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. - - -

Zelensky & Globalists In A State Of Political Agony

March 23, 2025•518 words

"The leading student of business propaganda, Australian social scientist Alex Carey, argues persuasively that “the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." ~ Noam Chomsky "Americanism not globalism will be our credo as long as we are led by politicians who will not put America first, then we c...

The Positives Of Oligarchic Rule

March 22, 2025•784 words

The inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults. Chris Hedges Democracy appears to be safer and less liable to revolution than oligarchy. For in oligarchies there is the double danger of the oligarchs falling out among themselves and also with the people; but in democracies there is only the danger of a quarrel with the oligarchs. No dissension worth mentioning arises among the people themselves. And we may further remark that a government which is co...

Modern Oligarchies

March 22, 2025•291 words

"To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy." ~ Thomas Jefferson "The real difference between democracy and oligarchy is poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy." ~ Aristotle "When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then poli...

Recipe for Democracies Tipping Towards Autocracies

March 20, 2025•287 words

"Every dictatorship has ultimately strangled in the web of repression it wove for its people, making mistakes that could not be corrected because criticism was prohibited." ~ Robert Kennedy "The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not." ~ Christopher Hitchens "I have often thought that if a rational Fascist di...

America At A Tipping Point: Autocracy

March 20, 2025•694 words

"Autocracy cannot do without its twin agents: a hangman and a priest, the first to suppress popular resistance by force, the second to sweeten and embellish the lot of the oppressed with empty promises of a heavenly kingdom." ~ Vladimir Lenin "I would have to point out in the strongest terms the autocracy of the Liberal structure and the cowardice of its members. I have never seen in all my examination of politics so degrading a spectacle as that of all these Liberals turning their coats in un...

Populism & Popular Sovereignty

March 18, 2025•487 words

"If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, you must tell them the crudest and most stupid things." ~ Adolf Hitler "Political populism always poses a great danger because it disorients people, creates excessive expectations or, on the contrary, prioritises objectives that are clearly not priorities or are simply impossible to achieve." ~ Vladimir Putin "As a rule, [populism] is done for the sake of political expediency by those who do not care about the consequences, who do not think even ...

Denial of Sovereignty

March 18, 2025•485 words

"Respecting the sovereignty means preventing coups, unconstitutional actions and illegitimate overthrowing of the legitimate government. All these things should be totally prevented." ~ Vladimir Putin "The purpose of the United Nations should be to protect the essential sovereignty of nations, large and small." ~ Nikita Khrushchev "We believe that big nations should not bully smaller nations, and that the sovereignty of nations must be respected. And we have long urged that disputes be resolv...

Dostoevsky’s Concept of the Sublime

March 17, 2025•461 words

"Leave those vain moralists, my friend, and return to the depth of your soul: that is where you will always rediscover the source of the sacred fire which so often inflamed us with love of the sublime virtues; that is where you will see the eternal image of true beauty, the contemplation of which inspires us with a holy enthusiasm." ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau "Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way in which we a...

Sublime Is An Experience That Exceeds Ordinary Human Scale

March 15, 2025•464 words

"Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt" ~ Immanuel Kant "Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything, will really ...

What is Not a Nation-State, According to Trump?

March 14, 2025•450 words

Nation state as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state. Zbigniew Brzezinski The competitive nation-state system, with all its capacity for good and evil, is spreading in the Third World and is transforming that world. Robert Gilpin Globally, as the nation-state becomes increasingly less mea...

Will Canada Become the 51st State?

March 13, 2025•356 words

"In 10 years, this sleepy Canada will be ripe for annexation - the farmers in Manitoba, etc., will demand it themselves. Besides, the country is half annexed already socially - hotels, newspapers, advertising, etc., all on the American pattern." ~ Friedrich Engels "There are probably 400 to 500 people, water protectors, north of the 1889 boundary, that was the result of an illegal annexation of treaty territory by the United States against not just the Standing Rock Nation, but the entire Lako...

