Category: propaganda

Institutional Capture & Socio-Cultural Re-Programming

Just another few pieces of evidence to add to the already vast mountain range of nonsense we are expected to swallow on a daily basis.

3 short-bits follow, plus a bonus. Each is ignoring, or side-stepping the most contentious and necessary topics while exploiting the low-hanging fruit, that of course being the most fruitful recipe of our times.

  1. The Geoengineering question, bypassed in the typical trifecta fashion: Avoid, Smear, Redirect. If that doesn’t work, pretend it’s new and revolutionary. Or, pretend it’s old and therefor safe and reasonable. If all else fails, feign ignorance. Not necessarily in that order.

    Here our host lets him get away with it, so typical! (For shame, he instantly dropped in my initial estimation by multiple degrees.) So, in their non-summation Geoengineering is all about Bill Gates covering up the sun, and certainly not about a century of global military industrial complex scheming.

    Furthermore, it’s right up there in the Crazy Zone with the Virus-Deniers and Flat Earth theory!

    This ‘rabbit hole’ is so old to me now, all that’s left of deep inquiry here is the pondering: Do they really buy their own bullshit? (34:33 minute mark for the Geoengineering ‘question’). This is what’s posing as ‘alternative journalism’ these days. Effective ‘ambush journalism’ has been inverted into staged theater, then morphed into public relations. Not a single toe-to-toe to be expected. It’s like listening to a well-choreographed two-step. I’d prefer watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, at least they occasionally ventured into new territory, still choreographed of course, but for the sake of their well-seasoned audience, a welcome escape from the repetition. Professor Steven Starr on Geopolitics and Empire: We Are Already in WWIII

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/geopolitics-empire/id1003465597?i=1000598968822

2. Next we have a Geoengineering documentary, supposedly out in 2008 (that I somehow never heard of? Seems unlikely.) Full of goose-stepping oddness and fear-mongering, narrated by a digital voice, then the famous Alan Watt, and various other voice-overs.

Here is the oddest sentence of the entire 4-hour All-Over-The-Place Everything-Soup Concoction: 03:40:53 “HG Wells talked about the new freemasonry of the air. Policing the skies.” Wait, Whaa?!

And seriously, a 4-hour documentary, who watches those?
Exactly.

Don’t Talk About the Weather (2008)

3. And, never fear, the institutions will continue doing their institutionalizing!

Science™ brought to you by . . .

The modern day worshipping of the imperialist, industrialist and technocrat alike. It’s the current New World Religion.

And, yippie, Arizona State University, my Alma Mater, continues to lead the way, now color me proud! (Don’t miss the sarcasm dripping in computer-augmented Magenta at this point!)

According to their provost and Executive Vice President, Nancy Gonzales of Miami, Arizona, rural folk should not be scorned or pitied, because they can still blossom from their abject poverty working in the mines in order to serve the Corporate State at ever higher levels. So won’t their kinfolk be proud!

“Although many people focus on the disadvantages of a rural upbringing, we didn’t see it that way. Miami was a place where parents sacrificed and families supported one another to lift up the next generation.”

According to their propaganda that well-educated, well-meaning next generation is going to solve all the global desert metropolises’ water worries with more awesome tech solutions.

Confoolery at its finest! Keep climbing that ladder kids!

For our bonus, here’s a rare journalist to whom I still give the benefit of the doubt. Beginning the interview they discuss the new rain water technology that’s just hit the NY stock exchange. I think she honestly doesn’t know (yet) just how deep and long this rabbit hole goes. I look forward to more from her on the topic as she tries to dig though it. And more power to her!

Better get your umbrellas, drought prep and insurance updates, folks!

Corey’s Digs

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221222005128/en/Rainwater-Tech-

And last, but not forgotten, Happy Valentine’s Day!

And one for the fellas, too!

Random Notes: Understanding False Hierarchies

Digging through my files for content. Make of them what you will. Or won’t. Comments most welcome!

False hierarchies, that is all hierarchies not based in nature, are crippling our civilization. And maybe, that’s just natural.

They are invariably:

~Based on fluffing not rivaling, so that the leader is replaced by a Yes-man rather than an honorable man.

~Confusing true power with temporary status

~Leading a horse to water, noticing he does not drink, and blaming him for being stupid. Rather than questioning if the horse is intuiting more about the contents of the water than you are.

~I’m in charge, you’re responsible. That is not meant to mean you are to act as my scapegoat. It is meant to represent the bond between the care-givers.

