas related to the personal behavior of both Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. It suggests that in deeply corrupt, degenerated, or mentally ill individuals, there exists a kind of weakness—one where the entire mental and physical system is unable to resist temptations. This is similar to what happens with addictions like alcoholism, binge eating, drug abuse, sexual compulsions, gambling, and other forms of immoral, decadent behavior. I’ve noticed that Trump sometimes seems unable to control his impulses and urges, which is why, when he speaks, he often says so many inane or foolish things; ultimately, it reflects a lack of self-control and inner strength.
Sections 44-54 from Nietzsche’s book “The Will to Power”
Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52914/52914-h/52914-h.htm
44.
The most common types of decadence: (1) In the belief that they are remedies, cures are chosen which only precipitate exhaustion;—this is the case with Christianity (to point to the [Pg 36]most egregious example of mistaken instinct);—this is also the case with “progress.”
(2) The power of resisting stimuli is on the wane—chance rules supreme: events are inflated and drawn out until they appear monstrous … a suppression of the “personality,” a disintegration of the will; in this regard we may mention a whole class of morality, the altruistic, that which is incessantly preaching pity, and whose most essential feature is the weakness of the personality, so that it rings in unison, and, like an over-sensitive string, does not cease from vibrating … extreme irritability….
(3) Cause and effect are confounded: decadence is not understood as physiological, and its results are taken to be the causes of the general indisposition:—this applies to all religious morality.
(4) A state of affairs is desired in which suffering shall cease; life is actually considered the cause of all ills—unconscious and insensitive states (sleep and syncope) are held in incomparably higher esteem than the conscious states; hence a method of life.
45.
Concerning the hygiene of the “weak.” All that is done in weakness ends in failure. Moral: do nothing. The worst of it is, that precisely the strength required in order to stop action, and to cease from reacting, is most seriously diseased under the influence of weakness: that one never [Pg 37]reacts more promptly or more blindly than when one should not react at all.
The strength of a character is shown by the ability to delay and postpone reaction: a certain ἀδιαφορία is just as proper to it, as involuntariness in recoiling, suddenness and lack of restraint in “action,” are proper to weakness. The will is weak: and the recipe for preventing foolish acts would be: to have a strong will and to do nothing—contradiction. A sort of self-destruction, the instinct of self-preservation is compromised…. The weak man injures himself…. That is the decadent type.
As a matter of fact, we meet with a vast amount of thought concerning the means wherewith impassibility may be induced. To this extent, the instincts are on the right scent; for to do nothing is more useful than to do something….
All the practices of private orders, of solitary philosophers, and of fakirs, are suggested by a correct consideration of the fact, that a certain kind of man is most useful to himself when he hinders his own action as much as possible.
Relieving measures: absolute obedience, mechanical activity, total isolation from men and things that might exact immediate decisions and actions.
46.
Weakness of Will: this is a fable that can lead astray. For there is no will, consequently neither a strong nor a weak one. The [Pg 38]multiplicity and disintegration of the instincts, the want of system in their relationship, constitute what is known as a “weak will”; their co-ordination, under the government of one individual among them, results in a “strong will”—in the first case vacillation and a lack of equilibrium is noticeable: in the second, precision and definite direction.
47.
That which is inherited is not illness, but a predisposition to illness: a lack of the powers of resistance against injurious external influences, etc. etc, broken powers of resistance; expressed morally: resignation and humility in the presence of the enemy.
I have often wondered whether it would not be possible to class all the highest values of the philosophies, moralities, and religions which have been devised hitherto, with the values of the feeble, the insane and the neurasthenic in a milder form, they present the same evils.
The value of all morbid conditions consists in the fact that they magnify certain normal phenomena which are difficult to discern in normal conditions….
Health and illness are not essentially different, as the ancient doctors believed and as a few practitioners still believe to-day. They cannot be imagined as two distinct principles or entities which fight for the living organism and make it their battlefield. That is nonsense and mere idle gossip, which no longer holds water. As a matter of fact, there is only a difference of [Pg 39]degree between these two living conditions: exaggeration, want of proportion, want of harmony among the normal phenomena, constitute the morbid state (Claude Bernard).
Just as “evil” may be regarded as exaggeration, discord, and want of proportion, so can “good” be regarded as a sort of protective diet against the danger of exaggeration, discord, and want of proportion.