America's Existential Threat is Not Canada

March 12, 2025•548 words

I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that. So we need to be very careful...With artificial intelligence we're summoning the demon. ~ Elon Musk We, the great American nation, decided that we've got 138 military bases around the world and we've now figured out that we can buy these drones from the Israelis, and we've decided that the way to proceed is to use this new technology to go and kill ...

Is Zelenskyy a “Walking Dead” President?

March 11, 2025•455 words

"I used to think that the causes of war were predominantly economic. I came to think that they were more psychological. I am now coming to think that they are decisively "personal," arising from the defects and ambitions of those who have the power to influence the currents of nations." ~ B. H. Liddell Hart "The failure to dissect the cause of war leaves us open for the next installment." ~ Chris Hedges "The best defence of peace is not power, but the removal of the causes of war, and interna...

NATO, USA - UK, & The Ukraine Proxy War

March 11, 2025•381 words

"White House and State Department foreign-policy experts are overwhelmingly directed towards military and diplomatic issues, not development issues." ~ Jeffrey Sachs "We are not at war (except with our own demons)." ~ Jeffrey Sachs "Tax the rich. End the wars. Break the power of lobbies in Washington. These are the demands of Occupy Wall Street. They are very important. The US corporations dominate Washington. The big oil companies, Wall Street banks and the military-industrial complex - they...

America's Relative Decline

March 9, 2025•593 words

"For most of the history of the American empire, government has been a tool for preserving and furthering the power and might of white male corporate elites." ~ Cornel West "We better rethink the position of the United States in the world and whether we want to be an empire. Being an empire puts all of us in jeopardy. The American Empire, while it was just wreaking havoc on other nations, didn't bother us." ~ Howard Zinn "The American empire should be destroyed." ~ Aleksandr Dugin "The Ameri...

China 100% Tariffs Against Canada

March 9, 2025•725 words

The really big problem with China is that there are the unfair trade practices, like currency manipulation, illegal export subsidies and the theft of intellectual property, but then there's also things that the WTO doesn't cover that it should, which is the use of sweat shops and pollution havens. ~ Peter Navarro Any time you read that your government is erecting tariff barriers, supporting threatened industries with subsidies, or interfering in any way with free trade between individuals or n...

Counterintuitive Thinking

March 7, 2025•797 words

Counterintuitive actions prove we can trust real knowledge and do the opposite of what we feel makes sense. ~ Penn Jillette Counterintuitive action makes a fellow feel smart. ~ Penn Jillette As counterintuitive as it seems, generosity begins wherever you are. It is important to make generosity a priority. ~ Andy Stanley Real life does not come naturally. It is counterintuitive. It is a skill we have to learn. That's because the way to real life is not something we get, but something we give....

Trump's Worldwide Tariff Strategy: A Self-Inflicted Economic Catastrophe

March 6, 2025•1,111 words

"Thanks to economists, all of us, from the days of Adam Smith and before right down to the present, tariffs are perhaps one tenth of one percent lower than they otherwise would have been. And because of our efforts, we have earned our salaries ten-thousand fold." ~ Milton Friedman "Tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices, which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world and losses of far more jobs than are saved." ~ Thomas Sowell "As hi...

Trump's Economic War on America, Canada, Mexico, European Union, and China

March 5, 2025•729 words

The combat of WAR and an economic WAR have a lot of similarities. You do have to be skilled, aggressive, know your enemy and your strong attributes and limitations. Both skills are needed although one may be more natural. ~ Richard Marcinko To me, the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we're five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we'll never be able to recover. ~ Ste...

Coercive Economic Diplomacy & Tariff Blackmail From An illiberal Trump Administration

March 4, 2025•706 words

"Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men." ~ Milton Friedman "One who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman." ~ Mahatma Gandhi "Coercion created slavery, the cowardice of the slaves perpetuated it." ~ Jean-Baptiste Rousseau "Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, ...

What are Some Causes of Pushing Nations to War While in an Economic War?