~Helping people adjust to their servitude is not actually helping. It’s akin to helping addicts find their next fix, you are opting to make yourself feel better in the moment by helping someone else feel better in the moment, at the expense of long-term solutions. The proverbial thumb in the dike.

~Hardest lesson for an empath (or a yes-man) to learn—stop cleaning up other people’s messes—you are only making it worse for the next generation.

~America has roughly 35 million acres of lawn and 36 million acres housing and feeding recreational horses. 

https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.htm

~The tragic hero is brought down by his virtues, not his vices!

World War I: The Great War Was also the Great Enabler of Progressive Governance

“It was decided to make [the soldiers] help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month. All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill …and be killed. But wait!

Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance—something the employer pays for in an enlightened state—and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.

Then, the most crowning insolence of all—he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.
We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back—when they came back from the war and couldn’t find work—at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!”

Click to access warisaracket.pdf

~As Carroll Quigley writes, its success was partly due to “its ability to present itself to the world as the defender of the freedoms and rights of small nations and of diverse social and religious groups”. (2)

Empire of hypocrisy | winter oak

Big Words from Little People

I love it! Had to share this must-read in the on-going Viral saga.

By Eric F. Coppolino
‘WHEN I HAD MY ONE opportunity to ask Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. one question at a fundraising event in Greenwich, CT on April 24, 2022, I chose to ask him about Christine Massey’s work. Mr. Kennedy, the nephew of Pres. John F. Kennedy, heads Children’s Health Defense (CHD), which presents itself as an organization providing the unvarnished, uncensored truth about scientific issues to the public.’

https://open.substack.com/pub/planetwavesfm/p/why-is-robert-f-kennedy-jr-running?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Oh those pesky pots and kettles, all so black!

“The Power to Suppress Dissent
In a Jan. 24 mass email sent by Children’s Health Defense, signed personally by Mr. Kennedy, he wrote of a recent lawsuit his organization filed against the Washington Post, AP and Reuters, “Our groundbreaking antitrust lawsuit has the power to demolish Big Media’s ability to suppress dissent.”
What about the cartel of “little media” monopolizing one side of the story and discrediting the others? Crushing dissent is what exactly he’s doing — that is, the people whose findings dissent from the viewpoint that the “pandemic” crisis was legit. If there was no virus, and the government knew it, and admits it, that has serious implications.”

Bravo, Mr. Coppolino!

Controlled Opposition: Health Freedom

In my book, he just admitted it, though I expected it long ago.

Great article to get up to speed:

https://open.substack.com/pub/janicephillips/p/there-is-an-amazing-debate?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

“Everyone’s favorite “health freedom” guru said as much…of course, not publicly but in an email that’s been shared. You can find the write-up about it here. Planet Waves Interview Details
RFK Jr. in his own words; “I’m grateful for your courage and intellectual integrity. I have an open mind on this issue but no bandwidth to spend the time energy and credibility capital to personally investigate it. I feel the same way towards those people who passionately and knowledgeably argue that 9/11 is an inside job. It could be true. But there are opportunity costs in taking on this cause and I think diminishing returns to my overall effectiveness. I cannot right every wrong or expose every falsehood. I need to be strategic In choosing my battles. If you reflect, you will find that you do the same. I admire and encourage you but I must beg off on this war for the time being. I’m more likely to join if you get it nearer the goal line where the cost/returns ratio improves.”
In other words, you blaze the trail, I’ll reap the rewards of an easy and marked path if and when you get to the destination. What douche bag of epic proportions! He KNOWS the science and knows he’s broadcasting fallacies every single day to his millions of fans (donors) and will continue to perpetuate the Big Lie because the costs are too high. Instead, he’ll let other’s (people who don’t matter to HIM or his All Mighty Dollar) take all the risks.”

Happiness vs Joy

Have you ever pondered the difference of certain words often used interchangeably? Or, what that difference, or obfuscation of difference, might mean?

There seems little doubt the art of subtlety is being systematically erased from human consciousness.

One coy glance to move a man, or your entire derrière in the air?

If this is a natural phenomenon resulting from the rise of systems thinking, or a top-down control mechanism, or desensitization gone amok, or devolution, or democratization, I can only speculate. And stay open to suggestions.

But I do find it to be a personal goal and an evolutionary imperative that we don’t let subtlety die in the nebulous gray zone.

