Exploitation of Resources

Posted: January 23, 2026 in Conspiracy, Corporatism, Crime, Culture, Fascism, Politics
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Possession is nine-tenths of the law. —unattributed aphorism

If all wars are ultimately resource wars, with aggressors attempting to capture resources possessed by, say, indigenous peoples, the question arises “to whom do those resources truly belong?” The Carter Doctrine would have it that those foreign resources are actually ours (the U.S.) because we somehow possess rights in them. Justification? Used to be simply that we want or need them.

The novel justification being floated is that U.S. corporations are better situated the exploit such resources. Thus, the fact that Venezuela sits on top of immense oil reserves ripe for the taking means those resources can’t be left in the hands of Venezuelans. They must instead be seized and exploited by the U.S. using the full force of the state if necessary, and oh maybe some of the downstream corporate profit will be shared with Venezuelans but don’t count on it. In bizarro world, this is justification for neocolonialism except the U.S. doesn’t extend a protective arm over the citizens of those countries a/k/a the rightful owners of the targeted resources. The U.S. just takes punctures their sovereignty, takes their stuff, and lets happen whatever local effects may obtain. It’s not quite a smash-and-grab job because time and investment are needed before hauling away resources, but it’s tantamount to the same.

As with all geopolitics, there are those (like me) simply aghast at the brazenness of U.S. actions around the world and others cheering “Fuck yeah! America!” like the goobers (puppets) in that film from 2004. Like other books and films, art imitating life (though dystopia or extreme parody) has been inverted and become entirely predictive of reality. Hard to contemplate anyone during creation of those artworks conceiving their work becoming how-to books and films for despots and criminals, but that’s the level to which geopolitics has sunk. No longer even a need for pretense. Just plunge forward and annex Greenland or Canada. Why not? Resistance will be pathetically futile.

Contemporary culture has reflected on the past few centuries of absolutely scandalous activity and exclaimed “Omigod, what have we done?” Judging the past and adopting pretzel logic to somehow correct ourselves has not made anyone immune to additional scourges. All that was once old is new again.

Offered Without Comment 43

Posted: January 21, 2026 in Consciousness, Science
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From Tom Murphy’s 9-part (so far) exploration of consciousness called Ditching Dualism:

Materialism … acquiesces to unthinkable complexity. It surrenders the requirement that we possess end-to-end accountability, living instead with ambiguity and uncertainty. Confident assertion that consciousness cannot emerge out of matter does not strike me as being tolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty (and where is such sure knowledge acquired?). Importantly, material monism is not claiming to have a model for how it all works; not pretending to understand; not demanding certainty. Rather, it is comfortable with not-knowing — submitting to complexity, while still respecting and acknowledging that atoms are found wherever we look and no violations of physics have been exposed in living beings or otherwise.

Offered Without Comment 42

Posted: January 18, 2026 in Conspiracy, History, Intellectual History, Politics, Religion
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From Jared Yates Sexton’s book The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis (2023):

The religious dedication to the preservation of the story of not only the United States but all of “Western civilization” — the supposed narrative of how the modern world came to be — is the means by which power shields and hides itself. The conspiracy theories that afflict people like my family, people willing to die and kill for those ideas, serve as a buttressing of that system. The stream of lies is designed to hide the origins of their material lives, consecrate their suffering, and co-opt them as guardians of their own inequality. [p. 8]

True Believers

Posted: January 16, 2026 in Conspiracy, Culture, Debate, Nomenclature, Politics
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Been a long while since I read George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, though I return to his themes regarding boot-heel totalitarianism quite often and quote some of his more memorable lines. So I was surprised to stumble across the quoted passage below, which other cite as either evidence of Orwell’s misogyny or his (anachronistic?) recognition of an apparent phenomenon:

He [Winston] disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy. But this particular girl gave him the impression of being more dangerous than most. 

I don’t recall picking up on this passage (or others like it) by Orwell. Perhaps I was distracted by Orwell’s other brutal characterizations, such as the character Emmanuel Goldstein being offered up as the despised target of the Two Minutes Hate, another phenomenon better understood as formalization of longstanding discrimination against a religious-ethnic group. Maybe antisemitism is more obvious or legible upon reading the novel than misogyny. I can’t say. Neither registers on me despite privilege, identity politics, and bigotry of all manner being shoved in my face constantly these days. So much for dreams of a post-racial, equal-opportunity society, I guess. Conspiratorially, this is part of a divide-and-conquer strategy meant to deflect attention away from the real struggle (i.e., class war).

