(see note 1)
GRAND MASTER CORNELIUS SCHRECK, ILLUMINATUS PRIMUS: Well, I think we can begin at this point. Brother Sentinel, are we secure?
GRAND GUARDIAN HENRY JAMES BALOR, ILLUMINATUS PRIMUS: Grand Master, the doors are sealed, the guards are at their stations, and the interdimensional horrors from the Slime Pits of Blagoonah are sniffing around for eavesdroppers.
GM SCHRECK: It is well. Sister Warden, are all present qualified to be here?
GRAND WARDEN LOUISE CAUCHEMAR, ILLUMINATUS PRIMUS: If they aren’t, they’re about to wish they’d never been born. (Pause) Grand Master, the Howlers from the Abyss have tasted everyone’s blood samples and certify that all present are qualified to be here.
GM SCHRECK: It is well. Sister Secretary, I think our only item of business today is to introduce our newest member of the Grand Council of Five, fill him in on the details of our sinister plans, and answer any questions he may have.
GRAND SECRETARY HULDA BLUTMORD, ILLUMINATUS PRIMUS: That’s correct, Grand Master.
GM SCHRECK: Excellent. In that case I’d like to introduce you all to Peter van Duchten, our new Illuminatus Primus. Welcome to the Grand Council of Five, Brother van Duchten.
PETER VAN DUCHTEN, ILLUMINATUS PRIMUS: Thank you, Grand Master. This is really a great honor.
GM SCHRECK: It’s well earned, my boy. Your recent work as chief dirigent of the New York lodge in particular has been exemplary. Getting the city government to make exactly the decisions that drove it into bankruptcy and turned the city into a festering hellhole—that was very well handled, very well handled indeed. (See note 2)
VAN DUCHTEN: Thank you, Grand Master.
(Pause for handshakes)
GM SCHRECK: Very well. If you can all sit down we’ll proceed with the briefing. (Pause.) Louise, if you’d like to begin?
GW CAUCHEMAR: Of course. Since the founding of our order in 1776— (See note 3)
GG BALOR: Please! I insist on our traditional calendar. 5776 AM. (See note 4)
GW CAUCHEMAR: Of course. Since then, we’ve pursued Adam Weishaupt’s grand plan of spreading chaos, discord, and confusion throughout the world. Back in those early days our main schemes focused on overthrowing governments. The difficulty, of course, is that as soon as we overthrew one government, people just put another one in its place, and if we brought that one down it wouldn’t take long for a third to follow.
VAN DUCHTEN: Did anyone consider finding out how many times they would keep putting up new governments?
GG BALOR: Oh, yes. It was given a good solid test. Look into the history of 19th century French politics sometime. (See note 5)
GW CAUCHEMAR: So we began experimenting with trying to discredit governments through clever propaganda. That had mixed results at best, though we did have some entertaining successes. Finally, in 1927—
GG BALOR: Please—
GW CAUCHEMAR: —excuse me, 5927 AM. Our predecessors in the Council of Five, as I was saying, hit on the plan that has guided us ever since. Instead of discrediting and overthrowing governments, we get them to discredit and overthrow themselves.
GM SCHRECK: And not just governments. Every institution that can claim any kind of legitimacy in the eyes of the masses is ripe for the same strategy.
GW CAUCHEMAR: Exactly, Grand Master.
VAN DUCHTEN: I’m not sure I understand. How does that work?
GW CAUCHEMAR: It’s quite simple. Let me give you an example. One project that’s well under way already aims at getting physicians to keep changing their minds about what counts as a healthy diet.
GG BALOR: That’s low-hanging fruit. Wave a little money at most people in the medical industry and they’ll say whatever you want.
GW CAUCHEMAR: Granted, but it’s not enough to make them look corrupt. We also have to make them look stupid. So our agents in the medical industry are busy convincing people that saturated fats are bad for them and polyunsaturated fats are good. In a while, once the new habits are established, we’ll have them switch the two. We’ve got any number of similar projects under way to make official health advice spin around like a weathercock in a tornado. As those take off, watch the credibility of medical experts drop like a rock.
GG BALOR: And if anyone asks why the public should believe the latest claim when everyone knows that ten years from now the experts will just change their minds again, they’ll get a blank look followed by a patronizing lecture, which will make the experts look even more like fools.
GW CAUCHEMAR: And of course it won’t be limited to the medical industry. For our triumph to be achieved, we’ve got to get the whole scientific community to lose credibility in the eyes of the public. Think of all the climate scientists that are yelling about global cooling right now. In twenty years we’ll have them yelling just as loudly about global warming. Not only that, they’ll insist that they never predicted global cooling, even though there are plenty of books and newspaper articles still around to contradict them, to say nothing of the memories of everyone who’s paying attention to the issue now. (See note 6)
VAN DUCHTEN: I’m sure the Council of Five has worked this out in detail, but…well, I’m astonished that they’d fall for that.
GM SCHRECK: My boy, it’s the simplest thing in the world. Convince people that they’re the smartest ones in the room and know better than anyone else, and there’s literally no limit to the crass stupidities you can get them to believe.
GW CAUCHEMAR: That’s only one of scores of projects along the same lines. Fifty years from now, when an expert in a white coat gets up behind a podium, the first thought in the minds of his listeners will be, “Who’s paying him to spout this nonsense?”
GW BALOR: And the experts will be publishing plaintive opinion pieces wondering why nobody takes them seriously any more. It really is exquisite.
VAN DUCHTEN: Okay, I think I follow you. I assume the same thing will be going on in the political sphere.
GW CAUCHEMAR: Exactly. The main thrust of our plan there is to get each of the main parties to copy the policies of the other, while insisting loudly that they’re doing no such thing. In the US election in 1980—
GG BALOR: Please—
GW CAUCHEMAR: —5980 AM we’ll have the Republicans put a washed-up movie actor into the White House, who will pursue exactly the same policies as a New Deal Democrat. The next Democrat who gets into office will copy everything the Republicans are doing, and so on. Meanwhile we’ll ramp up the absurdity to levels never before seen. By the election in 6016 AM we’ve arranged things so that urban liberals who pride themselves on their enlightened attitudes will be backing a race-baiting neoconservative warmonger, while rock-ribbed Bible Belt conservatives will be cheering on an unspeakably vulgar divorcee and serial adulterer from New York City. (See note 7)
VAN DUCHTEN: That makes my head spin.
GM SCHRECK: Just wait and see who we have lined up after that. It’s going to be quite the entertaining spectacle.
GW CAUCHEMAR: Before long both parties will pursue most of the same policies, but the party out of power will denounce those policies in the most inflammatory language they can come up with, while the party in power enacts them. Once the party in power changes, of course, the party that was doing those things will start denouncing them, and the party that was denouncing them will start doing them. Every presidential election will be billed as the most important election of a lifetime, and then nothing significant will change once the votes are counted, except who’s denouncing whom. It’s all very elegant.
GG BALOR: And before long everyone outside the political class will assume as a matter of course that every time a politician opens his mouth, he’s lying.
GW CAUCHEMAR: Which will be true more often than not, anyway.
GG BALOR: Oh, granted.
VAN DUCHTEN: Okay. Okay, I think I get it. What’s the endgame?
GM SCHRECK: Ah, that’s the most delectable part of all. People will put up with absurdity for a good long time, but eventually they just can’t keep pretending. One fine day, when the political system is chockfull of liberals who won’t liberate and conservatives who have no notion how to conserve, when official pronouncements from qualified experts make less sense than a duck speaking pig Latin, some hapless fool will get up behind a podium to spout some abject idiocy or other, and people will start to laugh. They won’t be able to help themselves. Hysterical laughter will spread far and wide as the sheer absurdity of the entire system becomes impossible to ignore any longer. The whole charade will come crashing down, and with it, the sense of legitimacy and the social cohesion that allows a government to exist at all. Bwahahahaha!
GG BALOR, GS BLUTMORD, AND GW CAUCHEMAR: Bwahahahaha!
VAN DUCHTEN: Has—has this been tested?
GW CAUCHEMAR: Of course. We have a final test running right now in the Soviet Union, which is scheduled to reach its goal sometime in 1991. Russians being Russians, of course, they keep poker faces in public, but they’re already laughing themselves into hiccups over the absurdities of the Soviet system once they get behind closed doors and the vodka comes out. By 1991 there won’t be anybody in Soviet territory who can listen to the Politburo’s latest nonsense without giggling.
GM SCHRECK: And the Soviet project is simply a final test of a well-established method. The process we’re discussing, my boy, is what ended the Roman Empire in the West.
VAN DUCHTEN: Seriously?
GM SCHRECK: Sister Secretary, you’re our historian. Perhaps you’ll fill in the details.
GS BLUTMORD: Of course, Grand Master. Brother van Duchten, you know that the Western empire fell in 4476 AM, I trust? Good. For half a century before then, the Western emperors weren’t even located in Rome. They’d holed up in Ravenna, protected from barbarian warlords by the marshes around that city, and their effective authority only extended over a few dozen square miles of swampland. Meanwhile the official rhetoric still pretended that the emperor was the lord of the Western world and his legions would surely chase off the barbarians sometime soon.
Then—this was in 4475 AM—a ten-year-old boy was crowned emperor of the West. His sole qualification for the job was that he was the son of Attila the Hun’s Greek secretary, and somebody owed Daddy a favor. His name was Romulus Augustulus. That was all it took. Nobody in Ravenna, or anywhere else in the empire, could say “Romulus Augustulus, Emperor of the West” without thinking of the poor little boy stumbling around in the imperial regalia, and they started laughing and couldn’t stop. It didn’t take long before the remaining legionaries guarding Ravenna were laughing so hard that a barbarian chieftain named Odoacer walked his army right past them and seized the city. Odoacer laughed, too, and then he told the last Roman emperor of the West to run along and play. Which he did, by the way. (See note 8)
GM SCHRECK: And then the Western world descended into a thousand years of chaos!
GW CAUCHEMAR: Discord!
GG BALOR: And confusion!
GM SCHRECK, GG BALOR, GS BLUTMORD, AND GW CAUCHEMAR: Bwahahahaha!
VAN DUCHTEN: I imagine that there was some consternation and moral warptitude in there somewhere, too.
GM SCHRECK: Oh, granted, but we don’t often talk about the Greater Mysteries even here.
VAN DUCHTEN: Oh. Oh, sorry.
GM SCHRECK: Not a problem, my boy. We know you still have much to learn. I’ll have the Directorate of Strategy schedule a briefing for you tomorrow, and the High Priests of Blagoonah will prepare you a copy of the Tome of Unspeakable Dread as soon as they can get enough parchment made from the skins of beasts better left unnamed. Any further questions? No? Excellent. We all look forward to working with you. Brother Guardian, you can let the interdimensonal horrors know they’re off shift for the time being. Have someone throw them a few auto insurance salesmen. They’ve earned some chew toys.
*******
In other news, this month has five Wednesdays in it, and by longstanding tradition this means that the commentariat gets to nominate and vote on what I’ll write about for the fifth Wednesday post. What do you want to read about? The Bavarian Illuminati want to know. (See note 9)
*******
Note 1: This date works out to April 1, 1975 in the civil calendar. Draw your own conclusions.
Note 2: New York City was driven to the edge of default in 1975, after a long series of idiotic decisions by the municipal government. The price of the bailout included handing over control of the city budget to a committee of bankers and accepting drastic cuts in city services, bureaucracy, and welfare payouts. The city didn’t regain full control over its finances until 1985.
Note 3: The Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria, then as now better known as the Bavarian Illuminati, was founded by Ingolstadt University professor Adam Weishaupt and four of his grad students on May 1, 1776.
Note 4: Anno Mung. Mung is said to have been the most influential disciple of Gruad Grayface, who allegedly founded the tradition Weishaupt reformed and reorganized. Subtract 4000 from AM dates to get AD dates.
Note 5: Over the one hundred years that followed 1789, France was by turns a kingdom, a republic, a dictatorship, an empire, another kingdom, yet another kingdom, another republic, another empire, and yet another republic. I think that record still stands.
Note 6: Yes, they did, and yes, I know they’re still insisting that they didn’t. I’ve discussed this here.
Note 7: I don’t imagine anyone will quarrel with the Grand Master’s description of Donald Trump. Those who question his portrayal of Hillary Clinton are encouraged to consider, among many other examples, her 1996 characterization of African-American youth as “super predators,” and her repeated insistence that the US military should enforce a no-fly zone over Syria in the face of the Russian intervention there.
Note 8: I can’t vouch for the hysterical laughter, but the other events the Grand Secretary recounts can be found in any historical (or hysterical) work on the end of the Western empire.
Note 9: Bwahahahaha.
GM SCHRECK: It’s well earned, my boy. Your recent work as chief dirigent of the New York lodge in particular has been exemplary. Getting the city government to make exactly the decisions that drove it into bankruptcy and turned the city into a festering hellhole—that was very well handled, very well handled indeed. (See note 2)
Note 2: New York City was driven to the edge of default in 1975, after a long series of idiotic decisions by the municipal government. The price of the bailout included handing over control of the city budget to a committee of bankers and accepting drastic cuts in city services, bureaucracy, and welfare payouts. The city didn’t regain full control over its finances until 1985.
—–
Gosh this brings back memories. I remember the bailout of NYC which was handled by the Federal Reserve Board. It was a matter of financial survival since the city was holders of several bonds, etc.
Now, NYC today is probably going to go bankrupt since they lost their income base, and the public unions have forced very large pensions (in the 1980s), and well the current mayor, who is clueless about how money works. I wonder if there will be another bailout or will everyone let NYC hang in the wind.
Personally, I think that the people who are now running the city have no clue about money. Zippo. They seem to think if they close their eyes and wish hard enough, they will have the money to do what they want to do. No hard choices need to be made. Hmmmmmmm. I wonder will happen next.
If there is a conspiracy to provoke a good belly laugh, I’m all for it! 🙂
Worthy of Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, my friend. Very well done.
It’s great to see an April 1st fall on a Wednesday!
As a late reply to Northwinds… the reason the school wouldn’t let you in to re-take English composition is not because you’d be any kind of threat to the students. You’d be a threat to the teacher: a student who was eager and able to hold them accountable for the effectiveness of their teaching. What if that caught on with other students, in other courses! The horror…
I see the Illuminati have familiarized themselves with Robert’s Rules of Disorder!
For the fifth Wednesday I propose Jung’s archetypes and how Hitler is the Wotan archetype.
Oh, my! You have created a classic for the ages here, methinks. I love it!
And GM Schreck has uttered a profound truth when he said, “Convince people that they’re the smartest ones in the room and know better than anyone else, and there’s literally no limit to the crass stupidities you can get them to believe.”
Hi John. If you’re willing to do it, my vote for a 5th Wednesday topic would be a discussion of whether the Iran war could (or could not) be our “Twighlight’s Last Gleaming” moment. There was a bit of alluding to this in last week’s comments, so I suspect I’m not the only one who would be interested to hear your thoughts on what role this Iran war plays in the bigger picture of catabolic collapse.
P.S. – To be more specific, perhaps I should say within the context of US empire collapse, rather than catabolic collapse.
JMG’s
How is the illuminati’s plan for the state of California unfolding? Is it on track? or unfolding more quickly than anticipated?
Also, did the Seers of Bavaria also cleverly invent blue hair die and inflatable frog costumes ?
Fifth Wednesday: apologies to our international readers, but me the parochial American, I would like to have a discussion about the American Constitution, its’ provisions, what it did and does for us, and how it might need to be amended.
I hope you realize, Mr. Greer, that your April 1 joke is in serious violation of DEI correctness. I did not read one single non-Northern European name among your characters. Not historically accurate, you say? Like, who cares? History is like the nation state, obsolete. Why are those entities obsolete? Because John Jingleheimer Smith said so in the Alligator Times and no one challenged this obvious truth. So that is already established.
For the fifth Wednesday, how about an oldie but a goodie, a post on Robert Graves and his influence on the polytheistic revival. We should pay attention to what our poets have to say (and we’ve already heard much about Jung, Hesse and are continuing with Yeats).
Happy All Fool’s Day. Recommended reading: Alan Gordon’s “Thirteenth Night,” “The jester Leaps In,” and “An Antic Disposition.”
And for the topic of this post, “Tension, apprehension, and dissention have begun……”
And from the front lobby at Center Pointe (all “points” in Gainesville, FL are spelled with an ‘e”) a hugely fat inflated Easter Bunny waddling out the front door, followed by most of the Admin’s office……
The Grey Badger, whose cap and bells have vanished over many, many moves. Have fun!
neotunesdolphins, Not a fan of the NYC mayor–also don’t live there–but I will say he had a novel idea during a snowstorm last winter. He made a public proclamation that anyone who wanted to earn some walking around cash show up at certain designated spots to shovel snow for the day. You do all see what this means. No business got to have “the shoveling contract” (right wing grifting by passed) nor did any non-profit (left wing grifting) get to be gatekeeper. Money was spent, but so far as I could see, I was visiting in NYC, there was no off the top skimming.
P.S. After rolling on the floor and laughing my head off ….. The Illuminati meeting – that was a wonderful work of comic genius….. because if Mad magazine made this ripped-from-the-headlines stuff in its heyday, nobody could possibly believe it. “My tardis must be out of order…. need to do another hard reset….”
A perfect post for this day of April First.
All votes for fifth Wednesday topics have been duly written down in bat’s blood on the skins of nameless and unhallowed beasts.
Neptunesdolphins, I’m glad somebody else remembers the flustered cluck that was NYC in the 70s! I’m quite sure you’re right, btw, when you suggest that the city is in for a repeat of the experience. Like so many limousine socialists who have never had to stick to a budget or do without, the current mayor lacks the life experience that would teach him that catastrophic failure is always an option.
Scotlyn, bwahahahaha!
Franklin, thank you. Their influence isn’t hard to spot, I’m sure.
Lathechuck, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?
Justin, that’s Robert Anton Wilson’s Rules of Disorder, I’ll have you know. 😉
Robert, thank you. Sometimes satire is the only way to communicate truths…
Clay, I’m sure Grand Master Schreck rubbed his hands together and cackled when he thought about California. I’m not sure about the frog costumes; that may simply mean that the people who wear them are being possessed by the great god Kek. As for the blue hair dye, though, of course — that marks anybody who wears it as a sacrifice to Blagoonah, who notoriously devours his victims starting with the brain.