I kind of relate it to the difference between American cheese and aged chèvre. And the difference between emotions, feelings and sensations.

Our culture has become increasingly sensationalized. It’s become a gamers’ world of goal-oriented stimulus that must be fed on a constant basis.

Fleeting hits of happiness have all but replaced the finer nuances of lasting joy. Considering absurd comments like Hilary Clinton’s ‘Americans have a happiness deficit’ I can’t help but consider the context conspiratorially. She is not blind, or dumb. So she must be bullshitting on the commands of her handlers.

Do a quick search on ‘Americans and Happiness’ and it’s clear this relationship is not only Big Business, but Big Science, as well as Big Politics.

“Further complicating matters has been the bias critics have shown when examining happiness. Sociologists have viewed happiness through the lens of society, psychologists the mind, physicians the body, preachers one’s faith, politicians the government, and so on. This has made the field a jumble or hodgepodge of viewpoints, more so I believe than most other subjects. As well, all sorts of experts have attempted to control or take ownership of happiness in America in some way, this too contributing to the scattered nature of the subject. Businesspeople, government officials, and religious leaders have seen themselves as arbiters of happiness and have assumed responsibility for delivering it to Americans in order to solidify their own power. Likewise, politicians from each persuasion have often claimed to be the greater instrument of happiness than their competitors, making it appear that the emotion can be bestowed rather than earned.” The (American) Pursuit of Happiness | Psychology Today

Is happiness an emotion? Indeed, it is not. Joy is an emotion. Happiness is a mood. A sensation. Have any of the mainstream consensus trance defenders bothered to notice that?

Joy is bound to life itself, its opposite is pain. Together they create a kind of ‘trauma bond’ that keeps us engaged and inquiring incessantly into others and the world around us. It comes from the well-spring of the eternal natural world. Or, God, if you prefer.

Happiness is a day at the games or a fine concert or great sex. I’m not knocking it! I’m just saying, there’s far more to life than that, and if you can’t taste the difference between American cheese and aged chèvre, then perhaps you should not be speculating on the condition or the ills of the American culture.

Special is the New Deranged

You’ve gotta love the myth-makers’ knack for crafting novel ‘non-judgmental’ lingo.

After all, who wants to say anything too closely resembling honesty about someone who caused loads of damage to their own lives and those of nearly everyone around them? That would be so mean.

Especially, obviously, on their deathbeds. This is when kind lies are most required, for the good of those gathered, who definitely do not want to be reminded that they rubbed elbows with such creeps and degenerates all their lives.

Especially, obviously, if there’s inheritance involved. Everyone wants to believe they inherited good, clean money and stuff, not funds garnered by drugs (unless they’re legal!), or theft, or blackmail, or you know, god forbid, blood money.

Who can help but to consider the grandchildren of the Great Fauci, as just one example?

Sure, they can go to his Wikipedia page and read how awesome he is once he’s dead. They can brush up on all his prestigious awards before hearing the sweet tinkling chimes of their personal portion of his vast estate which they have rightfully earned through his unfortunate passing. They can tell their own grandchildren how many lives he saved and how much of their own fortunes they owe to his generosity.

But, what if those poor future grandchildren get ahold of some of the fake news available today? Just imagine how this might affect their innocent psyches? And who would be responsible for this psychological torture?

Well, all the disinfo agents, clearly! Those evil-hearted, hate-spewing degenerates who are never grateful for their assigned heroes. Those same miserable wretches who believe Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab and the Bush & Clinton clans and even Trump are ALL deranged psychopaths.

All those crazies who are ruining our democracy!

If you can’t see it yet, put your rose-colored glasses back on!

Doctor’s orders: 3 puppy videos, 10 deep breathes during your time out, 33 rainbow drawings with your permanent markers, then you can re-join us nice, happy folk in civilized society.

Oh yes, that’s so much better! I can see clearly now!

It’s those people who believe the world reeks foul at every turn when in fact the stench is coming from within their own selves! Ahhhh, yes.

If they would just look in the mirror and smell themselves.

If they would just see the world as we do, so full of wonder and joy, then the world would magically shape-shift right before their very eyes and they would be filled as we are with the light of love and joy radiating outward at every angle of the sun, especially from their eyes and anus.

If those haters see a drug-pushing, lying, greedy turd in the mirrored face of the Great Fauci, then they just don’t realize the world is a kaleidoscope of marvels and all they have to do is change their black lenses for pink ones, which would undoubtedly turn their subjective hell into a fantastic earthly paradise!