Once prejudice is pointed out, however, one is alternatively challenged to agree that everyone, every type, every identity, is radically equal on the one hand or fundamentally, immutably different on the other. It’s an unsolvable paradox. Of course, if looking for differences among groups, sliced and diced according to any number of questionable characteristics (because the dominant culture obsesses about such things), one is pretty much guaranteed to encounter divergences. Most distributions are not perfectly, uniformly even but tend to bunch. Like coin flips, it’s only across large sets that a comforting 50-50 average is found. To entertain Orwell’s suggestion, is the true believer syndrome over-represented among women? Is there something biologically or socially determined (i.e., nature vs. nurture) that makes women (not a minority or protected class) particularly vulnerable to ideological capture?

I decline to argue in that direction but will say that others are acknowledging that female social justice warriors enforcing groupthink and agitating in the streets are weirdly visible and may be more comfortable than men advocating for political violence (saw a poll to that effect but could not locate it to provide a link). There is an acronym (AWFULs = Affluent White Female Urban Liberal) and a name (Karen) for women who exhibit high levels of entitlement and indignant righteousness a/k/a righteous indignation. They also mouth off and adopt provocative, combative approaches under the false expectation that no one could possible oppose or arrest them (or punch or shoot). They wear virtue armor. Behavior in many instances appears to be entirely performative, meaning “being seen” as a dissenter on or for social media. Numbers skew based on other demographic bases (e.g., age and education), with some being truly arbitrary (Anderson being at the front of the alphabet while Williams being at the back). Again, I can’t say what’s going on because I simply don’t think readily in such terms and prefer to elide the issue. But I can’t help but to take notice when others take notice, some even going so far as too argue that women are categorically unfit for leadership positions. History has at least proven that assertion untrue.

The Divided Self

Posted: January 8, 2026 in Cinema, Consciousness, Culture, Journalism, Media, Music, Television
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The term divided self comes from a book by R.D. Laing published in 1965 and refers to the divergence between private, inner experience and the self one projects out into the world, the latter of which is reflected back to oneself as external feedback. Laing’s wider context includes psychological descriptions of psychic disintegration, dysphoria, schizophrenia, and madness associated with inauthenticity and adoption of a false self. The phrase “I’m beside myself” accidentally captures the sense of dual personae, i.e., having an internal monitor or being a passenger on board an out-of-control ride. Those obsessed with the idea of self (or identity, or mind, or psyche, or consciousness, take your pick, but not the identity politics version) at least know of Laing’s term, though I suspect it’s become moribund in today’s anti-intellectual environment. I resurrected it from memory in response to the Adam Curtis podcast interview embedded below.

Although I’m favorably disposed toward Adam Curtis, his remarks irritated me because he fails to cite Laing in his observations about the changing nature of discourse and how people hold themselves out in public — now always with an eye toward being surveilled, filmed, or both (filmed being an anachronism in the era of digital video). Yeah, well, duh. Curtis combs through historical footage and finds so much of it … dated, evidence of a time when people were more authentic and less performative. As a careful thinker about media, Curtis should recognize that historical representations in pictures, film, television, indeed all media, have always been stylized (just like incessant selfies with arm extended). If examples from decades past (his youth?) appear somehow more natural, less staged, managed, or unnatural I consider that simple nostalgia bias.

Staged photos appeared in the earliest daguerreotypes, and silent films had to establish an entire vocabulary suitable to cinematic storytelling, which has continued to revise and refine itself over a century. TV news reports have similarly shifted from styles used by Edward R. Morrow to Walter Cronkite to Dan Rather to whatever idiots are now vomiting up government talking points. Musical recordings in all genres also exhibit a continuous evolution of performance practice, sometimes going backward to attempt to recapture historical practice as a fetish. Cinema sometimes does that, too (e.g., B&W and/or silent elements from the past purposely reused for effect). That’s the finding: consciousness (alternatively: the way the self is constructed) and its cultural expressions are always moving targets.

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Humanitarian Duties (redux)

Posted: January 7, 2026 in Environment, Ethics, Industrial Collapse, Philosophy, Politics
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As industrial collapse gets worse and conditions deteriorate, the already unmanageable flow
of populations away from locations where life is intolerable or impossible will only increase.

Since publishing the earlier version of this title, the picture has shifted and reversed a couple times, i.e., already porous borders thrown wide open then slammed shut again. Thus, immigrants into the U.S. were initially limited and/or repelled, then welcomed without responsible oversight, and are now being arrested and deported without due process. The sentence at top is (part of) what I published in November 2018, knowing even then that mass movement and migration would be highly divisive and disruptive as industrial civilization enters its death throes. And so it has proved to be, though few will admit that civilization is cracking up. Civilian populations in Western countries have not yet openly targeted immigrants in their midst. That responsibility in the U.S. fell to ICE. Don’t know about other countries, but according to some, reports are suppressed regarding tensions building to expel and deport in the hope of preserving local cultures felt to be under siege from within.

