Trump’s Karmic Test
Renée Parsons
For those who believe that there is more to life than just the physical, material world, the role of karma is well understood. Popularly known as what-goes- around, comes-around is not frivolous new age lingo but a Universal cause and effect concept that is pertinent to everyday life. It can be measured by thought, word and deed and respects no ideology or religion.
No one in life is immune; not Queens, no Presidents and not the Congress, as we all face daily choices about how to live with purpose and integrity.
Despite an uncanny ability to deflect every Democratic challenge in the last three years, there is little doubt as the 2020 political season unfolds, that Donald Trump’s most significant adversary is himself and that the Dems are accidental allies. Weird, but these are the topsy-turvy times we are living in. And yet it would appear that the partisan conflicts have had its impact especially in the area of Trump‘s foreign policy.
Generally thought to have been elected in 2016 due to his commitment to end the incessant interventionist wars, the President’s most recent State of the Union (SOTU) address would give lie to that notion. With Trump still needing to justify the brutal assassination of Iranian General Soleimani, his inclination for violence as reflected in his budget choices has not gone unnoticed.
While every SOTU is a major egocentric trip with its massive disconnect between the politics of illusion and a real outside-the-bubble world, Trump used the occasion to present a host of self-serving ‘feel good’ moments that were more about grandstanding when he wasn’t bragging about military accomplishments.
The SOTU provided insights into the President’s thinking with an appalling glimpse of Trump’s foreign policy gone rogue. Who knew that the previous administration’s “failed policy on Cuba” was back on the table?
The most startling event of the evening was Trump’s introduction, with two rounds of bipartisan cheering and standing ovations including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the virtuous maidens in white, for the pretend self-proclaimed ‘interim’ President of Venezuela Juan Guaido. He was introduced by Trump as the “true and legitimate President” which is a ridiculous assertion lacking any factual or legal basis.
Guaido has been President of the Venezuelan National Assembly since January 2019 which is not the same as being elected President of the country. He was not a Presidential contender against the incumbent Nicolas Maduro in the 2018 election and did not challenge Maduro’s election until he was about to be inaugurated in January, 2019. As an imposter, Guaido, with the menacing eyes of a hitman and no legal standing, has been bold enough to be sworn in without having campaigned or won the election!
To believe the gibberish that Guaido is the legitimate President of Venezuela without ever having campaigned for the position is to suspend reality into a simulated existence where truth is expendable. Both Trump and the entire Congress believe the illusion – on their feet shouting ‘huzzahs.’
But here’s the question: Were Trump and the Congress fully informed of the truth about Guaido? It would not be outside the realm of possibility that the truth of the Venezuelan election was deliberately withheld by those who would benefit from the false narrative just as it would be easy to believe that Trump and the Congress have lost their collective minds.
In any case, the introduction provided evidence of a OnePartyRule with both Republicans and Democrats uniting with Trump’s promise that Maduro’s ‘tyranny would be smashed and broken.’
Later administration officials predicted ‘impactful’ measures within thirty days meaning new sanctions or something more than Trump’s usual bombast.
The day after the SOTU, Trump greeted Guaido at the White House with all the proper diplomatic courtesies awarded an authentic foreign leader including an overnight at Blair House and a full US Marine Honor Guard.
For all his rally attendance successes, Trump suffers a disconnect from a great swath of Americans who are done with these damned wars and understand that deliberately-created political crises are all about usurping Venezuela’s petroleum reserves which are far greater than Saudi Arabia.
Speaking of natural resources,Trump declared that “The US has become the number one energy producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world by far. America is now energy independent”
If true, why are US troops still in the Middle East? Why are US troops still protecting the Saudi pipelines to the tune of $500 million? Why is the US threatening Venezuela?
The answer might be as simple as protecting the MICs Defense contracts from drying up and their profits from a free fall. The following SOTU quotes say it all:
“To safeguard American liberty, we have invested a record breaking $2.2 Trillion in the US military. We have purchased the finest planes, missiles, rockets, ships and every other form of military equipment and its all made right here in the USA.”
“Our military is completely rebuilt with its power being unmatched power anywhere in the world. it’s not even close.”
In other words, the wars are not just about seizing natural resources but about preserving the financial welfare of the US defense industry at the expense of the American taxpayer.
Just prior to the SOTU, Trump made a stunning announcement which has received little US media attention by announcing reversal of the US 2014 ban on landmines as a necessary tool for war. The US now joins Myanmar as the only other country in the world with landmines. Given his braggadocio about military strength, the landmine reversal did not warrant a mention during the SOTU.
So there you have it. Despite the turmoil Trump has experienced since 2016, it has been his karmic responsibility to grow from those challenges, to use each obstacle as a path to align with a higher vibration and become a more conscious person, fully aware of his global responsibility to humanity – that has not appeared to have happened.
One of the basic laws of Karma is self responsibility; that each individual is responsible for their own conduct and decisions as Karmic tests occur 24/7. While these comments are specific to Donald Trump, the lessons therein are unilateral to every person on the plant especially those individuals who gain economically from death and destruction.
Instead Trump has persisted, like much of the Congress, in creating ‘bad’ karma with no awareness of its existence or the option to collect ‘good’ karma, failing to understand its potent impact on all aspects of life. For most of us, karmic payback may manifest in the privacy of our personal lives or within the walls of our home while Trump’s redress may be very public.
Here’s where it gets complicated: Pelosi and the Dems have also created ‘bad’ karma with their own abuse of power; they too will reap the results of their own behavior. So Trump, whose life is more complex with the intense Deep State opposition he attracts, will be wrestling with multi-layers of karmic payback.
The Quantum World tells us everything is energy and as such, the US, as a country, is subject to its own Karma. It is against the SOTU backdrop that a post-Constitutional American Empire clings to an unsustainable standard of institutional decay that must give way to a new foundation unfolding to a higher consciousness.
Like Trump, it is up to each of us to be responsible for our own karma and accept it as a principle of life as we “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The world will be a better place.
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and President of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC. Renee is also a student of the Quantum Field. She can be reached at @reneedove31.
