Q The Revolution

Previous posts:
Deep Throat v. Q
Q The Conspiracy - A Phenomenon
The Gospel According To Q
A-Marketing We Will Q
The Name Of The Q
Q The LARP Carp
Spe-Q-lating On Q
In The Twilight Of The Q
Jonesing For Q
Analyzing Q-Analysis

The Silence of the Q

The Q Prophesy
To Q Or Not To Q
A Quantum Of Q-Bit
Surfing the Q Wave
CQ CQ CQ
Q Tips And Quislings
Some Quick Q
The Voice Of Q
The Q Treason
Q The Endgame
Right On Q?
Q The God-Emperor
Who Is Q?
Behold The Qult
Notre Dame du Q
The Q Genesis
Behind the Q Ball
The Qiller Q
Q d'Etat

As of the moment I write this, Q has posted 1,039 Drops since 26 February 2020, with a total of 4,426 since 27 October 2017.  I mention this by way of saying I have 5 or 6 abandoned articles on this topic, because things are changing and evolving so fast that it is a full-time job keeping up with it.  I invite the good reader to go to QMAP if one has the time and interest to keep up with the deluge.

The time investment is multiplied because Q has implied, and the Qvians have asserted, that the earliest Drops on 4chan (before Q was Q) are now in play.  In other words, as the Qvians put it, Q posted the end at the beginning.

There is also a significant number of Commentators on YouTube to report, parse and interpret every linguistic nuance for you if you are not into reading.  I will only recommend In Pursuit of Truth (IPOT), since creator Patrick Mack is rather level-headed and produces excellent documentaries on non-Q topics.

If you are new to the Q PsyOp, allow me to very briefly sum up the situation:

Q is ostensibly (no one has confirmed anything beyond speculation - see Q Proofs) a group of loyalist members of military intelligence, who recruited Donald Trump to run as president to aid their effort within the Executive branch to clean out corruption and insurgency within the United States federal, state and local governments, as well as destroy an international cabal that controls the power structures of governments worldwide through the use of blackmail and Satanic rituals.

For my research on the identity of the Q, I recommend the reader see Who Is Q?

The Q hierarchy looks like this:

• God - use of religious symbolism and faith as the authority for all Q Ops;
• Q - military intelligence/NSA using a sophisticated set of information tools and weapons to by-pass typical communication channels and control perceptions;
• Q+ - POTUS, aka Donald Trump;
• Autists - aka Anons, or the Apostles using my nomenclature, who "decode" Q Drops and distribute the "official" meaning and message of Q to the Qvians;
• Qvians - my term for the Commentators, or hard-core true believers (think pastors), who spread The Gospel According to Q;
• Qniverse - my term for the followers of Q, the parishioners if you will.

I should note for new readers that I refer to Q in the 3rd Person Singular Neuter (it), rather than the Masculine preferred by many Autists and Commentators, because I believe it to be a group of people using advanced technology to manipulate perceptions for a desired outcome.  I have over two dozen articles outlining my research and thoughts on the Q Phenomenon.

With the background now established, where do we stand with this PsyOp?

As one can imagine, Q has been quite busy framing the Corona virus pandemic (DEMpanic) and the current riots in a way favorable to Q+ (POTUS), and which casts events as being thoroughly under control of military intel.

If at the back of your mind, you are hearing Psalm 23, you are getting the hang of this.

"We are at war, the war is real" is the consistent message Q has put out in the nearly three years it has been operating.  Trump has been fighting a war of wills against an insurgent cabal of both foreign and domestic enemies.  Trump is the only person strong enough and clean (scrubbed) enough to lead this war.  He is the only True Patriot smart enough to run a 4-D chess match against the enemy as the front man for NSA-based intel officers still loyal to God and Constitution.

Q began as one of several anonymous posters on 4chan in late 2017, all claiming to be government insiders in one department or agency, or another.  The one we now call Q seems to have been the one that people latched onto as being "authentic," though I suspect any of them would have led to the same place, perhaps with small modifications to the narrative.

A legitimate question at this point, for the objective observer, is whether current events were fomented by Q's messaging, or did Q accurately predict an inevitable or predetermined outcome.  It's a "chicken or egg" argument that could each consume a full-length book.  I suspect the forces Q and POTUS are up against had several scenarios planned, and it was the words and actions of Q/POTUS that made the current situation inevitable, perhaps desirable in their view.

Q frequently posts the statement, "optics are everything."  This implies to my mind that events are allowed to progress, no matter how destructive, until the popular mind has sufficiently framed those events in a way favorable to Q/POTUS.  Once the framing is achieved, Q/POTUS can act in a way that increases favorable marketing/poll results.  Favorable results increase the spread and esteem of Q/POTUS, thus forming a perfect feedback loop, with a nice shot of dopamine to reward the Qvians.

As friend and colleague Joseph P. Farrell likes to say, he who controls the interpretation of prophesy, controls its fulfillment.  We need to keep this in mind going forward.

One of the mantras of the Qniverse is "future proves the past."  Q has frequently said that its Drops and Prophesies (a word actually used in the Qniverse) can only be interpreted in the light of future events.  Here's how Q Prophesy works:

We will focus on Drop #14, from 1 November 2017, when Q was still posting as "Anonymous" on 4chan.  Note that the post begins with a famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware in a Durham boat.

Attorney John Durham was brought into the Department of Justice on 27 October 2017, the day Q first began posting.  This is widely interpreted as signalling the long awaited Durham Report will carry POTUS to victory.

