KenshoHomestead

Real American Heroes

I will start sharing more about Individuals I find who heed principles over politics, in their own words, condensed.

John D. Whitehead

“Disagree all you want about healthcare, abortion and immigration—hot-button issues that are guaranteed to stir up the masses, secure campaign contributions and turn political discourse into a circus free-for-all—but never forget that our power as a citizenry comes from our ability to agree and stand united on certain principles that should be non-negotiable.

“Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour)—and that’s just what the government spends on foreign wars. The U.S. military empire’s determination to police the rest of the world has resulted in more than 1.3 million U.S. troops being stationed at roughly 1000 military bases in over 150 countries around the world. That doesn’t include the number of private contractors pulling in hefty salaries at taxpayer expense. In Afghanistan, for example, private contractors outnumber U.S. troops three to one.

“No matter how we might differ about the role of the U.S. military in foreign affairs, surely we can agree that America’s war spending and commitment to policing the rest of the world are bankrupting the nation and spreading our troops dangerously thin.

“For too long now, the American people have rationalized turning a blind eye to all manner of government wrongdoing—asset forfeiture schemes, corruption, surveillance, endless wars, SWAT team raids, militarized police, profit-driven private prisons, and so on—because they were the so-called lesser of two evils.

“Yet the unavoidable truth is that the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentationsor some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

“It’s time for good men and women to do something. And soon.

“Wake up and take a good, hard look around you. Start by recognizing evil and injustice and tyranny for what they are. Stop being apathetic. Stop being neutral. Stop being accomplices. Stop being distracted by the political theater staged by the Deep State: they wantyou watching the show while they manipulate things behind the scenes. Refuse to play politics with your principles. Don’t settle for the lesser of two evils.”

Please read this monumental article in its entirety and take a moment to deeply consider how you can be a force for positive action, because each one of us can be, just the way we are. We still have marvelous power right at our fingertips in this country, let’s use it for good, before it’s too late!

https://mailchi.mp/rutherford/monsters-with-human-faces-the-tyranny-of-the-police-state-disguised-as-law-and-order-by-john-w-whitehead?e=39c2b09a89

Not So Wise Women

I did some travel writing during a decade of constant travel and my favorite part was having an excuse to talk to elderly ladies. Someday I will dig up more of these photos and interviews. It was sheer enjoyment and curiosity that drove me to them.

I really had no agenda and I’d been advised to steer clear of politics, but sometimes I’d ask about the ‘communist’ takeover, quickly followed by the Soviet occupation, though it was probably still too early to discuss such recent wounds in polite company in the 1990s. So, sometimes I’d seek out un-polite company.

It always stuck with me how often I hear a lady say some version of: “We had no idea what they were capable of!” I believed them. “Of course, how could you possibly have known, so tragic,” is what I’d be thinking.

Now that I’ve grown I’ve gotten a different take on this well-worn phrase. Now I think, well, why the hell not? Had you not gotten the news of their atrocities in Poland and Hungary and East Germany and so on? These are your neighbors, after all.

But, of course they had, these were not peasants in the countryside usually, they were worldly elderly women living in Prague, most of them still working into their 70s, because that’s what happens when the government ‘collectivizes’ all your family properties, businesses and homes. That’s what they called it, collectivized, because it sounds so much nicer than confiscated.

They had a suspicion of ‘volunteers’ that was completely unknown to me previously and was actually the hardest thing for me to overcome in the beginning, since part of the time I was living there I was a Peace Corps volunteer. Now I get it. It’s the ‘Trojan Horse’ thing, and the fact that volunteering was forced on them by the government as part of their ‘civic duties’ along with voting in sham elections and showing up for cheesy government-sponsored parades and celebrations.

I would do dumb touristy things without a second thought, like photograph folks’ houses I found lovely. One time a horrified middle-aged lady ran out of her front door in her robe to scream at me: “No taking pictures here! Are you healthy?!”

826907F4-F475-4291-8056-97F651AC7318 — Me in Slovakia 1995

That line stuck with me for years. “Are you healthy?” What in the world did she mean by that, like, I looked sick or something? I was very healthy indeed, her house was so beautiful and I so admired it I was doing what was completely natural for me to do, take a picture, duh!

F10495DD-59E9-455F-AB87-C3C784466DCA — Belarus 1999

Then many years later I realized she must have meant ‘healthy in the head’ because the paranoia in these folks ran really deep. Though apparently they adopted it too late to save themselves from the real enemy.

The Soviet tanks rolling into other major Eastern European cities was in the papers. They knew. They just thought, “Oh, but that could never happen here!”

