Chicken Littles Under the Falling Sky

Doom springs eternal in the human breast

The airwaves are ringing with more ominous predictions of World War III, from both the state controlled mainstream media and the alternative press. Another world war seems like a pretty odd thing to be fantasizing about, and longing for, but that’s what’s happening. They aren’t warning against it; they are cheerleading for it.

For at least the past year, that overt cheerleading was directed towards Ukraine, where the world’s only penis-piano-playing “former” actor is head of state. #Stand With Ukraine was as popular in Congress as it was in Hollywood. The stars flocked to the supposed beleaguered war zone, to pay homage to the small but surely powerful Zelenskyy. Bono, the only rock star in the world who would rather attend Bilderberg meetings, somehow held a concert there. The logistics must have been a nightmare for the staffs of those involved. It was only by the grace of the God none of them believe in, that they didn’t perish in the fighting. Apparently, war zones are much safer than generally imagined.

But with the the world’s first terrorist attack by hand gliding, the focus has changed back to America’s most trusted ally. The one it has that “special relationship” with. The one that has garnered us the wrath of the entire Arab world. It’s probably fitting that the fear porn now emanates from the Middle East. After all, that’s where most people have thought the final battle would be fought- Armageddon and all that. Iran is the favorite whipping boy of our “free” press once again. Putin is yesterday’s fake news. Most high-profile American Jews are foaming at the mouth in anticipation. The Christian Zionists have doom boners over the prospect of the Antichrist arising, and solidly stand by Israel. It’s # Stand With Israel now.

It’s hard to reason with these Jews and born-againers both. The Jews have an intense loyalty to Israel, not to America. And the born-againers want war to happen, so it fulfills Biblical prophecy. I’ve spoken to enough of them to know that they don’t want cooler heads to prevail. They must have this war, so they can quote even more extensively from the Book of Revelation. I don’t know, it just seems unnatural, at least to me, to favor war over peace, because you interpret parts of the Bible to say that it will happen. Wouldn’t a benevolent God be pleased with us, if we showed the better angels of our nature (yeah, I still like that phrase of Lincoln’s) and achieved peace?

As we stand on the precipice of war, where we have been standing for well over a year at least, I want to provide at least one voice saying that it isn’t inevitable. And, in fact, the nonstop fear porn is reminiscent not only of the COVID psyop, but essentially standard operating procedure for our corrupt and incompetent leaders since well before I was born. Dire things are always about to happen, according to our “journalists” and the corrupt public officials they cover for. And nothing is more dire than a new world war. I’ve been guilty of this too, in a way. How long have I been saying that the system has to collapse? Some of us first started saying this in the 1980s. Which is about when the preppers (then called survivalists) became prominent.

I’m looking at a basement full of bottled water as I write this. If things don’t ever collapse, it’s going to be quite a chore getting rid of it. No one wants old bottled water. Unless you’re at real crisis level. Walking Dead status. Remember when we were going to run out of food? Was it two years ago? I’ve already forgotten. Most all the bigger podcasts in the alt media advertise and/or sell prepping equipment. Along with all those vitamins and supplements, of course. Just like the television networks sell Big Pharma products and interracial relationships. We’re all selling something. I have no advertisers for my “I Protest” podcast. Let me know if you have something to sell. As long as its not Viagra or Bud Light, we can work something out.

This is why I never make predictions. I have no idea what is going to happen, politically or culturally. I never foresaw my kids’ generation liking coffee and poker. As I’ve said many times, I would have bet every penny I have that the 2016 election would be rigged for Hillary Clinton, the Queen of Corruption. I would have picked every other Democratic Party presidential candidate to be selected over the rapidly diminishing Joe Biden. I certainly can’t tell what they have planned for 2024. Michelle Obama? Trump being president from a prison cell? Who knows? I don’t get invites to Bohemian Grove. But a lot of others in the alt world do make predictions. Which are almost always wrong. They just never mention that.

I used to rant and rave about how all the female “journalists” on television just happen to look like all the actresses. Don’t any average-looking females excel in journalism school, I asked. In my novel The Unreals, I had the characters make up lists of the most exclusive minority groups in the world, which was a tip of the hat to those Book of Lists series that I really enjoyed. I remember that, alongside Jewish janitors and Unsuccessful Offspring of the Successful, I listed Overweight Victoria’s Secret models. Well, fast forward to 2023, and Victoria’s Secret actually has overweight models. I obviously never saw that coming. I thought “pretty privilege” was about the greatest benefit anyone could enjoy. Now I’m starting to feel sorry for the hotties.