As you read the text, notice that nearly every line is a question that is not answered.  The questions are phrased in such a way as to allow multiple correct answers.  Whenever it is expedient, Q can point to any of the questions it has posted and say that current events have proved that question to be prescient.

This technique is equivalent to a carnival side-show mentalist saying, "I'm picking up a message for Mike.  Is there a Mike in here?"  If, in the unlikely event there are no Mikes, then he can say, "Maybe Mark?  The message is a little garbled."

Q14 lists an entire cast of "bad actors" who could easily make headlines at any time in the following 3-4 years, and Q can then say that it successfully predicted this when the timing is right.

This particular Drop, along with Q19, are causing a lot of chatter in the Qniverse, because obviously Q "foresaw" current events, though actually the questions could have multiple answers that change to match current events, and the mention of ANTIFA and Muslim Brotherhood (MB) are good bets for multiple situations.

Q19, dropped the same day as Q14, deals almost exclusively with the relationship between the Democrat Party and the black American population, and leaders and spokespeople.

In this case, there is roughly 170 years of history, the comments of LBJ on passing the welfare laws in 1965, and 50 years of modus operadi to draw on.  This is nearly as safe as predicting the sun will rise tomorrow, in terms of the picture Q is painting.

Notice also that Q14 and 19 were posted almost one year to the day after the election of POTUS, giving any think tank sufficient data to predict the actions of opponents into the future.  Add to the that the ability to capture and read electronic chatter (military intel, or MI), and one has a pretty solid handle on tactics and means of an opponent.

I should mention at this point that Q's assertions of being able to pick up and use electronic chatter of opponents is exactly what the Qvians are so angrily accusing the Obama administration of doing in the so-called Obamagate spying operation.

A common exclamation among Commentators right now is, "How did Q know this three years ago?!"

Having worked in theater and side-shows most of my life and knowing the tricks, I am hardly moved by these "predictions".  If Q had said, even speculatively, that a viral epidemic would sweep the world, and it would be followed by civil unrest based on racial issues, I would be first in the believers' line.

Q has even established an out in the case that any prediction appears way off.  It's disinformation.  Of course, the enemy reads the Q Drops too, and we can't give away everything can we?  Q doesn't even have to do the dirty work.  The Qvians themselves wave off any inaccuracies as false trails for the cabal to follow.

The answer is simple for anyone that has read American history covering the last 170 years.  Nearly all episodes of civil unrest and rioting have been fomented by the political left, and in pretty much every case has led to the overwhelming election of a right-wing administration.  Note specifically Lincoln in 1860, and Nixon in 1968.  We may infer the same forces electing Trump in 2016, and current events will most likely sweep him into office with a Nixonesque landslide in 2020.

What really bakes the noodle, with this established historical pattern in mind, are the political left in America actually trying to throw the election to Trump?    After all, Trump has proven so resilient to the left's machinations, and Q's Drops seem prescient enough, that one could infer a massive operation to engineer society on the part of both sides.  Just a few short years ago, the right would have fought tooth-and-nail against a national ID - especially for voting purposes - yet they are now begging for it.

As Q itself frequently says, we are watching a movie.  There is a nagging suspicion at the back of my brain that this is all a huge game to get the right wing to demand everything they would have rebelled against less than half a decade ago.  And this is what makes me so suspicious of Q, and Trump.

Q seems to know what will happen years ahead of time.  Q claims to have recruited Trump.  Trump always seems ahead of the game.  The left seems to play right into political traps.  The left has put up a candidate that so obviously feeble and incoherent that no one could seriously vote for him, unless out of sheer spite or misguided loyalty.

Everything together smacks of a thrown election, creating a hero of such power and stature that even the most hard-boiled anti-statists would follow him right over the cliff.

Why, it's almost as if the whole thing, on all sides and in every detail, has been planned, and that Trump is not only the desired outcome of so-called white nationalists, but is in fact the product of a collusion of both sides of the aisle.  The Democrats appear to be falling on their swords to create a single-party system with all the trappings of a totalitarian regime.  And thanks to Q, the right-wing conservative resistance is waltzing right into it thinking they are patriots every step of the way.

When I am working on a puzzle, I know I am on the right track when the pieces start to form a coherent image.  In this case, all the pieces don't seem to add up until one imagines it is completely staged on all sides to herd people in a very specific direction while subverting all their normal cautions and reservations.

Q has successfully merged religion, politics, militarism, commerce, and social engineering into a tight little package.  It has people around the world spouting slogans, while deriding people who spout slogans.  I has people praising the use of logic and reason, while accepting unconditionally everything they are told.  It has framed a political leader as a quasi-religious figure appointed by God to clean up all the injustices of the world and save us from damnation.  It has gotten people who previously would have panicked over the Chief Executive threating to use the military on US soil cheering for it - even begging.

You tell me if this seems normal in the cold light of reason.

Is the revolution a left-right battle?  Or is it the final push for something much more nefarious and frightening?

Post Scriptum: A great many Qvians have whipped themselves into a froth over the possibility of Barack Obama and/or Hillary Clinton being brought up on charges of treason.  If this ever happens, and it is a Big If, there are a number of problems with it.

The US Constitution grants Congress the sole power to "declare war," however there are no formal or proscribed formats for such things.  The last time Congress actually "declared war" was 5 July 1942, when it passed a joint declaration of war against Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria.  More recently, Congress passed a joint "authorization to use military force" in the wake of 9/11, to authorize the president to use the military to fight terrorism.