I would not have pressed further back then and I took these ladies at face value. Now I would press, because what I think was really at play was what I see all around me today in this country: denial, suppression, wishful thinking, neglect, misdirected hostility, and so on.

They are showing you what they are capable of, right now, Americans: police state, mass surveillance, technocratic overlords, end of private property, mandatory vaccinations, end of free speech, and the very long list goes on.

Thanks very much to Decker, Dispatches from the Asylum for this brief sampling of the day on the capabilities and intentions of our current overlords:

“Check out the latest of these shitards and their latest, choicest f**kery:”
First wireless insect-size robot takes flight – via roboticsnews.com

That Sign Telling You How Fast You’re Driving May Be Spying – via technocracy.news

Your Volvo Will Soon Call The Cops On You If It Thinks You’ve Been Drinking – via zerohedge.com

Finger Vein Vending Machines And A Global Biometric Police Database – via activistpost.com

NYC subway denies using ‘real-time face recognition screens’ in Times Square – via theverge.com

Police in Canada Are Tracking People’s ‘Negative’ Behavior In a ‘Risk’ Database– via vice.com

MAIN CORE: GOVT “THREAT LIST” NAMES AT LEAST 8 MILLION AMERICANS WHO WILL BE DETAINED WHEN MARTIAL LAW IS IMPOSED – via amg-news.com

DARPA Seeks FAA Approval For Military Drones Over American Cities – via technocracy.news

AT&T Creates FirstNet For Law Enforcement Surveillance – viatechnocracy.news

Homeland Security To Scan Your Face At 20 Top Airports – via technocracy.news

Law enforcement taps Google’s Sensorvault for location data, report – viacnet.com

Snitch Switch: Smart Assistants With “Moral AI” Could Call Police on Owners Who Break Law – via thenewamerican.com

Take a good, hard look, because I really don’t want to have to say, “I told you so!”on my death bed.

But, of course, if it comes to that, I certainly will.

FEDD05AD-6D58-404A-8B8A-32B90880D8A3 — Me in Prague, Czech Republic 1994

Socialism is Unethical

In response to Caitlin Johnstone’s article, I’d like to offer this rebuttal. I have loads of respect for this journalist, I agree with her on most of her points of view, except this and the fact she’s clearly not researched weather modification/geoengineering, but that’s another post.

Rugged Individualism Cannot Save Us, Only Enlightened Collectivism Can

I know the arguments and I’ve lived them in post-Soviet countries. Being the simpleton I’ve been called I do find it valuable to make the complicated simple, whittle it down to the essential. Socialism is unethical. That’s all that matters to me.

I don’t like to be bullied, most folks don’t. Whether that bully is another individual or a group, it’s wrong. What happens in practicality with collectivism, after the niceties of fairness and group-think wear off, is manipulation, a constant shifting of the goal post, gaslighting, dehumanizing, celebrating mediocrity.

Imagine this as it often happens within a typical master/slave dynamic, like with parents toward their children. When Mom wants her teenager to think for herself she’ll say: “So, if all your friends jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, would you do it too?”

Yet the very same mom will insist her daughter does not elope and wears white to her wedding, and invites the right people, and all sorts of other group-think behavior if it suits her fancy. You might chalk this up to that’s just how the world works, but clearly upon deeper reflection it’s obvious this is not ethical: It’s not based on consistent and universal principles, it’s based on the whims of what the mother finds ‘right’ in the moment.

We are naturally collective, that’s why we need the balancing power of strong individuation. ‘Rugged individuals’ don’t go off to conquer new territory, whether in land, mind or sea, in order to be alone, alienated with their creation beyond kin or company. They do it in service to something, and that something is often called ego, but in fact ego alone doesn’t get one very far, unless there’s a crowd there serving that ego.

To see what collectivism, or socialism as it’s currently named, will look like as a worldwide system, one needs only consider it in a practical confined context. In healthy families it works brilliantly. But what happens in unhealthy ones, or when the tribe gets larger?

What about in a business setting, for example? Someone in that business is taking a bigger risk, someone is more competent, more popular, more trusted, more diligent, more something. That’s just how we are wired, we follow the weak at our peril.

Organizing around the weakest links is what’s required of socialism, for ‘equity’s’ sake, but in nature this creates the same predator/prey situation as in any work environment. We must collaborate, we must cooperate, but not at the expense of the will of the strong, the natural leaders.

“It is precisely these generalities of character, governed by forces of which we are unconscious, and possessed the normal of individuals of a race in much the same degree—it is precisely these qualities I say that in crowds become common property. In the collective mind the intellectual aptitudes of the individual, and in consequence their individuality, are weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped by the homogeneous, and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper-hand.” Gustav LeBon’s The Crowd

I don’t believe in free will. I think will is very expensive indeed. What will the strong do if they are constantly undermined, manipulated, bullied by the crowd?