Put your rose-colored glasses back on, Dude, before you bum everybody out!

Counting Blessings, Cutting Loses, Culling Critters

A respite from the heat, but still no rain. We surveyed our fenced land for grazing and have come to the sad conclusion that our intention last year to grow the herd will not be achieved in the near future.

Seemed like the right thing to do, growing the herd, considering food inflation and especially high meat prices, and the fact that Hubby is here full-time now, and that more bartering/trading could be in the foreseeable future. But, the parched land screams otherwise.

Between the steeply rising cost of feed and the meager forage available, and no guarantees the stranglehold of the weather terrorists will let up any time soon, we come to some difficult decisions.

We will wait another year to freshen the goats, drastically reduce the number of sheep, and breed back only one sow. We will maintain the poultry flock as-is for the most part, but had hoped to add ducks once again to the mix. No rain means fewer bugs means more supplemental feed. So that plan is not looking too good now either.

Planned building projects are also getting postponed. A ‘milking parlor’ was on the list, some much-needed repairs to the deck, rebuilding the greenhouse, a field shelter for the herd, and on and on, plans are easy, implementation, not so much!

We are blessed with an already achieved minimalism: Living seasonally, frugally, well-acquainted with the boom-bust cycles of our overlords and still small enough to be flexible, and with enough local support to know we’ve got each other.

Our most crucial long-term goal remains: Growing our own feed—perennials as well as annuals.

We hear the word ‘sustainable’ repeated multiple times a day these days, but there’s rarely anything truly sustainable being suggested.

It’s 99% hype and green washing. But actual sustainability does exist, and the more self-reliant we can be, the closer we are to achieving it.

How do we measure up?

And it’s not like there’s not plenty for us still to do and learn here, even with squeezing the belt tighter.

I’m still very interested in herbalism, especially as it pertains to our local environment. The best things in life are free, or nearly so, no?!

And while I do appreciate the allure of the consumer life, I’m far more fascinated by the natural world all around me. It’s always a matter of slowing down, observing ever more closely, teasing out the potential of all that is all around me, and some of that certainly means our local community, but that doesn’t just mean the people.

I’d love to learn more wild crafts, as well as more fine art tuning; more science, and more speculation; and much, much more about where and how these endeavors mesh.

There is a different brand of “More!”, isn’t there, than the furious Billy Idol sang about?

Or, maybe it’s all the same, in the midnight hour?

How the Predator Sees You

When you draw a heart, you are showing them where to aim.

“LaVey had one solid philosophy non-Satanists need to adopt: self-preservation. LaVey likely picked this up from Nietzsche.
“There has never been a great ‘love’ movement in the history of the world that hasn’t wound up killing countless numbers of people, we must assume, to prove how much they loved them! Every hypocrite who ever walked the earth has had pockets bulging with love!”

A Prima Facie Examination of Satanism | Winter Watch

This is what Alice Bailey describes as the “externalization of the hierarchy”: the hidden rulers slowly revealing themselves.

“The “simpler code” devised for the masses used to be organized religions. It is now becoming the Temple of the Mass Media and it preaches on a daily basis extreme materialism, spiritual vacuosity and a self-centered, individualistic existence. This is exactly the opposite of the attributes required to become a truly free individual, as taught by all great philosophical schools of thought. Is a dumbed-down population easier to deceive and to manipulate?

“These blind slaves are told they are “free” and “highly educated” even as they march behind signs that would cause any medieval peasant to run screaming away from them in panic-stricken terror. The symbols that modern man embraces with the naive trust of an infant would be tantamount to billboards reading, ‘This way to your death and enslavement,’ to the understanding of the traditional peasant of antiquity.”
– Michael A. Hoffman II, Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare

“Meanwhile Mitterrand’s Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, led a relentless policy of promotion of the “culture of inversion” (defined recently by Paul Kingsnorth as the dedication of “the cultural elites, and sometimes the political and economic elites… not to upholding the cultural forms they inherited, but to turning them on their heads, or erasing them entirely.”) This program manifested itself in such examples as raves in the Louvre and post-modern ballets featuring excrement and menstrual blood. This was the era in which Mélenchon came of age as a member of Mitterrand’s socialist party, where he held positions of senator and then minister. The Mélenchon of 2022 is very clearly the heir of this moment, not a new invention or deviation.