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I particularly ‘enjoyed’ Trump’s use of human props, or shields.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/17/uk-defending-press-freedom-amal-clooney
Apparently western leaders should do more to defend journalistic freedom around the world.
Did a quick search of the article for the following string: ‘Assange’.
The answer came back:
‘Not found’
This is the Guardian sewer that publishes its latest Sinophobic hate tract today, featuring an ‘Anonymous’ ‘Chinese writer living in North America’, to claim that the dreadful ChiComms are leaving the people in Wuhan to rot. Can you imagine the horror if this disease had broken out in, say, San Francisco, instead of a city where the Government can mobilise probably the greatest effort ever undertaken in preventing the spread of disease? And the vermin call it ‘journalism’.
Just think of those tens of millions of people with no health insurance, plus tens of millions more with not enough cash to pay the deductibles.
None of them daring to seek medical attention, even if they had symptoms-because the cost would break them.
Each of them hanging on, and on, and on -infecting more people.
The rest of the world would love to ‘do unto the US Deep State that which t has done unto us since 1945’.
That would include declaring Donald Trump an illegitimate President and installing Bernie Sanders instead, he never having been on a Presidential Ballot Paper.
It would include bombing the ***out of West Point, the terrorist training centre previously known as ‘The School of the Americas’, the Pentagon, the whole of the greater CIA/NSA infrastructure, not to mention destroying Hollywood, the water supplies of California and the Missisippi basin; freezing 100% of US assets abroad and stealing every single gold bar from Fort Knox that belongs to the USA.
It would certainly include imprisonment without trial for the top 50 officers of the Federal Reserve; at least 5000 organised criminals working for US investment ‘banks’; and absolutely would involve putting Boards of US weapons manufacturers on trial with guaranteed guilty verdicts and 175 year no-parole prison sentences for every single one of them.
Oh: and we would encourage our female ‘diplomats’ to run down and kill US teenagers then flee the country claiming ‘diplomatic immunity’.
We will leave global economic terrorism for now, but the US certainly needs to be on the wrong end of that………
All 100% correct except that there isn’t a single gold bar left in Fort Knox to steal now. It was all sold or stolen years ago.
I’d say just arm the Indigenous population with a few on those hypersonic kinetic missiles and they’d take it from there. Much like Little Big Horn but on a grander scale 🙂
Then we can get back to a more civilized government that minds its own damned business.
You apparently do not appreciate these sociopaths live for this crap. It keeps their juices flowing. Cackling Killary may yet get on Stop and Frisk your Bloomer’s ticket and be VP. For a price of course.
This is a fantasy. Once fascism gets established it is nearly impossible to stop it if history teaches us anything.
Pseudo-religious talk about Karma is very reminiscent of the decent Christians comforting themselves that all those badies will be punished in hell for an eternity. IE. Because they won’t be in this life.
It’s a way of coping with total defeat after 50 years of neoliberalcon supremacy and proto fascism. After a 100 year war on labour.
It’s already over. What do think this is? France 🇫🇷 ?
I don’t fight fascism because I believe we will win. It’s because they are fascist. And we know who has all the guns.
It is entirely feasible that Trump is mockingly forcing people to face the devil within …
It’s entirely possible pigs could fly. It’s just a bit improbable though.
He has been great at waking up America and the rest of the planet to these harsh realities. He has been an extremely useful idiot in this respect.
Exactly my point: most avoid issues and the detail.
The devil is in the detail.
Drinkers forget this … and I believe that Trump no longer fears himself,
nor his passing. Trump has a long memory and so do i: recalling expecting,
what Trump oversaw, back in ’92’, before he visited chapter 11.
He most certainly will never forget the WHO ! ? Why . . .
‘Won’t get fooled again’ >>> Lol
Will the Brits. ?
That’s kinda what Bashar Assad said.
MAGA
Hebrew is read from right to left
Strong’s Hebrew Concordance 98
agam: a marsh, muddy pool
Original Word: ?????
Part of Speech: Noun Masculine
Transliteration: agam
Phonetic Spelling: (ag-am’)
Definition: a marsh, muddy pool
TRUMP IS THE SWAMP / Trump’s Jewish Elite MAFIA & The 5 Dancing Israelis
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x673c6t
http://www.ascertainthetruth.com/att/index.php/video-resources/87-the-media/1806-trump-is-the-swamp-trump-s-jewish-elite-mafia-and-the-5-dancing-israelis-2017
https://hendersonlefthook.wordpress.com/2018/05/16/why-trump-is-a-rothschild-tool/
Actually he really meant America/Last/Israel/First. We just didn’t read between the lines but that last EO he wrote to defend the terrorist racist apartheid state of Israel against BDS kinda proves that he really doesn’t give a flying f_k about the Bill of Rights if it interferes with Israel’s depraved genocidal ambitions.
I refuse to show any interest in the so-called US presidential election.
If I have learned anything in 50 years of following politics, it is that it doesn’t matter.
It is purely an emotional sink for political energy … and a very effective one.
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” – Karl Rove
Just for the record: Siddhārtha Gautama, the later Buddha was born and lived in Hindu North-India, which is where the notion of Karma comes from. He didn’t invented it, it existed there since ages. Jainism was also big, another sign of the the tolerance of Hinduism which allows “all roads to Rome”, not “my way or the highway” in Western speak.
It seems that history is about to repeat. The highwater mark in SEAsia was the helicopters evacuating the last invaders from Saigon. The highwater mark in the ME is going to be similar scenes in Iraq.
A final warning has been issued to US troops there – 40 days after Soleimanis assassination – the Resistance is ready to move, an irresistible force about to meet a not so immovable object.
Along with Idlib and Allepo its been amazing start to 2020. And its not even spring!
Karma is already happening.
Does anyone believe that Trump and his ilk are happy, or have a modicum of equanimity?
These demented human beings are miserable, self seeking failures by any measurement of dignity.
They are living examples of possession by possessions.
Agreed!
For example, surely Trump must realize that Melania is just a glorified sex worker – not that I have anything against sex workers.
