The photo of the Chinese soldiers holding a rifle to the head of the female dissident is the same that I showed my colleagues back in 2009 when the company was on a quest to expand into mainland China. I took huge flack for it, but my point was that despite what our insipid Records Management Officer said admiringly of the Chinese records retention policy - " amazing how similar their policy is to US standards" - the CCP was only 5 decades from shooting people in the streets, and we shouldn't be so trusting.
It amazes me when you hear the comment "people are the same everywhere". There are important differences that should not be set aside because we all eat, sleep etc.
“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
This is what I quote to people when they think I’m insane for wanting what I believe is inevitable violent restructuring coming to the US to hurry up and get here.
An advantage we have over our Revolutionary ancestors is that we don’t all have to be warriors and providers. There are those of us, through training and experience, may serve best through kinetic efforts, and those of us, who through other training and experience, may serve best in non-kinetic, supporting roles.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, if you picked up your musket you had to put down your axe or plow. Today, that doesn’t have to be case.
What gives me some hope is that a broader section of society, and not just fighting age males, are able to materially contribute to a parallel way of doing things, and if/when things go kinetic, contribute towards the greater good of their like-minded allies.
There are 1000 “infantry rule number one”s, but one of my favorites is “as long as you’re still in the fight, always be working to improve your fighting position”.
Learn to shoot. Learn how to field strip and clean a weapon in the dark. Learn first aid. Put on a rucksack and stick a 40lb bag of cement in it and hike a mile then three then five and so on. Find a neighbor to do it with you. Start a neighborhood garden and share the experience of success and failure with the neighborhood children. Learn the basics of electrical and plumbing work. Tear apart your lawn mower or chain saw and rebuild it. Learn how to treat water and teach your kids as a science project. Learn how to make soap.
Most importantly, learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Whatever name you use - the man, the elites, the globalists, globohomo, whatever - they seek to make you a slave, and in particular a slave that is wholly dependent on its master and is just barely comfortable enough to not want to do anything to upset the system. Invest your time and resources and relationships in things and systems and people that enable you to not be a slave. If you wait until the wheels come off, it may or may not be too late, but it will absolutely be infinitely harder.
Thank you for bringing Thomas Paine’s pamphlet alive. It speaks to us today as it did so many years past and this needs to be seen by all of us who worry in these anxious times.
Sub "God is real" for the ATF thing in the sign and you'd have a real winner. The ATF thing is redundant with the state mafia thing and the infringement thing.
Thomas Paine is an American classic, but it's worth noting that he's been equally inspiring to firebrands on left and right almost from the beginning. One of the least impressive guests we ever had during my time at the Bill Moyers show was a spacey old hippie who'd written a couple of books about how Paine would have totally been on board with his Age of Aquarius politics.
How many of our cultural elites would recognize themselves as our modern Tories? And would standing before that mirror make a difference in attitude or would they agree without reservation?
Isn't this the fundamental value system of the elite that gives cover to their snobbery -- the cult of expertise? This is what drives people like Rachel Maddow and Renee DiResta and Fauci to lash out -- the refusal of the ruled to accept the decisions of their rulers, as if the value systems or methodologies were never in doubt, never to be questioned.
Paine was an interesting character. After inspiring the American Revolution, he became a supporter of the crazy left in the French Revolution and also rabidly anti-religious. That aside, "Common Sense" or "American Crisis" as you correctly title it was a classic and is more relevant today than ever. The first sentence of the main text is a perfect 'executive summary' of what our attitude towards govt. should be: "Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins."
"There is a Latin saying going back 2000 years: “per aspera ad astra" which translated means “through adversity to the stars,” or, "through hardship to the stars." So whenever an obstacle rises that seems to block the path forward, in reality the obstacle has an essential function. And that is, it forces me or it forces humanity to generate more — either more strength, more energy or more consciousness."
Eckhart Tolle
Shall we move through adversity to the stars, you and I?
“A thousand years hence perhaps in less, America may be what Europe is now. The innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favor, may sound like a romance and her inimitable virtues as if it had never been. The ruin of that liberty which thousands bled for or struggled to obtain may just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility, while the fashionable of the day, enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the fact.
“When we contemplate the fall of Empires and the extinction of the nations of the Ancient World, we see but little to excite our regret than the mouldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent museums, lofty pyramids and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship; but when the Empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than the crumbling brass and marble can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple of vast antiquity; here rose a babel of invisible height; or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here, Ah, painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of Freedom rose and fell.”
-Thomas Paine; 1794 in a letter to a friend while in Luxembourg prison
The photo of the Chinese soldiers holding a rifle to the head of the female dissident is the same that I showed my colleagues back in 2009 when the company was on a quest to expand into mainland China. I took huge flack for it, but my point was that despite what our insipid Records Management Officer said admiringly of the Chinese records retention policy - " amazing how similar their policy is to US standards" - the CCP was only 5 decades from shooting people in the streets, and we shouldn't be so trusting.
It amazes me when you hear the comment "people are the same everywhere". There are important differences that should not be set aside because we all eat, sleep etc.