Hereditary weakness as a dominant feeling: the cause of the prevailing values.
N.B.—Weakness is in demand—why?… mostly because people cannot be anything else than weak.
Weakening considered a duty: The weakening of the desires, of the feelings of pleasure and of pain, of the will to power, of the will to pride, to property and to more property; weakening in the form of humility; weakening in the form of a belief; weakening in the form of repugnance and shame in the presence of all that is natural—in the form of a denial of life, in the form of illness and chronic feebleness; weakening in the form of a refusal to take revenge, to offer resistance, to become an enemy, and to show anger.
Blunders in the treatment: there is no attempt at combating weakness by means of any fortifying system; but by a sort of justification consisting of moralising; i.e., by means of interpretation.
Two totally different conditions are confused: for instance, the repose of strength, which is essentially abstinence from reaction (the prototype of the gods whom nothing moves), and the peace of exhaustion,[Pg 40] rigidity to the point of anæsthesia. All these philosophic and ascetic modes of procedure aspire to the second state, but actually pretend to attain to the first … for they ascribe to the condition they have reached the attributes that would be in keeping only with a divine state.
48.
The most dangerous misunderstanding.—There is one concept which apparently allows of no confusion or ambiguity, and that is the concept exhaustion. Exhaustion may be acquired or inherited—in any case it alters the aspect and value of things.
Unlike him who involuntarily gives of the superabundance which he both feels and represents, to the things about him, and who sees them fuller, mightier, and more pregnant with promises,—who, in fact, can bestow,—the exhausted one belittles and disfigures everything he sees—he impoverishes its worth: he is detrimental….
No mistake seems possible in this matter: and yet history discloses the terrible fact, that the exhausted have always been confounded with those with the most abundant resources, and the latter with the most detrimental.
The pauper in vitality, the feeble one, impoverishes even life: the wealthy man, in vital powers, enriches it. The first is the parasite of the second: the second is a bestower of his abundance. How is confusion possible?
When he who was exhausted came forth with [Pg 41]the bearing of a very active and energetic man (when degeneration implied a certain excess of spiritual and nervous discharge), he was mistaken for the wealthy man. He inspired terror. The cult of the madman is also always the cult of him who is rich in vitality, and who is a powerful man. The fanatic, the one possessed, the religious epileptic, all eccentric creatures have been regarded as the highest types of power: as divine.
This kind of strength which inspires terror seemed to be, above all, divine: this was the starting-point of authority; here wisdom was interpreted, hearkened to, and sought. Out of this there was developed, everywhere almost, a will to “deify,” i.e., to a typical degeneration of spirit, body, and nerves: an attempt to discover the road to this higher form of being. To make oneself ill or mad, to provoke the symptoms of serious disorder—was called getting stronger, becoming more superhuman, more terrible and more wise. People thought they would thus attain to such wealth of power, that they would be able to dispense it. Wheresoever there have been prayers, some one has been sought who had something to give away.
What led astray, here, was the experience of intoxication. This increases the feeling of power to the highest degree, therefore, to the mind of the ingenuous, it is power. On the highest altar of power the most intoxicated man must stand, the ecstatic. (There are two causes of intoxication: superabundant life, and a condition of morbid nutrition of the brain.)
49.
Acquired, not inherited exhaustion: (1) inadequate nourishment, often the result of ignorance concerning diet, as, for instance, in the case of scholars; (2) erotic precocity: the damnation more especially of the youth of France—Parisian youths, above all, who are already dirtied and ruined when they step out of their lycées into the world, and who cannot break the chains of despicable tendencies; ironical and scornful towards themselves—galley-slaves despite all their refinement (moreover, in the majority of cases, already a symptom of racial and family decadence, as all hypersensitiveness is; and examples of the infection of environment: to be influenced by one’s environment is also a sign of decadence); (3) alcoholism, not the instinct but the habit, foolish imitation, the cowardly or vain adaptation to a ruling fashion. What a blessing a Jew is among Germans! See the obtuseness, the flaxen head, the blue eye, and the lack of intellect in the face, the language, and the bearing; the lazy habit of stretching the limbs, and the need of repose among Germans—a need which is not the result of overwork, but of the disgusting excitation and over-excitation caused by alcohol.
50.
