Numerous Narratives 🍁

Atomic essays, mini explorations, and a digital garden of diverse ideas – welcome! This is my space for creative experimentation, a place where fiction and reality collide. You'll find reflections on everything from economics and politics to culture and technology, alongside the development of my novel and nonfiction projects. My tools of choice? Of course Linux, Standard Notes, Manuskript, and the secure writing environment of theQuill.app. The views shared here are entirely my own and do not reflect the opinions of my employer or any organizations I am affiliated with. My perspectives may evolve over time as I strive to maintain an open mind. This blog offers a snapshot of my thoughts at specific moments, capturing ideas that resonated with me then. Please note that some older posts may no longer align with my current views. - - -

I Was Asked Over The Years, "Why Is Indigenous Studies Difficult To Learn?"

April 24, 2025•417 words

"Indigenous people believe that Man belongs to the World; civilized people believe that the World belongs to Man." ~ Daniel Quinn "Indigenous people made huge contributions to this country. The biggest is in sharing the land and resources. People need to see that, understand that. Indigenous people should be viewed as the founding peoples of this land." ~ Perry Bellegarde "We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims ...

America Gearing Up Their Nuclear Armed Submarine Forces Off The Coast Of China

April 23, 2025•305 words

"Our nuclear weapons are meant purely as a deterrent against nuclear adventure by an adversary." ~ Atal Bihari Vajpayee "We have got thousands of nuclear weapons in order to achieve deterrence." ~ John Spratt "That's a point that Dan Ellsberg has made for years. He said it's kind of like if you and I go into a grocery store to rob it, and I have a gun. The guy may give you the money in the cash register. I'm using the gun even if I don't shoot. Well that's nuclear weapons - essential to post-...

90 Days Of Uncertainty

April 22, 2025•331 words

Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. ~Milton Friedman "Coercion cannot but result in chaos in the end." ~ Mahatma Gandhi "I support free trade. Donald Trump supports free trade.Trade means jobs. Jobs in the United States, jobs in my home state of Indiana are supported by international exports." ~ Mike Pence When Tru...

Trump's Gamifying Tariffs To Make A Deal

April 21, 2025•668 words

"Never in human history has a whimsical decision by a single person destroyed so much wealth." ~Arindrajit Dube "I keep asking myself, 'What is this [Trump] Administration trying to do? Was the objective to re-industrialize the United States, or to raise revenue to help pay for tax cuts to the rich, or to change the global flow of funds? My answer consistently is, they want to remake America, but you can't remake America unless you remake the world at the same time. So it's a revolutionary mov...

Political "Yes Men" Surround The Ruler

April 19, 2025•794 words

A few yes men may be born, but mostly they are made. Fear is a great breeder of them. ~William Wrigley, Jr. I only have 'yes' men around me. Who needs 'no' men? ~Mae West Be aware of "yes" men. Generally, they are losers. Surround yourself with winners. Never forget - people win. ~Bear Bryant I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their job. ~Samuel Goldwyn I didn't feel the need to have a lot of yes-men standing around me. As Mit...

Authoritarian, Narcissistic, & Demagogic Leaders

April 18, 2025•579 words

"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." ~ H. L. Mencken "Reason and truth have rarely prevailed against demagoguery when the audience is too ignorant to tell the difference." ~ Charley Reese "Exploiting people's emotions of fear, envy and anxiety is not hope, it's not change, it's partisanship. We don't need partisanship. We don't need demagoguery, we need solutions." ~ Paul Ryan "American fascism will not be really dangerous until th...

Loss Of Status & Cult Of Personality

April 17, 2025•314 words

"It's not a matter of maintaining the status quo. We have to create a dynamic state, oriented towards expansion." ~ David Ben-Gurion "Stalinism is linked with a cult of personality and massive violations of the law, with repression and camps. There is nothing like that in Russia and, I hope, will never again be..." ~ Vladimir Putin "Within a capitalist consumer society, the cult of personality has the power to subsume ideas, to make the person, the personality into the product and not the wor...

Social Anxiety & Economic Existential Threats

April 16, 2025•246 words

"It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me." ~ Stephen Fry "You have social media and the Internet and immigration and so, suddenly, cultures are clashing and people feel as if they're less familiar with the people around th...

Pathological Narcissistic Fantasy on A Political Scale

April 16, 2025•253 words

"It's a deep and all but certain truth about narcissistic personalities that to meet them is to love them, but to know them well is to find them unbearable. Confidence quickly curdles into arrogance; smarts turn to smugness, charm turns to smarm." ~ Jeffrey Kluger "At times we can be self-absorbed. Lord, help us to open our hearts to others and to serve those who are most vulnerable." ~ Pope Francis "It's really hard to have a fair discussion when you're faced with militarism, aggression, and...