March 3, 2025•505 words

"The world has never been as divided as it is now, what with religious wars, genocides, a lack of respect for the planet, economic crisis, depression, poverty, with everyone wanting instant solutions to at least some of the world's problems or their own. And things only look bleaker as we head into future." ~ Paulo Coelho To me, the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we're five years away, I think, ten years at the mo...

Worst Case Scenarios if Tariff Trade Wars Escalate Due to the Trump Administration

March 3, 2025•855 words

"History is replete with examples of empires mounting impressive military campaigns on the cusp of their impending economic collapse." ~ Eric Alterman "I expect to see trade wars, foreign policy disasters, a few race riots, a decrease in personal liberty, higher taxes, higher inflation and probably, economic collapse. The silver lining is, secession will probably become more feasible." ~ Charley Reese "At the crash of economic collapse of which the rumblings can already be heard, the sleeping...

Reading and Learning About Dr. Morris

March 2, 2025•352 words

"First there was racism. Then liberals created institutional racism and coded racism. You can only hear it with a dog whistle." ~ Evan Sayet "What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism." ~ Rand Paul "In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and particip...

Are You, Your Brother's Keeper?

March 1, 2025•697 words

"Am I my brother's keeper?" There you have the whole Biblical understanding that you are your brother's keeper. You also have a whole other understanding in which you are not your brother's keeper. And I've heard some extremely bright people take this position. ~ Elie Wiesel We are not our brother’s keeper we are our brother and we are our sister. We must look past complexion and see community. ~ Maya Angelou The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber. Religion ...

The Cost of War and the Fall of a Hegemonic Empire

February 27, 2025•1,221 words

"Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony." ~ Noam Chomsky "I believe - though I may be wrong, because I'm no expert - that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil." ~ Dustin Hoffman "The scope of America's global hegemony is admittedly great, but its depth is shallow, limited by both domestic an...

100s of Billions of Dollars Spent On the War Economy

February 26, 2025•1,011 words

America and her allies are stepping into a very thick forest and they will be lost in no time. There is an unsustainable debt crisis on the horizon. The dollar's supremacy in the world is fading. The economy is shifting from the West. Internal factions risk tearing countries apart. Unemployment off the charts, crime rate through the roof, portions of society ignoring laws, no social safety net, pensions eroded or devoured by a volatile stock market and the plummeting dollar. North America is...

The Hidden Hand of Historical Bias

February 25, 2025•989 words

"We can at least try to understand our own motives, passions, and prejudices, so as to be conscious of what we are doing when we apeal to those of others. This is very difficult, because our own prejudice and emotional bias always seems to us so rational." ~ T. S. Eliot "It is doubtless impossible to approach any human problems with a mind free from bias." ~ Simone de Beauvoir "There are only two ways to be quite unprejudiced and impartial. One is to be completely ignorant. The other is to be...

Racial Equity and Educational Justice Requires Systemic Changes

February 25, 2025•364 words

The education justice movement and the prison justice movement have been operating separately in many places as though they're in silos. But the reality is we're not going to provide meaningful education opportunities to poor kids, kids of color, until and unless we recognize that we're wasting trillions of dollars on a failed criminal justice system. ~ Michelle Alexander "Antiracism is not "my" campaign. I have been doing antiracism organizing, activism, educating and writing for 20 years, in...

Restorative Justice and Alternative Disciplinary Approaches

February 24, 2025•788 words

"Restorative justice says "No, the offense affected a relationship" and what you are seeking for is to restore the relationship, to heal the relationship." ~ Desmond Tutu "Our current criminal justice system has no provision for restorative justice, in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right for the people they have harmed. [...] Instead, our system of "corrections" is about arm's-length revenge and retribution, all day and all night." ~ Piper Kerman "...

Who Really Benefits? The Hidden Costs of Federal Equalization Payments

February 22, 2025•815 words

"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics." ~ Plutarch "The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." ~ Aristotle "Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged well-organized inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of...