Hello mods – please remove my comment (reply to fair dinkum).
It was too harsh.
Thanks.
It was harsh I agree. And disrespectful to sex trade workers, many of which have been abused throughout life. However you retracted it.
I imagine her Karma is having that pig on her. If it happens at all. Which is also rude on my part.
Trump? He is an utterly alone narcissist. Surrounded by people, none of which he can trust in the slightest.
Ranting away on Twitter while in public his slurred speech suggests a rapid decline or drug addiction.
His powerlessness in the clutches of the deep state must truly rankle. Thus someone must pay.
And now he plays with political assassination and endless drone war fare. And the most likely and available targets for retaliation are family he installed in typical nepotism.
He would be wise to keep anything he values far from the Middle East and off of the streets of America. This would be a bad turn of events.
Ironically, I believe he has still killed far fewer people than would the lunatic liberals of the DNC and their war mongering pets. Let’s hope so, he is on track to defeat those vile clowns once again.
@clickkid
you are right! Melania’s handler is no other than Jeffrey Epstein who introduced Melania to Trump! Melania was just a prostitute.
She done OK, then.
This is too brilliant not to share. The too early taken Jeremy Hardy. On The Groan too…
Someone once said that seeing is believing, which is not the case. I’ve seen Tony Blair.
Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation, 2007
Some comedy fans just want the stuff about how hard it is to find the end of the cling film. I’d rather be doing that, to be honest. But sadly I’ve been cast a bum steer in life because I’m a political comedian. And it’s a miserable time to be a political comedian… People say: “Oh it must be good for you. Trump must be good for you comics.” But you know what, I think an untrammelled, expanding Israeli state is a high price to pay for some fake tan gags really.
MAP Comedy Night, Feb 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/feb/15/jeremy-hardy-speaks-volumes-interview-katie-barlow-wife-book-extract
Jeremy Hardy I think I’ve met him a couple of times when I was a proper Lefty _ I’m too old for that type of thing now I’m afraid.
I say I think, because post protest pub meetings can be a bit vague – although Courage Bitter ( you needed Courage to drink it – as soppy Southern drink) hepled a bit and I think that we and many other anarchist lefty types shared a compact and bijou squat a few times in the early Eighties – before I was famous and not Jeremy.
I’m joking of course.
My favourite anecdote of his was the one where he met a Tory sort who said ” You can’t be a Socialist – you’re wearing shoes!
That had me in fits of laughter as if the workers in a Tory mind had to wonder about Britain as Jesus did in his Sackcloth and Ashes.
Anyway – back to Trump.
Trump may be the Clown at the Circus – but he is not the Ringmaster nor the Proprieter of the Circus.
Merely a player.
By coincidence I was watching Abbey Martin earlier – of Telesur and she asked in passing a very pertinent question- which is this:
If Trump wasn’t the Republican’s candidate – which other candidate would they choose?
Great question.
Sheriff Joe?
The US Military is still behind by two generations Russia, China and possibly Iran in the development of hypersonic missiles using more than the combined defense spending of the whole industrial world combined. What have they got for it? The flying turkey known as the F-35 that was recently taken out by a relic of the cold war SAM by the Syrians.
Another example was the gas guzzling Humvee that sucked up more gas than an Indy racer that’s 2 MPG when its not weighted down with armor to protect it from an errant IED. Why they went for them instead of the good ol’ reliable Jeep. Probably some kick backs and a little graft was involved.
The fact is the arms industry is so corrupt that it makes drug dealers look like paragons of fiscal virtue. So far I think over 30 Trillion bucks mysteriously vanished into some event horizon yet Congress gives these spendthrift morons 2 Trillion dollars more to waste but hey but what the hell? It’s not their money.
What do Americans need with affordable health care, decent jobs (not gigs), infrastructure minor shit like that? I mean when your bringing “freedom and democracy” to the world so that UNICAL can make the big bucks. Who cares?
Every American (and I presume you’re American) should watch this…
https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/479779-seth-siegel-poisoned-water/
The amazing thing is that there hasn’t been a revolution; but that’s a whole other bundle that I won’t go into here.
Meanwhile here in France we’re into the 66th week of non-stop protests and the Macron government is about to fall.
It’s taken that much effort…
Yeah they’ve been poisoning our drinking water in wells at least since the mid 19th century to kill off Indians and the occasional settler who got in the way of Harriman’s railroad then after WW II they had all this Florine used to make Uranium Hexafluoride for enriching Uranium that they convinced the ADA was good for dental health so the dumped the crap into much of the water supply.
I’m sure you know about Flint Mi that used antiquated lead pipes to transport water from the Flint River. All kinds of horror stories. Right now here in the “Golden State” Nestle is sucking the water table dry to provide bottled water for all those cool eco events. So the problem is not just poisoned water but no water unless you but from those “friendly” people who make Nestle’s Quik. Gotta love ’em. They got run out on a rail in Bolivia for pulling that shit there. Rapacious bastards.
In the US they would just mow the protesters down and either slaughter them all or toss them into the prison slavery system. Solitary confinement for the lot.
Their good fascist friends and allies that run them and the UK refer to this as “mowing the grass.”
The French are unique. It’s even a joke in a movie here.
Who IS that guy?
He’s French.
In Canada our own French are naturally a bit xenophobic to put it politely. As they should be I think. Look at the surrounding culture they too must resist.
Anyway. Your people have been an inspiration to the world but we have neither the resources nor the stomach for a fight. It would be a blood bathm
How many human beings have now died as a result of the draconian sanctions unleashed on the Venezuelan people by this rogue terrorist state?
I also wonder how the people of Detroit are faring considering 33.4% live below the poverty line, or in Cleveland where 35% live in poverty.
And yet Trump brags of defending ‘American liberty’ (oxymoron) by spending $2.2 trillion dollars in maintaining the hegemony of this debauched Empire.
Yet, in the land of the free (another oxymoron) vast swathes of people live in poverty – or live in their cars, or in the burgeoning tent cities.
How’s the water in Flint? Is it still undrinkable?