A theory of exhaustion.—Vice, the insane (also artists), the criminals, the anarchists—these are [Pg 43]not the oppressed classes, but the outcasts of the community of all classes hitherto.
Seeing that all our classes are permeated by these elements, we have grasped the fact that modern society is not a “society” or a “body,” but a diseased agglomeration of Chandala,—a society which no longer has the strength even to excrete.
To what extent living together for centuries has very much deepened sickliness:
modern virtuee }
modern intellect } as forms of disease.
modern science }
51.
The state of corruption.—The interrelation of all forms of corruption should be understood, and the Christian form (Pascal as the type), as also the socialistic and communistic (a result of the Christian), should not be overlooked (from the standpoint of natural science, the highest conception of society according to socialists, is the lowest in the order of rank among societies); the “Beyond” —corruption: as though outside the real world of Becoming there were a world of Being.
Here there must be no compromise, but selection, annihilation, and war—the Christian Nihilistic standard of value must be withdrawn from all things and attacked beneath every disguise … for instance, from modern sociology, music, and Pessimism (all forms of the Christian ideal of values).
Either one thing or the other is true—that is to say, tending to elevate the type man….
The priest, the shepherd of souls, should be looked upon as a form of life which must be suppressed. All education, hitherto, has been helpless, adrift, without ballast, and afflicted with the contradiction of values.
Either one thing or the other is true—that is to say, tending to elevate the type man….
The priest, the shepherd of souls, should be looked upon as a form of life which must be suppressed. All education, hitherto, has been helpless, adrift, without ballast, and afflicted with the contradiction of values.
52.
If Nature have no pity on the degenerate, it is not therefore immoral: the growth of physiological and moral evils in the human race, is rather the result of morbid and unnatural morality. The sensitiveness of the majority of men is both morbid and unnatural.
Why is it that mankind is corrupt in a moral and physiological respect? The body degenerates if one organ is unsound. The right of altruism cannot be traced to physiology, neither can the right to help and to the equality of fate: these are all premiums for degenerates and failures.
There can be no solidarity in a society containing unfruitful, unproductive, and destructive members, who, by the bye, are bound to have offspring even more degenerate than they are themselves.
53.
Decadence exercises a profound and perfectly unconscious influence, even over the ideals of science: all our sociology is a proof of this proposition, and it has yet to be reproached with the [Pg 45]fact that it has only the experience of society in the process of decay, and inevitably takes its own decaying instincts as the basis of sociological judgment.
The declining vitality of modern Europe formulates its social ideals in its decaying instincts: and these ideals are all so like those of old and effete races, that they might be mistaken for one another.
The gregarious instinct, then,—now a sovereign power,—is something totally different from the instinct of an aristocratic society: and the value of the sum depends upon the value of the units constituting it…. The whole of our sociology knows no other instinct than that of the herd, i.e., of a multitude of mere ciphers—of which every cipher has “equal rights,” and where it is a virtue to be——naught….
The valuation with which the various forms of society are judged to-day is absolutely the same with that which assigns a higher place to peace than to war: but this principle is contrary to the teaching of biology, and is itself a mere outcome of decadent life. Life is a result of war, society is a means to war…. Mr. Herbert Spencer was a decadent in biology, as also in morality (he regarded the triumph of altruism as a desideratum!!!).
54.
After thousands of years of error and confusion, it is my good fortune to have rediscovered the road which leads to a Yea and to a Nay.
[Pg 46]I teach people to say Nay in the face of all that makes for weakness and exhaustion.
I teach people to say Yea in the face of all that makes for strength, that preserves strength, and justifies the feeling of strength.
Up to the present, neither the one nor the other has been taught; but rather virtue, disinterestedness, pity, and even the negation of life. All these are values proceeding from exhausted people.
After having pondered over the physiology of exhaustion for some time, I was led to the question: to what extent the judgments of exhausted people had percolated into the world of values.
The result at which I arrived was as startling as it could possibly be—even for one like myself who was already at home in many a strange world: I found that all prevailing values—that is to say, all those which had gained ascendancy over humanity, or at least over its tamer portions, could be traced back to the judgment of exhausted people.
Under the cover of the holiest names, I found the most destructive tendencies; people had actually given the name “God” to all that renders weak, teaches weakness, and infects with weakness…. I found that the “good man” was a form of self-affirmation on the part of decadence.