This gets problematic when one wants to indict someone of treason.  In the US, 18USC2381 creates a criminal act called treason.  If found guilty, the perpetrator may be jailed for not less than 5 years, fined not less than $10,000, and could receive the death penalty.

Treason in the US is defined as levying war against the States, or giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the States.

It gets murky in that the US has not actually "declared war" for nearly 80 years, and knowing how attorneys love to parse words, is an "authorization to use military force" legally the same as a declaration?  If so, then the accused must be shown to be a legal combatant on behalf of a foreign power which has declared war on the US, or show that the accused knowingly gave aid and comfort to an enemy that has decalred war on the US.

A combatant is defined by the Customary IHL, Rule 3, under international law.  Combatants are only members of the Armed Forces, excepting medical and religious personnel, and thus are uniformed and identifiable as combatants.  Otherwise, we are into a really murky realm of espionage, and I don't have the energy to dive into that topic here.

Thus, to get an indictment - and ultimately a conviction - of treason, there must be a declared war, which alone would take years to sort out the legal tangle of that mess, and the accused would have to be a combatant or spy on behalf of the declared enemy, which itself is a bowl of legal spaghetti.

The chances of any of the chast of characters the Qvians salivate over being indicted, tried and convicted of treason in their lifetimes is slim to nil, given their current ages.  There are at least a half dozen Supreme Court decisions just waiting to happen, not to mention questions that are far more complex than the meaning of "is".

If any indictments and/or convictions come out of the Qniverse Fantasyland, they may well lead to new and modified legislation going forward.  At a minimum, we can expect the entire process to wend its way through the frozen molasses of government in the next 30-40 years.

I find it highly improbable that anyone of significant status within the Qniverse Fantasyland to ever see the inside of a courtroom, much less a jail cell.  Judicial Watch has been trying to haul Hillary Clinton into court for a deposition under oath, and even with court orders and piles of evidence, they can't even get her in the same State as the court.

And just to rub salt in the wound, many of the players in Qniverse Fantasyland have or had at the time sovereign immunity.  If you want to understand that term, you're on your own.  Good luck!

The Russians Are Hacking! The Russians Are Hacking!

Putin Authored Brexit
Italy Election Interference
US Elections 2016
Russia Election Warfare Worldwide

If you look at the above-linked articles, you'll start to notice a pattern. The pattern falls out like a rock. Wherever nationalism, populism and culture win out over globalism and progressivism, Russia is there tampering with the levers of power.

True or not, the accusation that Russia is promoting anti-globalism and a multi-lateral geopolitical world is only bad if you are a globalism swine.

For perspective, the US has provably and admittedly interfered in other nations' elections since at least 1948, in Italy, and most likely long before that. The US used to justify this interference as bringing "democracy" to the downtrodden masses and rescuing the world from "communism," whether those nations wanted it or not.

What makes the Russian situation rather comical is not only the fact that she is accused of destroying globalism - without actually ever saying that, but that Vlad Putin appears to be the busiest man in the world. On top of that, Putin is probably the greatest intellect ever in the history of everything and never makes a mistake or loses a contest.

When you pull back a get a little perspective on things, you realize that neither Russia nor Putin are capable of doing everything they have been accused of. We are asked to believe that Russia has the time, resources and desire to deeply penetrate the media, social movements and politics of just about every Western nation - and a few others - in the world. There must literally be a huge, dark, subterranean chamber in Siberia full of thousands of Russian hackers and advertisers working literally around the clock hacking every existing mind-control system out there.

Not only are the Russians capable of this, but they are master manipulators, insidiously guiding the though patterns of millions of people, particularly in the moments leading up to a vote.

In a plot worthy of the best Bond villain ever, Russia cleverly deploys RT articles and Facebook ads at just the right moment, using carefully selected trigger words to make you vote the way they want you to. Like a zombie, your mind has been taken over with anti-globalism thoughts because Russia, masters of the most subtle aspects of every Western language on Earth, can carefully craft messages that slide right past all your psychological and rational defenses and induce you to pull the voting lever against your will.

The whole thing is patently absurd, if not downright preposterous.

The underlying assumption in all this is that you and I are completely mindless idiots susceptible to anyone with a mastery of advertising and social media.

In short, it is good if we all blindly follow Uncle Sam's mental manipulations, but it is a crime bordering on genocide if any other entity is able to override and undo it. That is basically what Russia is being accused of.

The thing is, if Russia is wrong for doing it, then everyone is wrong - including a corporation or government near you. It doesn't matter how altruistic and noble the cause is, if any entity attempts to override an individual's thought processes, it is wrong.

That all media outlets everywhere are attempting to manipulate our dreams, desires and beliefs is a given. For more than a century, the mass media has been used to steer the populace this way and that - whether it is inducing us to buy products and images, or William Randolph Hearst taking the nation to war. The marketing and PR machine has infused itself into our most private and secure realm - our minds.

The wailing indictment of Russia in the Western mediasphere is equally an indictment of itself. The only real difference is the degree to which one side or the other is controlling our minds.

None of this absolves us from individual responsibility. We must be eternally vigilant against the invasion of our most sacred inner spaces. We must educate ourselves, recognize the manipulations and repulse the attacks, whether it is Russians trying to control our voting fingers, or the Western media-industrial empire trying to make us believe that our conscious choices are not ours.