As if any of the creatures in Washington care about any of this. Anything to maintain control over much of the Planet.
And with the highest incarcerated prison population and highest record in private prison profits in California, most recent, it seems the solution to corporate ‘societal’ wealth is to have 50,000 homeless on the streets in L.A. , just ‘hanging’ around, the corner . . .
wealth on tap.
(datsa’ rap trap 😉 )
Just watched John Pilger’s searing documentary ‘The Dirty War On The NHS’ which included segments on the wondrously caring and compassionate US ‘health system’ in places like Chicago and such quaint notions as ‘patient dumping’ where, to further save costs, and make more billions $$$$ – patients are evicted from hospitals early and dumped at homeless shelters.
My god, the barbarians are not just at the gate. They’re already inside the building.
These completely dehumanised psychopathic neoliberal ideologues who only care about money and profits.
More and more for us and all you useless eaters can just fuck off and die.
That’s the mentality. It’s so sick.
No, that wasn’t a pun. It is truly sick how warped society has become.
Hey now! They are just doing their jobs aren’t they?
Why we could say they are just following orders.
I am quite sure when the crap hits the fan the US won’t hesitate to genocide all of Canada and Mexico. All us dirty socialists.
The Neocon nutters are capable of anything to maintain the Empire and their own power and wealth. Anything.
That’s the really scary thing.
Washington D.C. ( District of Columbia )
“Columbia” is a name for “Goddess of Creation, War, and Destruction” better known as the goddess of death and pain. She is derived from the imagery of Semiramis, wife of Nimrod, and Queen of Babylon.
The statue on top of the Capitol building called the Statue of Freedom is actually Persephone, meaning “She who Destroys the Light”. She is the queen of the underworld. She is crowned with pentacles (pentagrams–stars with five points). When someone stands on something, it is usually an indication of ownership. Therefore, she owns the facility she stands upon. Although the dome on top of the Capitol building was not finished until 1868, the final installation of this statue on top of the dome took place on December 2, 1863. The original Capitol building, without the dome, was completed in 1826.
Columbia and Persephone are seen as other statues around Washington D.C. area.
“……….When it came time to pick a name for the new capital that was being moved from Charleston to its present site, Senator John Lewis Gervais, whom the present day street is named after, in 1786 said, “in this town we should find refuge under the wings of COLUMBIA.” It is from this speech that people rallied to name it Columbia, beating out the name Washington in an 11-7 vote in the state senate.
It is clear from Gerais’ quote that Columbia, South Carolina was named for the goddess Columbia and not Christopher Columbus.
https://esotericcolumbia.blogspot.com/2018/10/columbia-sc-isnt-named-after-columbus.html
Don’t worry. One day soon a civil war may be fought to end slavery and we can all rejoice.
It’s not a sure thing. It may take some time. But for the record, prison slavery has always been legal.
It was very confusing all these years with Americans talking about the Lefties in California. What a joke.
I think Kamala put the end to that lie once and for all.
America is waaayyy to the right of center. Both parties. Even Sanders barely qualifies as a centrist. Extreme ideologies fabricate their own reality.
While there is polluted water and crumbling infrastructure everywhere I have good news for you…
You can keep your doctor. Believe me.
Hope and change?
10,000 lies and yet the cretin is still more honest than that other beloved hero of the people.
Don’t feel too bad though. Up here we have Trudeau. The neoliberals got relected.
Down here in Australia, there’s a pentecostal thug bible basher Scott Morrison as Prime Minister, (a bit like Mike Pence, but without the nuclear weapons)
Did you notice Gezzah, that on the intro to the bushfire Q & A on ABC, that they showed an old girl asking that highly pertinent question-‘Does the Prime Minister’s religious beliefs have anything to do with his lack of interest in climate change?’, or words to that effect. Of course they do!!! ‘Smoko’ is lovin’ it as his dearly anticipated End Times approach. But the ABC, as you would expect, dogged it, and no such question was asked of the panel, including the ultra-sinister Jim Molan, the ‘hero’ of the destruction of Fallujah.
Richard… a pox and a plague on the ABC. I havn’t watched Q & A for years now. As I said, my TV is turned off nearly the entire time, but I’m so not surprised by what you say. In fact, I expect it.
After yesterday, trying to raise awareness about Julian Assange and that the very large majority just didn’t want to know period.
Couldn’t give a farting Cassowary what’s happening in the World. As long as they have their little trinkets and creature comforts.
Your many summations about the state of this country, and the state of people in this country is bang spot on, and I see it everyday as well.
Jesus (no, not a pun) first they rehabilitate Johhny War Criminal Howard, now they’re busy rehabilitating this peice of shit Molan.
Yeah, go ask the people of Fallujah what they think of ‘Our hero Jim’… Ask them about all the babies born with chronic birth defects. And two heads.
I did stomach about 6 mins of Insiders on Sunday morning.
Thought…. what a pile of steaming dog turd. Some Labor politician refusing to answer a simple yes or no on whether Labor supported the Adani coal mine. He couldn’t even answer a simple yes or no.
This country has the politicians it so richly deserves.
Karma, ay.
The UK media are currently awash with the apparent suicide of Caroline Flack (age 40); and for our friends outside the UK, no I’ve never heard of her either (I don’t watch ‘the telly’)…
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/feb/15/former-love-island-presenter-caroline-flack-dies-aged-40
The suicide of anyone is a very sad event, but in this instance the media narrative is that Flack killed herself because of abuse on social media (none of which is proven at this stage). This comes just days after UK Government legislation to put OfCom in charge of internet regulation.
I think most folks will know where this is going; and again, Flack’s death was very sad, but sadder still is that her death is being used for political purposes.
What appears to have happened is that Trump finally caved in to the Deep State, and that’s why things are going better for him. I am starting to suspect we may see a war against Iran in Term II.
What they’re gonna reap is more Trump after next November!
Too late. By the election Iran will be a FULL member of the SCO.
A bit like nato an attack on one member will be defended by ALL members.
The yanks are not going to land a single boot on the ground against Iran itself – never mind one backed by Russian/Chinese and rest of SCO military might.