That virtue which Schopenhauer still proclaimed as superior to all, and as the most fundamental of all virtues; even that same pity I recognised as more dangerous than any vice. [Pg 47]Deliberately to thwart the law of selection among species, and their natural means of purging their stock of degenerate members—this, up to my time, had been the greatest of all virtues….
One should do honour to the fatality which says to the feeble: “perish!”
The opposing of this fatality, the botching of mankind and the allowing of it to putrefy, was given the name “God” One shall not take the name of the Lord one’s God in vain….
The race is corrupted—not by its vices, but by its ignorance: it is corrupted because it has not recognised exhaustion as exhaustion: physiological misunderstandings are the cause of all evil.
Virtue is our greatest misunderstanding.
Problem: how were the exhausted able to make the laws of values? In other words, how did they who are the last, come to power?… How did the instincts of the animal man ever get to stand on their heads?…
Thanks for your effort and energy Knoxville Christian-Anarchist…., for many centuries we have genuflected to the ‘male’ god given to us to fear so that other males and even some females can dictate to us, the slaves. Who said god was a male. Who says there is a god? This has been so normalized over the centuries, the slaves have actually celebrated their imprisonment, their mental numbness. I think it will take more than the Truth to awaken the numb, so to enable them to transcend their fear, to throw away ‘the books’ and drink water when thirsty, eat food when hungry and feel, be fully aware of themselves. Some people say the masses are content with their bullshit. I don’t agree.
We have read the books apparently. What books have we NOT read? What don’t we know? We’re repeatedly reminded of what is irrelevant as if it is important!
You are right, humans should live a life of permanent pleasures. I just don’t get how so many people in America seem to enjoy working so much, whether it’s regular jobs or domestic chores, and staying hyper-active all day. They even seem to love driving, which is its own kind of labor. The other day, I spoke with a nurse who said she’s fine and even happy to drive two long, boring hours every day—an hour from home to the hospital and another back again. To me, that’s not only physically exhausting but also economically unreasonable. I bet a big chunk of her income goes straight to fuel. It’s just crazy.
Check out these two great books by philosophers Raoul Vaneigem and Bob Black, which explore the benefits of living a life of pleasure and avoiding excessive work. Even the poet-philosopher Baudelaire claimed that people should be drunk 24 hours a day, as he, along with Schopenhauer and other realist pessimist thinkers, believed that life in a sober state is pure pain and torture, and that the only way to be happy is to be drunk. This is why I dislike many Republican Party right-wing Christian moralist traditionalists who oppose food stamps, claiming poor people use them to buy alcohol and cigarettes, as if trying to ease pain with these things is some kind of satanic crime. I genuinely believe poor people are right to drink, smoke, and gamble, and that they should have the right to reduce their daily existential suffering.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/raoul-vaneigem-the-book-of-pleasures
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work
Take a look at what Bob Black says here which i think is correct:
“No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.”
He’s right, I just can’t understand how so many Americans settle into a daily routine of working 8 hours at Walmart and then another 4 hours at a different grocery store. It’s just wrong, exhausting, and completely crazy!
PS: If I were the US president, given the rise in technology like artificial intelligence, robots, and androids, I’d aim to create a system where affordable robots could be available to the masses to handle cooking and domestic chores for working-class families. I know it sounds like a far-fetched, utopian idea, but maybe one day it could be possible, helping people live with less stress and physical exhaustion.
Hi my friend, you are right !! I just don’t get how so many people in America seem to enjoy working all day, whether it’s at their jobs or doing domestic chores, and staying hyper-active nonstop. On top of that, they actually like driving everywhere, which feels like its own kind of labor. The other day, I talked to a nurse who said she’s fine with driving two long, boring hours every day—an hour from home to the hospital and another back. To me, that’s not just physically exhausting but also economically ridiculous. I bet a huge chunk of her income goes straight to paying for gas. It’s wild.
Check out these two great books by philosophers Raoul Vaneigem and Bob Black, which explore the positive benefits of living a life full of pleasures and avoiding excessive work. Even the poet-philosopher Baudelaire claimed people should be drunk 24 hours a day because, according to him, Schopenhauer and other realist pessimists believed life in a sober state is pure pain and torture, and the only way to be happy is by being drunk. That’s why I dislike many Republican Party right-wing Christian moralist traditionalists who oppose food stamps, claiming poor people use them to buy alcohol and cigarettes, as if trying to ease pain with these is some kind of crime. I genuinely believe poor people are doing the right thing by drinking, smoking, and gambling, and they should have the right to reduce their daily existential pain.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/raoul-vaneigem-the-book-of-pleasures
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work
Take a look at what Bob Black says here which i think is correct:
“No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.”