And therein lies the crux of the matter. The Western political media and the corporations that own them are scared spitless by the huge wave of nationalism and the wholesale rejection of globalism and unbridled immigration, and the resulting destruction of national and cultural identity. The only way they have to fight it is to convince us that our decisions are not ours, but are the result of insidious manipulation by the evil Russians.

It's not working, but we must remain on guard, because the attack against the new nationalism will increase, and the methods and channels used to manipulate us will increase in number and strength. The globalists have spent centuries building up their command and control structures, and they will not just give up and walk away.

Today, it's Russians, but when that narrative fails - and it will sooner than later - there will be a new bogeyman. The more we, as individuals, assert control over our own thoughts and destinies, the more the attacks will increase. The only defense we have is knowledge. Learn how these systems work, and they will lose power over you.

One cannot fight an invisible enemy, and learning how it operates makes it clearly visible.

Onward through the fog...

Are You Ready For Some FU-ball?

NFL players genuflecting in submission; Brad Mills/USA Today
Sports, via Reuters

The idea of compulsory worship of the State and its symbols makes me puke.  I haven't stood for the US national anthem in decades - probably since high school - and especially at sporting events.

Don't get me wrong, I happily stand and salute any time someone waves the Bonnie Burnet Blue and plays Texas Our Texas, but that hasn't happened at any public event I've attended since the early 2000s, and the reason I do so is because my country has been a captive nation of war since 1865.  But that's another story.

What I find particularly amusing about the current debate-du-jour in the good ol' US of A is that the people protesting the national anthem by going down on one knee is such a screwed up situation that I can't help but laugh my fool head off.

Before I get to the real meat of the matter, and being a product of Roman Catholic indoctrination, seeing people go down on one knee is what I call genuflecting, and it is a sign of submission to higher authority.  Thus, these over-stuffed boneheads are, in effect, offering greater submission to the State than simply standing and covering one's heart.

Har-har-har!  What a bunch of buffoons!

What is most amusing, however, is that all these meat-balloons that are submitting to the State in supplicated "protest" are biting their own asses.

They play a game that does not exist anywhere outside the United States.  They work for a monopoly that has special dispensation from that State to be exempt from the laws of that State that prohibit monopolies.  Most of the players would be manual laborers were it not for the incredible luck they had in landing such over-paid jobs that made them millionaires and national "heroes."  Their places of work are stadia that were paid for by municipal bonds and legal tax cheats granted by folks who have been sold a bill of goods in the interest of "tourism" and "public relations."  The owners of these bloated boneheads (yes, it is a kind of slave market) are billionaires who, for the most part, use the teams as tax write-offs against their massive incomes.

Furthermore, these steroid-puffed slabs of beef receive additional income through product endorsements that are marketed to duped citizens of those United States, and incentive payments from networks whose major source of income (given that their other shows are increasingly unwatched) to draw bleary eyeballs to the weekly spectacles that few outside the United States watch (soccer, a.k.a. football, rules the rest of the world).

Frankly, given that these people wouldn't have the ridiculous incomes and unreal jobs if it weren't for the United States, they should be bowing and scraping the turf on their obscenely wasteful stadia in submissive gratitude for what they have.  They certainly know nothing of the trials and tribulations of the inner-city poor folk they claim to be in solidarity with, nor would any of them bother to go into those neighborhoods.  They are upscale now, and have been since high school.

The gentle reader may ask what makes me any kind of expert on American FU-ballers.

Well, back in the day, when I was a fresh graduate from university, which I paid for out of my own pocket with no sports scholarships, I lowered myself to work sports for one of the Big Four affiliates in Houston.  Not only did I spend untold hours toting heavy gear up and down the sidelines of pro-sports events, I spent vastly more hours in the dark editing "news" stories for the local and national sports broadcasts, working for a boos that hated white men (this was the late 80s and early 90s, mind you).

I shot hours of interviews with these mental midgets with a ratio of 100-to-1 of footage recorded to usable sound bits (not even enough for full bites).  I did focus pieces on these meat-lockers in their palatial estates, where they regularly got into trouble beating wives and girlfriends, doing copious drugs, driving intoxicated, and living like Roman gladiators with the blessing of Caesar.  In fact, I can't count how many stories were quietly pushed aside to keep public images polished to a high sheen.

Yes, these over-grown and sickly-coddled children should not only be genuflecting to the flag and anthem that represents the only nation on Earth where they could find meaningful work, they should be lying prostrate in worship.

The owners too.

And where they have all screwed the pooch - though it is hard to sort this one thing out of the incredible list of options - is that they have fed into the one issue that Donald Trump can turn into a fortune.

Trump is a marketing guy - dare I say genius.  That's how he got to where he is now.  He is adept at manipulating symbols to dress up pigs' snouts for the ball and reaping a mighty profit from it.

These Bumbledicks (Marxist-Socialist Progressives) - owners, players and media alike - have just handed Trump one of the meatiest scenarios they possibly could, and we note that Trump has dutifully taken the opportunity and like an NFL quarterback doing the sneak, is running with all his might for the end-zone.

What completes the delicious irony is that no one, and I mean NO ONE (except us Far Siders) will dare to attack Trump's glaring Achilles' Heel on this issue, and that is the sheer number of dual citizens among his appointees, staff and advisers, since those dual citizens are of the nation of Israel.

What an incredible farce!

The Pragmatic Art

O what tangled web we weave...