Trumpism Fear & Greed

April 14, 2025•385 words

"Nobody can solve debt problems like me." ~ Donald Trump "I've always felt fine about Putin. I think he is a strong leader, he's a powerful leader, he's represented his country the way - the country is being represented." ~ Donald Trump "I'm going to fight for every person in America who believes government should serve the people, not the donors and not the special interests." ~ Donald Trump "Any violation of civil rights will be aggressively pursued and prosecuted by my administration. No ...

Kiss My Ring

April 14, 2025•389 words

"Bow or bend the knee," The President snarled, his voice harsh as metal rasp-seared by flames, raw and hollow and with the furnace intensity of conquest. His voice ripped breath from him, with the stench of burned treaties and broken nations. The room, a deformed replica of the old United Nations chamber, fell silent. The gathered heads of state, some dressed in suits, others in shackles, stumbled, looking up towards the charred iron and oil-soiled gold throne. The President's right hand hung b...

Ai & China's Textile Industry: Speed and Efficiency

April 12, 2025•407 words

"When it comes to economics, president-elect [Donald] Trump has promised to revive American manufacturing, get tough on trade with China, cut taxes and invest in infrastructure." ~ Judy Woodruff "The vast majority of Americans are employed in service sector industries, and many of those sectors are highly internationalized. The most high-value added sectors, notably the tech sector, is massively globalized. And, for them, it would be a disaster if America's trade policy was to go down a spiral...

China's AI In Manufacturing

April 11, 2025•469 words

"In a sense, artificial intelligence will be the ultimate tool because it will help us build all possible tools." ~ K. Eric Drexler "You can't just stop technological progress. Even if one country stops researching artificial intelligence, some other countries will continue to do it. The real question is what to do with the technology. You can use exactly the same technology for very different social and political purposes. So I think people shouldn't be focused on the question of how to stop ...

Trump's 90-day Reprieve Of Worldwide Tariffs On Most Countries

April 11, 2025•351 words

"Frankly speaking, we all know that provoking military and political instability, regional, and other conflicts is a helpful means of distracting the public from growing domestic social and economic problems in certain countries. Such attempts cannot be ruled out, unfortunately." ~ Vladimir Putin "The decision-making process in the White House does not let most issues get up to the President. The Council thought opening up global markets to derivatives that would destabilize other countries wa...

Understanding A Narcissistic Politician

April 9, 2025•628 words

"The narcissist devours people, consumes their output, and casts the empty, writhing shells aside." ~ Sam Vaknin "The thing about narcissistic people is that they don't think they're being narcissistic." ~ Michael Ian Black "Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them." ~ T. S. Eliot "I don't think Trump is a deeply self-aware person. But he's absolutely off the charts as a narcissist...

What is Trump's End Goal With These Tariffs?

April 8, 2025•406 words

"By the way, my tax cut is the biggest since Ronald Reagan. I'm very proud of it." ~ Donald Trump "Well the thinking is we have the highest tax rate in the world. In the entire world, we have the highest tax rate. There's gridlock in Washington because there's no leadership. So what I'm doing is a large tax cut especially for the middle class and they're gonna- we're going to have a dynamic country. We're going to have dynamic economics. And it's going to be something really special. And peopl...

Great Powers Tend To Lash Out On The Downfall

April 7, 2025•489 words

"History is replete with examples of empires mounting impressive military campaigns on the cusp of their impending economic collapse." ~ Eric Alterman "The idea wasn't to make a direct political statement since the current economic collapse hadn't begun when we started on the book. The parallels I'm most interested in are the ways that human nature never changes, no matter how far back in time you look." ~ James Vance "Capitalism, the ogre of those protesting Wall Street, has suffered a publi...

American Tariffs – Trumpism From Liberal Benevolence To Capricious Narcissism

April 7, 2025•474 words

"The notion that big business and big labor and big government can sit down around a table somewhere and work out the direction of the American economy is at complete variance with the reality of where the American economy is headed. I mean, it's like dinosaurs gathering to talk about the evolution of a new generation of mammals." ~ Bruce Babbitt "The corruption will come back to haunt the Trump administration. But mostly, it'll come back to haunt the American economy, as companies decide they...

Trump's Effective Truth Of Tariffs

April 6, 2025•320 words

"Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money." ~ Unknown "As one person said to me , Republicans know [Donald] Trump is a stain on their party." ~ Mara Liasson "We must confront the reality that his [Donald Trump] comments have provoked, and consider whether we want to import such hatred to this country." ~ Tulip Siddiq Trump’s tariffs are framed as a protection...