What is the source and context of that photo? Do people really take such snapshots for their albums?
“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
This is what I quote to people when they think I’m insane for wanting what I believe is inevitable violent restructuring coming to the US to hurry up and get here.
Me too. But to read it sorta gave me the chills because it really reveals how precarious the situation is right now.
I'd probably still be on my recliner reading my books if it wasn't so plainly the case. It just our time in the barrel of history.
It's on us...and up to us. I pray it's in us.
An advantage we have over our Revolutionary ancestors is that we don’t all have to be warriors and providers. There are those of us, through training and experience, may serve best through kinetic efforts, and those of us, who through other training and experience, may serve best in non-kinetic, supporting roles.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, if you picked up your musket you had to put down your axe or plow. Today, that doesn’t have to be case.
What gives me some hope is that a broader section of society, and not just fighting age males, are able to materially contribute to a parallel way of doing things, and if/when things go kinetic, contribute towards the greater good of their like-minded allies.
Start today.
There are 1000 “infantry rule number one”s, but one of my favorites is “as long as you’re still in the fight, always be working to improve your fighting position”.
Learn to shoot. Learn how to field strip and clean a weapon in the dark. Learn first aid. Put on a rucksack and stick a 40lb bag of cement in it and hike a mile then three then five and so on. Find a neighbor to do it with you. Start a neighborhood garden and share the experience of success and failure with the neighborhood children. Learn the basics of electrical and plumbing work. Tear apart your lawn mower or chain saw and rebuild it. Learn how to treat water and teach your kids as a science project. Learn how to make soap.
Most importantly, learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Whatever name you use - the man, the elites, the globalists, globohomo, whatever - they seek to make you a slave, and in particular a slave that is wholly dependent on its master and is just barely comfortable enough to not want to do anything to upset the system. Invest your time and resources and relationships in things and systems and people that enable you to not be a slave. If you wait until the wheels come off, it may or may not be too late, but it will absolutely be infinitely harder.
When do we get that shit started?!
In 2024, Thomas Paine would be throttled on social media and tagged as a spreader of harmful malinformation.
That Kermit meme pic, oh my! Thankful I had just downed my last swig of coffee.
Thanks, Yuri!
Thank you for bringing Thomas Paine’s pamphlet alive. It speaks to us today as it did so many years past and this needs to be seen by all of us who worry in these anxious times.
Sub "God is real" for the ATF thing in the sign and you'd have a real winner. The ATF thing is redundant with the state mafia thing and the infringement thing.
Thomas Paine is an American classic, but it's worth noting that he's been equally inspiring to firebrands on left and right almost from the beginning. One of the least impressive guests we ever had during my time at the Bill Moyers show was a spacey old hippie who'd written a couple of books about how Paine would have totally been on board with his Age of Aquarius politics.
He 'evolved' over his lifetime. See my comment below.
Great one, again. Gotta find my copy of Common Sense and re read.
Excellent Yuri, your timing is perfect.
This post was made for you ;) Remember, remember…
Its not the fifth of November but I will. Blessings my friend.
How many of our cultural elites would recognize themselves as our modern Tories? And would standing before that mirror make a difference in attitude or would they agree without reservation?
Isn't this the fundamental value system of the elite that gives cover to their snobbery -- the cult of expertise? This is what drives people like Rachel Maddow and Renee DiResta and Fauci to lash out -- the refusal of the ruled to accept the decisions of their rulers, as if the value systems or methodologies were never in doubt, never to be questioned.
Epic! Thanks.
My thoughts exactly!
Paine was an interesting character. After inspiring the American Revolution, he became a supporter of the crazy left in the French Revolution and also rabidly anti-religious. That aside, "Common Sense" or "American Crisis" as you correctly title it was a classic and is more relevant today than ever. The first sentence of the main text is a perfect 'executive summary' of what our attitude towards govt. should be: "Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins."
"There is a Latin saying going back 2000 years: “per aspera ad astra" which translated means “through adversity to the stars,” or, "through hardship to the stars." So whenever an obstacle rises that seems to block the path forward, in reality the obstacle has an essential function. And that is, it forces me or it forces humanity to generate more — either more strength, more energy or more consciousness."
Eckhart Tolle
Shall we move through adversity to the stars, you and I?
“A thousand years hence perhaps in less, America may be what Europe is now. The innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favor, may sound like a romance and her inimitable virtues as if it had never been. The ruin of that liberty which thousands bled for or struggled to obtain may just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility, while the fashionable of the day, enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the fact.
“When we contemplate the fall of Empires and the extinction of the nations of the Ancient World, we see but little to excite our regret than the mouldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent museums, lofty pyramids and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship; but when the Empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than the crumbling brass and marble can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple of vast antiquity; here rose a babel of invisible height; or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here, Ah, painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of Freedom rose and fell.”
-Thomas Paine; 1794 in a letter to a friend while in Luxembourg prison
Great and pertinent subject for an essay! Well done!
https://wholeamericancatalog.substack.com/p/thomas-paine-the-pen-behind-the-american
Aah, my Sunday's meat and potatoes. Thanks Yuri.