“This is the “peripheral” France—rural, consisting of small- and medium-sized towns and overseas territories—upon which Bernard-Henri Levy each day vomits his class hatred, despite the fact that, for over thirty years, it has been hit hard by the practical consequences of his liberal gospel, to the point that, in the poorest rural regions, living conditions are even more dramatic than in the “problem” suburbs. It comes as no surprise that this France, which comprises more than 60 percent of the population, has been completely wiped off the left intelligentsia’s radar. It is simply the logical consequence of the process that has led the modern left, since its conversion to the principles of economic and cultural liberalism, to gradually abandon its original social base in favor of the new, overeducated and hyper-mobile upper-middle classes living in globalized metropolises, who represent only 10 to 20 percent of the population and are structurally protected from liberal globalization’s problems (when they do not benefit directly from it) […]

https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/france-farmers-and-the-failing-extreme?r=apljy&utm_campaign=post&utm_source=France,%20Farmers,%20and%20the%20Failing%20’Extreme%20Center’&utm_medium=ios

It’s the System, Stupid

To me this entire story positively reeks of stagecraft. But, even if we take it at face value it demonstrates how screwed up our food system really is.

MONDAY, JAN. 26, 2015 PHOTO In this Monday, Jan. 26, 2015 photo, cows are milked on one of the carousels in a milking parlor on the Fair Oaks Farms in Fair Oaks, Ind. Fairlife, which is rolling out nationally in coming weeks, is the product of a joint venture between Select Milk Producers, a dairy cooperative, and Coca-Cola. The product is filtered to have more protein and less sugar than regular milk. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Here’s the story in tiny nutshell: The McCloskeys were sued for animal cruelty at their dairy farm following an undercover employee’s secretly videotaping several instances with four workers involved. Now a settlement has been reached:

Completely denatured milk sold as natural, tasty and healthy

The Fairlife ads, cartoon milk dresses.
Classy.

A $21 million Settlement has been reached in a class action lawsuit filed against Defendants The Coca-Cola Company (“TCCC”), fairlife, LLC (“fairlife”), Fair Oaks Farms, LLC (“FOF”), Mike McCloskey and Sue McCloskey (“the McCloskeys”), and Select Milk Producers, Inc. (“Select”), relating to fairlife and FOF Milk Products. The lawsuit alleges that Defendants falsely labeled and marketed certain dairy products produced using milk from cows that were allegedly not treated humanely. Defendants deny all allegations and have settled this lawsuit to avoid further litigation.

The Court has not decided who is right.You may submit a Claim Form to receive 25% of the average retail purchase price, up to $100, for your purchases of fairlife Milk Products and FOF Milk Products, if the products were purchased for personal use and not for resale, and were purchased on or before April 27, 2022. Claim Forms submitted without Valid Proof of Purchase will be capped at a Cash Award of up to $20 and Claim Forms submitted with Valid Proof of Purchase will be capped at a Cash Award of up to $80, subject to certain adjustments (upward and downward) depending on the number of claims submitted.

So, there’s video evidence, but the Court has not decided who is right. Must be so confusing, poor kids.

But you get some money anyway if you can come up with your milk purchase receipt, potentially from 2015. Brilliant.

In an interview the McCloskeys talk about all the fantastic improvements they’ve made to garner public trust once again in their dairy products since the video’s release, and the broad coverage of ‘the scandal’ by MSM (I do believe they neglected to mention the product line was owned by Coca-Cola, but I may have missed that part and really do not care to re-listen. It was annoying enough the first time listening to Mike Rowe pander to these creeps).

What I did hear in the interview was how proud the McCloskeys are now of their complete video surveillance system, how they are well on the road to becoming ‘Net Zero’ so that they can help curb climate change as responsible business owners, and how very excited they were to see the gleam in the eye of the school children who came there to tour their facilities and were so thrilled to see cows being milked by carousel machine.

Now they might grow up to become mechanical engineers, Mrs. McCloskey beamed!

I’m so excited for our Green future too, aren’t you?!

Still This Love Crap

Have you ever experienced unrequited love? Ever love someone who was so out of your league they didn’t know you existed? Ever been horribly, unfairly, unceremoniously jilted by a lover? Ever love someone for years who treated you like shit most of the time? Ever love someone who turned out to be completely different than the one you thought you fell in love with?

Ever tried to muster up feelings of love for someone or something you did not, could not, love?