The Shock Of American Worldwide Tariffs

April 4, 2025•299 words

Capitalism, racism and inhuman technocracy quietly develop in their own way. The causes of misery are no longer to be found in the inner attitudes of men, but have long been institutionalized. ~ Jürgen Moltmann Technocracy wants to do everything by machinery. Machinery is doing just fine. If it can't kill you, it will put you out of work. ~ Will Rogers The human mind, in taking us down the path of technocracy, has become the adversary of life itself and collaterally the adversary of the huma...

An Economic integrated USA & Canada

April 3, 2025•490 words

If the Schengen system (of border-free travel) is destroyed, Europe will be seriously endangered politically and economically. That is why we Europeans have to invest billions in Turkey, Libya, Jordan and other countries in the region as quickly as possible everybody as much as they can. ~ Wolfgang Schauble "The only technology that helps to create a plethora of business and employment opportunity while promoting the green environment, is serving good for the society and, therefore, the sustai...

Balancing Trade, Manufacturing, and Economic Growth in the Era of Tariffs

April 2, 2025•844 words

"Goods produced under conditions which do not meet a rudimentary standard to decency should be regarded as contraband and not allowed to pollute the channels of international commerce." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt "That's at the root of the human interaction: fair trade." ~ Billy Corgan "But I believe in fair trade, and I will tell you, I have many, many friends heading up corporations, and people that do just business in China, they say it's virtually impossible. It's very, very hard to come int...

President Trump’s Trade Policy

April 1, 2025•593 words

"What protectionism teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war." ~ Henry George "We shouldn't be putting tariffs on anything. That hurts working men and women in US. What we should be doing is making our manufacturing more competitive." ~ Rick Santorum "Tariff policy beneficiaries are always visible, but its victims are mostly invisible. Politicians love this. The reason is simple: The beneficiaries know for whom to cast their ballots, and ...

Trump Tariff Day Coming To All Countries Soon

March 31, 2025•181 words

"Liberation is the path of transcendence. Manifestation is the path of immanence. Both lead to the same place: the divine." ~ Anodea Judith "The greatest force of personal liberation is the decision to widen our circle of compassion, moving from focus on self to focus on service." ~ Marianne Williamson "The liberation of language is rooted in the liberation of ourselves." ~ Mary Daly "As history has repeatedly proven, one trade tariff begets another, then another - until you've got a full-bl...

How Did China Become The World Leading Manufacturing Superpower?

March 31, 2025•440 words

"Products made in China are cheap through the exploitation of the workforce. Every time we shop, we are driving the nail further into the coffin of American manufacturing jobs." ~ Joe Baca "We've lost an edge that we used to have in scientific innovation applications to goods to be sold. In many ways, that is also changing in the electronic field. Almost all of the materials that we use now are of advanced technology, I have an iPad and also an iPod, both of which are made in China. Although w...

Canada is An Extremely Stable Governance Country

March 29, 2025•180 words

"The reality of Canadian history is that we've been willing to do the important things the world demanded of us: fighting in World War II, in Korea, in the Balkans, where we were involved in offensive military operations, and in Afghanistan, where we have made disproportionate contributions." ~ Chris Alexander "There are two miracles in Canadian history. The first is the survival of French Canada, and the second is the survival of Canada." ~ F. R. Scott Canada is a highly stable geopolitical...

Canadian Universal Access to Healthcare versus American Unequal Access to Healthcare

March 29, 2025•510 words

"I will sign a universal health-care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year." ~ Barack Obama "America must deal once and for all with an utterly irrational health care financing system that allows private interests to make billions in profits from the pain and suffering of their fellow citizens. America is the only country in the industrialized world that does not provide tax-su...

Trump Officials Testify In March 25, Senate Hearing After War Plans Revealed To Journalist In Signal Group Chat

March 28, 2025•1,532 words

"You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. If they want to get you, over time they will." ~ Edward Snowden "Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them." ~ Julian Assange "Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior." ~ Julian Assange "There is thus ...

Dark Power of Tribalism and the Nature of Civilization

March 27, 2025•443 words

"Tribalism never prospers, for when it does, everyone will respect it as a true nationalism, and no-one will dare call it tribalism." ~ Ernest Gellner "Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience." ~ Christopher Hitchens Human history is competing tribes, with survival, power, and dominance driv...

USA: Nationalism with Factional Ultranationalism

March 26, 2025•519 words

The holiness of the kingdom of God must be preserved. If Jesus refused to acknowledge and fight for Israel as God's favored nation- even though it was the one nation in history that actually held this status at one time- how much more must his followers refuse to acknowledge and fight for America as God's favored nation" To say it another way, if Jesus was committed solely to establishing a kingdom that had no intrinsic nationalistic or ethnic allegiances- not even with Israel- how much more sh...