It’s over. Has been for six months. The Yanks are going, over sexed, over paid, over back there.
There’s more than an echo of McCartthism in this — policies are championed to further the business and ideological intersts of powerful individuals that don’t necessarily reflect the priorities and interests of the country as a whole. People, often those who really should know better, then bandwaggon on those policies, not only to avoid being labeled unpatriotic but to also prove that they’re just as or even more patriotic than the people originally promulgating them. We’ve seen this time and again, probably the most egregious recent example being the miasma of lies that were used to invade Iraq. Its a mindset that might appear to work but I believe that its ultimately a road to nowhere.
I’m less concerned about the current emphasis on military spending than I would have been in the past because I sincerely doubt the ability of the US to carry through on these plans. The writing’s been on the wall for some time and they can certainly spend the money but the chronic shortage of engineering talent, the systematic shortchanging of education and our steady erosion of manufacturing knowhow will limit our ability to turn political wishful thinking into reality. Sure, we’ll still be able to produce boutique products, eye-wateringly expensive munitions that we can use to intimidate people who can’t shoot back, but we’re already in an era where serious cost overruns and performance deficiencies are the rule rather than the exception. This problem has been brewing for a generation or more and it will take a generation or more to fix it. Unfortunately our politicians are still living in the reflected glory of past empires, they seem to be unable to recognize that WW2 was 75 years ago, so I expect we’ll stumble along business as usual alienating more and more people until all we have left are those we can buy with our increasingly useless dollars.
I hope to live long enough to see Karma fully visited on the United States of America and its dumbed-down clueless accomplice citizenry.
@clickkid
Exactly what I have in mind. I have lung cancer and I ask only one thing: to live long enough to see the evil empire crawling like a worm; same with its citizenry.
I have no religion but there is one prophecy in the bible that I am interested in. In Revelation 18, we are told that Babylon the great’s destruction will be accomplished in “ONE HOUR” (verse 19). We are told in the same chapter that she is to be destroyed by fire (Rev. 18:8-9, 18). Moreover, in Revelation 16:17-19, we are told that an earthquake will shake the city at the time of its destruction. Now this Babylon should not be confused with ancient Babylon which was conquered by Cyrus. This Babylon is described in Isaiah 13 and 14, Jeremiah 50 and 51. These salient descriptions point to a great “latter-day” nation which by means of its enormous military and economic might will establish its ascendancy over the world. And this is none other than the United Liars of America. Do you believe in this prophecy? For the sake of karmic justice, I want to believe in this prophecy. I also take delight that Mother Nature comes to the aid to Karmic Justice by having a colossal earthquake to obliterate the land of the evil empire. The prophecy goes on to say that after this momentous event, no person will ever inhabit the land again. Perhaps the land goes under the ocean?
[If you are not interested in the finer points of Karma: read no further]
“No doer of the deeds is found,
No one who ever reaps their fruits;
Empty phenomena roll on:
This view alone is right and true.”
Visuddhimagga XIX.
All of the above: which could have been said – perhaps more clearly – without any reference to debased theories of karma. When a culture meets another culture: its precepts have to be translated into a new language. So they take on the metaphysical structure of that language. This produces a major cultural-cognition block – called ‘holophrastic indeterminancy’ by Quine. Basically; languages – or bodies of texts – mean as a whole. Sentence by sentence transcription changes the sense and meaning of texts. The overall holistic ‘episteme’ is broken down. You end up with a debased cultural appropriation. Suffice to say: karma is not at all well understood in the West. Not well enough to apply to political commentary, anyway.
There are two basic ways to teach karma: as a metaphysical ontology of cause and effect. Or as liberation from a metaphysical ontology of cause and effect. Zen is the latter. America – except in isolated, rare instances – teaches the former. Which degenerates into ‘McMindfulness’. Which is New Age neural-kandy for neoliberals. Which is debasement. Zen is a liberation exegesis which would dissolve the American analytical tradition of cause and effect forever. Hence: it is not culturally compatible. It remains incommensurable and untranslatable.
For anyone who is interested: the reason is simple. Cause and effect arise together and are eternally inseparable. No more ontological chains of cause and effect. The central tenet of Zen is ‘pratitya-samutpada’. Which is usually translated as ‘co-dependent origination’ or ‘co-dependent arising’. But is ultimately also untranslatable to those who hold analytical views of ’cause and effect’. To really understand pratitya-samutpada is to dissolve the Western mind. Which would be a bit of a culture shock!
A pure exegesis of which has no place in political commentary. Except perhaps to say: we as a political species – the Aristotelian ‘zoon politikon’ – are so hopelessly lost in karmic language-activity we think we are faithfully describing an objective reality. We are not. We are creating a quasi-autonomous pseudoworld out of words and analytically structuring our ‘reality’ to match our concepts of reality. That is: word and world are logico-semantically self-identical …but separated by descriptive screens of analytical representations from the Real. That is the socio-political construction of reality as a one-to-one isomorphic ontological ‘word-world’. One that looks and feels real: but the concept of the real is not real. It is political and we are politically defined and defining.
We prefer the sign – the word-world – because that is where our identity arises. As a personal individual self-identity …different from the rest. Which is a pure conceptual illusion which we are held to by our cultural-cognition. If cause and effect arise together as inseperable: so do subject and object and self and other. There is no absolute objective basis for differentiation: so why do we make one? And why do we so violently defend our constructivist delusions with wars and genocides? Because we cannot stop making the unreal real? Because the political reproduction is a personal reproduction?
We take words as concepts and apply fixed identities to them as configurations and personifications of things. Political things. Which are only ever discursive and descriptive differences …not actual differences. Applying the logical-rational structure of language to them automatically and unconsciously: they become fixed substantial identities with independent causal attributes inherent to themselves …and only to themselves. Politically defined individual things. When you have unique fixed self-identical causal entities: you have to invent ways for them to interact due to their individuated uniqueness and innate essentialist characteristics. I did say invent: cause and effect is a cultural conceptual constructivism that arises only in the language-act …the act of ‘languaging’. We invent and reinvent ourselves politically in our descriptions of cause and effect realities. Realities that are not really real.