Patricia M, oh, they’re in trouble now! All such rabbit symbols invoke that archetypal American trickster god, Bugs Bunny, who will mess with them but good. (Glad you liked the piece.)
Hello JMG and commentariat:
Today is April 1, and today is also Wednesday. I know outside Spain (where we historically have another day in the year for pranks), this day is for humor. I guessed John wrote some joke or a prank, but I didn’t know he was going to dedicate a post to the Illuminati thing…
Well, I’m glad to have read it. Thanks to JMG notes, I’ve confirmed my suspicions that the text was from the ‘70s, though sometimes reading it, I’ve doubted wether these guys were talking about their future (since the ‘80s) or our present in this century. “History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes”.
I’m also glad to have finished reading and writing about very serious topics (during last Open Post), and begin this funny parodic conspiracy theory story, in which I think it was engaged R.A. Wilson himself.
There’s been a lot of ink spent (or maybe wasted) about the legendary Illuminati order since A. Weishaupt began it more than two centuries ago. It’s been a classical within the nutties and freaks who usually believe and spread conspiracy theories.
I first met the Illuminati “business” during the ‘90s when I read a local magazine about occultism, UFOs and another prodigies. I never thought it was a very real story to explain the whole recent History, but well, there’s been others who have thought History can be explained by some “scientific” historical laws which (of course) they know; I can forget a writer neither, who claimed modern History was driven by a “contratradition”. However, this writer had much less followers than the other men I’ve refered before him. So, if some too serious thinkers have played to find one only cause to recent History, why not the Illuminati to explain everything was/is happening? (please, note I’m being ironic now).
Finally, I’ve just understood “Cauchemar” is the French word for “nightmare”(indeed, they seem related according part of their letters, if I’m not wrong).
Very good!
V: And thus begins the Age of Chaos. Bwahahahaha
Perhaps the best answer for this utterly serious post is to give a report on a recent claim I heard on a podcast. A Chinese-Canadian history professor claimed, that The Freemasons were one of the hidden influential groups pushing evangelical Christians and the USA towards the goals of the Zionists to, trough hopeless imminent destruction of Israel, bring about the coming of the Jewish Messiah, who shall usher the Greater Israel state.
I kid you not, this was on Tucker Carson.
23. March, if I am correct, so not even an April fools.
You sir, being a mason, are one EVIL cookie 🙂 No wonder your evil laugh comes over so naturally. 😀
As to voting; I have no ideas, that do not include some variations on: “oh, what do you think of the war over there” “oh, what ever are we do”. So my intent is to lurk a bit and see what comes along. 🙂
Best regards,
V
(I do hope I was nimble enough to slip trough this week, before the Hammer of Ban comes down on the mentioning of a certain little state. Bwahahahaha 😉 )
Delightful parody fiction. Or is it?!?!!
For the 5th Wednesday, I would be interested in our complicated relationship with the Space Race and the new Lunar missions that are happening today and in the next few years.
The soundtrack for this “production” should be Mozart’s “Musical Joke.”
(it ends with a major dischord.)
Anonymous # 6:
A good idea…I agree. So my vote goes to Jung Archetypes, too.
——————————
Some days, I was having a talk with a friend, and we ended remembering and eventually debating about online conspiracy theorists. My friend pointed every conspiracy theorists and their followers nowadays are far right supporters (when not openly Fascists). I answered him near every conspiracy theories before Internet were followed by right wing people (for example, something written by supposed Zion wise men); but I didn’t know why. My friend said it may could be due to lack of culture of righters (opposite to the supposed higher culture within leftists). I wasn’t very convinced by his reasoning. Some days after that talk, I thought that the whole Marxist theory can be seen as a complex conspiracy theory. An example: In spite of depicting quite well some historical events, Marx idea of having discovered “History Laws” hasn’t been confirmed by real sciences: even worse, it’s been debunked as ideology/belief by authors like for example, C. Popper. And his forecasts about the future hasn’t ended in a better way. However, Marx supporters have went praising this theory as an scientific truth after its debunking until today, in spite of additional evidences of being contrafactual (for example, USSR collapse and China becoming a capitalist country). I think this attitude and behavior could be correlative (mirrors game) of the same thing within Far Right conspiracies nutties.
Iesou = 888, and there are two: Anti, Ante or No fish, Is fish aka Two Fish.
888 + 888 = 1776, one being Christos, the other being Chrestos. Red tongue, blue tongue.
White squares as July 4th 1776 + Black squares as May 1st 1776 = Novus Ordo Seclorum
1080 moon + 666 sun + 30 goad = 1776 and 1776 – 1913 = 137 the prime mover
1913 is a Book of Lies, false breaks where each “President” is blood related, except 1.
Apron Boys: Jim Poke 11, Grover Cleveland 22/24, Harry Trueman 33, Barry Soetero 44.
11 = 555 feet tall, 22/24 is Skidoo, 33 is a 33rd Two Headed Eagle, 44 is eating 9/11.
45 as Chinese Music is a sun, moon, eclipse sickness, a “coronavirus”.
47 as Windmill Words is “gets rid of” over and over, like a Trumpet of an end.
The Illuminatus Trigger of all proofs, as if a Heikel = https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G9c8dSmaYAE4nw9.jpg?name=orig
OMG,
THIS WAS AN APRILS FOOLS!
I loved this story, to this day it is one of my all time favorite stories! I once even voted to have a sequel. A story about how the survivors settled down, what challenges they faced, inwardly as well as outwardly.
OK, this is my vote: a Sequel to Atlantis wont sink experts agree. May the inspiration flow. 🙂
Hello JMG,
Thank you for your essay. Today is a great day to talk about conspiracies. 😂The illuninatti plan for the state of California is going on schedule.
For the 5th Wednesday, my vote is for Jungian archetypes.
Also funny… Last week, you wrote, “I considered becoming a botanist”. That gave me a chuckle. In Russian slang, “a botanist” (ботаник) is a person with autistic proclivities. 😉
Before Grand Master Schreck could put his most effective schemes in to use he and the Illuminati had to first run a pilot project on their most extravagant ideas. They wondered, where to test them out before moving on to the major cities.? They needed a place that proved that if they could do it there they could do it anywhere.
Ah Ha, it struck them like a thunderbolt. A modest size city in the pacific NW known for its well mannered population, down to earth economy , lack of corruption and sensible politics. If they could turn a place that puts its political efforts in to recycling, good energy politics, sensible public access laws and controlling urban sprawl then they could have their way with any locality they wanted. If the ideas worked in Portland then they could work anywhere.
Grand master Schreck rubbed his hands with glee as he thought of the success of his pet project. Today the city of Roses, tomorrow Miami.
I propose a topic, a short guide to prepare us for the current energy (and also political) shock; the consequences of the war in Iran are only just beginning to be felt and will take years to fully manifest.
Here is my Q-tip for the day:
https://imgur.com/a/PyDPlTc
Thanks for a delightful April Fool’s Day read, JMG! Now that I’ve enjoyed a peek behind the curtain, I can confidently go about my business, secure in the thoughts that nobody is actually in charge of history, and there is really nothing new under the sun.
OtterGirl
Fifth Wednesday: iirc you said that, like religions, whether conspiracy theories are literally true or not is the least interesting thing about them. I have been called a tin foil hatter in my time on the internet. Could you tackle conspiracy culture and history and whether it is going mainstream? It seems the Aquarian Age will be full of conspiracy theorists as we’re not all singing Kumbaya holding hands anymore.
The current conspiracy I believe in is that Netanyahu is no longer with us and the AI videos put out featuring him demonstrate that. Some people have noted that Trump never refers to him any more for some strange reason given their partnership in war. Incidentally, they kept Ariel Sharon on a ventilator for 8 years before his death was announced so it could be a long wait before I’m proven to be right.
In Scotland the leading Freemasons are nearly always upper class landowners. Why is Freemasonry so hierarchical and class based? Secondly, how do polytheists and non-theists become masons given the ‘Supreme Being’ requirement?
For the fifth Wednesday my vote is for the common ground between esoteric Buddhism and Western Occultism.
I for one am very reassured to see that world governments are being directed by competent people with a plan. Unfortunately my applications to the D.C. sub-lodge were rebuffed!
I would like to vote for Iran War/Twilight’s Last Gleaming comparisons, as well. An overconfident president initiates an attack on a middle eastern nation supported by China that he’s convinced will be a fait accompli in a few days (after firing and sidelining anyone willing to tell him no or explain what a bad idea it was), that rapidly develops into an expensive quagmire with no achievable military objectives and disrupts oil infrastructure for a decade at least. You have to admit some prescience on that one!
“my vote for a 5th Wednesday topic would be a discussion of whether the Iran war could (or could not) be our “Twighlight’s Last Gleaming” moment. There was a bit of alluding to this in last week’s comments, so I suspect I’m not the only one who would be interested to hear your thoughts on what role this Iran war plays in the bigger picture of catabolic collapse..”
After I read this:
https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran/
I was pretty horrified. He makes it very clear that neither side can afford to be the first one to back down. It could be very bad for us.
Haha! What’s sad is how believable it is. Alas, I think it was Terrance McKenna who pointed out that if anybody were really in control, the world’s intelligence agencies wouldn’t have to have their lights on in the middle of the night trying to figure out what was going on.
For the Fifth Wednesday post… I notice that April 29 will be very close to the 20th anniversary of your first post on The Archdruid Report, which was on May 3, 2026. Might I humbly vote for a retrospective on your blogging career these past two decades? Unless of course you plan to do something similar on May 6 instead.
P.S. Off-topic (but then I’m not entirely sure what counts as on-topic for this post) but… NASA’s Artemis II is launching today, sending a crew of astronauts to orbit the Moon, the closest humans have come in over half a century. IIRC the Changer story ends with him on the Moon. Seems like we’re setting up for a fairly literal fulfillment of that myth.
Mary Bennet @14: I’m still wondering how that plan got past the public services union…
Bugs Bunny takes on the admin’s office? It was over a minute before I could even speak, for laughing. But, Bugs, please spare Ashley at that office’s front desk. She does a lot of good for us and can answer just about any question and is a great help to the confused or in over our heads. The bosses, now…… have at it!
Oh, hey! Do a post on American archetypes!
Oh this was so delightful, thank you John for the smile and giggle. Coming from an acting background I thoroughly enjoyed reading out the dialogue. On a somber note it made me think of the long-lasting effects of propaganda: it creates a tired apathetic public, erodes trust until it becomes nonexistent, and conditions the individual to stop expecting truth altogether.
I’ll also put in a vote for your opinion on Iran, from whatever angle you choose.
Well done. Very much like a skit from the premiere of Saturday Night Live UK a couple weeks ago, where they bring Prince Andrew to MI-5 headquarter in 1997 right after Princess Dianna died where the present the Prince with a 29 year plan to rehabilitate Charles’ image by making Adrew look as bad as possible.
Robert M. # 7:
That phrase you’ve quoted remind me some people is stupid due to their lack of cleverness, but some others are stupid for being too smart (or pretending they’re smart enough). A classical historical: Stalin when he had his agreement with Hitler (German-Soviet Deal), thought he was smarter than Nazis really were: he was utterly wrong, like WW2 showed bitterly him and every Soviet people then. USSR eventually defeated Germany, but it paid a huge human price.
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Mary B. # 14:
I think even a stopped clock shows the right hour two times in a day. So I can see NYC mayor had a good pragmatic idea to implement it, at least from my European point of view. However, I’ve heard some not very good news about him in my local MSM, since he won last elections there. Well, I’d say (like a French writer whose name I can’t remember now wrote about Napoleon): “He did good things, he did bad things”. I think it’s a diplomatic phrase, but we can agree/disagree wether this or that politician good things overpass bad things, or his/her bad things are less than good things.
I remember a lurid TV advertisement (do I repeat myself there?) for a documentary about the incipient Ice Age that I saw in about 1977 or so. No receipts needed; I remember.
For most of my early and middle life, and even to an extent today, I generally accepted that if science had determined something to be true*, it probably was, which I suppose is pretty normal for someone who was born a couple years after the first moon landing.
* – my best understanding of the meaning of “true” in science is that it’s shorthand for “not falsified to date”, even for long uncontested things.
Actually, about that. The idea that the Soviets would have called nonsense if the US had been pulling shenanigans about that and not landed on the moon at all: that’s pretty solid, right? That’s a good enough reason by itself for a lay non-rocket-scientist to believe in the landings, right?
Anyway, I mostly believe science still, even though the question of who’s funding the whitecoats, as mentioned by GW CAUCHEMAR in the story, does occur to me. The first time I really felt a “you gotta be kidding me” about a science announcement was about the exoplanets. Not that I don’t think there are such; I believe science about how solar system formation works, so it follows that there would be exoplanets. But that we can locate them and learn details about them from here? Color me skeptical about that. The detection method sounds akin to starting at a streetlight at the far limit of your vision and counting the insects around it. And if I y’all’d bear with me while I extend my tortured analogy even further, the idea that we know details about these planets sound like saying we can not only count those insects but identify them by species.
Not that I think anyone profits materially from pretending knowledge that we don’t have about exoplanets (well, I guess if your job is “exoplanet finder”), but since we’re not going to be going anywhere but our still lovely if a little battered blue marble, providing some conveniently unverifiable information from our supposed ability to look out there in detail might provide some shoring up for the myth of progress.
I’m not insistent about this. It’s quite possible that if I dedicated some years into getting a science education and gained access to the process and saw how it works, I would see that the detection methods are sound and the data are real. From where I sit now though, I don’t really think that’s the way to bet. And I’d much rather spend that time playing my guitar.
JMG: I’d like to add one vote to blue sun’s idea about whether we’re looking at a scenario broadly similar to your story “Twlight’s Last Gleaming”, please.
For 5th Wednesday, I would like to either second Anonymous’ suggestion of “Jung’s archetypes……….” in addition to Hitler/Wotan I suggest a focus on archetypes in a failing empire (or failing empires throughout history).
A tour de force, JMG! I have a question related to your earlier post on the education of desire, or “magician states”. I actually think your satire above gives us some clue into how some of that magical thinking is concocted! In any case, I am curious about your contrast with dictatorships which use more brute forces. But, I wonder don’t all polities/leaders – irrespective of how we label them – have to use some form of propaganda or “spectacle” to maintain cooptation and acquiescence? I have always been stunned at how readily people in the US swallow elite and media propaganda, but always comforted myself that other societies must be just as gullible. Or am I wrong? Or some populations wiser and we are particularly guillible?
Here is another good April 1 joke: https://www.adaptiveseeds.com/product/collections-mixes/mixes/floor-sweepings-mix/
I highly recommend this company as the very model and pattern of a virtuous seed vendor. What I expecially appreciate is that they tell you where your seeds were grown.
In unrelated news, I have been assured by very credible observers (cough, Jeff Childers, cough) that the war in Iran is going wonderfully and perfectly and it is definitely part of a master plan to restore the American empire, and anyone who doubts so is a dirty, stupid panican.
As far as Fifth Friday goes, I assumed the Illuminati already know what my vote is (otherwise, what am I paying them for?), but just for redundancy, here’s my vote: Jack Vance.
I’m terribly disappointed. I was expecting a riotous satire on all fools day, but instead I read a plausible history of Western Civ. (BWAHAHAHA) IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!
I have no preference for a 5th Wednesday post. Whatever is chosen, it will be epic.
Hahahaha so funny!
Ok, here’s some really crazy stuff that I hope you’ll cover! The Congressional alien hearings, no joke! Danny Sheehan is an attorney who litigated Watergate, Pentagon Papers, Iran-contra scandal, is representing the whistle blowers who say alien tech is a real thing. Also, 5 scientists supposedly working on UFOs. are dead/missing in past 8 months, and Matt Gaetz said there is an alien breeding program on X, Chris Bledsdoe in 2012 made a statement he had a revelation that April 2026 there is going to be a public alien presence.
This follows the Project Blue Beam and Project Bluebook, that outlines the government using a fake alien invasion to destroy world religions and “unite humanity” under the One World Government, or whatever.
The only TRUTH we can be certain of is the world are run by psychopathic liars, topped with a whole lots of stupid and greed sprinkles.
There are TRILLIONS of dollars missing on black ops crap and embezzlement, it’s been 30 years since Dolly the sheep. They don’t seem to bother with ethics and morality, so if they roll out “aliens”, I think they are full of BS and have genetically manipulated and tortured some poor human like thing. I can easily see murder happening to cover this up after seeing what happened to the 2 Boeing whistle blowers. With Operation Papaerclip, the US government took in thousands of genuine Nazi psychos (not what the Woke calls every one who disagrees with them) and gave them jobs at NASA and MKUltra clinics and who knows what else.
So I’m just all agog to see what Illuminati comes up with next! I say stock up on your toilet paper and stay tuned!
PS I asked my Father in confession last week what the Orthodox churches take is on aliens and surprise, they’re demonic forces! I kind of want to go see an exorcism….
What do you think of aliens? There’s been thousands of reports according to French astrophysicist Jacques Valle.
Hmm. Not faulting your post any, because if I were in a better mood, I would have found it funny. But as I read it I recalled your post on cognitive decline as well as your book Not the Future We Ordered and the results of cognitive dissonance that you discussed in the book. The Order in this post is describing how they were dedicated to inducing cognitive dissonance in the population so they could take over. While the actual process hasn’t been in charge of the Order, the cognitive-dissonance-inducing process has gone on just as you described. And here we are, cognitive decline all around us, and it doesn’t look like it’ll get any better.
I’ll vote for a discussion of the connection of cognitive dissonance to cognitive decline for the Open Post.
Lathechuck 4
> a student who was eager and able to hold them accountable for the effectiveness of their teaching. What if that caught on with other students, in other courses! The horror…
👀🙄√ Yep. Thanks.