I will eagerly grant that two months does not an administration make, but I must say that my initial reservations concerning Donald Trump seem to be manifesting.

I certainly have no love lost for the Clinton Crime Family, and I was elated that Hillary lost - though it seems she refuses to be forgotten.  Her presidency would have been an unmitigated disaster.  Should the Liberal Elite manage to install her as mayor of New York City, we can at least rest assured that the labor union mafias of Thog's Neck will keep her contained.

As I noted throughout the election cycle, here on my rant page, I had genuine misgivings about Trump, as well.  I could not envision a man who is a walking, talking brand being anything more than a well-meaning pragmatist whose primary motivation would be protection of (his) business interests.

As we've noted often enough here, the marriage of corporate and government interests is the very definition of fascism, and one is not comforted by the 10-foot tall fasces that frame the podium in the US House of Representatives.  We have also noted that the only substantial difference between Socialism and Fascism is whether government owns the business, or business owns the government.

In his first two months, we must grant that he has spent an inordinate amount of time heading off a vicious attack from nearly every corner of the Deep State.  In case you are not up on your political jargon, the Deep State is a term coined in the 1940s to describe those who are life-long bureaucrats whose jobs span multiple administrations - particularly the intelligence systems and the law enforcement operations.  In the US, that includes the NSA, CIA, FBI, DOJ, and related departments.

To a certain extent, the President exercises some control over these agencies.  He appoints the heads, who in turn appoint their staff, who in turn hire fresh meat for the mill.  Since at least the latter half of the Reagan Administration, the same faction (i.e. NeoCons or Bush Crime Family) have controlled most of the long-term functions of the Deep State.

Clinton is most definitely a member of the ruling NeoCon faction, as is Obama.  Trump most certainly is not.  Trump represents another faction that has been out of favor for the past 30 years, namely the Nationalists.  Make no mistake, the Globalists and Nationalists have the same goal - world domination - but who gets to run it is the primary bone of contention.

Make no mistake: Trump has plenty of support, not from the grassroots, but from the Nationalist elites.  His primary opposition are the ranks upon ranks of lifers who have been hired over the past 30 years, and who remain loyal to the Globalist wing.

To be clear, we here on the Far Side have never expected great things from Trump, only different things.  Our greatest hope is that the shocking rise to power of Trump will envigorate and activate the good men and women at the level of real life, and get them to realize just how much power they really have.  Sadly, I'm afraid the coming major disappointment over Trump will suck the wind out of their sails.  We shall see.

What we know about Trump, and increasingly see, is that he is a pragmatist.  Most successful Presidential candidates write books (or have them written) covering their political philosophies.  Trump wrote The Art of the Deal.  If you've read it, then you know that he falls squarely on the side of fascism.  He believes that government exists to protect business interests (not people's rights, as the Enlightenment posits).

Trump is also an artful negotiator - we must admit that regardless of personal feelings about him.  As such, he is well-versed in the concept of the means justifying the ends.  Any good negotiators knows that you sit down to the table with a set of goals and try to get the other side to give away the means to achieve them, or at least do so at the least possible cost.  There are no absolutes in a negotiation, only goals and means.

Trump's modus operandi is quite simple: weigh the relative value of everything, and figure out what you are willing to concede in order to get what you want.  Like the hiker several years ago who cut off his arm in order to survive, seemingly vital things are sacrificed for the greater good.  Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame might define pragmatism as, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."  Trump might add a rather narrow definition of who he thinks "the many" are.

In two months, Trump has already shown his pragmatism.  He answers every attack with an equal but opposite force, holding back his "nukes" until the other side escalates or caves.  He knows the Border Wall is his biggest ace politically (grassroot support), so he pushes that at the expense of Russian relations and peace efforts.  Accuse him of collaborating with the Russians, he doubles down by sending troops to Poland and chilling the happy talk.  He needs to placate the Military-Industrial forces, so he vastly increases the budget, while cutting back on arts and humanities.

Trump is an artful dodger.  He knows when and where to push, and he knows when and where to parry - even retreat.  He has clearly internalized The Art of War and The Prince.  He knows how to deflect an opponent's thrust and use it against them.  He is, in short, a white collar warrior.  We can respect that without necessarily agreeing with his goals.

Two months out of four, possibly eight years is hardly enough to judge his legacy, though it is certainly enough to become concerned about the relative weight he places on certain ideals.  In any event, he will not resign and he will not surrender, that much we can count on.  Being pragmatic, though, makes him a bit chaotic and unpredictable, especially since we don't know his precise agenda.  That much we will have to wait for time to reveal.

It is notable that his characteristic Twits and seemingly unregulated mouth (though we believe he is quite calculated in that regard).  He has also toned down considerably the rhetoric on tax cuts, Russian relations and has virtually gone silent on veterans' affairs, which he used to great advantage during the campaign.  We must also interpret his cost-cutting with regards to personnel is motivated by clearing house of Globalists, rather than pure budgetary reasons.

We can safely assume that Trump's actions have multiple layers to them.  Even after only two months, we can begin to connect a few dots to see where exactly his goals, principles and - yes - weaknesses are.  One major weakness is his burning need for applause, and we can assume that much of his agenda will amount to little more than clap traps.

It is always a good idea to maintain a healthy sense of skepticism towards government, but the wise reader will also cast a wary eye on Trump. It is tempting to pop the champagne and celebrate victory, but as Yogi Berra reminded us so eloquently, "It ain't over till it's over."