The incompetent will pull too much on the competent to the point they quit, or to the point their mojo is reduced to such a level as to become ineffectual. This is why Ayn Rand’s work is so relevant and poignant on the political level. How does power work? Well, above all, it’s an aphrodisiac for those who seek it.

But, is that what the ‘rugged individualist’ is seeking, necessarily? This is an assumption that’s often brandied about as fact by collectivist types.

”In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated. It is not all the world, as is so often repeated, that has more wit than Voltaire, but assuredly Voltaire that has more wit than all the world, if by ‘all the world’ crowds are to be understood.” LeBon

We need more rugged individuals, not fewer. We squash them, even in this supposedly most free country and beacon of individualism, we force them from the earliest age to conform and comply.

This feeds tyranny, no doubt, but not for the reasons collectivists think. It’s not because a few rogue elements get past the socialization and rise up to rule the roost out of sheer force of individual will. The tough skin the individual acquires by fighting group-think his entire childhood and adolescence becomes armor for some, but more often the individual succumbs to the pressure. Only the toughest survive not because they are beaten down by the competition, but because their potential rivals are beaten down by the crowd. That works really well for the ruthless.

”Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, “Your money or your life,” why should I be in haste to give it my money? . . . I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.” Henry David Thoreau ‘Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

The rugged individualists I know are more interested in adventure than in conquering; more interested in creating than in destroying, more interested in ethics than power.

The technocracy is ruled by the ‘law of large numbers’ that is — “BIG DATA” — that is, the crowd.

I wonder if the average person were to be presented with a simple and straight-forward question whether the answer would come out in favor of the ‘rugged individual’:

“If you were forced to have someone rule over you, would you rather it were a great individual or a machine of collective consensus?”

I don’t think I need a ruler at all, but if there were no other choice, I know my answer.

But then, I consider myself to be a rugged individualist.

Re-Balance & Re-Tune

“What do you do when things go from bad to worse?”

I was asked that question a couple months ago after the “tornado” hit our property by a man whose work I follow, Jason Lindgren. I consider the work he does with Crrow777 to be very inspiring.

6E255DFE-6DEA-4CCB-BD21-D4BD1137473B — So, pray tell, wise man, what do I do with a dozen fallen trees?

It’s not at all inspiring in the vein of Ram Dass quotes and vision boards and self-help mantras. You might even argue it’s the opposite, more often than not. Not that it’s nihilistic ‘slash and burn’ either, but more like, ‘tastefully deconstruct and reconsider.’

These guys have heard it all, I’m sure. Nut jobs, shills, conspiracy theorists would be on the mild side.

I see something quite different, typical. They’ve recently filmed a documentary called “Shoot the Moon” — about the lunar wave — quite à propos, no?

I see determination, resilience, fortitude, creativity—all qualities I consider to be deliciously rare. Others see ‘crazy’ where I see ‘courageous.’

Most of all, I see care. Authentic care.

“What a good question,” I replied at the time.

I really had not a clue at that moment and was still in a state of mental and emotional chaos, which had my conscious thoughts and unconscious feelings ALL over the place.

Of course, when I’m all over the place I drag Hubby all over the place with me, which surely isn’t the reason why he’s been working so much overtime, right?? 🙂

“Let’s sell it all and move to Mexico!” was at the top of my list at the time of that astute question. Folks don’t ask a lot of good questions, even the well-meaning ones. Mostly I hear useless platitudes, like these Ram Dass quotes, and even actual arguments about how they think I should be feeling.

To be absolutely frank in a ‘too much information’ sort of way I’m sure to regret at some point, I think what happened to my psyche right after the latest weather disaster was what the shrinks would call ‘complex PTSD’.

Yes, I’m self-diagnosing from the Internet. But, the symptoms fit, and the worst of it came out in flooding of somatic memories that were totally overpowering and illogical and unwelcome, along with intense anxiety, nightmares and terrors, paranoia, depression, loss of sense of stability and control, and so on.

These weren’t overpowering memories just from the previous two disasters, Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, they went much further back. They wen’t so far back sometimes that I couldn’t really tell if they were ‘all mine’ alone, but that doesn’t matter one bit, because they were terrifying and I was feeling them as if they were currently happening to me, alone.

I mostly isolate in such times, because I feel if nothing else, I don’t want to take others down with me. But also because I know from experience how badly the average person handles disaster, or grief, or anything remotely unpleasant or unsavory, so I feel I have little other choice.