‼️I would surely have gotten a better education had I gone to a one-room schoolhouse (or three-room: add a bathroom and bookroom aka ’library‘)‼️Not a choice,— yet. Someone at such a modest schoolhouse would have certainly “noticed” that I couldn’t write worth sh_t🚽. I won’t be around for it but (decrepit), in 20-30 years, every neighborhood oughta have a three-room schoolhouse as an alternative, with its shoestring budget, like in the olden days. None of this $10million garbage. No highfalutin school buildings.
Major school-system problems existed when I was a kid (1957-1970) and, have only gotten worse. It is a trend downward. But we need not think that all is lost.
JMG
It is hard to believe I was ever 14. I used to wonder how old I would live to be. (Well, 73 or higher.) And JMG, I am indebted to your Archdruid blog, and this one, which have helped steer me “‘not’ off a cliff.”
I hope you, JMG, have had “a good latter part of last week.” Whoa, last week’s comments were incredibly informative and active. I think you are saying “Gimme a vacation‼️”
ALL OF LAST WEEK’S COMMENTERS
Thank you‼️all for your comments last week. I in fact do feel better for it. It is “commentariat-therapy.” This time last week, I was feeling like a slew of World War One canons had blasted me the previous month. Today, I have recovered to the degree I feel like I can walk past a rose🌹and appreciate its smell. Last week was my toilet-to-rose week.
I think this will be a quiet week for me. Nose-to-grindstone doing bookkeeping for the whole of 2025 for our LLC. (I am an errant bookkeeper. Bad bookkeeper.🤦🏼♀️)
💨🚽🌹🏫–>🏚️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Once again, all votes have been graven on plates of pure orichalcum by Deep Ones in the drowned ruins of lost Atlantis.
Chuaquin, yes, all the names have meanings like that. “Schreck” is German for “terror,” Balor is an evil god from Irish legend (the original of Tolkien’s Sauron), “Cauchemar” is French for “nightmare,” “Blutmord” is German for “bloody murder,” and “Duchten” is Dutch for “dread.” “Blagoonah,” on the other hand, is Old High Lemurian for “what’s the date today?” 😉
Vitranc, yep. We’re dangerously close to another round of witch hunts and mass murders, as people flail around to find someone to blame for the consequences of decades of bad decisions in which they themselves participated fully.
Phutatorius, I like that idea!
Chuaquin, exactly. Both sides have their own conspiracy theories; the only difference is that the conspiracy theories on the left have been socially acceptable for the last century or so, and even that’s fading out as antisemitism becomes widespread on the far left.
Eugene, er, no, Obama wasn’t a Mason. Trust me, we keep track. The last Freemason in the White House was Gerald Ford. (Joe Biden was made a Mason at sight by the grand master of a traditionally African-American jurisdiction after he stepped down, but there’s serious question as to the legitimacy of that action as the ancient landmarks strictly forbid initiating “an old man in his dotage.”) As for the rest, you can use gematria to prove that Bozo the Clown is the Antichrist, you know.
Vitranc, it would be a very different story, as that April Fool’s post was intended as a parody. Read the names “Tarc Omed” and “Nacil Buper” backwards and you may get a better idea of what I had in mind.
Inna, ha! Clearly I missed my calling.
Clay, bwahahahaha!
Justin, thanks for this.
OtterGirl, I considered writing a piece in which the Bavarian Illuminati hung their heads in despair, realizing that there was no way they could plunge the world into chaos, discord, and confusion more effectively than by stepping back and letting things just go the way they were naturally going.
Bridge, yes, I’ve heard that one. It reminds me rather forcefully of the “Paul is dead” business among Beatles fans back in the day. Still, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Tengu, Britain is a profoundly caste-ridden society, and Masonry got coopted by the upper classes early on. Elsewhere, it started off that way but has worked its way far down the social ladder — most Masons here in the US, for examples, are small businessmen, skilled laborers, and retirees. As for the requirement of believing in a Supreme Being, nontheists are strictly excluded from regular Freemasonry, but polytheists are not. The ancient landmarks don’t say that you have to believe in only one god, just that you have to be able to take oaths in the name of one who’s supreme. Nearly all polytheist faiths have that feature, which is why there are vast numbers of Hindu Freemasons and a fair number of Japanese Masons as well.
Sirustalcelion, you must have submitted the application incorrectly. You have to bury it in your backyard so the underground agents of the Illuminati can get it. 😉
Slithy, you’ll rarely hear me agree with Terence McKenna, but he got that one right. I plan on doing a retrospective on 20 years of blogging on my first May post, so I haven’t logged that one. As for the Artemis mission, I want to see if they can actually make it work; if they do, I’ll have some crow to eat.
Patricia M, oh, Ashley will be fine. Bugs will make a wisecrack, she’ll laugh, and he’ll cause her to sprout bunny ears and a fluffy white tail but otherwise leave her unharmed. The bosses, on the other hand, will be turned into Illudium Q-36 space modulators and shipped up to Marvin the Martian via Elon Musk’s next space launch.
Jane, good. It’s not propaganda alone that does that, though — any time a privileged caste of experts insist that they’re always right, even if they genuinely believe it, it has the same effect.
Bradley, that’s almost too convincing to be funny! Bwahahahaha.
Cynthia, that’s certainly one of many pieces of evidence that point in that direction. Myself, I’m fairly sure that the whole “we never went to the Moon” business is a Chinese psyop. Mao’s government insisted in 1968 that the Moon landings were fake, and since they have plans to go to the Moon themselves in the near future, it would make sense for them to manufacture a bogus case for faked Moon landings so that when they go, they can claim that they were the first ones there.
Anna, we’re more gullible than most because it pays us to be gullible. Remember that even for the poor, standards of living in the US are absurdly inflated compared to the rest of the world. If we were ever to have our standards of living drop to, let’s say, Eastern European levels, I think you’d find American gullibility would decline very fast indeed.
Mary, funny. Thank you.
Cliff, I read Childers regularly to find out what the most extreme MAGA true believers think. Since he’s a lawyer, he’s brilliant at arguing himself into believing whatever supports his side of the case. Mind you, he also has good data points now and then, but his main interest to me is that he’s the perfect counterpoint to the people on the other side of the spectrum who always insist that everything Trump does is both pure cackling villainy guaranteed to kill us all, and also unbelievably stupid and doomed to fail.
John, bwahahahaha!
Candy, if you appreciate Jacques Vallee — one of my favorite authors on the subject — you should certainly read his book Passport to Magonia, which makes a very strong case that “aliens” are just the latest version of what used to be called elves and goblins; they’ve always been here and they always will be. John Keel’s books on the same subject, especially The Mothman Prophecies, are also well worth reading. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the alien schtick gets deployed at some point by the US government; they’ve been using it since 1947 to cover up aerospace technology testing, after all.
SLClaire, nah, you missed two details. First of all, the Illuminati in this parodic story aren’t trying to take over, just to spread chaos, discord, and confusion. Second, they’re not causing cognitive dissonance. What they’re causing is far more threatening: a collapse of public trust in the cult of expertise that’s used to justify a decadent and dysfunctional system. The hysterical laughter they seek to bring about is a resolution of cognitive dissonance, as people say, “Okay, I get it — the experts really are as corrupt and clueless as I thought they were all along.”
Northwind, I wish I didn’t remember when I was 14 — it was a miserable time for me, though at least it was better than my childhood. As for a vacation, nah, I had one of those. I’m having fun now.
How I miss the 90’s.
This is so… comforting. It’s good to know that this was the plan all along. I’ve been terrified at the thought that this was a reoccurring self inflicted catastrophe.
Vitranc # 18:
Nothing new under the sun, though I think the conspiracy theory you told us has certain originality within its “family”.
Freemasons conspiracies have been used to denounce disliked political ideas since 200 years ago, methink. At least in my country, the most (in)famous conspiracy mixed Jews, Freemasons and Commies in happy friendship, to destroy Christian civilization. It was popular during last Spanish War and then during Franco dictatorship. Of course, some Jews can be Freemasons, but not every Freemason is a Jew. Oh, and there’s fact about Communism: both Lenin and Stalin disliked Freemasonry, because they thought its rites were too similar to their hated religions…
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Clay D. # 26:
I guess you wrote your comment in an ironical way…
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Bridge # 30:
I can answer you, about your theory on Netanyahu and Trump, with one of my favorite sayings: “Si non é vero é ben trovato”.
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Slithy T. # 34:
Maybe there’s nobody controlling 100% the world. Indeed, past historical events (like current events), according the most serious historians, seem to happen due to many causes, sometimes correlated, sometimes not.
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Bradley # 39:
Prince Andrew as a scapegoat to hide his brother Charles problems?(or the whole UK Monarchy problems). I think “Andrew fig leaf to cover Charles shame”, it isn’t impossible, though on the other hand I’ve got the impression that the British Crown has tried always to protect Andrews dirty secrets, until last events in UK; but who knows?
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(To be continued)
Great piece of literature.
Suggestion for the 5. Wednesday: How to live a happy life in an age of decline?
The question is more on attitude, mindset, inner life etc. (For the material side i could imagine: live frugal, boost your household economy, work for and on yourself)
illuminated greetings,
parttimedruid
A paraphrase of something attributed to C.S. Lewis. “In a healthy society the homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers are there to make home making happen effectively and well.” The bright parts of history are when ordinary folks ( the vast majority) live in peace in their homes with friends, community at large, family and people working to meet their needs all going on fairly well. We had a patch of that in the United States beginning after the Civil War with ups and downs and imperfections of course with a peak after WW2 and now that pleasantness is fading. My father age 20 in 1952 lived through that peak, raised a family with six children (I had a splendid childhood) and in his 80’s said he had lived through good decades that weren’t going to be repeated and felt sorry for his grandchildren and great grand children.. No thanks to you filthy Illuminati creeps!
Eugene 23
> where each “President” is blood related
I had heard of this “myth.” It had been making the rounds for decades in genealogical circles.
As an amateur genealogist (with 45 years experience), in my spare time, I wanted to find out for myself if this myth that US presidents were/are blood-related is true, or not. I did my own anecdotal study around 2018, spending many a day working on it.
I selected randomly twenty-five family trees of US Presidents (by then, many of the trees were online).
Except for Van Buren and Trump, the myth is indeed true. US Presidents, going back to the 1600s England, by way of the thirteen colonies, are indeed blood relatives.
I spent time verifying each generation of each of the 25. I was shocked. And I spot-checked almost all the rest. Grandma wanted to know.
Conclusion: Except for Van Buren and Trump, most all, if not all, US presidents are blood-related to each other, of England, from the thirteen original colonies, as were/are their wives, 3rd through 14th cousins of each other.
The entire lot of them are from the aristocrat-class,— are now privileged aristocrats,— deny they are aristocrats,— and will do just about ANYTHING to make the world think they are not privileged uppercrust aristocrats. Take any two presidents (seriously, any two), and I found a common ancestor between them tracing back to the 1600s somewhere in the thirteen colonies.
Trump is not related to any of the other presidents, being his people were latecomers. His lines come from Germany and Scotland, a couple generations ago. I REALLY like that Trump’s people are nouveau-riche, and not old-money. Trump is independent. Trump’s father was a self-made man. President Van Buren wasn’t related to any of the other presidents, but did come from the Dutch upperclass New York City, so technically, he was from the Dutch aristocracy.
In my informal genealogical study, I even included some famous names, like Stephenon Colbertus, who touts he came from a downtrodden Irish family. Not so. I blew that lie out of the water. Colbertus is as blue-blooded and old-money as any New England hoity-toity blue-blood tweed-dresser. His progenitors launched his career because long before he was born, they were millionaires and aristocrats. He is an f-ing liar. I know so.
💨💸🌳💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Re: Note 4.
This is interesting, I’ll have to look into it.
You know I still haven’t been able to read René Le Forestier’s magnum opus on the Bavarian Ones. It’s been almost 2 years but I’m the primary caretaker for a family elder and that time has been hectic…
I should hope Le Forestier’s book includes this type of “genealogy”, the roots of the system.
Hello –
GG Balor here. It appears in reviewing this transcript that I failed to chastise GM Cauchemar for mistakenly referring to the year 5991 AM in the, ahem, vernacular calendar re: the fall of the Soviet Union.. I must apologize to my fellow Illuminati for the oversight. I was too busy guffawing. 🙂
…For the Fifth Wednesday post, something about the nature of conflict on the higher planes (kind of following on on that post I read in the most recent Magic Monday) would be nice.
JMG, speaking of our aprils fools Illuminati working overtime to wreck the legitimacy of all our institutions. I have often wondered if there was some all powerful trickster behind the the curtain arranging the choice of who we are allowed to vote for in high political office. I guess they wanted to be sure the masses couldn’t accidentally vote in another JFK.
It has been a long bumpy downhill road from Thomas Jefferson to Kamala.
Note: Greek democracy lasted for 185 years before self-destructing. Let me see….. 2026 – 1776 = ?.
Per JMG: “Bridge, yes, I’ve heard that one. It reminds me rather forcefully of the “Paul is dead” business among Beatles fans back in the day. Still, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Have you been listening to “Hatikvah” played backwards, recently?
A little more details on note 5 above; it’s actually vastly more complex than the 7 political changes described by our gracious host. From May 1789 to September 1870, France suffers through 14 total overhauls of their constitution (note that the actual French Revolution runs from1789 to 1804):
Absolute Monarchy to May 1789
États généraux (noble/clergy/3rd estate assemblies); 1789
Assemblée Nationale (single parliament);1789
Monarchie Contitutionelle to 1792
Convention Nationale (republic 1.0) to 1795
Directoire (Soviet-style Committee dictatorship) to 1799
Consulat (Roman-style senate and triple consul dictatorship) to 1804
First Empire to 1815
First Restoration (back to Absolute Monarchy); 1815
100 days (back to 1st Empire); 1815
Second Restoration (back to Absolute Monarchy but with constant amendments and concessions to local assemblies) to 1830
Constitutional Monarchy to 1848
Second Republic (king-styled president + single parliament) to 1852
Second Empire to 1870
Third Republic (president and bi-cameral parliament) to 1940
After the 19th century France keeps experimenting with constitutional/political structures.
John, since this still is the same day, I can get away with saying, that indeed I was born yesterday ;-). That is why I took the name of Mu-Elortep very seriously and try to stay away from the human sacrifice he so forcefully demands. There was supposedly a rumored lost scroll containing the lost prophecies of Emor Fobulc. Rumor has it, that within its verses is contained the incantation to banish the Lord of Evil. But since I cannot find it, it must be, that the sinister FREEMASONS have suppressed it. Alas I have wondered these last decades (pardon me, hours, since indeed I was born yesterday 😉 ) desperate and lost.
Ok, seriously. I know the names. I knew it was a parody, even though I missed the April fools joke. But I found the story slotted very nicely with the legend of Atlantis the Theosophists tell and right about that time I read Dion Fortunes Sea Priestess and the story of Merlin and Morgan, when it is told how they arrived in the past to the new lands fascinated me. So yes, it would be a different story. But you would have at least one fascinated reader 😀
If nothing else consider this high praise for your parody. ahm bwahahahaha!
Oh yeah, I tried to come up with at least one president I was related to, and thank gods, I couldn’t find one.
I am descended from original colonists of the 1600s but very likely they were peasants🧙🏼♀️.
Some of them German: the category of German who fled their German homeland 1705 because of the brutality of multitudinous petty§ German bully-aristocrats who made those fleeing peasants into canon-fodder. German petty aristocrats —> German peasants = “shoot ‘em in the back.”
§ families that commanded little itty-bitty snatches of land, some not as big as a “county.”
💨🧙🏼♀️⛵️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
These days you have to add Islamic conspiracies to the list. It’s going to be a Judeo-Islamic-Marxist-Freemason conspiracy to “destroy Western civilization”.
Meanwhile the Jews are going to be talking about a Christian-Islamic-Marxist-Freemason conspiracy to destroy the Jews, and the Muslims are going to be talking about a Judeo-Christian-Marxist-Freemason conspiracy to destroy the Muslims, and the Marxists are going to be talking about a Judeo-Christian-Islamic-Freemason conspiracy, etc.
An idea for the fifth Wednesday. A discussion of what I call the Globalists or Atlanticists The European/North American generational power elite. We seem to have had a look see of them via the Epstein documents. I think to their frustration Russia and China are outside to them, as is Iran. I realize they are a varied group that don’t walk in lockstep and have divisions, a network with nodes. There is I think a strain of undercover spiritual skulduggery as part of it all, but not omnipresent with spirit archonic influences. There is a whole ecosystem of spirits up to stuff – good and bad IMO. I realize I have lined out in the above a mixed bag of topics. Been aware of this murky group since the 70’s.
All I can say is kek.
As for the 5th I’d suggest covering the topic of the occult as a taboo in history and academia.
The number of examples where scholars and historians outright deny reality in favor of covering up “embarrassing” history could fill a novel. But here are some of the more ridiculous examples. According to scholars of ancient Gnosticism there is an informal “black list” on the books of Pistis Sophia because they’re “too magical” and “condemn homosexuality” which contradicts the “consensus” on ancient Gnosticism. Also apparently saying the Knights Templar were anything but big standard Christians is no good either, apparently all those which depict the Gnostic characters Abraxas and Yaldabaoth were used because they “looked cool.”
It’s as if they’re desperate for it not to exist. Might be an interesting topic.
I’d like to learn more about those wars/conflicts in Heaven/higher planes. Since on this plane, even people who want nothing but be left alone and live in peace are being dragged into the wars of the so-called elites, I’d like to know if something similar will await you “over there,” too. That would be a really depressing prospect, but inquiring minds still want to know. If the material wouldn’t justify a whole post, maybe you can answer it here? Or is it off-topic? Is anything off-topic this time?
Again, everyone’s votes have been engraved on beechwood boards in baleful signs by cowled and cackling scribes whose robes conceal worse than shapeless forms.
Piper, would it be any better if it were a reoccurring catastrophe inflicted by sinister masterminds?
BeardTree, the zenith of empire always seems like a golden age for people in the imperial heartland who look back on that time after it’s passed.
Northwind, go back enough generations and we’re all related — and of course people in the upper classes very often have lots of descendants. (I recall that a quarter of the people in Ireland are descended from King Brian Boru.) I’ve long wanted to do a study that took 47 American conspiracy theorists at random and figured out how many of them were related; I suspect it would be a pretty fair number.