He’s right, I just can’t understand how so many Americans settle into a routine of working 8 hours at Walmart and then another 4 hours at a different grocery store. It’s just wrong, exhausting, and downright crazy!
Dear scientific truth-seekers: Check out this other interesting theory of what might have happened in Venezuela. The article says that Putin traded Ukraine, because Putin wants to own Europe and Ukraine, Trump Latin America and China Asia. These 3 empires want to own the world
Venezuela was exchanged for Ukraine in the tripolar distribution of Alaska 2025.
Source: aporrea
By: Oscar J. Camero | Friday, 01/16/2026 12:36 AM | Printable version
Having made the contrition for the unexpected overshooting of the army in the face of the presidential kidnapping of January 3, it is propitious to review Venezuela’s geopolitical alliances.
It is important to place the fault on the defense, focused primarily on the power of Russian anti-aircraft equipment (S-300 and Buk-M2) and on Chinese radars. The former were caught disconnected from the radars, the Buk-M2s inoperative, not deployed and even with their components stored; the latter, neutralized.
According to experts, the incidence of the “invisible” F-35 and F-22 fighters was decisive in the blindness of the radars, creating an access corridor from La Guaira to Fuerte Tiuna. At the same time, the power cut in Caracas through cyberattacks and blowing up of military communication centers (Cerro El Volcán, La Carlota, Armada in La Guaira, Higuerote airport and the Cagigal Observatory) left the command centers speechless.
Logically, the human factor limps in the narrative, extremely surprised by the speed of “Operation Absolute Determination”. The Venezuelan army evidenced the lack of a communicational plan B and the cover-up of the inoperability of the anti-aircraft defense system, probably for some time. In addition, the fact that a lone officer fired an Igla-S (autonomous from radars and external electricity) reflects that the soldiers were not on their weapons during the early hours of the morning.
At this point, let us speak of the ally, especially the Russian, since the defensive foundation is of its own making, and partly of responsibility. If the Russian interest was to counteract the United States geopolitically, its effort languished. At a time of enemy military concentration in the Caribbean, a dysfunctional fiasco such as the one seen should have been prevented by the advisers, with logistical and maintenance minutia.
Nicolás Maduro requested missiles and drones from Russia and China since the beginning of “Operation Southern Spear”. They never arrived, despite the signing of strategic agreements. Embedding its effort in Ukraine, Moscow dismissed Caracas and there is talk that in Trump’s first presidency it offered to exchange it for Kiev (Fiona Hill, US Congress, 2019).
Even more serious is the statement of Andrei Martyanov, a specialist linked to the Russian army: in Alaska, 2025, Putin and Trump defined tripolarity (multipolarity): Europe for Russia, South America for the United States, and Asia and Oceania for China.
Dear friends, what an evil world in which all ruling classes of the world and all governments of the world are evil. Check out this is an interesting article about how the new Venezuela’s president Delcy Rodriguez has been appointed and installed by the CIA
Note: Check out an article I posted here http://trump-the-evil-thief.blogspot.com from a marxist activist about what really happened in Venezuela. The article is pretty good, even talks about the Venezuelan Madurista government sold themselves to Trump
It was the CIA that nominated Delcy over María Corina
By: Oscar J. Camero | Saturday, 01/17/2026 05:43 AM | Printable version
Source: https://www.aporrea.org/tiburon/a348815.html
CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with the president in charge of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez. It was on Thursday. They talked for a couple of hours. An anonymous official told The New York Times in the United States that they discussed intelligence, economic stability, and the need for Venezuela to cease to be “a safe haven for U.S. adversaries, especially drug traffickers” The visit could not have been more sinister. Venezuela has just been bombed by the United States, a fact that led to the military kidnapping of its president and the death of 47 Venezuelan soldiers and 32 Cubans, the latter with coups de grace. Materially, there was destruction of Buk-M2 launchers, warehouses, a hospital and military communications centers (Cerro El Volcán, Cagigal Observatory, Fort Tiuna, etc.).