This describing of the political imaginary is not meant to satisfy anyone. It is merely preliminary. But by entering into language-activity we enter into culturally constructed cause and effect relationships. Which distort our describing of realities. Over time: we end up describing descriptions of descriptions of descriptions with only an ephemeral sense of the Real. Which is politics.
Cause and effect are metaphorical differences that allow us to describe things. They are not real but distorting. Not dennotative but connotative of political unrealities. There is no Cosmic Law of cause and effect …or culturally misappropriated schema of divine retribution. Karma comes from the same discourse as pratitya-samutpada and is untranslatable without it. Particularly: you cannot appropriate from a non-ontological and non-binary discourse to an analytical binary-political discourse. Not unless you want to dissolve the discourse as delusional and free yourself from binary-political entrapment. Which sounds like a good idea to me. I’m not sure ‘America’ – as a discursive metaphorical personification – is ready to be dissolved. Which is the real meaning of karma.
1000 apologies,👍
“Krugman’s column, under the headline, “Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Socialist,” makes the correct observation that “Bernie Sanders isn’t actually a socialist in any normal sense of the term. He doesn’t want to nationalize our major industries and replace markets with central planning,” and suggests that Sanders would be better described as a European-style social democrat.”
That’s a very telling comment, especially since $68 billion dollar Bloomberg entered the race. Krugman is actually saying the US is an oligarchy run by plutocrats and Sanders has the audacity to want to transform it into a socially democratic society.
To the ruling class democratically run elections are considered revolutionary.
For decades the super-wealthy have controlled the electoral process by: enacting legislation like Citizens United; gerrymandering every state; tactically suppressing minorities and the marginalized from voting; deploying lobbyists and representatives from think tanks to inundate mainstream media news casting opinions without identifying whose actually paying them, etc…. Multinational corporations and the uber-wealthy are having a grand time and it shows–three people in the US now own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the entire population. In other words, three people possess more wealth than a 160 million.
For more than three years, centrist Democrats expressed outraged over “Putin the oligarch” interfering in the 2016 election. Let’s define oligarch–an oligarch is a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence (Bloomberg). And now let’s define oligarchy– a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution. Well if that’s the case, there’s very little difference between the US and other plutocratic nation-states. Isn’t the Electoral College a striking example of this–a politician can win the popular vote by millions and still lose the election.
Simply put, the will of the people does NOT matter. Seventy-five percent of the population wants Medicare-for-All, but it’s the billion dollar health insurance companies deciding this issue. Ninety percent of the population wants to end the endless wars and spend tax dollars on rebuilding the US infrastructure, ending homelessness, improving public schools, and transforming the US into a 21st Century nation—but that doesn’t mean a thing if the arms industry and all the ancillary war profiteers are making trillions.
An electoral democracy is the revolution the ruling class fears.
They know Sanders is not going to confiscate their property or nationalize every industry. What they oppose is paying their fair share of taxes, regulations safeguarding the lives of workers, a living wage for employees, ensuring excellent healthcare for everyone, ending subsidies to industries destroying the planet, and taking money out of politics.
The goal is to create a civilized society where everyone can live a life of dignity. How revolutionary is that!
So the big question is –can you convert a plutocracy into a democracy via the ballot box. Many say no–the system is just too corrupt. However, Sanders supporters, more diverse than the media wants you to think, are saying they want to give it one last shot before our Titanic sinks…….
You cannot have a ‘democracy’ in any meaningful sense, in a capitalist pathocracy. The USA is the prime example. That generation after generation buy into this ludicrous exercise in self-delusion is proof of the power of life-long brainwashing, and the smothering of any meaningful dissent. The Obama debacle should have been the last straw, but it wasn’t. Black voters trooped out to support Clinton, their enemy for decades. Working class UK voters chose five more years of brutal Tory class hatred and austerity.
It may take a failed attempt by Sanders to obtain the nomination, or if it’s miraculously attained relentless thwarted attempts to achieve progress before hopefuls eventually see the ballot box offers few solutions when the military/security/surveillance corporate state reigns supreme. What other options besides taking to the streets does the younger generation possess for metamorphosing the world out of its current mess?
You are defining Communism rather than Socialism, but that is the way in the USA dating from McCarthyism.
Admin,
Why were my comments taken down ?
Was it something I said ?
If Karma is real, why do people like Thatcher, bLiar, Bush, Cheney and their ilk live full and healthy lives after they retire fron the public stage , enjoying their ill gotten gains , while the rest of us suffer because of their policies and actions ?
Asking for a friend. 🤔
It’s like Bill Hicks said, “We always kill the guys that try to help us, always. And let the little demons run a muck: John Lennon murdered, John Kennedy murdered, Martin Luther King murdered, Gandhi murdered, Jesus murdered. . . Ronald Reagan. . . wounded.”
I doubt very much Lennon tried to help anyone ,apart from himself, along with the other three, for someone who use to pay £65.000 a tear keeping his furs in a special room doesn’t come across to me as someone who’s trying to help, not one of them put a penny back in the city of Liverpool, apparently McCartney was suppose to have contributed £250.000 to the LIPA project , claimed most of it back in tax , the rest was paid fr by the EU, as I understand it
I mean say what you will about the Beatles, or think what you want about Lennon, there’s plenty of information out there from which one can construct a ‘fuck Lennon’ argument, I think the fact remains that these days we no longer have mainstream artists who are trying to be as legitimately antagonistic towards the status quo as Lennon was. I mean, Russell Brand? Eh. . . I don’t know.
Also, the larger point was about those figures who challenge the status quo, only to be murdered, whereas the “demons,” to put it in Hicks’ words, continue to run amok.
They used the ‘fuck Lennon’ stuff when they programed Mark Chapman to be the patsy.
Based on what I’ve read about MKULTRA over the years, I suspect it could’ve been possible.
You forgot to mention the Pequot who were killed off after helping the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock survive. Talk about gratitude!
Maybe if the rock landed on the Pilgrims instead we’d all be better off.