Thibault, Mung and Gruad Grayface were both invented out of whole cloth by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea in their mighty satire on conspiracy culture, Illuminatus!. No, you won’t find that sort of thing in Le Forestier’s book, as he’s a competent historian and knows that Weishaupt made up his system out of a mixture of Enlightenment rationalism and misunderstood classical history.
Brendhelm, yeah, I probably should have put that in, but I was too busy guffawing, too. 😉
Clay, er, JFK may not be your best choice. I’ve long thought that Seymour Hersh’s portrayal of him in The Dark Side of Camelot is much more true to life than the hagiographical literature that clustered around him once he was safely dead.
Patricia, true. Now look up a few other democracies…
Phutatorius, funny! I’ll have you know that I did listen to “Abbey Road” played backwards, back in the day.
Rashakor, thank you for this!
Vitranc, okay, good to hear. For years now I’ve considered writing a novel about the last days of Atlantis and the aftermath of its sinking. If I do, it’ll be less satirical than the April Fools post, though certain — ahem — parallels to the present will be in evidence.
Anon, you’ll be interested to know that among the Freemasons I’ve met, nobody’s yet talking about a Judeo-Christian-Islamic-Marxist plot!
Cynthia C. # 41:
Until the ‘80s, scientific consensus within climatologists was indeed that an Ice Age would come soon, in geological time terms. So it was normal a 1977 documentary showed that theory. Only a few scientists suspected CO2 sustained growth due to human industries could heat Earth atmosphere soon, I think since the ‘60s. It was only since the ‘90s when a new scientific consensus about Climate Change/Global Warming was achieved until now. Although I think this scientists agreement is based in some serious evidences, I find quite disappointing the lack of memory within today climatologists to remember the “next Ice Age” claims said/written before the ‘80s by scientists.
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Anna # 43:
I don’t think USA citizens are better or worse than another Western citizens to believe or reject their own country Spectacle (propaganda+advertisement). For example, you can find in Spain in a ramdom way people who think Putin and Trump are crazy (thanks to their blind belief in the usual MSM narratives), and people who are true dissenters from official speeches (though unfortunately they often fall in the conspiracy theories trap).
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Cliff # 45:
From my European point if view, I find very bizarre how the True Believers in Trump trust without any doubt in his “infallible” leader, with his perfect master plan to win Iran war (or even they believe he already won). It seems a messianic-like bias not very fit to be working in a democracy (ahem). One of the advantages of democracy is when people is able to correct and criticize their elected leaders for their possible mistakes.
However, in the anti-Trumpian side, his opponents make a mistake thinking Trumpian attacks against Iran will end in a sure USA defeat in a Dien Bien Phu battle way (by evident reasons, Iran can’t win in a “clean” way this war).
However, Iran could hurt USA civil and military structures in ME (indeed maybe has already begun to do it), so IMHO this mess could mess in a middle ground, within a grey area without big winners/losers (stalemate, to some extent).
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(To be continued)
Regarding JFK and Seymour Hersh: I do wonder if his “Dark Side” book was written as a hit piece, his means of “doing something for Israel.” Maybe as a way of atoning for his “The Samson Option,” in which JFK plays a not unimportant role. Yes, JFK had his issues, and then there were the sins of his father, Joseph, which I won’t go into. But some grudges last several generations. I’d recommend reading both books.
Northwind Grandma #55, JMG #68
And don’t forget all the work that’s been done on the blue-eyes gene: apparently it was a one-time mutation that happened somewhere around Moldova (a tiny country between Ukraine and Romania) thousands of years ago. So every single person on Earth with blue eyes are cousins!
I am the walrus.
Ewige Blumenkraft und ewige Schlangenkraft
For the fifth Wednesday, I second Tengu’s proposal for the common ground between esoteric Buddhism and Western Occultism. If I could, I would add in where the differences lay too. To be honest, I figure you would cover that in any case.
Candy D.# 47:
I hope to tell it to you avoiding to upset you, but I’m afraid some religious people (especially Conservatives ones) tend to throw into the “demonic” commonplace everything they don’t understand well and it doesn’t fit in their beliefs system as a “new” thing. It seems to me the “alien” topic is a case. I think it’s a lazy attitude in front of the unknown things.
I’d like to say UFO phenomenon, better than aliens. Identifying UFOs with hypertechnological civilizations from another planets seems to me an evident Faustian belief in god Progress, which hasn’t real evidences.
On the other hand, I think a small part of UFO phenomena isn’t due to human secret aircrafts or strange natural phenomena, but maybe due to not human beings (though they hadn’t to be aliens). They can be good, evil or neutral to human beings, methink.
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JMG # 50:
Very good and expressive names for the story characters! I grasped the Cauchemar meaning, but I don’t speak German nor Dutch, nor Lemurian.
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You mean the left has managed for more than a century to hide under its “fig leaf” of Academia philosophy and sciences its own conspiracy theories: I agree.
By the way, I see myself as a center-left man, but my friend with I discussed this topic tends to a harder leftism. Although he isn’t a far leftist, he doesn’t like very much old school Socialdemocracy, he’s slightly woke (not too much thanks God), and he seems to have read the whole Marx works. So if I tell him my ideas about some arrogant Marxist ideas as conspiracy theories, maybe our friendship would be soon in danger…
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In addition to the Freemasonry topic, I can say a lot of lies and half-truths have been told as part of conspiracy theories around Freemasons. However, it seems unavoidable that, when you hear some people meet periodically in a secret way, far from common average people, fake news begin to be told to the public.
On the other hand, like another conspiracy “families”, Freemasonry legends are very loosely based in a few distorted real facts. For example, Regular Freemasonry in Anglophone countries is different from Freemasons in Catholic culture European countries. Maybe following the French model, in countries like Spain, Freemasons usually have been anti-catholic (even anti-Christian). During last two centuries, the Catholic Church and Freemasonry have been ideological enemies. Indeed, Freemasons are the black beast of Rome, and vice versa. This context explains in part the “black legend” of Freemasonry here (possibly made up by Catholics).
It’s interesting to point how Freemasons seem to have thrived in Spain more liberal times (in the European sense) than in Conservative ones (friendly to Rome). It seems there’s some relation between Freemasons ideals here and classical liberal ideology (for example, free speech and separation between Church and State).
When Franco began last Civil
War, he started to prosecute Freemasons. His purpose was to make Spain became a Catholic State, and finally he succeed. So it isn’t a Fascist-like regime based partly in a far right Catholicism, prosecuted one of its black beasts.
There’s a spanish movie, called “Mientras dure la guerra”. Its main character’s an old and famous university teacher, who’s casually trapped in Franco’s side. One of his friends is a man who became a Protestant and a Freemason when he lived in the UK. Franco soldiers notice his situation, so they arrest him and kill him without a trial. This movie is based in real events from 1936.
Freemasonry was legalized again in last ‘70s, when current democracy began; however, it seems Freemasons haven’t thrived again like in previous liberal times. Freemasons have lived better times like organization. Ironically, Catholic Church in Spain has lived better times too. The two long time enemies look like tired and outdated in these today times.
Hey JMG
It’s nice to see you return to the short fiction that you used to post many years ago, especially when it is a homage to “Illuminatus!”.
On the subject of the 5th Wednesday post, along time ago there was the suggestion that you write about how much of western society has become more “feminine” in how it acts, but I think you may have already written about that already. Did you already write about that subject?
Great essay for April Fools Day JMG. Much to my wife’s consternation, I delight in conspiracy theories and oten discuss them. I think that they show the deep anxieties many people suffer from.
If only it were only so easy that we could blame all the problems of our world on a few malevolent people rather than on the sum total of our own bad choices.
Thanks so much
@ Cynthia Christie (#41)
Re: staring at a far-away street lamp and identifying the insects buzzing around it
A fine analogy. The business about exoplanets is very clever, and may very well be true. I.e. the conclusions drawn may be a more or less good fit with whatever actually exists and is going on around far-away stars. However, it is extremely unlikely that humanity would ever be able to verify those conclusions. They could just as easily be completely bonkers hallucinations, and we would never know the difference.
The same goes, by the way, for a lot of what is taken for scientific truth much closer to home. Much of what is treated as established scientific truth, in fact rests upon a very tall and shaky house of cards, built of questionable yet unverifiable assumptions.
re: today’s date. I don’t really like giving facebook and all that know my my actual date of birth, so it currently reads April 1, 1950. Thus far, no one seems to have noticed that I am very obviously not 76 years old.
It’s so funny because I just saw a YouTube video from a few years ago highlighting how a Democratic administration is much more likely to start a war with Iran than a MAGA administration.
“Before long both parties will pursue most of the same policies, but the party out of power will denounce those policies in the most inflammatory language they can come up with, while the party in power enacts them. Once the party in power changes, of course, the party that was doing those things will start denouncing them, and the party that was denouncing them will start doing them.”
It’s too true to be satire!
I love the character names!
Also – At my next meeting of the Green Wizards’ Benevolent and Protective Association, I will introduce the idea of replacing our clumsy system of photo IDs and ticketed events with cost-effective blood-tasting by Howlers from the Abyss.
Hi John Michael,
Bwahahahaha brother (whilst displaying the secret signs of those initiated unto the Grand Mothlan Society of former Mad Magazine readers)!
Very funny indeed. And I particularly enjoyed the line about declaring us to be ‘smart’, whilst doing otherwise. Way back in the day, the supposed left leaning politicians dismantled the manufacturing sector in this country by throwing them all under the bus. They actually used those ‘smart’ words way back in the day, and described us as ‘the clever country’. Didn’t seem all that smart to me.
Our Prime Minister gave a very rare address to the nation last night. Nothing much was said, as was to be expected from a spineless bureaucrat in leader’s clothing. The general message was along the lines of Douglas Adams famous dictate: “Don’t Panic!” Dunno about you, but having just heard the official plan to tackle a major crisis, I genuinely did begin to feel a touch of panic. It was hardly reassuring. Mark my words, the way has now been opened for: a leader.
I note that your biggest chief is about to pull out of NATO. Given the mischief in the far east of Europe, I’m hardly surprised by the threat. Only a fool would believe that a proper leader won’t cut the Gordian knot and force all to face themselves. There is something darkly humorous in that it takes an ex-reality television personality, to you know, display reality to those who prefer to look the other way. 🙂 Oh well… Strange days huh? And I very much enjoyed your cheeky story.
By the way, is it my imagination, or in the near to the top of the seal you displayed, it looks to me like a wide eyed small fluffy dog was caught in the act of weeing on the weighty tome and awaiting swift punishment? Only a bunch of intellectuals would include such imagery on their seal. 😉
Cheers
Chris
Beardtree 65
> Globalists or Atlanticists The European/North American generational power elite
Now that I am reminded, referencing my ‘amateur genealogist’ note of earlier today, this syndrome could be thought of as having a third dimension—of time, the timeframe being roughly year 1600 onwards. Up until about 1975, the power elites have been largely of Northern European ethnicity —> American. Since the mid-1970s, there have been non-European ethnicity players who have made scads of money, like the Sawdis and d’Isrulies. d’Isrulies and their cohorts have sucked Americans dry and pocketed the cash. (Two sentences is my limit; no more; I shan’t start it all up again.)
My point is that Northern European ethnicities have ruled the roost from years (rounding off) 1600 to 2000 AD. That whole thing appears caput. New ethnicities want a share of the profits; these new ethnicities have ‘shark-ized’🦈some good-sized chunks/hunks in the last fifty years. Fair is fair. It appears that those descended from the aristocratic (kleptocracy) original thirteen American colonist-bandits have lost their edge — they must labor considerably harder to ’have their ships not run aground.’ There are younger pirates🏴☠️in town, who are finding new ways to thieve. It is “Let’s Make a Deal,” or steal as much as one can.
💨🦈🏴☠️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Again, everyone’s votes have been marked down on the black sands of Carcosa, where the cloud waves break in the wind from Yhtill and thoughts lengthen into nightmare in the afternoon.
Phutatorius, perhaps, but when I looked for corroborating evidence I found it doubled, tripled, and in spades. John H. Davis’s The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster and James Spada’s Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept The Secrets are particularly revealing. I forget who the wag was who suggested that “Kennedy” is how you pronounce “Corleone” with an Irish accent, but the point’s valid: the Kennedys were an organized crime family, major players in the Boston mob who clawed their way into faux respectability mostly because Joseph P. Kennedy had the street smarts to get out of the stock market in 1929 before the crash and thus had plenty of money when everyone else was flat on their backs. JFK was smoother than his father but cut from the same cloth, and his brother’s fight against the Italian mob was more a turf war than anything else.
Justin, good heavens — Paul! Now we know where you’ve been hiding all these years, while Billy Shears was cutting all those records. 😉
Phil, (makes secret sign in response).
Chuaquin, I know; around 10,000 Freemasons were shot under Franco’s regime in Spain just for the “crime” of being Freemasons. I know brother Masons who have made pilgrimages to some of the mass graves.
J.L.Mc12, no, I haven’t written on that. I’ve added it to the list.
Raymond, I find them intriguing, but I always remember how many people have been slaughtered by conspiracy theorists. It’s a very, very high number.
Pygmycory, ha!
Dennis, oddly enough, I was thinking of that.
Rhydlyd, funny. I haven’t checked into the rates the Howlers charge these days.
Chris, oh my. That had me giggling. No, the critter perched atop the book is an owl, the symbol of Minerva. That’s how you can tell that the Bohemian Grove outfit here in the US is anti-Illuminati, since they burn a gigantic owl image in their rituals. As Arkon Daraul so famously put it, “The history of the world is the history of the warfare between secret societies.”
Maybe I’m way off base with what your intended meaning for 1975 is, but, was 1975 the year you have said we could have decided to do something productive about climate change?
JMG: There hadn’t yet been any moon landings in 1968. I made a brief attempt to find out what Mao’s government said about the Apollo program in that year, but I wasn’t able to find anything. Is it that they denied that a crewed mission orbited the moon and then came back? That was a thing that took place late in that year. Anyway, the idea that the whole moon landing denial thing is a Chinese psyop is all too credible to me. I think they would try to undermine westerners’ pride in western achievements just as a way to reduce our social cohesion and take us down a peg in general, regardless of any plans they may have to go to the moon themselves. But if it’s about getting western people to believe they were first, I think they’ve miscalculated. I would bet that a western moon landing denier’s response to a Chinese landing would be to either deny that too, or to reconsider their denial of the US landings.
As regards JFK it can be hard to accept that our heroes or good guys have feet of shale. Though Kennedy was that varying mixture of the good, bad, ugly, the beautiful, falsity, truth, wisdom, foolishness, weaknesses, absurdities, strengths common to humanity. Include myself in that category. A good friend. sees all that stuff in you and takes it all as part of the package. I have some good friends along those lines
If you will tolerate a potential digression, what roles did the space launches in 1960s and the space launch that happened this very day (hmmmm, a rocket launch on April Fools? There’s a joke in there somewhere….) play in the grand conspiracy we have seen?
JMG-
Oddly enough, I recently learned that one of my father’s sisters has traced our family line back to ol’ King Brian. I prefer to identify with my mother’s Finnish side of the family (XC-skis, Linux, and all that), but even the 1/4th of my ancestry goes back to that Irish king.
This was a really fun post.
My vote for the fifth Wednesday essay is a magical geography of the United States. What are the different energies of the different locales, how those affect the regional cultures, how best to use the different energies,, etc That sort of thing.
Thanks
I will second Brendhelm’s suggestion,”nature of conflict on the higher planes.”
How did we conceptualize stories like Pyderi’s march against Math ap Mathonwy? Were Yeats reports of the frustrators in ‘A Vision’ hinting at a wider ongoing discord between higher plane factions? Is A.I forming some kind of abomination on the astral plane?
@ JMG “As for the Artemis mission, I want to see if they can actually make it work; if they do, I’ll have some crow to eat.”
I suspect they will eventually get back to the Moon but only because it is becoming a geopolitical high ground. China is currently on schedule to have a manned moon landing in 2029-2030 with Chang’e 9. One can wonder what it would do to the image of the US as a world leader when someone else beats them to a moon return? Current schedule for the US is a landing in 2028 but no ship capable of this has been proven yet.
The US plan rely on Blue Origin and Space X. I suspect Blue Origin might be able to pull it off as they are going slow and steady, generally only show their hand once they are pretty sure it will work, but their pace is lower because of this. Space X with Starship is years behind schedule and way over budget, has yet to get it to orbit or demonstrate its orbital refueling capabilities which it vital to that thing landing on the moon. So far only one Starship hasn’t blow up or burnt up on re-entry and they need 18 successful back to back launches in a row to refuel in space, a massively over engineered concept. I suspect this is going to be the Achilles heel of the whole endeavour.
US is currently aiming for early 2028 landing so long as Blue Origin get it together.
As for the Moon base, I am not so optimistic that will happen. I suspect that will be pushed back year over year until it just drops off the schedule all together.
However, maybe the launch today is the closest we get to going back but only time will tell. Eventually, people will get tired of seeing ten of billions of dollars being burnt up on umm… vanity waving contests most phallic. 😉
My vote for the fifth Wednesday is a deeper dive into your premonition discussed a few months ago on Magic Monday about the imminent mass departure of some millions of souls from this earth to their true home on another plane.
So many people on that discussion thread chimed in with corroboration of one kind or another that it gave me goosebumps: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/340551.html?thread=56960839#cmt56960839
JMG,
Regarding the claims of the Moon landing being faked, I had no idea the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee was behind that! I assumed it grew up out of general post hippie cynicism in the mid 1970’s. I don’t doubt it though, the Chinese have always been good at psychological warfare. Where did you hear about the Chinese origin of that theory? I might have to write about it!
Cheers,
JZ
Chuaquin (#69): I find that disappointing as well. I think a great feature of science is that done correctly, it does indeed revise its conclusions in response to better information*. If trying to downplay or conceal the previous consensus about an oncoming Ice Age was meant to protect the reputation of science, it’s pretty dubious as to whether that worked as intended.
* – I don’t necessarily lose respect for public figures for “flip-flopping” , for the same reason.