Jingo Bells

I make a sharp delineation in my mind between patriotism and nationalism.  The words "patriot" and "nationalist," at least in American usage in the 20th century, have been severely diluted and warped.  To me, and according to older dictionaries, a patriot is someone who defends and protects the land, culture and history of a place, while a nationalist is someone who defends the government of that place.

Frankly, I have little to no use for government of any kind.  The only things I have ever gotten from governments are things they told me I had to have, like identification papers, and that I had to pay for them and renew them on a regular basis, since my identity changes regularly.

I certainly have never received any benefit from government.  I have, on the other hand, paid a pretty penny to maintain government, but to what end I really don't know.

I've heard hundreds of times that I have to pay my fair share, but for what?  What share am I supposedly getting that I have to pay so dearly for?

Well, security and protection, I'm told.  Yet, my home and those of pretty much everyone I have ever known have never been attacked by foreign invaders, though I must say my home has often been attacked by domestic invaders - government goons worried about what I am doing in my home, for the most part.

When it comes to security, I am ready, willing and able to defend my home and family without help from any goons.  I am also under no illusion that there is such a thing as security.  Every lock can be broken and I would rather be responsible for losing my own stuff, thank you very much.  Depending on government for security is like keeping a rabid dog in my bed for defense.  It tends to bite the hand that feeds it.

As for protection, well I was a registered marksman and owner of a fine collection of firearms.  I still maintain a formidable collection of knives that I am pretty handy with.  I have also learned to make a wide range of booby-traps from household items, just for shits and grins.  My assumption is that if a bunch of goons ever come around wanting to protect me, they will probably draw fire and do more damage than if I was left to my own devices.

I was raised in the ancient tradition that any able-bodied male is a defender.  I never saw much use for the armed forces, since my country has not been attacked since 1864, and that attack was carried out by the very folks claiming to be my protection.  Sounds like a mafia protection racket to me.

Most of what I have ever seen from government was a bunch of lard-ass blowhards looking all serious about making laws that have little intended effect, but make nifty reasons to harass people, when the need arises.

These glorified mountebanks get a lot of my money to sit around in fancy buildings thinking up new things to me to do.  They wear splendorous titles and expect honors and deference, yet they are nothing more than common crooks in three-piece suits with nifty little flag pins on their lapels.

Under them are thousands of uniformed goons who run around enforcing laws they have never read and couldn't care less about, as long as the paycheck and benefits keep coming - out of my pocket, by the way.

I'm a patriot, I suppose.  I love the land and the people, the culture and the language.  I would defend those things to my death, so that my children could also enjoy them and further enrich them with their own contributions.

I am not a nationalist, though.  I have little use for government.  I want nothing from it but to be left alone.  It offers me nothing I need, and takes everything I have to support a privileged few at the expense of the many.  Under all the pomp and circumstance, government is nothing more than a bunch of hoods with bigger guns than me that they bought with my money.

What puts me in the frame of mind is watching the US elections.  All I keep thinking about is the brilliant humorist P. Jl O'Rourke's book title, "Don't Vote, It Just Encourages The Bastards."  And as comedy genius George Carlin said, "If you vote, you have no right to complain."

Rant Du Jour

If it's any comfort to you folks in the West, Asia's economy has slammed on the brakes, too.

When I first came to Indonesia in 2008, the country had 8% growth, the energy industry was going gangbusters, and foreign investment money was pouring in like a waterspout in monsoon season.  Cina was on a building spree to end all Building sprees, buying up Indonesian coal like it was the last supply on Earth.  Everyone was making money hand over fist.

Then the bottom fell out.

The US and EU economies tanked and China's exports were chopped off at the knees.  Western sanctions against Russia put the halt on the next hottest economy around (which was the real intent).  Southeast Asia, which was basically the low-cost labor supplier to China, along with the coal, suddenly found jobs drying up.

A combination of oil price cuts and really, incredibly short-sighted bureaucratic blunders on the part of Indonesia's Energy Ministry caused the bottom to fall out of the industry here.  And when I say bottom fall out, I mean the backup to the backup of the bottom fell out, too.  The sudden black hole in the government's budget has caused it to go on a tax hunt like never before in this country.

They are scrutinizing tax returns.  They are going through every title and deed.  They are hog-tying mud-caked tribesmen with bones in their noses (oh, yes, still have them) and forcing them to get tax numbers and start reporting their non-existent incomes.  The government is terrified also that a bunch of out-of-work, bored folks will suddenly realize how cushy and out-of-control all those ministries have gotten.

See 1998 for an example of what happens when that occurs.  People have gotten quite accustomed to upward mobility around these parts.

The areas of Jakarta, like Kemang, where all the ex-pat execs used to live have dried up.  Houses that used to rent for a month what a "normal" house gets for a year have stood empty for months.  All the oil companies have pulled out most of their ex-pat staff and are running on skeleton crews until the ministry comes to its senses.  By that I mean that current rules require exploration risks to be 100% on the company, all equipment imported for drilling can never leave again, and the government gets a majority share of production for doing nothing.  This is not to mention wonderful cabotage laws that require only Indonesian-flagged vessels to operated in national waters.  Bye-bye ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total.

A combination of greed, corruption and the attitude that good times always continue are sinking the ship of state.  Can you say "panic?"

None of this is to say that it's not happening in the rest of the world, too.  The Globalists have pushed too hard and tried to jump too far on the final leg of their take-over plans.  The blow-back comes in the form of all the nationalist movements worldwide, such as Brexit, Trump and the astounding rise to sainthood of Vlad the Putinator.