Likely, we’d still have ‘Mayflowers’, Oak Forests 😉
Dragonflies, Butterflies & Fireflies, in the UK.
Well you can probably thank the Romans who like the American Government giveth (such useful items as the Adrian’s Wall, stone roads and a Feudal Society that they call “civilization”) and taketh away (anything that represents an indigenous culture of any kind).
It’s often fascinated me the way certain cultures define their embrace of private property and normalization of slavery as “civilized” in comparison to the “savage” ways of those they colonized.
I think the way “civilization” is defined by imperialists is who’s got the bigger club and by how much they can rape and pillage before somebody stops them.
How do you define it?
Good government, political skill and diplomacy. All things that existed in the Americas before the invasion. The Iroquois Confederacy was a perfect example from which was the Great Law of Peace that much of the Constitution was derived from.
Yes!
But to me, these things are not “civilization.” I think the idea of “civilization” is merely an ideological justification for the “club,” as you mentioned earlier–
That’s because the word “civilization” has been redefined for propaganda purposes. All it really means as a civil society that isn’t ruled by force and coercion making what is called “Western Civilization” anything but civil.
Indeed!
‘Western Civilization’ is self-limiting, as we can see right now.
That’s because most ‘’Western Civilization(s)’’ don’t really exist. They are mainly facades for a corporate kakistocracy.
Notice how the one claiming to be the most “civilized” nation proudly flies the flag of the corporation known as the East India Company?
It’s hard to tell if Britain acts as an extension of the US or if it’s vice versa.
A fear of miscegenation, I mean, it’s the Puritanical way, no?
Yeah they had a real problem with many of the young escaping from the uptight Puritanical “Saints” and joining Indian Nations and like America today claiming they had a better way even if they had to kill you to prove it.
Or convert you. And convince you to take up slavery, or neoliberal economic policies, etc.
Mmm. You could say that dying alone, having lost your mind, in a hotel room because deep state actors didn’t want any intrusive photos to show how the mighty had fallen, was definitely karma for Mrs Thatcher. Blair’s course is not run yet but you only have to look at photos of his cadaverous face to see he is not happy. And why should he be? He went from being a global celebrity to a much-hated bit-part player on the American talk circuit.
I know little about Cheney except his approval rating was 13% when he left office….I believe in karma.
Hi lundiel,
Since you believe in karma, how do you think karma will deal with the USA? Taking into account that it has killed millions of innocent lives, plundered nations, destroyed cultures, destroyed the environment.
Badly.
They will surely pay for it in their next life. They could be reborn as Yazidis or Venezuelans..
Or, worst fate of all, Palestinians, or decent Israelis.
Q.E.D.
If Trump truly believes that the US military is the very best, and invincible, then he’s really not in this world at all. The actual reality suggests unmistakably that it’s a giant, muscle-bound paper tiger, on its last legs; not even able to dare to strike back against Iran when the Iranians missiled the main US military base in Iraq, with Pentagoon-terrifying accuracy, and with still-undisclosed US military casualties of some kind.
The Iranians announced this as the first stroke in a campaign to drive the Anglozionist empire out of the ME altogether, in revenge for the Soleimani murder; and the Az imperial gics daren’t escalate and hit back again, because they already know the devastation that Iran can unleash on their ring of bases in the Gulf, against which attacks the US has no effective defence. Equally ill-defended, by ‘Iron Sieve’, is the zio-cancer in Palestine. And the goons won’t even think about exposing their white-elephant carriers to the new missiles, which have now brought the whole disastrously-costly and ultimately futile carrier battle group strategy to complete obsolescence.
Nightmare on to the final collapse, Donald! Couldn’t happen to a more deserving set of schmucks than the gics who run the Az empire!
The US military is also, by many degrees, the biggest cause of pollution in the world.
Dear Greta, though, will never mention this.
You have stolen my future. I hate you for this
What was that old movie..? Village of the Damned.
The United States has been involved in the Middle East for a very long time indeed. Close to a century and its’ involvement has only grown deeper and deeper over that period, especially since WW2; when oil became so incredibly important strategically… modern armies run on oil.
Almost seventy years ago the oil wealth of the Middle East was recognised as the single biggest source of wealth on the planet by the Americans. Why then; as the US had/has vast oil and gas reserves of its own and only got a tiny fraction of its energy surplies from the Middle East, even today it gets far more from Venezuela than the entire Middle East, was it so involved in the Middle East; today they even have huge armies sitting on the top the reserves… is the US so obssessed with the oil in the Middle East?
Because controling the oil and most importantly access to it, gives them enormous power over the nations who are heavily reliant on Middle East oil, like India, China, Japan and Western Europe. Control of the oil, to a lesser or greater degree, basically gives the US a strong hand on the rest of the industrialised world and is great way to dicipline the world.
One word. Israel.
Gweedo seems to be at a bit of a loose end just now as he skulks around Washington.
They seem reasonably happy with Maduro in Venezuela for the time being.
Why don’t they just mount a coup against Trump and declare Gweedo the new president of the US instead?
It would save all the bother of an election in November.
If Schiff, Nadler and Schumer pulled their fingers out they could pull this off in short order.
Gweedo could just appoint himself US president and it would all be sorted out.
He is skulking around back in Venezuela now – got quite a impromptu welcome at the airport – thoroughly funny as he goes through passport control and a lone airport worker woman gives him an earful and returns with some water – then he walks out to his welcoming committee.
The guy is a clown and ordinary Venezuelans treat him like one.
Very heartwarming.
The poor guy must be gutted.
You go to all the trouble of staging a coup and nobody even notices.
You’d think they’d have the common decency to arrest him, or put him on trial, or something.
But no, they don’t even condescend to notice.
Coups ain’t what they used to be.
Rather refreshing to hear Karma mentioned at all these days, but from my long familiarity with literature on the topic, it seems to me that we will seldom get to witness the retribution, or the mirroring, of wicked deeds as their karma is worked through. In fact, according to some teachers, there can be over a thousand years between incarnations, allowing time for a completely fresh environment to rid us of our conscious memory of former prejudices, after which we will then encounter again the people whose lives we affected for better or worse.