I want to say now what I think really helped, now that I feel on the upswing once again. It’s not because I think what helps me will help others necessarily, but you never know how adding to the reservoir of our individual coping and healing techniques could work for someone, somewhere, and I’ve got a great big hunch more folks are going to need more such resources for the coming decades.

What’s working for me, what have been my buoys in the darkness?

Not those typically espoused by those who think they know, like ‘get out and socialize’ or ‘join a club’ or ‘try these meds’ or even meditate or try a new hobby.

Jason’s simple question—spontaneous, honest, rhetorical—gave me a point of focus I expect he never intended, but was able to offer to a virtual stranger, out of . . . I don’t really know . . . empathy, curiosity, tact?

A few other things helped too. I consulted an astrologer for the first time in my life. https://readingsbyyerevan.com/

I decided (again) my first responsibility is to my own well-being, which should be obvious, but I often forget it.

This blog helped, the folks who support me in this blog helped. I got to send my chaotic feelings into the ether, to be read or ignored as the reader saw fit, no obligation, but no expectations from me either. That’s truly cathartic for me.

I’m taking herbal hormones and eating an even healthier diet than I typically do, just loading up more on the veggies and herbs and lightening up on the chips and fries. That part has been pretty painless.

Isolating for me dramatically reduces stress, yet this is what all the experts say to never do. I think that’s because they want the vulnerable to join cults and be in an even greater position of weakness to group-think and consensus trance and taking bad popular advice, like anti-depressants, for starters.

I’m not saying I’ve figured it all out or it’s all downhill from here, but I’ve added a few more tools to the box.

So, to answer your question, Jason, “What do you do when things go from bad to worse?”

I re-balance and re-tune, and if that goes well, I re-commit.

I might still be down, but I’m not yet out. And there’s no power, be it technocratic, dogmatic, omnipotent or otherwise, who’s going to force me from our land in this lifetime. If it comes to push and shove, I go down with the ship. Period.

Stubborn? Perhaps.
Inspired? Definitely!

Stop the Madness!

The geoengineering/weather modification is destroying lives, property and our environment. This is now clear to millions of folks around the world who are getting educated, standing up, and speaking out.

But millions will not be enough to change this course, we have the biggest multinational corporations, governments and militaries around the globe against us, and against the entire web of life.

Like this landowner, who goes by Swamp Boss, we have also been losing trees at an astonishing rate these last several years. This is absolutely not normal by any stretch of the imagination and any landowner paying attention knows this. Our forests are being poisoned.

3FCF4621-F71A-4D95-BF17-D4A689C81DB5 — <iframe width=”300″ height=”250″ src=”https://153news.net/player/embed_player.php?vid=13178&width=300&height=250&autoplay=yes” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe

I try to talk about this with folks—friends, neighbors, family—I even hand out flyers, and I get blank stares and eye rolls for my efforts, and rarely do I get a single question or look of concern. It’s baffling and upsetting and I’m really peeved at the lack of care of those around me. That’s why I spend so much time alone gathering evidence from folks I’ve never met, simply because it’s too painful to not find like-minded individuals, so I seek them out, even if only in cyberspace.

There is plenty of information out there and if more folks don’t take an interest in the actual world around them, the natural world, we don’t stand a chance.

I really wish I knew what the magic formula would be to get folks to look up from their games and fiddlesticks for long enough to realize all our lives and livelihoods are in danger, and we are at war.

Folks need to stop saying, “Calm down!” And start rising up.

What will make folks care? Who do you think your grandchildren are going to blame when they inherit a dead planet, while you eye-rolled yourself back into a zombified stupor bowed before your handheld radiation fondle slab?

Or said, “No problem, calm down, God will solve it.”
Or said, “Technology landed us on the moon and will solve this too, so stop bothering me with your negativity.”

”But look . . ,” you will try to explain at your grandchildren’s accusations of carelessness and irresponsibility . . . “You don’t have food, but you have Facebook! We did that! You’re welcome!”

What kind of trade off have you made on their behalves, and who gave you such a right?

Spring Chaos to Summer Swelter

The geoengineered ‘tornado’ this spring has been a big setback for us, but we’re adjusting with a blossoming ‘f**k it’ attitude that will surely see us through the misery of the current hazy-swamp setting per the weather controllers.

The ‘feels like’ temperature promises to remain in the 100s for a few months, no doubt. Most folks around here say that’s normal, but that’s because most folks alive today have been living with modified weather for decades without realizing it. Weathermodificationhistory.com

Since the politicians and select scientists have partnered up to bully the public into buying their global climate change scheme, the few who even notice the atmosphere is different think the technocrats will swoop in and fix it all up again.