Alternative economic systems, such as ASEAN and BRICSA, that still respect national boundaries and cultures, while replacing the over-ripe and rotting carcass of the Western banking system, are coming into their own.  China's battle for the 9-Dash Line in the South China Sea is a direct dart in the eye of Western hegemony.  The unbridled gold-buying spree in China, India and Russia show a long-term plan to reinforce monetary foundations and stabilize economic shocks that are coming as the post-WW2 alliances and agreements start to unravel.

Honestly, I have no problem with globalism, per se.  The problem has been that for the last 60 years, the push has been to free corporations from national boundaries and level the playing field for faceless, soulless entities, at the cost of individual freedom and the sanctity of culture.  I would be quite happy to get rid of the money-making scam that is commonly evident in visas and passports for human beings.

However, the Western concept of corporations has shown repeatedly that these monster "legal entities" cannot be trusted and should never be allowed to slip the regulatory leash.  In other words, free the people, not the mega-corps.

When free to choose, people will always gravitate to areas with their common language, culture, foods, and sensibilities.  On the other hand, corporations don't care about any of that.  They are predatory and will slither into every nook and cranny, and gut the place of anything valuable unless they are tightly controlled.

People will care for their land.  Corporations will suck every penny of profit out of it until there is nothing left but waste.

When I say "people first," I am not referring to the liberal catch-phrase that hides a multitude of "diverse" evil.  I am referring to taking the yoke off of all us individuals.    Yes, it's a libertarian pipe-dream, but one that has the benefit of never having been tried. There's been a lot of lip service to "liberty" and "freedom," but in fact that has only been shared with the privileged few and not the masses.

In many ways, Karl Marx was right, but the execution has failed miserably, because true communism only works on small scales with ethnically and culturally homogeneous populations.  Massive state infrastructure that forces "diversity" and jumbled populations to work together is doomed to fail, as it has repeatedly.

People will smoke.  People will do drugs.  People will eat fatty foods.  Let them the hell alone.  Just don't steal my stuff, leave my family alone and don't murder anyone who isn't trying to do one of the previous two things.  What more do you need for a decent life?

If left the hell alone, people will do what is right for themselves and the ones they care about.  And they will collect in groups of like-minded folks who all have similar goals and cultures.  Let them.

But when Uncle Globalist wants to come in and rape and plunder your wealth using the deadly power of the government, well he should be roped, chained, tarred and feathered.  Maybe even a good turn in the pillory for some humiliation and ridicule might do him some good, as well.  But for gods' sake, don't enable him with TPP and TTIP and all those other alphabet fuels on the fire.

Kind of got off topic there, didn't I?

Well, that's why you come here and lurk in the corners, isn't it?

Triumph Of Chaos

Do you live in a nation?  A state?  A nation-state?

If you are not sure, then you can be forgiven, since the terms are rarely defined or even discussed these days.  And frankly, most of the political turmoil in the world today can be traced directly to efforts to dissolve the nation-state in favor of a kind of war-lord system governed by the UN (or whatever succeeds it).

To get to the heart of what is driving global madness, we need to first define some terms.  A 'nation' is an organic entity defined by language, culture, names, and other aspects of people's lives.  A 'state' is a political entity defined by lines on a map, taxation, legal systems, and so forth.  'Mercantilism' is an economic system that seeks to protect a nation's trading interests through the use of legal, military and regulatory means.  How they all fit together will become clear in a moment.

On the island of Java, where I live, there used to be a number of nations broadly defined as Javanese and Sundanese.  The Javanese primarily inhabited the lowlands, while the Sunda stayed mostly in the mountains, with a fuzzy dividing line between the east and west of the island.  These nations were distinguished by language, culture and cuisine.  Javanese and Sundanese are distinct dialects with many sub-dialects.  Culturally, one of the most obvious is the patterns of batik (printed cloth) that distinguished one region from another, but there are also physical and architectural differences.  On the plate, the Javanese prefer spice to the Sundanese preference for bitter flavors.

Over the top of these nations is a political entity called the Republic of Indonesia, which is a modern state, with all the bureaucratic trappings of other republics.  This political entity uses the Indonesian language, which is wholly distinct from both Javanese and Sundanese, and the state identifies itself with a flag, anthem and other symbols of the modern state.

The driving force that unified the two nations under the state was mercantilism, the mutual interest of both groups to protect their business interests and promote those interests through the use of common regulations, a legal system for disputes and a military to project force on outside challengers.

The modern nation-state arose in the 1400s in Europe, primarily in Venice, Genoa and other Italian city-states.  The distinct cultures formed naturally through familial ties and language/culture.  In order to reduce friction between the powerful trading families and focus on expanding business, they created a system of laws and regulations to level the home playing field.  They then built, for the time, mighty militaries to protect their ships and caravans from raiders and ensure safe delivery of goods and the more important return of money.

Over time, nations, states and mercantilism combined with cartography and the ability to define boundaries and borders and record them on maps and negotiate them with other entities to create the modern nation-state.  A fine example of a nation-state is Switzerland.  It is actually three nations - Italy, Germany and France - combined under a political system defined by boundaries to protect its business interests through mercantilism.  The inhabitants speak different languages and enjoy different native cultures (nation), but share a single government and military (state) symbolized by a common flag, anthem and other such things.