During that long intervening period, we will contemplate from a higher perspective the good or evil we have done, (we will have plenty of undistracted time to do so) and slowly build up the earnest longing to compensate for the evil and build upon the good. In the case of those we have wronged, we will experience the pain we have caused as if it were happening to ourselves, and this will lead in our next life to our encountering those people again, although we will not remember them (presumably to avoid the potential chaos involved in dealing with the powerful emotions involved in our subjective guilt while we see to the important issue – that of repaying the wrong we have done).
With all that in mind, what Washminster likes to call by the disinfected term, “collateral damage”, involves the lives, agonies and deaths of countless people, all of which must be worked out through karma. Not realizing the indirect harm we have done is apparently no excuse, much as in Britain, “ignorance of the law is no excuse”, so we can see certain presidents and presidential advisers amassing vast karmic spreadsheets of suffering souls, all of whom they owe repayment in kind. Needless to say, getting through this could entail many, many incarnations, but we should also have in mind one concept which modern man finds so hard to understand, which is that Karma (or “The Universe”, if you prefer) is never in a hurry, and what must come must come.
We should think big sometimes. Our lives are pretty small.
From what you have posted up here, I would imagine that, like myself, you are a person who is a student of the philosophy of Buddhism. I say this because your writing indicates that you have a good understanding of the workings of the laws of karma across the eternity of our lives, and across all the worlds that support sentient life throughout the space-time continuum of the multiverse. Our circumstances in the present are the effects of causes made in previous lifetimes and, likewise, the causes we make in the present determine the effects we will experience in the future. Instant karma, however, is the immediate retribution many seek – and whilst such a notion may go someway towards assuaging the anger and rage of those who witness iniquity and injustice, these folk may possibly have to be disappointed by discovering that it is no more than the title of a song by John Lennon. Like you say, one of our problems here is that we live in an ‘instant’ culture, where immediate gratification is our only satisfaction whereas ‘eternity’ is another matter entirely. Most of what everyone is shouting and screaming about, can be likened more to the froth and spume whipped up by the storms on the surface of an ocean, the deeper currents of which eventually bring about changes. Nevertheless, no one is exempt !
Some aspects of Buddhism are certainly a part of what interests me about human existence, but perhaps closer to the mark would be that I am a student of philosophy in general, with an interest in building bridges between inner experience – the truth of which we cannot doubt, because experience is experience – and the outer reality with which everyone is perfectly familiar, but obviously dissatisfied.
My main concern is that the current fashion for seeking individual “freedom” by summarily rejecting anything which might be called, the Spirit, has left a hole in mankind’s existence which cannot be filled by anything other than that very Spirit. And man is aware of the hole, although he is fashionably ashamed to admit it.
The absence of good religious teaching today (no longer required as a subject in our schools), along with the shortage of gifted religious teachers (teaching religion without inner conviction, or freedom from prejudice and propaganda, is far worse than no teaching at all), has resulted in a widespread form of mental malnourishment as far as the whole human being is concerned, and any first steps in correcting this situation must involve a formal recognition of the inner hole I mentioned above.
It’s a struggle, but those with insight and perseverance will always have a voice.
There can be no authentic spiritual practice without an understanding or belief in the existence of past and future lives. Without such an understanding I will be left with only concerns for this life alone.
If I think there is nothing beyond my death then I am free to do as I please in the here and now.
Thinking about my death is the only way to begin to understand karma in an authentic way – otherwise I will use it only as a weapon against others.
That’s exactly why our politicians can do so much harm. They are simply not mature enough to see beyond the next quarter’s investment payouts, although they can see far enough to ensure a conspicuously comfortable retirement.
After that? Nothing. So why wouldn’t they think, “Me, Me, Me” with every breath they draw…
It reminds me of how paradoxical it is that very clever people like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins can parade their atheism before the public while also admiring the beauties inherent in Nature’s designs. To me, that basically amounts to choosing to recognize the left half of “the spirit”, and quite arbitrarily choosing NOT to recognize the right half. Is the “oneness” of this whole picture really so difficult to grasp?
Yes, but it is a great song.
I agree – it is a great song – his work will endure
Trump and the US MIC are on parallel tracks for one big issue: US stock prices have to go up no matter what, intertwined with the US dollar as the world’s exclusive financial vehicle. Both have become virtual commodities, the former by self buy backs and the latter by QE xx.
Trump believes high stock prizes will get him reelected and the MIC want to make even more money – the endless greed problem. The Wuhan virus could be enough to tip over the global virtual finance card board set.
Oil and gas fields are their main physical assets, not just the American ones or the(b) locked Canadian, but Venezuela’s and Arab ones too.
The Russian and Iranian ones are out of reach, the Iraki ones are becoming hot potatoes.
Do US military fight abroad without paychecks? Robots do, but GIs won’t.
Trump knows how he plays on teevee.
Anybody within his force field gets insta karma. ‘You’re Fired!’
The dumbfuck venezuelan was supposedly gonna be president in seven days – a year ago!
Trump noded along with his dumbfuck hawks knowing that it would not happen.
Dumbfucks look like complete dumbfucks – insta karma.
Dumbfucks wanted full on intervention in Syria and invasion of Iran and Ukraine and Uighar land – Trump nodded along with the DF hawks – where are they now ? Eating their instakarma that’s where.
Not a peep in the msm about the massive gains of Syrian Army, not a peep about the massive casualties suffered at the Airbase in retaliation to the DF hawks advise , that Trump nodded along to, the Dumbfuck generals and hawks were made to stand behind him as he claimed zero casualties- knowing any retaliation to the retaliation would have seen thousands and then tens of thousands of casualties within days – just let the instakarma fuck the Dumbfucks every time.
Where is Durhams investigation and the charges, Renee?? I keep asking – the ultimate karma that finally knocks Obamas halo and wipes Clintons smirk and blows back to our very own DS goons and MSM and bozo the clown and tge rest.
That’s the insta Karma i want to see.