Weilong (#78): Thank you, I’m glad you like my analogy. And yes, that’s about where I stand about exoplanets. I would add that it’s a pretty low stakes question. We are not going to Mars, never mind the exoplanets. Who cares if our information about them is real? There could be four Earths orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to us, and for all our ability to get there, that 4 light year distance might as well be 4 thousand light years, or 40,000. I’m a little curious about the second part of your comment. Not that it’s so hard to believe, but can you give an example or two of established scientific truth that rests on a tall, shaky house of cards? (Well said, by the way.) Again, it may well be so, but what would be an example of that?
JMG,
It seems to me that there are two very different kinds of conspiracy theories.
1) they type that we are discussing here that involve shadowy figures pulling the strings of power and history. Such as secret societies running the world while carrying out sacrifices. These are almost always grand and can almost never be proven or disproven.
2) Explanations of controversial events that are counter to that put forth by the main stream media and the government. These are mostly on a smaller and more immediate scale and in my experience are often true. Examples are:
A) Carlie Kirk was not shot by confused kid with an ancient rifle, but instead was carried out by
some type of professional.
B) World Trade Center 1, 2, and 7 did not collapse from fires caused by plane collisions but were
imploded by a shadowy unknown group.
C) Seth Rich was not killed by muggers who shot him twice in the back but did not touch his
cash or Rolex watch. He was iced because he leaked files from the Clinton Campaign.
I am wary of the former but all on board for the later.
So how does JMG convince an AI to consume this masterpiece? A few of these and the inference engine should barf its guts out..
As for the comparison of Iran with Twilight’s Last Gleaming the match doesn’t seem that close to me. On the other hand the spastic flinging of ordinance about the Gulf is wrecking a lot of long lead time hardware such as desalination systems, refineries, and LNG equipment. Given how precarious the whole system was already might this induce a sudden step down in complexity?
At least it’s spring so mass deaths from freezing won’t be happening in Europe for several months.
Once again, the interdimensional horrors from the Slime Pits of Blagoonah have recorded all votes.
Luke, nah, I just chose a date fifty-odd years in the past for literary effect.
Cynthia, sorry — that was a typo on my part. I meant to type 1969, of course.
BeardTree, freely granted. I tend to react against any attempt to pretend that anyone is all the way to one side or the other, and there’s a vast amount of JFK-worship out there.
JoeSchmoe, depends on which grand conspiracy you have in mind. There’s no shortage of them, you know!
Lathechuck, no surprises there. My father’s family is a Clan MacGregor sept that traces its lineage back to the Scots of Dalriada, who were Irishmen with wet feet, so doubtless ol’ Brian is back there in my genetics as well.
Ian, oh, granted, it’s all just an, er, rocket-measuring contest. Still, as a child of the space age who remembers exactly where he was when the TV announced that Neil Armstrong had set foot on the Moon, it was a grand sight to watch this evening.
John, that’s a speculation of mine based on a range of evidence. Call it a conspiracy theory if you like!
Clay, good. There’s a huge difference between secret societies and conspiracies, and most of today’s conspiracy culture revolves around confusing the two. Both exist, mind you, but secret societies aren’t involved in most conspiracies. I should do a post on that someday.
Siliconguy, those who are interested in poisoning data sets could do worse than to dump a collection of left- and right-wing conspiracy literature into the hopper!
Fascinating exposé, JMG! I can’t imagine the extreme dangers that you faced in obtaining this crucial record; it sure looks like you out-007’d James Bond. No doubt you wore your Druid robe and nemyss while engaging in elite-level espionage in dark alleys – nobody would have even batted an eye. Since I know that every word that you write is gospel truth, I am sure that it is purely coincidence that this remarkable record has been ‘put out there’ by you on April 1st (Good cover, perhaps? Plausible deniability?). The Conspiracy Theorists are vindicated once again!
As for the Tome of Unspeakable Dread – now that sounds like some pleasant bedtime reading! Do you happen to know if it is in any way related to the Necronomicon? Is a PDF version of it available somewhere on the *hideously dark web*?
Would like to see another post about the faith of progress, but if that has been written to completion I would second a post about the Iran War in “last gleaming” style
JMG (#98) re the typo: I actually thought it might be another April 1st thing and was prepared to say. “ok, ha ha, you got me.” Also, I’m finding it mildly entertaining the different ways you’re finding to refer to eldritch abominations counting the votes. The one about cackling scribes with worse than shapeless forms was particularly good. So metal!
We start with two parents and as we go back the number of ancestors double each generation. At the great, great, great, great grandparent level we have 64 which means with the 46 chromosomes a human has we are not genetically related to a good number of those 64. And depending on how the dice rolls in sperm and egg formation and combination could that lack of genetic relatedness could happen earlier. An exception to this loss is the preservation of the Y chromosome from father to son assuming no hanky panky on the part of the mother.
I once calculated that with the continued doubling of ancestors our pool of potential ancestors equals the population of the world during medieval times. So yes, you are descended from Egyptian pharaohs and other famous types and a whole bunch of lowlife and ordinary folk.
@102 Beardtree
That argument has been debunked by pointing out that inbreeding happens to varying degrees, so some of your ancestors occupy multiple positions in your family tree.
pygmycory (#79) – I just turned 76 this April Fools Day (no fool like an old fool…). I retrospect, I wish now I had told my well-meaning adult child, who set up a farcebook account* for me, to use a fake birthdate (say, October 31).
* I can’t remember the last time I looked at that platform. I didn’t like it then, even less so now. It wasn’t my idea, but was reluctantly persuaded to sign up. Sigh.
This is wonderful; my first reaction was to crack up in the carpark of a motorway service station where I had taken a break from a particularly difficult drive. Got some odd looks from passers by.
I had picked up an ebay find – a vintage foot operated fretsaw for my workshop and it was a long trip by my standards. Getting home was delayed because there were what seemed like an unusual number of accidents and “stranded” cars. I think a few people had put off refuelling because of the expense and a few had simply got the inevitable calculation wrong. Losing all power in the middle of a three lane motorway is at best going to close that lane down causing long tailbacks . At worst it’s lethal.
Assuming a near total conspiracy with human agents could only be near-perfect . Humans make mistakes. And humans can and do go off script.
The strategy remains the same but there are a lot of failures with the implementation of the trial runs. Like with covid. And various endless attempts at mark of the beast.
I remember listening to a sermon from the 1970s and even back then they were doing their very best to fulfill the villain role of the Christian Cosmology as we discussed before.
Human determination may be endless. But so is fallibility.
Also they are now trying with the Palantir and other Global surveillance attempts right now like with Digital ID for the sake of protecting children so as to eliminate our Anonymity.
But the long descent will keep putting grains of sand in the gears of that implementation. If they don’t manage to pull off Geothermal and Nuclear power.
I forgot to cast my vote for 5th Wednesday topic.
The importance of the man who didn’t merely drive to the jazz club, but flew there on a space ship – Sun Ra!
I vote for “a post on Robert Graves and his influence on the polytheistic revival.”
@BeardTree (#102):
Actually it’s not always true that the number of one’s ancestors doubles in each generation. My father’s parents were first cousins: their mothers were sisters. So I don’t actually have as many as 16 great-great grandparents, but only 14. And the further back one goes, the more likely it becomes that the number of one’s ancestors is less that the theoretical number. If you trace your ancestry far enough back, to an era when most people were living and marrying within relatively small communities, the number of your actual ancestors may be much, much less than the theoretical maximum. Ain’t genealogy fun?
Nortwind Grandma # 55:
Well, in a wide sense, a lot of people from the same country “have the same blood”, because in a loose way, they’re far family, and yes, it can be tested by genealogy. Especially within high class people, everybody is far family in last term, because they usually prefer to marry between themselves. It’s also a known fact that European Royal Families, after having been married each other during centuries, are literally everybody cousins and uncles/aunts, so a wide “European family”.
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Rashakor # 61:
Indeed, I think France today politics is living its 5th Republic. Its current political frame was made by De Gaulle after WW2. Current French Republic is a middle ground between a Presidentialist Republic (whose President has more power, like POTUS), and a Parlamentarian one (President with only symbolic power, like in Italia). So today French President has some powers, but less than the USA leader.
Spain has lived a complex and changing political life during last centuries, but we only had two Republics, now we live in a parlamentarian Monarchy (I think we had our third Monarchy return in two centuries when Franco died).
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Anonymous # 64:
Conspiracies within Islamic world are part of its Victimist attitude. Muslim countries problems can be explained directly by European colonial past, and partly by the own Muslim world own self inflicted problems (cultural and religious refusal of free speech, for example-cough-).
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JMG # 68:
JFK story has been idealized by Americans and even outside the USA, I agree. For example, some people think he never allowed the Vietnam war beginning (so the bad guy was then LBJ President), though it’s known he ordered to send first “military advisers” to South Vietnam during his Presidency last times (ahem).
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Weilong # 78:
Yes, some “scientific truths” are really brittle. If Popper falsation system was applied to its last consequences to those “facts”, it would be a shock for True Believers in Science. But of course, it isn’t tried seriously…
On the other hand, some scientists claims can’t be tested in a lab: for example, the supposed origin of Universe, the future effects of climate change or the Nuclear Winter after an hypothetical WW3. I’m not saying these events cannot be thought nor predicted in an indirect way, but pure lab testing is evidently impossible for them.
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(To be continued)
Hi everyone,
For 5th Wednesday, I’d like to hear about the relationship and interactions between language (and in particular, the languages we speak) and the way we think and perceive the world. In other words, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
To be serious for a moment, one element of discord that I don’t think anyone has picked up on is the media’s focus on who’s winning and who’s losing in the battle of policies.
Who’s winning in the Iranian war? The Iranians and Americans have different definitions of what it means to win, and both sides will press on grimly until one or the other clearly prevails.
Guys, stop. This is like a marriage where the husband and wife have differing ideas of what the marriage should look like, the allocation of duties and responsibilities, etc., and neither side will give an inch. The marriage becomes a war of attrition. As a child I lived in such a marriage for 12 years and it scarred me for life. I prefer to remain single rather than risk ending up like my parents.
Nations are like people in a marriage. They share the same ball of rock. They can’t get away from each other. An insistence that their view shall prevail with no compromises is going to make them, and everyone else, miserable. As Sun Tzu allegedly said, “An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes.” If he will burn his own planet to the ground he is even more evil.
Dennis # 80:
It seems Democrats are warmongers like Republicans against their own black beasts.
Democrat Presidency under Biden mandate saw the beginning of Russo-Ukrainian war. Of course, Putin invaded Ukraine due to his own agenda (in the short form, he maybe thought NATO was weakened so he attacked Ukraine), but there’s an elephant in the room that nobody under current Narrative wants to remember: Kiev regime provoked Russians before the invasion pretending it was going to get out the non nuke proliferation deal (so he could have nuke missiles again pointing Moscow). In addition to this, military support to Ukraine government (after the “color revolution” or civilian coup d’état in 2014) was made by Biden govt, like they did previous USA leaders…
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JMG # 84:
In addition to the Kennedy family fondness to dirty businesses, I read somewhere JFK was helped by Italoamerican Mafia to reach the White House, but then Mafiosi thought he had betrayed them (quid pro quo broken), so it could be Mafia had helped in his killing in Dallas. Is it true?(or at least possible).
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Yes, Franco National-Catholic regime prosecuted Freemasons in a ruthless and cruel way, between another black beasts he hated. I knew thousands of Freemasons were killed without a trial or after a farcical trial (where mere suspicion replaced hard evidences), but I didn’t know exactly how many Freemasons were killed during the Civil War and the dictatorship.
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Cynthia # 95:
In an ideal world, scientific method needs to be revised strictly to show scientists claims are real hard facts. In real world, this checking is made…not always, methink. Science is under general Spectacle too, and scientists are human beings too, with their own ideological biases (for example).
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Clay D. # 96:
I think even the more bizarre conspiracy theories supported by the usual nutties have to some extent a loose real factual base, which become in a legend or an irrational narrative. There are levels within conspiracies contact with real facts or events; like the examples you’ve written, some conspiracies seem more believable than another ones because they have more probable evidences.
On the other hand, secret societies seem a good place for thinking and trying conspiracies, but I think those groups can do another activities. Their main hobby could be different of conspiring. In addition of this, there’s a lot of conspiracies that seem to have been made by economical or political public or open groups, not by secret groups.
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Beardtree # 102:
Indeed, I could say every human being living now in Earth in a very long way, comes from Adam and Eve, at least in a symbolic or metaphorical sense, so everybody are within a very wide family to some extent.
@JMG #68
You answered my questions 🙂
Thank you very much.
More about Freemason legends:
It’s said that actual King Charles of Great Britain, when he was only the Prince (well, he was that during a long time), rejected to become the Honorific and Symbolic Great Master of British Freemasonry, due to unknown motives.
It seems every Kings and Queens in UK since a heck of time ago have this honor, in addition to his role as Anglican Church Head.
This happened supposedly during early ‘90s. Then, casually, more and more scandals and dirty stories about Prince Charles began to appear in British MSM (one of them the real decline in his relationship with Diana). It’s said there could be a relation between his refusal to be Freemasons Chief and these troubles. “Si non é vero…”. However, according some people, due to his refusal to be Freemasons boss, Charles would never be a King (cough), which has become counterfactual now…
Another conspiracy theory around Charles of England is the very famous story about he had ordered to kill Diana and Al Fayed in a fake accident in Paris. Of course, believers in this story were usually Diana fans. During a time, Charles seemed to be scared after having noticed that story against him. He even feared a Diana hooligan attempted to kill him in public (in the movie about “The Queen” Elizabeth II Charles in a scene is afraid of a sudden noise he seems to hear first like a shoot).
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Conspiracy theories near always are based loosely in real events or groups. For example, Bilderberg Club exists in real world, and it joins a few very rich and aristocratic people, for example former Queen of Spain (Sofia de Habsburgo) and members of the Dutch Royal Family. Well, it’s always amusing to see how highest within the high class people like to spend their spare time. However, in spite of current Bilderbergers conspiracies “family”, I’ve got my doubts about this fake secret group real power. Maybe real conspiracies happen in a more opaque and secret context (like economical lobbies outside MSM radar).
Hilary Clinton’s “1996 characterization of African-American youth as “super predators,” “.
Huh? What? That’s not what I hear her say in the video. “Kids in gangs” is what she said. Not quite the same.
@ Clay Dennis #96
Thank you for this fine distinction. 🙂
There is indeed a difference between:
1) Positively explaining every problem in reference to shadowy figures – whose plans unaccountably ALWAYS come to fruition! Unlike the plans of anyone else.
2) Negatively doubting official explanations for any given event, when such explanations do not account for whatever is publicly known about it.
I often think that the former type of “conspiracy theory” is often put out there as a way to muddy waters, when people cannot be satisfied with official explanations, to discourage people from getting associated with those other mad people who think the lizards are in charge of everything. Tolerably often it works, too.
And this last is where it is up to us. If an official explanation does not satisfy it, we should be able to question it, without having to come up with our own explanation – if all it can rest on is guesswork and unfounded assumptions.
It is enough, or should be enough, to simply say – that is not making sense to me, and so I don’t believe it. I can have room in my mind for knowing that someone is telling porkies, and that I may never know WHY, because whoever it is, and whatever they are doing, they are doing it a long way away from my living room, and (unaccountably) without ever troubling to consult with me about it. 😉
@ Beardtree
“At the great, great, great, great grandparent level we have 64 which means with the 46 chromosomes a human has we are not genetically related to a good number of those 64.”
There are two assumptions here that are not entirely well founded.
1) that relatedness is inherited on a “whole chromosome” basis. (There are complex dances that happen when gametes are produced, which mix up all of the ancestral genes that the gamete holder carries, from whatever line of ancestry.)
2) That the *potential* to have 64 separate individuals as great great great grandparents is the same as the *actual* number of individuals filling that role. In my family we have records going back to one individual who arrived in what is now New England in 1640. According to those records, I can trace eight separate lines that connect me to that individual, through different people, one involving 11 steps, 5 involving 12 steps, and 2 involving 13 steps. In other words, when second and third cousins begin to marry, that reduces the actual number of separate individuals that you have in each ancestral generation. (The closest relatedness I found among the marriages involved in any of my direct lines, were an uncle and a niece.)
I like the suggestion of a magical map of the United States, and would really like to see one..
It’s interesting that a lot of conspiracies and cover-ups exist simply to hide the fact that those in high places -political, scientific, etc – have feet of clay, the existence of which should be no surprise to anybody. Exposing those is how the tabloids stay in business. We’ve had eras when flamboyant greed, overconsumption, and vulgarity were the order of the day before; think of the Gilded Age, and reforming ladies clutching their pearls and crusading against the ordinary vices of ordinary people had their heyday at its peak. However, all this does make for juicy reading and puts money in the pockets of the media. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
And once more, the weather people predict some rain to break Florida’s drought, and once more, I’ll believe it when I see it, and earnestly hope so.
This may be off-topic, but, as another commenter said, it is difficult to know what the topic is.
We live on the eastern flank of a north south flowing valley. At this time of year it is not unusual to spot flocks of geese flying in a northerly direction. What IS unusual, though, happened this morning. We normally see these flights on the other side (the western flank) of the valley, and need field glasses (binoculars) to see them properly. This morning a large, somewhat raggedy, flight went directly over our heads, not more than 50 meters or so above us. We could see each bird very clearly. About 20 minutes later an even more perfectly formed, but smaller, V-shaped flight when over us, even lower in altitude. Their calls were very loud, and the feeling of thrill was something else. It was a wonderful sight.
My question is, do you, or anyone in the commentariat, have a good link to information about this type of sighting in symbolic terms? Thank you!
I was wondering when someone would bring up the Bohemian Grove… and since conspiracy is part of the topic this week, for those interested, here is a radio show I did back in the oughts about the Bohemian Grove. I employed a lot of detournement of audio samples from across the conspiranoid internet, and my wife and I did a bit of a radio play for it… it’s called Bohemian Groove, and I put the first hour of it up here as a kind “radio comedy album” for those of you who remember what those were. (All hail the Firesign Theater).
https://sothismedias.bandcamp.com/album/bohemian-groove-part-1
Also, the second part on the history of Route 128 MA is up this week… focusing on the work of Benton MacKaye, Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein and roads not taken…
https://www.sothismedias.com/home/the-new-explorations-of-a-geotechnician
https://justinpatrickmoore.substack.com/p/the-new-explorations-of-a-geotechnician
Thank you for the space to share my work.