Missing from this activity is plain acknowledgement of humanitarian duty or obligation to fellow humans, immigrants, who are really just refugees. Three interlocking conditions lead others to seek refuge from a failed state: (1) loss of economic opportunity, (2) inability of a country to govern itself responsibly, and (3) ecological collapse. As a doomer, I had thought regions becoming uninhabitable from pollution, despoliation, depletion, and warming climate (and sea level rise) would be the main driver. Turns out other reasons anticipate loss of habitat. Still a long, long way down before industrial civilization terminates.

In the last decade or so, however, waves of immigration have stressed Western countries through a mixture of crime, fraud, and refusal to integrate. In contrast, pretty much every major American city has for generations had an unproblematic Chinatown district, so xenophobia all by itself is not the core of the problem. Rather, it’s lawlessness, drain on community resources, and a perceived long demographic slide into cultural oblivion that are creating pushback not wholly unlike the body’s immune response to foreign invaders. Begs the question “when should the humanitarian response end?” If the U.S. (or any other country) is among the last lifeboats to which others attempt to cling as civilization descends into anarchy (or worse), at what point is it necessary to save the boat itself, in effect telling others “sorry, no room for you”? I don’t know the answer to that question but have suspicions how it will go.

Curtailed Services

Posted: January 6, 2026 in Crime, Debate, Economics, Politics, War
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A remark made in one of the many YouTube interviews I hear stuck with me. It observed one of the things First World people typically take for granted, namely, food safety. If one travels to a developing country, there may be no equivalent of the FDA regulating production standards or conducting inspections to avoid pathogen-related foodborne illness. Accordingly, food safety may need to be a matter of constant vigilance to avoid tainted food. But in the U.S., the Federal government performs that service on behalf of citizens, which for practical purposes means that one need not think too much about it. Of course, foodborne illness and death still occur infrequently, but recalls of tainted food minimize effects once noticed.

“Taken for granted” is not pejorative in this context. It’s a fair expectation among the U.S. population that various services provided by government will be there when needed, primarily infrastructure (including transportation and energy), education through high school, and civil safety (including what’s understood as a social safety net). Government services are by no means perfect and some have declined disastrously since the middle of the 20th century. Critics of government in general often insist that its agencies is the worst option and services should be privatized. Take for instance 21st-century natural disasters (e.g., floods, fires, hurricanes). Just when desperate need arises, services under agencies such as FEMA are delayed, curtailed, and/or nonexistent. Scam fundraisers are typically the first to act. Happily, when disaster strikes and citizens are abandoned to their fates, their fellow citizens in local communities routinely step in where government fails. However, in some cases, aid has been actively thwarted in favor of profiteers with preestablished service contracts. It’s increasingly difficult to avoid regarding government as a giant money trough with all the usual pigs (including foreigners) lined up to fatten themselves.

Here’s a candidate for the most wasteful, out-of-control government service that ought to be curtailed severely: the U.S. Dept. of Defense War. David Stockman makes this point ably in an article at the Brownstone Institute by comparing the supposed peace dividend owed to Americans (and the world) in 1991 to the drawdown of the U.S. military following WWI (the Great War):

There is no peace on earth today for reasons mainly rooted in Imperial Washington—not Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Damascus, Beirut, or the rubble of what remains of the Donbas. Imperial Washington has become a global menace owing to what didn’t happen in 1991. At that crucial inflection point, Bush the Elder should have declared “mission accomplished” and parachuted into the great Ramstein air base in Germany to begin the demobilization of America’s vast war machine. So doing, he could have slashed the Pentagon budget from $600 billion to $300 billion (2015 $); demobilized the military-industrial complex by putting a moratorium on all new weapons development, procurement, and export sales; dissolved NATO and dismantled the far-flung network of US military bases; reduced the United States’ standing armed forces from 1.5 million to a few hundred thousand; and organized and led a world-disarmament and peace campaign, as did his Republican predecessors during the 1920s. [paragraph breaks removed]

One might counter that providing for general defense is the most important and necessary government service despite the U.S. only coming under attack rarely (usually blowback for something the U.S. initiates). Are the bloated budgets really necessary? Branches of the U.S. military and allied intelligence services work well enough (except Space Force, which is a bad joke) in spite of rampant corruption and their preemptive misuse for all manner of mischief and gunboat diplomacy. That’s a rosy framing, of course, considering agencies fail abysmally when subjected to sober analysis. Smedley Butler (in his 1935 book War is a Racket) and Dwight Eisenhower (by identifying the military-industrial complex) both famously warned against allowing warhawks and profiteers too much policy influence. But it’s taken for granted that the world is a dangerous place in need of policing and defense. As a result, the U.S. economy is always on a war footing and the government perpetuates warfare (forever wars) as a way of life.