I don’t know why RFK, Jr. is running for president, or being allowed to run. Was he compromised first before being given permission? His sudden emergence as Israel’s most enthusiastic supporter this side of Ben Shapiro probably answers that question. At least he hasn’t urged the Israelis to “finish off” the Palestinians, as the lovely and demure Nikki Haley has. So that’s something. Maybe Biden will cancel the 2024 election. That one’s been around since at least the Clinton years. The alt media has said “this is the last election” after pretty much every election since then. Or the one where the current horrific president will declare martial law. Oddly, few seemed to correlate that with the very real lockdown of society that happened in 2020.

But then again, I’ve never been good at looking ahead, even though I’m never “in the moment.” They used to ask us, back in the ancient times of America 1.0, where we “saw ourselves” five years, or ten years, in the future. I never had a satisfactory answer for them. First, I hoped to still be alive and well. Then I’d usually mumble something about being a published author. I didn’t have many defined goals, outside of finding someone to love who loved me back, and eventually seeing my name in print. No one liked my answer. I was told I lacked ambition, which I guess I do. Conventional ambition, anyhow. Wanting your name in print is, I think, pretty ambitious.

In the 1960s, we had Jeane Dixon. She was given the special honor of being America’s most notable prophet. Kind of like a Poet Laurette for a society that has no poets. Anyway, Dixon was always wrong. Always. If you’d thrown a dart somewhere, you would have been more accurate than her. Every year, she saw Atlantis rising from the sea. And the UFO occupants were finally going to go public. The truth about the JFK assassination was finally going to be revealed. Lots of public figures were going to be assassinated who never were. One year, she predicted that Earth’s teenagers were going to be abducted by Martians. If that happened, I missed it.

There are professional psychics. They can supposedly solve crimes, and the police often use their services. Since the police also often frame the innocent and refuse to admit they were wrong, this means little to me. They’ll tell your future, and even potentially save your life by warning you against going somewhere, or doing something. For a fee, of course. Freedom isn’t free. Everybody’s selling something, as I said. They differ a bit from the palm readers, or the mediums who were widely popular in the nineteenth century before being generally discredited. Lincoln and his wife held seances in the White House. What with tyrannizing the public and trampling on the Constitution, it’s a wonder he had time for that.

From New Age mystics, to right-wingers going off the grid, lots of Americans think they see what’s coming down the pike. But you’ll have to pay for that knowledge. And no refunds. If they’re wrong, which they’ll almost certainly be, don’t mention it in front of their supporters. It’s not good for business. They can sense trends. You’d think that they’d be able to profit in some way from the ability to see into the future, other than asking you to pay them, that is. Has any psychic ever won the big lottery? Think what a psychic, who happened to be a fan of Huey Long, could do with hundreds of millions. But Huey Long fans never win the big lottery, either.

I think all of this is connected somehow to the lack of desire on the part of very many people, to work for peace. To demand it, and to strongly oppose war. So many just parrot the Bible saying “There will be wars, and rumors of wars,” as if that means we shouldn’t try to stop or even oppose them. I look at it as God giving me the intellectual capacity to realize how wrong war, and corruption, and injustice, and unfairness, is. Why should we accept them, or tolerate them, just because they have always existed? Shouldn’t we try to do something on our own, instead of waiting for God to sort it all out?

I know- I've said that there is no human answer for the level of corruption and injustice in the world today. The entire system is rotten to the core, and every level of power is run by those with no scruples or principles. But I can’t stop pleading, I guess. I have that bleeding heart that classical liberals used to be noted (and ridiculed) for. As Teddy Kennedy said about his brother Bobby in the fantastic eulogy he delivered, he “saw wrong and tried to right it.” That’s what I’m trying to do, in my own small way, with the modest platforms at my disposal. If I were in Congress, I’d be constantly introducing legislation that failed to pass. Just like Senator Huey Long did.

As Jack Nicholson’s character said to the big Indian in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, “Well, at least I tried. At least I did that.” The poet Alexander Pope wrote, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never is, but always to be blest.” I think it works that way for the doomsters, too. And there are a lot of doomsters in our world today. We could amend that poem to read, “The sky never falls, but is always about to.” We have gone downhill, by every measure, during the course of my lifetime. The only time I think we improved a bit is when Disco finally died at the end of the 1970s. The culture got better just because of that.

I’m as cynical as they come much of the time. Ask anyone who knows me. I used to read Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary every day. But I still maintained a streak of naive optimism, due to my fondness for fairy tales, and Frank Capra films, and the myth of JFK’s Camelot. I blanched, and still blanch at premonitions of disaster. Aren’t things bad enough without consistently inaccurate predictions? The only prediction I can make is that, whatever happens, it won’t be with our input, and it will result in things being worse for the mass of people. I would think that’s pessimistic enough without any asteroids, or solar flares, the Great Tribulation, or a literal end of the world scenario. Keep your faith, but don’t give up on the tiny ripples of hope.