Now that we have all survived comedic rapture of the International Day of Tomfoolery and from thence returned to our regularly scheduled consumption of propaganda, I would like in all seriousness to thank you, John, for this brief but welcome humourous insight into the workings of the Deep State.
As for the fifth Wednesday post, I would appreciate your thoughts on the Amelia phenomenon and what effect, if any, it may be having on European politics.
Funny, and on a more serious level it’s useful to step back sometimes and think about how absurd our time would look from the perspective on 1975, as in the bit about the 2016 (ahem, 6016) election. I have to admit my favorite part of this is the effort you put into the vote tallying notes, though. Delightful stuff. Speaking of which, I’d like to add another vote for “common ground between esoteric Buddhism and Western occultism”.
I think the cover of Sgt. Peppers is actually a photograph of members of the Illuminati. I mean Aleister Crowley is on there, and he is the father of Barbara Bush, right? Also, Stockhausen, who paid tribute to the star Sirius, one of the stellar influences in the global Illuminati underground. Marilyn Monroe was on there, and she was assassinated by counter-Illuminati in the JFK administration. Bob Dylan was part of the Illuminati plan to ruin the American folk revival started by OTO member Harry Smith with nasally vocals, but that particular plan did not work. Marlon Brando was also a member of the Illuminated ones. His later work in exposing the murder of Marilyn Monroe as part of the counter illuminati plan was just some of his work. He also wanted to expose the CIA and their own counter operatives by making a film about the Iran-Contra scandal, however another group who was controlling the puppet strings of Oliver North made North start his own company and by the rights to the film. Brando’s role in the film The Formula is further proof of Illuminati connection. Meanwhile, other Sgt. Pepper luminaries continue to Illuminate Beatles fans down a trajectory of musical mind control. For instance, boxer Charles L. “Sonny” Liston, aka The Big Bear, aka The Night Train, is said by some researchers to have delivered the KO punch frequencies used as subliminal sounds on the album that really punch the lyrics even deeper into the recesses of listeners minds. Several gurus featured on the cover have known Illuminati connections, and were part of the program to entice the youthful minds of the flower generation away from Christianity and towards the religions of the East… all part of known Illuminati plots.
Meanwhile the lyrics to the song “Fixing a Hole” are a clear recipe and secret cipher spell known to other Illuminati members. Singing along with the song fills the gaps in the mind where those on the other side of the 6D chess game try to get their fingers into your mind.
“A Day in the Life” is actually just about the every day activities of illuminati members when they aren’t making plans for world domination.
It is all coming together now…
https://images7.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED569/607eef223faa5.jpeg
Several things:
About NYC, yeah I was in the room calling banks……. . Not sure this time, since 2008, seems to have shaken the banks and afterwards is a tap dance between woke and MAGA. Bankers know where the lines are and how to balance on them. (A banking joke.)
Conspiracies: I had to fill FOIA requests for the Trilateralists, and all those since everyone was convinced that Federal Reserve Board was conspiracy central for the money cabals. I ended up with a boiler plate response since the questioners asked the same things over and over.
MAGA extremes: I watch Steve Bannon’s War Room to get the full flavor of their hysteria. Islam, immigrants, and Democrats who hate America. O and the evil Chinese.
Fifth Wednesday:
I noted the paradigm change going on. In Virginia redistricting fight, it is full on. The Democrats are scaring people with Trump, losing abortion rights, and losing veteran benefits. The Republicans are scaring people with evil Democrats, losing civil rights, and being run by the evil Fairfax County of wokesters.
It reminds me of the Middle Ages between the Popes and the kings in the 13th century – Frederick and Henry fighting against the church for their temporal power. They were the resurgent power. Later after the Black Plague, they were receding to the peasants.
I am curious as to how the survive the paradigm shift with my sanity intact. I guess you can fold it into the discussions on the long descent and all that.
Hmmm…
“…all votes have been graven on plates of pure orichalcum by Deep Ones in the drowned ruins of lost Atlantis.”
“…votes have been engraved on beechwood boards in baleful signs by cowled and cackling scribes whose robes conceal worse than shapeless forms.”
“…the interdimensional horrors from the Slime Pits of Blagoonah have recorded all votes.”
So… what have you promised all these entities in exchange for their help? (Perhaps it’s best not to ask, as your other employee The Colour out of Space may reduce me to a crumbling animated pile of dust…)
Roldy
I’ve got some topics in my mind to comment them to you:
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First, in addition to my last comment about UFO phenomena, I’d like to write something more about a tendence within some ideological or religious groups to “demonize” everything and everybody they don’t understand well or they don’t want to understand. I respect personal and groups beliefs and ideas, but I also believe in free speech, which includes a polite criticism. So…
I think, like I’ve written before, that to “demonize” phenomena and people outside the own beliefs/ideas echo chamber, it’s not only a sign of mental laziness, but also a sign of irrational fear to the unknown. I’m going to tell you a near ridiculous example. Some Conservative Christians think even today that rock music is Satanic. Some decades ago, in that same line, a Right Wing Catholic writer explained in a book how much diabolic were rock bands, especially (of course) hard rock and heavy metal groups. In those times there was a Spanish heavy band named “Barón Rojo”, who played a song called “Hijo de Caín”(Son of Cain). Due to its explicit biblical references, the writer blamed these musicians as Satanists. Well, a time later, the band frontman was interviewed by another writer, and told him he respected very much Jesus of Nazareth, being this rock singer a Christian in his own way. And he seemed honest in his beliefs. Of course, there are some real Satanists, or Atheists who play rock music, but blaming a music style as evil is dishonest, methink.
(By the way, you can find this song in whatever online search engine typing its title and group, though this guys always sing in Spanish).
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Franco prosecution against Freemasons in Spain:
Dictatorship had some “reasons” for wanting to kill Freemasons. Like I’ve write before, they usually supported Liberal politics (in the European sense of the term). So Far Right and Fascist-like Spaniards evidently hated them. Franco and his supporters had a pathologic Catholic point of view (and Spanish Freemasonry and the Catholic Church were ideological enemies since two centuries ago). It’s said Francisco Franco had a personal hatred against Freemasons because he had a brother (whom he hated) who was a Freemason. Well, my lack of deep History knowledges prevents me to confirm this information like a hard fact.
However, correlation between right wing Spanish Nationalism and Conservative Catholicism has been usual during my country recent History, at least since Napoleonic French invasion. Of course, I understand this view but I don’t justify it especially in its worst effects (political murder).
I can also point that, according Catholic Laws approved by the Pope more than 2 centuries ago (I can’t remember that Pope name), a Catholic man who shows in public he’s a Freemason too (or he’s detected as one by civil or religious authorities) will be under excommunion authomatically forever. So he won’t be seen as Catholic anymore by Rome (he’s been “fired”). It seems this Law hasn’t been replaced nowadays, yet. Main reason to approve this law against Freemasons was they like to meet in secret, so they must be thinking and planning evil actions (ahem). Guénonian Catholic Traditionalists seem to be sad with this situation, because René Guénon, before his conversion to Islam, defended Catholicism and Freemasonry alike (?) were the last remnants of true Tradition in the evil and irreligious West…I think this idea should be debated, but this is another topic different of what I’ve written here.
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Finally, I think most of conspiracy theorists freaks are too busy finding Great Conspiracies, with a few or no real evidences to show their reality. In contrast with this attitude, they seem blind to small possible conspiracies in “normal” life. Devil is in details!
For example, when democracy began in Spain, it appeared here a newspaper named “El País”, funded by a corporation (PRISA group) whose boss was a rich man (named Jesús de Polanco). This newspaper soon was the written MSM leader in audience and business here. Not casually, his center-left tendence made it friendly to the Socialist party, which won 1982 elections. During ‘80s and ‘90s, some funny Conservatives said this newspaper was the official bulletin for the Socialist government. Guess why, it’s easy…
However, nowadays this newspaper has lived better times (“sic transit gloria mundi”). De Polanco and his corporative group, due to apparent economical problems, sold El País to a mysterious investing fund. Who are behind the anonymous and opaque fund? Nobody knows it really.
In addition to this, some far left people here point (with some reason) that, since some years ago, this newspaper has been turning its bias toward the right wing, under its thin layer of woke paint (for example, having become a NATO views mouthpiece). So do the math…
Another “small” conspiracy here says another investing funds have bought a lot of empty flats here to speculate with real state prices (always up!). Some people say even Trump could be behind these investing funds (with no real evidences, cough). I haven’t found real evidence of it, but this hypothesis could explain in part our current real state bubble. However, I also think there could be some another causes (for example, massive migration fueling real state market prices, or greedy middle class people who owns flats to sell or rent them inflating their prices).
Off topic, but pertinent to the host. A memory champion who uses the old memory palace method. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2521782-unprecedented-insight-into-memory-champions-brain-reveals-his-tricks/
Neptune…# 103:
You’ve remembered the Trilateral, it’s another classic conspiracy theory in addition to the Bilderbergers or the Illuminati, or Freemasonry.
It’s interesting that, in a different way of another conspiracies, Trilateralists dirty secrets are popular not only within the unavoidable Far Right and Fascist circles, but within some leftists speeches, at least in my country. Evil Capitalism and blah blah blah…So leftist idea about Left lack of belief in conspiracies isn’t 100% true ( on the other hand, they ignore, for example, the Marxist “History Laws” mud feet to say it).
I think main “reason” to believers to trust in these conspiracies is the same that led Rome Pope centuries ago to launch excommunion against dual Catholics/Freemasons: “They’ve got secret meetings, so they must be thinking and planning evily evil plans”(?). Indeed, there’s often a close correlation between secret societies and conspiracies (I think usually without hard evidences to support them).
About Provincetown, RI and wokeness:
I am not sure if this is on topic:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/4510222/politics-of-erasing-iryna-zarutska/
The politics of erasing Iryna Zarutska
By Guy Benson March 31, 2026 9:14 am
Washington Examiner
Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, was murdered in Charlotte last summer. She was minding her own business, seated on a public transit train, when a deranged felon abruptly attacked her from behind, without warning, allegedly stabbing her to death. The vicious assault was captured in surveillance footage that went viral and sparked outrage, especially after it was revealed that the suspect had been arrested on at least 14 previous occasions.
………
The case became a national flashpoint, exemplifying what critics call a broken criminal justice system in “progressive” jurisdictions, where criminals are coddled, and innocent people such as Zarutska are endangered. A project to honor Zarutska’s life through art has now been declared “controversial” by activists and politicians on the Left, as murals in her memory are getting defaced by vandals and denounced by elected officials. In New York City, one such mural was targeted by someone who spray-painted the words “please vandalize this” over the murder victim’s face. The New York Post describes the mural as “loathed by local lefties for its ‘tough-on-crime’ message.” In Providence, Rhode Island, a similar piece of art is under attack by the city’s Democratic mayor, amid pressure from leftists.
Details, via the local NBC affiliate:
“What began as a memorial for a slain Ukrainian refugee has transformed into a political lightning rod in the “Creative Capital,” with Mayor Brett Smiley now calling for the artwork’s removal. The mural, located on the exterior of The Dark Lady, a prominent LGBTQ+ club downtown, remains incomplete as city officials and community members clash over its message and funding. The Mayor’s Office confirmed Sunday that Smiley wants the mural of Iryna Zarutska taken down. … Artist Ian Gaudreau, who began the work last week, told NBC 10 News on Friday that he never intended for the tribute to be political.”
The mural currently sits unfinished, with the details of Zarutska’s face only partially completed. Providence’s mayor released a statement blasting the artwork as “misguided,” “isolating,” and “divisive.” He notably did not mention Zarutska by name, instead referring to her as “the individual depicted.” Some much for the liberal “say her name” sloganeering. What is driving this callous, dehumanizing “controversy”?
Politics and ideology.
Some activists and opponents of the mural have raised explicitly racial objections (Zarutska was white), with online liberals seeding a narrative that tributes to this particular victim amount to a “weird right-wing dogwhistle.” The gay club in question is facing a backlash, with one of the owners stating that the firestorm has been “very distressing for the business.” The Left’s biggest problem with honoring a refugee who was brutally killed, however, seems to be that the “wrong” sorts of people care about her death, which could fuel the “wrong” sort of political narrative:
“Zarutska’s death became a focal point for national conservatives, including President Donald Trump, who has frequently cited the case while criticizing what he describes as lenient court systems in Democrat-led states. Further complicating the local response is the project’s funding, which includes a significant donation from tech billionaire Elon Musk.”
It’s pure tribal derangement. Trump has blistered the policy conditions that contributed to the slaying, and Musk has helped fund the tributes to the victim, so it’s bad. And thus, we’re being treated to the grotesque spectacle of self-stylized women’s rights advocates and selective “compassion” fetishists defacing and censoring artwork dedicated to a female murder victim — and a foreign refugee from Ukraine, no less. Hatred of certain political figures supersedes all other considerations, it seems, and our self-appointed empathy gatekeepers have concluded that honoring this specific victim is just too problematic.
Behold, “progress.”
UPDATE: Per local news accounts, the mural project has been canceled and will be removed. Democratic state Rep. David Morales cheered the decision, saying the censored artwork does not “reflect Providence’s values, nor does it reflect the creativity we want to see in our city.”
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I delete info about the actual killing. I did keep the rest. I am sorry but I am appalled. Maybe, I don’t understand how it does not reflect “Providence’s values.”
Is the paradigm shift of the two groups fighting over power in this controversy?
Speaking owl symbolism; and the movie Margin Call gets a reference.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/private-credit-bank-run-begins-blue-owl-gates-after-shocking-41-tech-fund-investors-ask
“First it was Blue Owl, the largest pure play Private Credit fund with over $300 billion in AUM. The company, the first to face massive redemption demands, refused to gate investors and instead announced it would sell $1.4 billion in private loans (it was unclear which loans were sold, but Goldman suggested that these are likely the best ones so as to find willing buyers, leaving the company with the toxic sludge) from its three BDCs (OBDCII, OBDC and OTIC) at 99.7 cents (a number which was meant to inspire confidence yet was laughable, especially since once of the “buyers” was a related-party insurance company, Kuvare, also owned by Blue Owl), to satisfy redemption requests. ”
And later; “Redemption requests in Blue Owl’s marquee $36 billion Credit Income Corp. fund, one of the industry’s largest, soared to 21.9% in the three months ended March 31, according to an investor letter first reported by Bloomberg, up from “only” 5.2% in the prior period. But it was the smaller Blue Owl Technology Income Corp, which was at the center of the February turmoil, that was the real shock after its shareholders asked for a shocking 40.7% back, compared with 15.4% three months earlier, according to a separate letter. ”
The appetite for gambling seems to be falling of late.
Here’s a story that may or may not have happened that involves a real conspiracy, two real conspiracies. I think it will enlighten the readers as to why grand conspiracies are impossible.
Billionaire no. 1: ::looks at Peon no. 3’s coffee cup:: Starbucks…They treat their employees, so well, and how do their employees reward them? With a labor union.
Peon no. 1: Despicable.
Billionaire no. 1: And now I’ve purchased a company with a labor union. If only a peon I listened to would’ve warned me.
Peon no. 3: Actually sir, I brought it…
Billionaire no. 2: Shut up Peon no. 3, men are speaking. Peon no. 1, arrange a meeting with Billionaire no. 2. Perhaps he could help.
Peon no. 1: Yes sir.
3 Days later:
Billionaire no. 1: We purchased a company who licenses your brand, but they have a labor union just for your brand! It’s terrible. They’re overpaid and lazy and costing me money. But we think you could help us.
Billionaire no. 2: I’m all ears.
Billionaire no. 1: We’ll stiff you on the contract and close down all work around your brand. Then, once all the labor union employees are fired, we’ll sign a new contract with you and hire all the people we like back as contractors.
Billionaire no. 2: Great idea! What’s in it for me?
Billionaire no. 1: We’ll pay you 10% more on the new contract.
Billionaire no 2: Sign me up and I’ll send you over a new contract.
Three weeks later on the phone:
Billionaire no. 1: We got your new contract. It’s 25% higher! We agreed to 10%.
Billionaire no. 2: I figured it was fair due to inflation.
Billionaire no. 1: It also says I can’t advertise my products using your brand!
Billionaire no. 2: I’m just protecting my brand. I don’t want it to be associated with your unsavory products.
Billionaire no. 1: Unsavory! It says we’re not allowed to advertise dietary supplements!
Billionaire no. 2: Well, if you don’t sign it, then you owe me $75 million pursuant to paragraph 514, line 3 of the original contract.
Billionaire no. 1: Why would I sign it when the only reason I bought the company was to advertise my products!
Billionaire no. 2: Because you said you would sign it. Are you not a man of your word?
Billionaire no. 1: Wait, you don’t want me to sign it so I have to pay the $75 million!.
Billionaire no. 2: Bwaha…I mean, that’s preposterous.
Billionaire no. 1: See you in court, but not before I launch a smear campaign against you, Mr. philanderer.
Billionaire no. 2: See you in court, but not before I launch a smear campaign against you, Mr. tax cheat.
Chuaquin (#110, #113): Quite so. Not all of what is called science is the application of the scientific method, which includes the step of performing experiments attempting to falsify the hypothesis. In the case of some “science”, like verification of the methods of exoplanet detection, or the field of cosmology in general, it’s hard to imagine what such experiments would even be. We can’t go back in the to see the Big Bang and we can’t go to the stars to see if the exoplanets are what we think they are.
Related: I once read a book by the cosmologist Laurence Krauss, or anyway I read it until I got to this part: he explained that a trillion years hence, star formation will still be going on and it will still be possible for new intelligent species to arise, but that such species will be unable to determine the nature of the universe because the vital clue of the cosmic background radiation will have faded to nothing. He may have also said that no galaxies other than the one where they live will be visible to them due to the expansion of the universe, but I’m unsure I remember that correctly. Be that second part as it may, though, I thought this about the first part: well, if that’s true, what makes us think all the vital clues are available *now*? Maybe they’re not. Maybe we’re missing information that would change the whole picture. Doesn’t that mean the entire field of cosmology might be rubbish? I put the book down at that point. It had been a hard slog up until then and since as far as I was concerned he’d just told me it might all be nonsense anyway, that was that.