Lingua Nova 10

Posted: January 3, 2026 in Idle Nonsense, Nomenclature
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cuffing season: in dating markets, a temporary reprieve from hook-up culture to pair up during the holidays (e.g., Thanksgiving through Valentine’s Day) to enjoy warm fuzzies avoided outside the season; related: snowmanning: finding someone (anyone!) with whom to pass the time and combat loneliness before spring shows up, snow and feelings melt, and hot-girl summer resumes

pareidolia: cognitive bias toward perceiving familiar shapes (e.g., faces, animals) in otherwise random or ambiguous visual patterns

alien ownership: a business purchased and controlled by parties without history, know-how, affection, or interest in the products or services central to the business

power dead even rule: radical socialist concept, particularly among women, that balance in relationships, power, and self-esteem must be perfectly equal to avoid climbers and achievers being victimized by those left behind or below; related to tall poppy syndrome

fed slop: leaks, psyops, and garbage news release of dubious accuracy or outright falsity, created for propaganda purposes; similar to AI slop

irredentism: acquisition or annexation of foreign territory because of cultural, historical, ethnic, racial, or other associations

airport divorce: separation of married travelers at airport security checkpoints with agreement to meet at the gate because … everyone handles stress differently

Abundance

Posted: December 30, 2025 in Economics, Environment
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Gawd how I’ve grown to hate the word abundance. Like freedom and democracy, it’s rhetoric that has been bandied about and degraded for decades but seems to have new life breathed into it regularly by virtue of periodic technological developments (and political campaigns) that promise the world at one’s doorstep (delivered by Amazon, natch). The word is also the title of a recent book by Ezra Klein (with Derek Thompson), which I haven’t read and plan not to read because its premise has such a high ick factor (I was revulsed). Here’s the thing: consumer society has certain inflexible needs at the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Sometimes called physiological or ontological needs, they are shelter, food, clothing, security, and human society. They can be met at surprisingly minimal levels and are thus nonnegotiable. History is replete with extended episodes when the masses got along with very little. Deprivation, suffering, and early death were commonplace. In contrast, expansive lifestyles and cultural norms based on abundance often lead to excess.

Human societies changed substantially with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, driven especially by new technologies that ramped up exploitation of fossil fuels. In practical terms, fuel is roughly synonymous with energy (physicists, feel free to correct me if worthwhile) and the late 18th century inaugurated an as-yet-unabated exponential increase in fuel, energy, and resource consumption accompanied by a veritable explosion in human population. It’s often remarked that inhabitants of an average U.S. household (millions of them) live better (materially, anyway) than a medieval king or queen (a modest number of royal families scattered across Western Europe). That’s largely because the cost of energy needed to do various types of work today is radically low in comparison to the era preceding the Industrial Revolution. (Industrial Civilization, OTOH, refers to 5–7 millennia that led eventually to the current fossil fuel era — only 250 or so years.) Quite a lot of that work is simple transportation and logistics: getting things to an emporium or to everyone’s door if home delivery is an option. To put that in perspective, consider the difficulty and cost of growing food in an agrarian society and getting it to market (when not consumed in situ). Loading the wagon and hauling hundreds of pounds of produce over, say, 25 miles was a Herculean task, typically enabled by a team of draught animals. Today, that’s accomplished with 1 or 2 gallons of gasoline (depending on the load and vehicle). DoorDash and Uber Eats arguably make getting fed even more convenient by relieving the consumer of any need to cook. Can’t someone just drop grapes into my open mouth while I lounge in comfort and decadence? Why do I even need to chew? Food from a straw gets me fed. Intravenous feeding bypasses even that.

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Offered Without Comment 41

Posted: December 29, 2025 in Blogosphere
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From Tom Murphy’s post at his blog Do The Math (on my blogroll):

… development [of] agriculture transpired very rapidly compared to relevant ecological and evolutionary timescales—which can be millions of years. A few-thousand years for a major transformation represents an ecological blink. As a result, evolution has not yet had time to pass judgment on the ecological viability of this new mode. The fact that we appear to have initiated a sixth mass extinction within a few millennia of the widespread adoption of agriculture does not speak well for it. Metaphorically, sophomoric agriculture has not yet earned a diploma, and is busy racking up failing grades in most subjects (by partying with technology). The prospects are not great. [italics and links in original]

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