In geopolitical terms, the threat of a second attack (according to Donald Trump) to take over oil production spaces, with quantitative damage to sovereignty, hangs over the country. So the meeting is still an imposition of blackmail, but one that the state apparatus must digest in the name of the government plan: (1) maintain peace, (2) rescue the presidential couple and (3) preserve political power. Morally, rubbing constitutes a monstrosity. The U.S. emissary, no matter how much political intelligence makes him up, is an enemy of the Bolivarian homeland. There must be a “stomach” to shake his hand, just as it must have cost Emperor Hirohito in 1945 to shake the homicidal hand of his victor MacArthur.
In the official’s head jump the keys to “Operation Absolute Determination”, outlined fundamentally by the CIA. It was this agency that spearheaded Venezuela and the one that, finally, after its covert action (infiltration, cyberattacks), sowed in Trump the rejection of María Machado, the preservation of Delcy’s institutional head to avoid chaos and a differential treatment of the country compared to that of Iraq in 2003. As a mirror, the CIA considered the dismantling of the Iraqi government and its army, in addition to the creation of an insurgency, wrong. In fact, in chaos, today’s Iraq does not flow oil-wise. With Richard Grenell’s opinion, the CIA painted Delcy’s portrait: his willingness to work together would conjure up the unproductive chaos that Machado represents. Trump’s arrogance devised that it was the intellectual “father” who approached his “creature”.
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND PLAGUE!
“Those who voted for him [TRUMP] might have been echoing Virgil’s words: ‘Aurum in stercore quaero’ ‘I am looking for gold in the dung,’ only to find shit in the gold.”
Arguably, one of the best depictions of the Constitutional Republic’s biblically abominable election system.
So are you dizzy and waking up to the fact that you’ve been played like a fiddle?
Round and round and round and round again (incessantly) goes the Constitutional Republic’s election merry-go-round, providing both species of Crocodiles (disguised as Donkeys and Elephants) their turn at the helm, to undo whatever was accomplished by the previous administration.
And the only direction it travels is round and round and round and round again (incessantly). It never changes and yet, tragically, every two and four years Americans clamor for their alleged voting rights to elect another nincompoop, scoundrel, incompetent, immoral reprobate, or outright criminal to rule over them.
230-plus years of the Constitutional Republic’s elections has proven that regardless whether a Donkey or an Elephant gets elected, America has only advanced further down her suicidal trek to the precipice, officially commenced in 1787.
Add to that Article 6’s Christian test ban whereby (and more importantly) the Bible’s mandatory biblical qualifications for civil leaders (e.g., Exodus 18:21, Deuteronomy 17:15, etc.) were also eliminated, and you have the perfect recipe for disaster.
Time to get off the Constitutional Republic’s biblically egregious election carousel. God has better plan!
The best the Constitutional Republic’s election system can ever produce is the lesser of two evils. Sometimes, the worst of the worst. And always, the evil of two lessers.
The Bible’s election system provides the best of the best of two or more biblically qualified candidates, every single time.
For more, see blog article “Constitutional Elections: Dining at the ‘Devil’s Table,'” at https://www.constitutionmythbusters.org/constitutional-elections-dining-at-the-devils-table/
For how the Bible’s election system operates, see blog article “Salvation by Election” at https://www.constitutionmythbusters.org/salvation-by-election/ Don’t be fooled by the title.
For more regarding Article 6’s Christian test ban, see Chapter 9 “Article 6: The Supreme Law of the Land” of free online book “Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective” at https://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/BlvcOnline/blvc-index.html
Find out how much you really know about the Constitution as compared to the Bible. Take our 10-question Constitution Survey in the sidebar and receive a free copy of the 85-page “Primer” of “BL vs. USC.”
I would be willing to bet a nickel that through out the history of humans being enslaved to a small number of necktie wearers, that the majority of citizens have been limited to information that benefited only the ruling factions.
What about the information that was not available or easily available to the citizens? We know our indoctrination systems reveal what will, for the most part perpetuate the gigantic mess of consumerism and corruption. The treadmill, the nothingness, the labor, the lies, the suffering, the tears.
How do we learn what is necessary to transcend this rot; individually, collectively, though the individual will know she/he cannot share any insights since they will be too different from what the indoctrinations have given us.