This is off on a bit of a tangent, but you brought up Spanish heavy metal bands. I’m a bit of a fan of one of those: Tierra Santa. Do you know them? Barón Rojo didn’t float my boat particularly, but I love Tierra Santa!
Andy # 105:
An interesting information, thank you.
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Martin B. # 112:
According my own intuition and reason, after having read different countries and ideologies online and MSM sources, I bet Iran war (and Lebanon war, and next Yemen war) are in a grey zone, without clear victories by the Western axis or Eurasian axis (Iran and its “bosses”). Iran is suffering by sure hard bombings, but less punitive than western propaganda wants to admit (though more destructive than Tehran accepts in its speeches). And Arab Kingdoms in the Gulf are been punished by Iran weapons until today, due to their serfdom to USA (air bases). Israel IMHO has been suffering less than Arab Monarchies thanks to its Iron Dome and US-NATO help, but only a Zionist zealot could assure its antimissile/drone defenses work at 100%, after more than a month in war.
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Scotlyn # 117:
Main problem of official versions is IMHO they tend to become Narratives which must be believed without any rational doubts (like the Russo-Ukraine war according NATO MSM or the COVID pandemic).
Main problem within official versions dissenters is they often fall into conspiracy theories they believe literally, as Counter-Narratives. So bye bye doubt and reason too…
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Justin P. # 121:
Thanks for remembering the Bohemian Grove, and for your link.
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# 124:
Oops! Funny…
A few weeks ago, I wondered why my local newspaper would publish an article demanding hazard pay for teachers (because Ontario schools are now dangerous) in the same edition as an article demanding homeschooling be banned as dangerous for children’s mental health, without anyone at the paper appearing to notice the contradiction. It all makes sense now! Bwahahahaha!
My fifth Wednesday vote is a discussion of either why there would be such a remarkably robust and thriving Japanese Golden Dawn scene, if you know enough to intelligently discuss the topic; or Sun Ra if Japanese Golden Dawn is not something you’re comfortable with.
OT, but I have not been able to access dreamwidth reliably since Monday night. I’m not sure if it’s a local issue or on a much larger scale, but I think it’s worth mentioning.
JMG,
Aren’t conspiracy theories always used to talk about things that are off limits on our society? They are always rediculus factually, but convey a hidden truth. A well crafted conspiracy theory will make anyone with authority think the speaker is either too stuipid or insane to pose a threat, yet attract the attention who think the same about the ruling class.
Meanwhile, their lack of connection with reality function the same way as setting a fairy tell in a far away kingdom.
Back when I spent more time in conspiracy circles I remember a veteran conspiracy nut say something along the lines of “A good conspiracy theory is one that cannot be proven”.
When I hear someone advocate a conspiracy theory I approch it like modern day myth, not focusing on weather or not it is factually true, but on what the person telling it believes about the world but does not dare talking about out loud.
Hi All,
I will also vote for the nature of conflict in other planes.
Remember, only raise one tentacle to vote!
Thanks,
Drew C
Once again, all votes have been etched in runes of lambent and unhallowed flame on the ruined walls of a dead village by the Color Out Of Space itself.
Ron, nah, it’s easy to get such things if you know how. The Grand Secretary’s desk is made of oak, and so it’s a simple matter to talk to the oak spirits and get them to swipe a copy. If they ever go to metal desks things won’t be so easy. As for the Tome of Unspeakable Dread, that was written in the 19th century under a pseudonym by a sinister British mathematician named Charles Dodgson, and illustrated with eldritch and unhallowed sigils by John Tenniel. It is in two volumes and speaks of the doings of a dread entity named Ah-Liss.
Cynthia, glad you enjoy it. I’m having fun with that.
BeardTree, as several other commenters have noted, that doesn’t quite work, since once you get past a modest number of ancestors the lines are apt to cross. That said, since the powerful and successful tend to have many more descendants than average — think of the harem of your average Egyptian pharaoh, and consider the likely results in an age before birth control — your point still stands.
Andy, as I recall, that happened fairly often in the opening rounds of the 1973 energy crisis, too. Ah, memories. 😉
Info, billions of grains of sand, millions of gravel flakes and small rocks, and some pretty fair boulders as well. What’s more, we all know how often computers get things wrong, and LLMs have added whole new realms of cybernetic hallucination to the mix. All that global surveillance and vast data banks will result in whole oceans of misinformation and psychotic delusion, gleefully amplified by the efforts of the inevitable hackers who figure out how to game the system.
Martin, granted — and in this case it’s made much worse by the simple fact that the media fixates on whatever will get eyeballs watching their ads. It doesn’t have to be relevant, and it doesn’t have to be true — and these days, as often as not, it’s neither — as long as it keeps viewers staring at the screen.
Chuaquin, nobody knows for sure, but the number’s somewhere above 10,000 — that’s how many have been documented. As for Charles, the King has never been the Grand Master of English Freemasons — that role’s normally fobbed off on a duke. Right now it’s Edward, Duke of Kent, one of Elizabeth II’s cousins; in 1901, when Albert, Prince of Wales (and Grand Master of English Masons) became king, he resigned his Grand Mastership in favor of one of his younger brothers.
CC, try this one, then — or simply look up “hillary superpredators” on your favorite search engine.
Patricia M, exactly. Most real conspiracies are embarrassingly prosaic — they exist to cover up the fact that somebody is boinking somebody they officially shouldn’t, or has some other scandalous habit, or stole an election, or what have you. It’s when people start insisting that everything they don’t like about their lives is the result of some sinister scheming group that you know that paranoiac fantasies have just entered the chat.
Scotlyn, I wish I did. Anyone else?
Justin, ha! Funny. I’ve considered using evidence of the sort I cited to work up an account of which conspiracies are at war with which other conspiracies, and slipping it out there into the conspiracy-culture scene.
Old Steve, you’re most welcome.
Borealbear, that was part of the fun, of course. The interdimensional horrors are flattered, btw.
Justin, sshhh! You’ll give away too many of the secrets! As for that book cover, though…
…that’s absolutely priceless.
Neptunesdolphins, granted. It’s a paranoiac world out there.
Roldy, me and the entities are good buddies. We tip back beers at a nameless and unhallowed bar in Kingsport whenever I get up there, and they decided it would be fun to take over counting votes this time.
Chuaquin, good. Little conspiracies are everywhere, and midsized conspiracies happen now and again. The bigger the conspiracy, though, the more likely it is to trip over itself.
BeardTree, thanks for this. There’s a whole memory-contest circuit using the old methods these days. Joshua Foer’s book Moonwalking with Einstein is a good intro to that scene.
Neptunesdolphins, Morales is quite correct that the mural isn’t in keeping with Providence’s values, since those values include the notion that some races and genders are good, others are bad, and it’s unacceptable to point out that notionally “good” people sometimes do really evil things. That’s a fairly widespread attitude in some circles these days.
Siliconguy, thanks for the heads up. The private-credit bust isn’t getting much attention these days, but it may end up being the trigger for a much wider crisis.
Peon, thank you. Yeah, that’s pretty accurate.
William, it makes perfect sense once you realize that the welfare of teachers and staff is all that matters to the educational bureaucracies; the welfare of the students is irrelevant to them. Thanks for the heads up about Dreamwidth.
Four Sided, exactly! Treat conspiracy theories as dreams or delusions, and interpret them symbolically, and you can learn an immense amount about society’s fears and unmentionable hopes from them.
JMG, please consider my tentacle raised to vote for an essay on the nature of conflict on other planes.
OtterGirl
JMG said: “a child of the space age who remembers exactly where he was when the TV announced that Neil Armstrong had set foot on the Moon”
Me too. I was five years old, and they pre-empted my favorite program to show some grainy black and white footage of some guy doing something that was nowhere near as interesting as my preferred show was. I got yelled at by the adults in the room for whining about it. Nobody had bothered to explain to me what was going on.
The whole book is up on Archive if you’d like to have a read:
https://ia902808.us.archive.org/1/items/CommunismHypnotismAndTheBeatles/CommunismHypnotismAndTheBeatles_text.pdf
I am amazed that at 65,000 copies of this thing were printed up…
Here is a zinger from it:
“Even a non-expert can grasp the word content of the record although Dr. Bryan warns that “the devices used in these records are so subtle that they very well may pass inspection by a well-meaning committee of physicians untrained in hypnosis, brainwashing and other such fields.” As long as the string puller pulls the strings, the puppet does fine, but unless the string puller is there the puppet can do nothing by himself. As Dr. Bryan puts it, “when you loosen up the strings and fall down — it’s obvious to me, obviously placing the idea in the subconscious of the child that unless the string puller is there he can’t do anything by himself without the specific directions of the communist boss, or whoever it happens to be. . . and it really takes the entire control away from the child, and
then after he gets through three or four of these deepening techniques he says, I can make you jump much higher than that’ and then he goes on to prove it.”
Metallica’s Master of Puppets is also an illuminati album btw : )
” I’ve considered using evidence of the sort I cited to work up an account of which conspiracies are at war with which other conspiracies, and slipping it out there into the conspiracy-culture scene.”
That sounds like another means of poisoning data sets, but in a different way then we’ve been talking about.
Bwahahahaha! Fun and informative post JMG!
Yes, Neptunesdolphins, I too moved to shot-out NYC in 1979, danced to punk music and watched many friends die in the 80’s while trumsters looked for gold, Giuliani and Bloomberg took over for our mini renaissance, a fake Italian trashed it, Covid did a final kill…
I pray for my little beautiful adopted home… it served me well…I will always love NYC but not sure which way the wind will blow. We shall see.
On another note, I had asked about Nick Land last week, and this week listened to Hermetix podcast on Land with Vincent Le. My non- academic conclusion was that Land is of the “survival of the fittest” school, believes Capitalism has become an independent egregore with AI as its new minion, and we might as well just let it go as it may.
Wishing those that celebrate, a Happy Easter and as we say, He has risen🌹
Yogaandthetarot
“William, it makes perfect sense once you realize that the welfare of teachers and staff is all that matters to the educational bureaucracies; the welfare of the students is irrelevant to them.”
Oh, absolutely; but what surprised me is that they somehow missed that those two articles together would make it pretty clear to parents what the newspaper thinks about the welfare of children. I know it’s just ordinary incompetence, but it sometimes seems astonishing how incompetent the mass media can be.
For those interested in this question, “How many generations does it take for the average descendant not to be genetically related to the ancestor?”, I found this at biology.stackexchange.com:
https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/112962/how-many-generations-does-it-take-for-the-average-descendant-not-to-be-genetical#:~:text=Graham%20Coop%20performed%20simulations%20related,information%20to%20a%20specific%20descendant.
Sorry for the hundred mile long link. Not much I can do about it. Anyway, the bit that pertains to the current discussion topic about that is this:
“Graham Coop performed simulations related to this question, based on actual transmission data for each chromosome in humans. He found that after 10 or 11 generations there was >50% chance that any particular ancestor contributed no genetic information to a specific descendant. Fewer than 5% of a person’s 14th-generation ancestors will have contributed genetic information to them.”
That’s very interesting to me. Let’s say the time between generations is 20 years. That’s not bad for a historical estimate, right? I know it’s usually more in the western world now, but I think a guess of 20 years on average is not far off the mark. So 14 generations is only 280 years. That’s not much at all. That means if you have genealogical information about ancestors that predate roughly the birth of Mozart, the chances are that any given one of those ancestors is no more related to you than just anyone of the same ethnic background. (Backgrounds plural, if applicable.)
280 years. Wow. Much less time than I thought that answer would turn out to be. That’s well into the Age of Sail!
Neptune # 132:
It’s a pity some people think there are “better” killed people than other. I thought an human life was an human life in every death: Equality under the Law?
I partly agree.
It seems that, in spite of being a migrant woman, that poor victim wasn’t scoring enough in woke Victimism Olympics: she was white and maybe Christian. Her killer maybe had a higher score in woke Olympics (cough). Due to his ethnic origin? (After reading your comment, I bet he was a “sacred cow” to wokesters, if I’m not wrong).
Woke hypocrisy is a shame IMHO in this case (with its usual cancellation and selective fondness to some people over other people).
I partly disagree.
I’m afraid Trump (and American right wing), don’t seem good, neither. I smell an opportunist attitude in them to “hijack” that poor woman and to make her their martyr. Maybe if she was alive now, she wouldn’t agree. Well, they mourned the woman death (for example remembering her), but not only for honest sympathy, but to their own political agenda, methink. She deserved some kind of tribute, but I doubt to make her a political icon was a good idea.
I mean, the two sides in current cultural wars (and I think this case’s one of these unending competing Spectacles) are behaving badly, methink. Of course, you always can choose your ideological favorite Spectacle and blame the others propaganda in a selective blindness to ignore the dirty side of your side.
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Cynthia # 135:
I’ve read your comment and I agree. However, I want to add some personal opinions about Science(s).
It isn’t impossible a few reckless and dishonest scientists can falsify their experimentations to fake hard facts, but there’s another trick which is also bad for science prestige. I’m thinking about the case of scientists who don’t fake facts, but they obtain biased ideas, or suggest them, which are a distorted view. For example, some neuroscientists show that, before a conscious action is decided within the brain, neuronal tissues already have started to activate. Maybe I’m wrong, but are they implicitly suggesting free will isn’t real? That “lesson” could had nasty consequences for society, and I think if they really think it, maybe it’s a conclusion made in a hurry, so I doubt it.
Cosmology: I think its elephant in the room is that a lot of cosmologic hypothesis cannot be proven in a lab nor by technology, so some cynical thinkers point this science is dangerously near to
Philosophy (when not to Theology). Well, I won’t despise every cosmologic hypothesis in that way, but it would be necessary look at them case by case. However, I can also say an unproved hypothesis isn’t an evident hard fact. For example, Big Bang explains well the origin of Universe…if you think there was an origin; but maybe the Universe is eternal (according some Philosophies and beliefs). I read a time ago an interview to an Indian scientist who complained about Big Bang hegemony in Cosmology, blaming the Western biases toward origin of everything, due to Christianism (maybe he had his part of reason). It seems impossible to do an experiment to prove wether it was an origin or not.
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Yes, I know Tierra Santa and I’ve heard some of their songs. They’re more recent than Barón Rojo in their musical career, methink, but I also know they like to play songs with biblical references in lyrics (thought I think more in a aesthetic way than a religious way). I’m not especially fan of heavy bands (I like more pop-rock and “only” rock bands), but I enjoy some heavy songs, especially ballads (well, it seems a commonplace to enjoy heavy ballads but I think that). Barón Rojo has been a legend heavy metal band in Spain since the ‘80s, but their songs have been always in Spanish. I think if they would have played songs with English lyrics, they’d be even more famous outside Spain.
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William # 137:
I don’t know how right to education works in Canada, but according Spanish Constitution, everybody has the right and the duty to be educated.
In real world, it seems homeschooling is seen by some people (and some authorities) as a threat to right/duty to education, because they identify to learn with formal schools; some another people think they’ve got their right to education including homeschooling as families option. A third kind of people (like me) think homeschooling can be under the Law, but everything homeschool children learn should be tested in periodical exams by the educative system. To be honest to you, I don’t know which group is “winning” now here.
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(To be continued)
King Charles III won’t be issuing an Easter message this year:
https://www.geo.tv/latest/658283-king-charles-wont-speak-this-year-palace-announces
@ Chuaquin #136
“Main problem within official versions dissenters is they often fall into conspiracy theories they believe literally, as Counter-Narratives.”
Speaking as a person more likely to be doubter than a crafter of official Narratives, this does not actually accord with my personal experience.
Unless, of course, you only count the minority of doubters who are rated as “OFFICIAL… dissenters”, because they loudly proclaim (and often monetise) their conspiracy theory.
My personal experience of doubters not prone to believing EITHER official narratives OR that the world is being secretly run by some shadowy cabal, is that most simply doubt quietly, without making much noise, but also quietly withholding compliance with whatever the official narrative of the day is urging them to do, and that their (our) number is therefore rather larger than that of either of the loud minorities who occupy the two extremes.
Good to know, JMG, about your sneakily Druidical ways of getting top secret info from the dastardly Illuminati. To be honest, however, I was hoping for something a little more dramatic – say, that you are part of a super-secret society of seemingly bookish Druids who are undoing the work of the cabals of occultists who are up to no good. I was thinking of something along the lines of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV series which I watched as a lad. You could be The Man From D.R.U.I.D. (Druid Revival Universal Illuminati Discombobulators), who leaves behind a single green oak leaf or a sprig of holly at the scene of your victories, as an enigmatic (and horrifying to The Enemy) calling card. Maybe you could get Commissioner Gordon to flash the Oak Signal onto the clouds whenever the Illuminati are getting too uppity so that you can come to the rescue. As you can see, I watched waaay too much TV as a child.
I haven’t read all the comments yet, but I’m raising my tentacles for a fifth Wednesday post on the Iran war and it’s effects on the decline of our civilization and its possible bringing the end of petroleum closer. I have read statements from oil industry people who say that the shut down wells in the Persian Gulf will never regain their past production.
In The Long Descent and in many of your posts, you have stated that the decline of our industrial civilization is a gradual process, something like going down a staircase one step at a time. I agree, but I think we’re facing a big step down at this time.
It is really wild that I think we could abolish all of our elections and appointment processes and just select random people to random positions by lottery and it would probably be an improvement over the leadership we have today.
Four Sided…# 138:
Your view IMHO has its part of truth. If you see conspiracies theories like myths, maybe they have an occult teaching to be learnt. I see them more like Counter-Narratives, apparently “better”
than official Narratives, but in some cases dangerous (when their believers think they’ve got the Absolute Truth). To give you a rough comparative, Protestant Reform was a Counter-Narrative opposed to the Catholic Narrative, and it had a good side. However, “witches”
were burnt alive in Catholic countries and Protestant ones alike.