8A83E41B-EB58-4C4E-BE5B-EF2DDA5C454C — Seriously?

The ‘f**k it’ attitude is necessary to maintain sanity currently, but knowing it must be temporary makes it especially bitter-sweet. Downed trees remain a keen reminder still in looking out through any window of the house.

But, I’ve adjusted to them now, labeling them in my mind as satanic yard art.

My shoulder injury persists, Hubby’s working loads of overtime, and there’s plenty to do just in maintaining what we can without tackling a difficult clean-up project just now. Or just about anything else.

As a bonus, the birds love it, we have cardinals nesting, super happy woodpeckers, bouncing bunnies, and the sheep are cooperative enough to take on the garden mess for me.

Since I can’t make cheese or garden or can, I’ve been trying to foster some new hobbies. Learning to paint and sew helps to pass the time, but mostly they are too sedentary for my nature. I’m trying to adjust.

But, it feels like trying, as does reading, which doesn’t fit so well with the ‘f**k it’ mindset. For now we join the masses in their preferred great American pastime of apathy, avoidance and distraction by binge-watching movies with a good buzz on.

90C1B9A6-C815-4FAC-B841-8AF7A4FD1717 — Now what bee in her right mind wouldn’t find that to be a pretty home?!

The bees are growing fine without my participation, yay! And, I think I heard Mr. Dragonfly volunteer to help me train the young grape vines.

The roses aren’t happy suffering through brambles and grasses, but they’re handling their neglect with grace nonetheless.

But, there should be butterflies all over these zinnias, and that’s cause for concern.

Which then reminds me, it must be cocktail hour. Like Grandma used to say, “It’s 5:00 somewhere!”

July 4th: Happy Delusions Day

In respect for this year’s 4th of July, I’d like to take a step down from my high snark horse to write something very sincerely from the bottom of my heart.

I still think this country is pretty awesome.

I know I bitch regularly about the endless warring, the corruption, the growing police state, the careless and brutal manipulation of the environment, our excessive tolerance of evil and our ever-increasing apathy, etc., etc.

But, the honest to heavens truth is, I bitch because I care.

We moved out here to try a rural lifestyle and to become more self-sufficient because we care.

To see the continual lowering of the bar since our ancestors carved their paths through this country is painful. To watch it yet do nothing is more painful still.

I often wonder who I’d be and what I’d be doing now if I were born in another time or place. Say, had I been born to a sex worker on the streets of New Delhi. Or, as the son of a warmonger like Poppy Bush. Or, even as sole heir to an aristocratic clan with an honorably-earned fortune, if there is such a thing.

I like to imagine that no matter where or when I’d have incarnated here on Earth, I would still find living in a fantasy-based reality a personal affront to all that is of authentic value in this world.

This gives me a marvelous sense of purpose. Like most of us, I was taught from my most tender age we live in the ‘land of the free and home of the brave.’ I was taught we have a Constitution, which was a foundational document written in a spirit of equality and justice by men of high moral principles and great learning. I was led to believe we are not an Empire aiming to control the people and resources of the entire world, and that those days of colonization are long over.

It was several decades later that I learned, in fact, the Constitution must be something of a con, because it’s not working. None of the things I was taught about the aims of this country are actually true, it seems.

As sad as that sounds, having a life’s purpose is a good thing. I have a job to do. I see my job as simple and straightforward as can be, and directly aligned with this nation’s authentic Independence—we’ve either got to take these lies and make them true, or we need to expose them. Either our founding fathers had some fantastically good ideas, or something’s rotting in Denmark, or something sinister this way comes, or we know them by their fruits—or, whatever—the truth remains that this fantasy-based reality is not serving U.S.

To all those repentant veterans and whistleblowers, this entire week I give y’all repetitive deep bows and innumerable shouts of praise and thanks.

A 4th of July message from Ron’s Reconnaissance, color me impressed.

“Of course, war and the large military establishments are the greatest sources of violence in the world. Whether their purpose is defensive or offensive, these vast powerful organizations exist solely to kill human beings. We should think carefully about the reality of war. Most of us have been conditioned to regard military combat as exciting and glamorous, an opportunity for men to prove their competence and courage. Since armies are legal, we feel that war is acceptable, in general, nobody feels that war is criminal or that accepting it is a criminal attitude. If fact, we have been brainwashed. War is neither glamorous nor attractive. It is monstrous. Its very nature is one of tragedy and suffering.” Tenzen Gyatsu

I also celebrate with whoops and waving arms (in the quiet and comfort of my mind) the young creators on the righteous path.