What Happens When You Don’t Seek

I didn’t plan any posts today, and the two I wound up doing were rather bleak. Here’s a cheery one to close out the day here.

Serendipity finds you

My plans rarely work (unless they are boringly simple), but serendipity has been good to me, so over time I’ve tried to make the most of that. My theory of serendipity is still evolving, but from what I’ve seen, it’s better to think in terms of “allowing” serendipity rather than “seeking” it or “creating” it. Opportunity is all around us, but we have beliefs and habits that block it.

Boldfaced emphasis in the original.

And if you liked that post, then you must buy Max Gunther’s books.

What America Was

At the Internet Archive is a document everyone should read: Pocket guide to Germany (1944).

That was handed out to our troops who would be occupying that country after its defeat.

Let me just quote a few passages from the first two pages:

Local customs, especially those touching upon religion, are to be given consideration and respect.

Respect property rights. Vandalism is inexcusable.

Rifling of orchards and fields and unauthorized appropriation of food stores are contemptible and punishable by court martial.

Remember that conquered and occupied nations will be critically short of food. Depriving the people further will create great hardship and in the end will cause conditions that will make your own job a harder one. It is always a strain on our supply lines to feed people of occupied countries. Don’t strain it further.

Don’t belittle or be critical of fighting qualities of former soldiers. By now you will have had a good opportunity to judge just how good a fighting man the enemy is. The point is, we don’t like to kick people when they are down.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

These words weren’t written for effect or for public relations.

That was the ethos of America once upon a time.

Contrast that to the wide-ranging brutality in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and then go see the many war porn videos on YouTube.

See for yourself how we create hatred today.

Thomas Paine:

An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers can not; it will succeed, where diplomatic management will fail; it is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the Ocean, that can arrest its progress; it will march on the horizon of the world and it will conquer.

Principles are transmitted by people.

Free Speech And Free Thought: All Or Nothing

I present to you the late William F. Buckley, who frightened people cling to as an example of what it means to be an “American.”

Now see this:

So much for Buckley’s Americanism, for his belief in freedom of expression.

A Fever Is Building

Effect:

American Corporate-Owned Monopoly Media: YOUR ENEMY!

What do I feel when I go out during the day? I feel revolution. I feel fight. I feel bad revenge – anger – and tar – and feathers – and the stocks. I feel a population seething with anger – controlled by a police apparatus that doesn’t yet understand what they are fucking with or the repercussions on their families as precedented by history – unrest – riots – public officials and middle managers of corporations going outside their place of business to face the fists and steel-toed boots of the people they’ve fucked for so long for faceless suits who just needed another boat payment

Cause (one of innumerable):

Junk-Food Exec Appointed to Key USDA Slot

During her tenure with the Clinton Administration, Woteki co-wrote a paper on “The Administration’s Responsibility to the Consumer” in regards to GM seeds. The paper omits potential ecological and public-health issues regarding GM seeds, and concludes that “the government’s only responsibility to the public concerning the technology is to support it vigorously.”

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

It should have become clear when, back in the 1980s, some shithead tried to argue that “ketchup” should be classified as a “vegetable” for nutritional purposes that we’ve all been taken for suckers they can fleece with impunity.

The time for that impunity to end is coming.