Well, I don’t have any problem with conspiracy nuts who believe in their stories in a not literal way…
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JMG # 140:
Number of people killed during last Spanish Civil War is different even when I compare the most serious historians data. There was a book in which its author wrote there had been a million dead (?). I’ve read between 100,000 and 500,000, depending of different ways to count deads (and ideologies?). Revenge in the two sides against inner ideological enemies was often commited, but according some sources, Franco side “won” in inner repression to the Republic. After the end of the war, there isn’t a definitive agreement about Freemasons, Communists and other hated people by the new regime, who were judged and legally executed (under Franco special legality). 10,000 Freemasons maybe is a more or less real figure, methink.
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According your data, I think the supposed Freemasonry conspiracy against nowadays King Charles III is very counter-factual, like another anti-Freemasons propaganda. I was guessing it to some extent.
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I’m puzzled by the picture you’ve shown us about a book on Beatles, Hypnotism and Communism. Very bizarre…Well, to try rationalizing that title, I’ve thought the Beatles when they began to be famous, could influence the whole world. Commies? Well, I’ve heard they were as “Progressive” as they could be the British youngs in the ‘60s. Maybe John (after having known his pacifist campaign against Vietnam war and the famous “Imagine” song) had a stronger fondness to leftism.
By the way, there’s a theory that says John Lennon wasn’t shot and killed by a crazy fan randomly, but he was punished for his leftism by the CIA (more due to the Vietnam thing than for “Imagine”). I don’t know…
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Thanks…Yes, little conspiracies usually have more contact with hard facts. Middle size conspiracies can happen too, but global and long time conspiracies loose real “ground” soon.
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Justin P. 143:
Thank you for your link to that bizarre book.
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William # 145:
I’ve noted since 10-15 ago to today how much journalists reasoning and “literary” style have worsened in newspapers and another MSM, while propagandistic claims have went up (cough). Maybe it’s a global tendence.
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Happy Easter! (For Christians and other people who enjoys these days in spite or not being Christians)
Communism, Hypnotism and The Beatles.
Our Latin master “Flash” Nel (so called because he walked very fast) was convinced that Elvis Presley was a Communist plot. He maintained that Elvis had been planted by the Russians to corrupt Western youth.
Mind you, in conservative South Africa 10,000 miles from the Flower Power years, it did look as though Western civilization was running off the rails. I remember a cabinet minister in all seriousness giving a speech in which he said our task was to preserve the core of Western thought and keep it safe until the Western world came to its senses and was ready to live by the old verities again.
Re Artemis II, I can still remember being wrapped up warmly and taken outside to see Sputnik move across the night sky, and listen as the radio played Sputnik’s beeping warble that signaled a new age had begun. I stayed up till after midnight the other night to watch the Artemis launch live. Spectacular. Well done NASA.
Checking in to vote for nature of conflict on higher planes please
For the 5th Wednesday, my vote is for Jungian archetypes.
It’s now April 2nd, and fool’s day is over. On the subject of conspiracy theories I offer the following proposition: some conspiracy theories are both true and important. But which ones are these? There’s the rub. For me, the archtypical conspiracy theorist is Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In Act I, a ghost informs Hamlet of a conspiracy; any sane person knows that a ghost is not exactly the most reliable of informants. Hamlet, being a cautious fellow, doesn’t simply take the ghost’s word for it. He sees that further investigation is warranted. He delays taking any decisive action until circumstances force his hand in Act V, and a blood-bath ensues. Shakespeare’s source for the tale was Saxo Grammaticus, as is described in the book “Hamlet’s Mill” which I highly recommend.
Yet again, all votes have been burnt into the soil of shattered Tokyo with radioactive flame by Godzilla himself. The Thing, It, She, Them, and the Blob are all waiting their turns.
Mother B, I was seven years old and knew exactly what was going on, and you couldn’t have pried me away from the tube with a crowbar.
Justin, that’s fascinating. So the conviction that people can’t make their own decisions, but have to be the puppets of someone or other, had already found a home on the crackpot fringes by then. As for poisoning data sets, nah, I just find One-Big-Conspiracy theories dull and want to get some creative minds dreaming up ever more elaborate struggles between secret societies.
William, one of the things that I find most fascinating about the managerial class is how many of them seem to be unable to realize that other people can watch their antics and draw conclusions from those. It’s the same weird distortion of thinking that led Hillary Clinton’s handlers to respond to each poll showing that people distrusted their candidate by looking blank and trying to “reintroduce” her to the public, as though the public couldn’t possibly assess her record and draw its own conclusions. This is another example — it doubtless never occurred to anybody at the newspaper or the teachers’ union that readers could connect those two articles and roll their eyes.
Cynthia, interesting.
Anon, curious. I wonder if his health is failing as badly as his photos suggest.
Ron, waaaaay too much TV indeed. Nah, Druidry doesn’t generally get into melodrama.
Tankermottind, that’s how most Greek city-states elected their legislatures. It was done by picking random members of the citizenry. They also had special positions for rich people, with a catch — if you signed up for one of those positions, you had to pay all the expenses of that department of the government for a year. It wasn’t without its problems, but it worked better than the system we have now!
Chuaquin, crackpot literature proclaiming absurd conspiracies has been a growth industry in the US since about a week after we became an independent country. That’s not even close to the strangest example I’ve seen.
Phutatorius, that’s a question worth a post of its own one of these days.
For the Fifth Wednesday topic, I vote for conflict in higher planes.
Yet another April 1 joke: https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
About the Kennedy family and other similar. Americans have a high tolerance for all kinds of graft and corruption. That is how you get stuff done. Remember, most of us came originally from peasant or other low class backgrounds in which a person didn’t survive without some kind of grift or other, and in which laws existed to protect the privileged. I think maybe the European upper classes retained feudalistic attitudes long past the time when feudalism or similar aristocratic arrangements of society benefitted all classes. What we don’t like is incompetence, which is why the current administration is polling badly, losing off year elections, and, generally, no longer very popular.
Back in the early 1990s, Bill Clinton approached the auto manufacturers with a deal he thought they couldn’t refuse. What if, he told these execs. we take health care, the most contentious issue in your contract negotiations, right off the table. Mind, nothing even approaching a national health service was being discussed. The execs. demurred. Why, because their good friends, golfing buddies and board members from the insurance industry objected. This wasn’t conspiracy. It was social class loyalty, which, over and over again, outweighs all other considerations, including even profit.
“William, one of the things that I find most fascinating about the managerial class is how many of them seem to be unable to realize that other people can watch their antics and draw conclusions from those. It’s the same weird distortion of thinking that led Hillary Clinton’s handlers to respond to each poll showing that people distrusted their candidate by looking blank and trying to “reintroduce” her to the public, as though the public couldn’t possibly assess her record and draw its own conclusions. This is another example — it doubtless never occurred to anybody at the newspaper or the teachers’ union that readers could connect those two articles and roll their eyes.”
It’s just hit me, and now that it has, I feel kind of silly for never having noticed it before, but there’s actually a really good explanation here: this is just another reflection of the extreme narcissism of the managerial class. There’s no reason to worry about what connections other people might make from facts, if their opinions don’t matter; and for that matter, how many times have the managerial class insisted no one would be smart enough to figure something out?
Regarding the 5th Wednesday …
I don’t often count all the topics but it seems like we have a very long list already, with correspondingly fewer votes per topic because they are spread out over such a wide range. Your count may differ, but at this point I think I see only three topics that have as many as five votes each.
Of these, I’ll cast my vote for “conflict on the higher planes,” or “War in Heaven,” or however you choose to describe it. (I mean the topic that Brendhelm introduced at #57.) But I wouldn’t mind losing, because the others look pretty interesting too!
MS Clinton’s warmongery (is that a word?–it should be–and as a Discordian Bishop, I declare that it is) is the very reason that I could not vote for her. Poking the Russian bear has always seemed like a bad idea. As a voter in California, I knew the Democrats had the electoral college vote in a bag, so I registered disapproval of both set of clowns by choosing one of the minority parties, probably Peace and Freedom and I probably couldn’t tell you the name of their candidate if threatened with hot pokers. Such are the politics of today.
I too am old enough to recall articles about the coming ice age–in fact it was a joke in my high school crowd–“Sinners repent, the ice age is coming”–implying of course that one had plenty of time to repent.
As for diets–oh my. “All fat is bad” “Some fat is okay” “Some fats are essential” “No fat, high carb” “High protein, low carb” “Whole grains are good” “All grains are bad” Fiber was so good at one point that bakers obliged with sanitized wood cellulose added to make high fiber bread–I remarked that we used to hang bakers for putting sawdust in the bread, not pay them extra for it.
Exercise–I still have a set of Princess Bells–white, plastic covered 3 lb. hand weights that were sold to women with the assurance that their use would NOT lead to unsightly muscles. I remember reruns of 40s era cartoons in which fat ladies tried to vibrate fat away with a mechanized belt around their waists. Now I notice that vibration devices are back in a slightly different form.
I was in college for the moonshot, but I remember resenting Fidel Castro from the beginning because broadcast of his victory parade pre-empted the Mickey Mouse Club, that my sister and I watched every weekday after school. Obviously no good can come of interrupting the Mouse. Isn’t the current Artemis Program rather like launching 3 wooden ships to discover a route from Europe to China? Deja vu all over again.
Hi John Michael,
🙂 Naughty small fluffy dogs are hardly powerful symbols to project potent forces, other than wee.
It’s a fun week and very appropriate for April fools day. Thanks for the many laughs.
Blue hair is a sign of Bognock from Blagoonah. He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the wars of the black slime, the Bognock came as a large and moving Slug! Then, during the third boost of the last of the lesser slimes, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Mantis! Many woke knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Mantis that day, I can tell you! 😉
The lesson for today: Beware the pits of Blagoonah.
Cheers
Chris
The history of France after the Revolution reminds me of the joke:
A man walks into a bookstore and asks for a copy of the French Constitution. The clerk replies, “I’m sorry Sir, we don’t sell periodicals here.”
Per JMG” “Justin, that’s fascinating. So the conviction that people can’t make their own decisions, but have to be the puppets of someone or other, had already found a home on the crackpot fringes by then.”
I think Dostoyevski’s Grand Inquisitor (fictional, btw) and Leo Strauss (real person and mentor to the neo-cons) shared that conviction, so maybe it had spread outward to include the fringes by the 1960s.
Chuaquin: I read about some research like that which you mentioned, that seemed to show that parts of the brain seem to begin a reaction to a stimulus slightly before the actual stimulus occurs, in this case it was whether you saw a blue flash or a green flash, if I recall correctly, rather than about an action the person had decided to take. But it was the same idea, things in the brain seemed to already be happening before it ought to have been possible. I took that to mean that there may be some form of future awareness possible for some subsystems of the brain, in a limited way. I thought it was pretty interesting, but I never heard anything else about it since then. As to free will, I guess if there were a scientific consensus that there is none, some people would take that as an excuse for bad behavior, but I think most people would take the view that it seems like we have free will, we’re using to thinking and acting like we have it, so we might as well just assume we do, regardless of what the whitecoats think. I certainly would. (It’s inevitable that I would, ha ha)
I broadly agree with your idea that things from cosmology should be looked at case by case. The further a thing is from direct observation or experimental proof, the less solid it is. I’m sure the speed of light is what they say it is, and I’m sure that the galaxies are receding from each other as described. I’m sure Einstein got relativity right and that the speed of light is the hard limit he said it is. I’m sure our understanding of stellar evolution is correct and that the implications for the future of the Earth are as described. The Big Bang I am less sure of, but not enough to make a thing of it. I don’t think the question of whether there was a Big Bang or if the universe was always there, or some alternate option proposed by the Indian scientist really matters much to our understanding of how natural processes work here in our environment; that seems pretty solid.
I feel culturally identified with heavy metal and that’s what I say is my favorite music, but the reality is that these days I seldom listen to any pre-recorded music at all, except for guitar backing tracks on youtube, and of course the whole point of that is to play to the music, not just listen to it. (I’m gonna miss that when it’s gone!) When I do just listen to music, it’s just as apt to be other rock, or pop, or country, or techno, or something else.
Thanks for the laugh!
For Fifth Wednesday, I vote for however you’d like to discuss Iran.
Kind Sir,
I vote for J.L.Mc12”s suggestion of feminization of society
I wouldn’t mind seeing a post on ‘conflict in higher planes’, so that’s my vote this time. I’m especially curious about the references in the bible to one.
Jon G (#165) : That’s hilarious!
For fifth Wednesday, I’d like to read what you might have to say about the nexus of national karma, individual citizens’ karma relative to the former, and the same in relation to being governed by a class of tweedle-dum twins giving only a pretense of choice between them. Obviously in the context of the US political system where democracy seems like a nice concept we might’ve once had, and harkening back to Scotlyn’s comment last week re: Iran/military machine/and effect of that coming home to roost here (though I’m unsure, personally, of chicken or egg order).
Thanks for the laugh with this week’s, um, illuminating (haha) essay.
If I may, I think with on the topic of conflict in the higher planes what many readers are concerned with is the fear that once we graduate from this material world we’ll be thrown into another just as frustrating and tedious, which is something of a letdown after two thousand years of being promised peace and joy.
It also echoes the experience of many of us have of spending our childhoods dreaming of what we hoped to do and achieve once we grew up, only to be thrust into an adult world of responsibilities, deadlines, and office politics. Some of us never really got over that shock, I’m afraid, and the prospect of having it repeated on a grand scale is quite disheartening.
(I still haven’t decided what I want to vote for, since my initial suggestion was already in the pipeline; I hope to make up my mind by this weekend.)
A bunch of MIT researchers have shown that AI chatbots will lead people down delusional spirals even when precautionary measures are put into place:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.19141
Sweden is getting rid of ed tech and going back to books in schools:
https://undark.org/2026/04/01/sweden-schools-books/
Cynthia Christie 146
> Fewer than 5% of a person’s 14th-generation ancestors will have contributed genetic information to them.
Now THAT’S int’restin’. Huh (stumped). Don’t that beat all. Good to know.
Hmm. My brother (“Alf”) was the spittin’ image of one of our 2nd great-grandfathers (“Frank”). I bumped into this tidbit because a 3rd cousin put up a Civil War photo online of Frank. If one saw photos of them side by side, one can immediately see Alf got a heckuva lot of facial DNA from Frank; I don’t know what else Alf got of Frank’s. But, I received Frank’s exceptionally ugly ‘male mechanic hands with stubby sausage fingers’ — dead ringer hands. Thanks a lot, Frank. (If I were face to face with Frank this minute, I would give him a piece of my mind🗣️📢.)
💨🧬🌳💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
“and for that matter, how many times have the managerial class insisted no one would be smart enough to figure something out?”
Paul Krugman is famous for claiming people voted for against their own interest. The first time I noticed was on some rant against something Kansas had voted for. I remember thinking “How many wheat harvests have you brought in Oh Great Economist?”
Then there is this,
” https://www.businessinsider.com/krugman-white-working-class-2016-11”
“Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning columnist and New York Times columnist, said Tuesday that he thinks white working-class voters in rural areas voted against their self interest in the 2016 election.”
Business insider by the way is owned by the same group that owns Politico, another bunch that worships the PMC.
But this other bunch of left-wingers also thinks Krugman is clueless,
https://inthesetimes.com/article/what-paul-krugman-gets-wrong-about-the-working-class#:~:text=Krugman%20ends%20his%20column%20with,to%20give%20up%20on%20them.
the articles too long to repost, but they are interesting. It’s not just Krugman. And it extends to more than economics. The exclusively urban judges in Washington think much more of timber wolves than the people who have to live with them, and now they want to import grizzly bears too. Then they complain about the “shoot-shovel-shut up” method of dealing with dangerous animals that they have forced on the countryside.
Yet again, all votes have been carefully noted down in the records of the city of Pnakotus by time-traveling Yithians from the abysses of the nameless past, and will be incorporated more or less at random in the Pnakotic Manuscript for the lasting puzzlement of future generations.
Mary, corruption has its uses, especially if the corrupt politicians in question have the brains the gods gave geese and bribe the electorate first.
William, yes, I think narcissism is a good label for that habit.
Michael_20, you’re quite correct; most of the proposed topics have gotten one and only one vote each. The ones that are doing significantly better than that are, in alphabetical order: common ground between esoteric Buddhism and Western occultism; the existence of conflict on the inner planes; Jungian archetypes; and the war in Iran. None of these have yet gotten ten votes. If anyone would like to change their vote,you may, but please tell me what you originally voted for so I can delete your former vote.
Rita, thank you. It amazes me how many people who were around for the global cooling scare pretend that it never happened. When I was a kid, btw, my great-aunt had one of those vibrating-belt things.
Chris, ha! And ha again! I never watched the movie, but I heard that bit about the large and moving Torb many times, and decided that Gozer was very sensible; nobody would have been impressed by a small and stationary Torb. I prefer my Vuldronaii unrectified, though.
Jon, okay, that was a tea-on-the-keyboard moment. Thank you.
Phutatorius, Edward Bernays made a lot of money claiming that, too, but most people were too smart to be suckered by his sales pitch. That it’s become an unthinking reaction these days is the thing that fascinates me.
Slithy, I guess I’m just weird. I spent my whole childhood longing to get out of the wretched mess of a family I grew up with, and go have a life more to my liking — and I proceeded to do that. Maybe that’s why I’m not too worried about the higher planes. But, yeah, I can include that in the discussion.
Anon, no surprises there. LLMs generate sequences of words that produce the illusion of meaning, but there’s nobody home; madness is hard to avoid once the feedback cuts in. As for Sweden, it’s good to see basic common sense trickling in despite all the obstacles.
Siliconguy, if you look up the word “hubris” in a good dictionary Krugman’s face ought to be next to it. I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to him to ask a single working class person what they actually want, as opposed to what clueless intellectuals from the privileged classes want them to want.
Chauquin 153
> and other people who enjoy these days in spite or not being Christians
I am mourning the loss of winter. Long live winter. May the Ice Cube be with us. May the element Fire rot in hell🌋.
💨❄️🧊🍦🌋💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Hi John Michael Thanks for the post. Love it. I’ve been following you from back since the Archdruid days. It’s good to have a sane voice in what is otherwise a fairly insane world.
I vote for the war in Iran
cheers from downunder