For the better part of 600 years, the nation-state has grown to cover most of the globe and has defined how we humans interact with each other.  Legal system compete to offer the most fair and secure environments for business, while the militaries go to war to protect and expand markets.  It is something we are all used to and hardly ever think about any more.  In fact, maps have hardly changed for decades now and we are generally shocked when extreme events rewrite boundaries, such as the fall of the Soviet Union.

Though the whole thing is rather chaotic, it has been relatively stable and allowed complex legal systems to develop that control activities within and between the various nation-states.  However, a major shift has been underway for the better part of the 20th century and into the 21st century.  Powerful interests have been trying to dissolve the nation-state in favor of a global system of laws and regulations, with a global military to protect trade.  The first step was the League of Nations after WW1, with the United Nations springing from its ashes in the wake of WW2.

Multi-national corporations have been a major driving force behind the effort to end the nation-state.  There are obvious advantages to conforming one's business to a single set of rules and regulations, rather than having to manage and maneuver through piles of legal hassle in every country where one does business.  The International Standards Organization (ISO) and HDTV (replacing NTSC, PAL and SECAM) are prime examples of this effort.

Imagine McDonald's, with outlets and franchises in most of the nation-states on Earth.  Employment laws, food and sanitation regulations, environmental laws, taxation schemes, and much more apply in every location and are radically different place to place.  It would be so much easier for them if there were a single set of global rules, a single taxing scheme and other standardization.

It would also be nice if there were a single military that protected business interests in every jurisdiction and on the high seas.

McDonald's is only one of thousands of multi-national corporations, and nearly all of them have a vital interest in conforming global business environments to a single standard.  Thus, the ongoing push to end the nation-state.

All of this is being led, of course, by banking and finance, which is the nucleus around which business orbits and the heart of mercantilism for centuries.  The test grounds for this unified system is the European Union and the United States.  They are both a hodge-podge of nations that are being forced, with varying degrees of success, to synchronize into single states.

The EU is the latest effort and one that is a bit clearer for our purposes than the US.  The EU is dozens of very distinct nations with roughly 20 states overlaying them.  Over the past 30 years or so, there has been a major effort to centralize banking and government, issue a single currency, erase borders, converge militaries.  And if Grexit and Brexit are any sign, it is failing miserably.

In fact, people like Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Chiang Kai-shek, who are prominent nationists, are often ridiculed and berated by corporate interests because nationalism is anathema to the state and mercantile interests.  They have been vilified, fairly or not, because their efforts undermine the centuries-long effort to champion political systems over natural ones in the interest of commercialism and profit.

To understand the current global chaos and honestly assess whether a particular leader is really wrong, or is just being castigated for being a naturalist/nationalist, one needs to understand the distinction at the root of the problem.

We are facing a massive clash of entrenched interests - a clash of civilizations, if you will.  On the one hand are those promoting nationalism, which is to say the natural and organic organization of human beings.  On the other hand are the statists/mercantilists who promote business interests and profits over the interests of individuals.  Who is right or wrong in this argument is a subjective decision.

My view is that nationalism is a natural function of life.  We are all imprinted with the location and culture of our birth.  There is only one "home," though there may be many "houses."  People, no matter how much we attempt to modify it, will always desire the "home" to which they were born.  Everything else will always be foreign.  This comes from two things: the natural imprinting of the electro-magnitic field of a given location at birth, and the mother tongue, which carries one's culture with it (culture and language are inseparable).

Like homing pigeons, we all have an innate desire to return to the place where we were born.  How strong that desire and how much one is susceptible to it varies, but it is always there.  Part of that most basic motivation is the desire to keep that "home" in some sort of pristine or original condition, a kind of defense mechanism that makes us fight for the sanctity and sovereignty of our birthplaces.

The other part of this equation - language - is even more deeply rooted.  Though I speak a number of languages, and I am fluent in four of them, English is always my default.  It is the language of my thoughts and it molds my worldview.  I can no more change that that I can change my brain.  It is the language that carries culture, and culture that influences language.  One can never be divorced from the other.

Thus, we see globally a fundamental clash between what humans are and what we feel, against what we have created.  Political and economic sciences have been separated from the most fundamental aspects of what it means to be human.  Despite centuries of education and social manipulation, the statist/mercantilist interests cannot remove these most basic impulses from humanity.  Efforts to genetically manipulate the organism may one day succeed, but I am skeptical.

In the real world, though, there are the Donald Trumps on the nationalist side - though I think he runs solely on instinct.  On the other side are the "globalists," whose efforts are, as we saw above, to synchronize a global system of laws, regulations and militaries to protect business and profits.  They are fundamentally opposed ideologies and can no more mix than oil and water.  They are mutually exclusive.

So when you see the Trumps and the Putins vilified in the corporate media, or people railing on about racial, globalist or religious ideals, at the heart of it is a clash of worldviews, a weltanschauungskrieg, or "war of philosophies."

I, for one, believe that the nationalists will win.  Beneath the rhetoric is a deep human truth that cannot be changed.  The statist/mercantilist effort seeks to replace what humans feel with an abstract ideology that must be learned - it is not installed at birth.  It is akin to a computer's BIOS and OS.  They can work together or clash, but when they clash, nothing will work.

I suspect the harder the statists push, the more the nationalists will resist until the whole thing collapses, or one side gives up, and I don't see that happening.  It is the proverbial rock and a hard spot, or in scientific terms, the irresistible force meeting the the unyielding object.

This will not end pretty.