Many books have been written. Many books have not been read. Ideas that are too unfamiliar are disregarded. How many ideas have we ignored and then developed the habit of ignoring anything that is different, thus maintaining the same treadmill behavior, the same suffering, wars for economics, barbaric behavior.
I live in a town that has a college so I’m told. I think the entire campus should be bulldozed over and apple trees planted in place of that busine$$ fraud !
What you’re saying about how U.S. voters are scammed into voting for the Republican Party and then switching back to the Democratic Party is similar to something Bob Avakian, chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, has said. He claimed in a video that elections are a scam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCmgGAU9Y90
What a corrupt world, where Venezuela’s ruling class under Nicolás Maduro has essentially sold out to Trump. It’s not just the US government that’s corrupt—governments across South America and the Caribbean are kleptocracies too, all working together to share the profits among the elites in the US, Europe, and across Latin America.
The US and European empires aren’t exactly oppressing the governments of third-world nations. What’s really happening is more like an agreement to exploit the resources of poor countries for the benefit of the ruling classes in the USA, Europe, and those same poor countries, leaving only scraps for the majority of people around the world.
Indeed, Jesus Christ was among the earliest social revolutionaries who opposed oligarchic governments. His vision was to establish a global socialist system where all people could live equally and happily.
Check out this 500 pages book about Christian Anarchism
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexandre-christoyannopoulos-christian-anarchism
Could it be that Trump is the President that the USian middle class deserve?
Maybe it’s Karma or payback time.
I’m just glad he’s your President and not ours.
Ogres in suits infest politics and the corporate world.
You are right, Trump is indeed the president of traditional middle class, because I think that the middle class is also an oppressor class that identifies with the ideology of the capitalist ruling class
“He is an open-faced imperial narcissistic thug threatening everyone at home and abroad.”
He IS the face of America. Like or not.
“He IS the face of America.” – I’m curious – just exactly – how would you define America…..as it exists today? Be sure to include demographics – I came here in 1949 – http://www.crushlimbraw.com/ – this AIN’T the same country! How about yours?
Thank you Crush…..I’m sure there were people were having this same discussion in 1949! Only names and neckties have changed! When did you last hear of a Maple tree targeting an Oak tree with a missile ?
By illustrating the ‘ambition’ to become a ‘leader’, an influential parasite…, should disqualify that person immediately. Instead, we cheer for that person. We have Everything backwards and wrong!
Does DJT Imagine He’s Playing JW? But Who’s Writing DaScript?
I’ve been reflecting upon the ‘movie’ I’ve been watching – the recent Venezuela caper added on to everything else with DaTrumpster – it’s very simple:
He was offered DaTicket…..and he took it – how else could he play John Wayne?
Lemme ‘splain – I see pure Hollywood – DaSynagogue of Satan writes the script – in turn it hires actors so they can play John Wayne – https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/2026/01/does-djt-imagine-hes-playing-jw-but.html?m=0
“The small number of independent voices that exist on the internet are operating under the constant threat of censorship and shutdown.”
It’s not just the crude censorship, the filters, the algorithms, it’s the concentration of ownership, the infiltration, the takeover of the state by the corporations. This is the fascism of Mussolini’s Italy, the corporate, security state but on steroids.
All I can say is: Thank God (whatever God is) that Trump is over there and not over here, in aUStralia that is.
We’ve got enough clowns in suits without having an OGRE Clown.
Good luck Folks.
Thank you Johnny….god is what we have been Given to fear…manipulators like fearful citizens….always have!
250 years of fraud, violence and tears. Have we fully awakened yet?
Your essay totally captures the very real half-mad zeitgeist Ed. A sort of surreal horror show. It’s as if we are all now unwillingly subjects of one of those old CIA MKULTA mind control experiments – all floridly hallucinating after being unknowingly drugged with LSD – while simultaneously subject to intense 24/7 psychological abuse and sensory bombardment designed to destroy our will to resist the – “suggestions” – of the experimenters. Perhaps at the end we will simply be an entire nation of “Manchurian Candidates” receiving our “instructions” from our “smart” toasters.
Of course that sentence should read – “MKULTRA” – but I wasn’t through my first cup of coffee yet and apparently the “spell check” still pretends the program never existed.
but MKULTA is great–it’s exactly what it is. (cult)