And yet still, despite its ephemeral nature—from its meaning, to its translation, to how it is individually experienced—some of our greatest thinkers, philosophers, social critics, poets, not to mention a good chunk of pop culture, still repeats “Love is the answer.”

We should love everyone and especially nature. That’s what’s wrong with the world, they insist, not enough love. And every time I hear this, I roll my eyes, even when it comes from someone I love.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b08njtjg

Most recently I heard it in an interview coming from Wendell Berry (link). How someone so inspiring, who has led such a charmed and wholesome and respectable life, who now at an advanced age seems so wise, could repeat such nonsense confirms for me only one thing: “We don’t see things for what they are, we see them for what we are.”

Love is the answer to the West’s problems, they say, because you take care of what you love. And the younger thinker and social critic Paul Kingsnorth agrees with him.

How lovely.

Now here’s a homework assignment I’d love to give to these fools. Kingsnorth likes to study tribal cultures, which I think is really cool. He likes them because they have a solid home in nature, unlike Westerners. And I agree. So, I think he should ask all those tribal folks their opinions about this ‘love’ solution so many Western thinkers keep harping on about.

My bet is, it doesn’t translate. At all. I bet he’d have to write an entire essay for them about what he means by love in the first place, let alone how he expects that will solve anything.

How do you make someone love you? Or care about you? I have a difficult time imagining a more monumental task. And yet, somehow those who care about nature are tasked with getting those very great many, like the Technocrats and their vast entourages, to not only love it, but to respect it, to care for it, to nurture it even. Seriously?

What a debilitating delusion they are spewing. And not just once or twice out of an understandable desperation. But constantly, for decades now.

Yet to call it out for the obvious shallow fantasy that it is, I become the bitch.

Well then, so be it. Let me play that role for a minute or two right now.

Imagine Mother Nature is your very own mother. Maybe you love your mother, let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. You love her, but your sisters love her more. And your mother and your sisters are screaming at you—“You don’t love me!” “You don’t care about me!” “You are exploiting me and you must stop!”

How will you respond to their shrieks and demands of love and care? Deny your lack of love, perhaps? Maybe yell back that they are all wrong about you? Maybe ask what they mean by that?

You might be so sure of your love that you ask what you can do to prove it?

Maybe Mom replies she wants you to write her a poem professing your loving feelings. So you do. You go even further, and you write 10 poems and throw in a tediously long essay to boot. And you’re very proud of your efforts and you feel you’ve really captured the intense love you have for her.

And she says she likes them, even the tediously long essay. In fact, everyone who loves her also agrees how perfectly you’ve captured those feelings of love through your words. Astonishing.

But, after all, those are just words, and you said to love her is to care for her, so she wants to see some action.

So with the same zeal you wrote the ten poems and tediously long essay you tackle the part where your loving words become caring actions.

You chop wood and carry water for her. You refrain from any negativity in her presence, because she doesn’t like it. You insist that everyone in her company, through shame or coercion or even force, abide by her rules and preferences.

At long last, she is satisfied with your efforts. You can feel the power of her appreciation filling your heart and coursing through your veins.

She tells you, “Child, you are a true master of loving care!”

“Except, you see, there’s so many children over there who don’t love me. And their lack of love for me is upstaging your love. Their lack of love is demonstrably more powerful than your true love. What can you do about this?”

And you reply, “Great Mother, don’t you worry, I can make them love you like I do!”

Really? Can you? What makes you so sure about that?

You read them your poems, and they smirk. Then they read your tediously long essay and shrug. You show them your admirable work in fetching wood and carrying water for your Great Mother, and they respond by clear cutting your forest and damming your river.

Then they tell you their favorite joke, laughing all along.

The joke goes like this: There were these three dudes on a yacht. One was an American, another was Russian, and the third one was Mexican. They were all drinking and getting boastful as drunken men like to do.

The Russian said, “In my country, we have so much vodka we can afford to throw it away!” And he takes a full bottle of vodka and throws it into the ocean.

They all laugh harder. So, the Mexican says, “In my country, we have so much tequila we can afford to throw it away!” And he takes a full bottle of tequila and throws it overboard.

And they all laugh harder still. Then the American says, “Well, in my country we have so many . . .

And he picks up the Mexican and throws him overboard.

The Russian and American look at each and howl with laughter. And the American blurts out between guffaws, “Tough love!”

To The Holy Spirit

O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken,
Who in necessity and in bounty wait,
Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken,
By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate.

Wendell Berry