Back From Beyond

An epiphany, an appetizer, and a pint-sized update, dedicated to CD

I just returned from a much-needed vacation and some spiritual counseling, did a bit of micro & macro dosing to help ease me off the Zoloft, which I highly recommend if you’re suffering from depression. SSRIs contribute to Alzheimer’s, and the science behind ketamine and psilocybin is rock solid: they both promote brain health and improve neural plasticity. I don’t often write about it, but there is a spiritual or philosophical grounding, a moral center, that you need to have to be in this fight. And no, I am not boasting. I’m not better than anyone else and I don’t consider myself morally superior to anyone. My past includes some spectacular fuck-ups, and like everyone else, I have transgressions that I need to own, and for which I must express contrition. I’m sure there are writers and thinkers on Substack with better chops, more powerful intellects, and more impressive track records when it comes to always doing the right thing.

Still, I firmly believe part of the problem is that Americans and people in the West in general, for that matter, do NOT care as much about a dead African as they do about a dead American. A dead African or Arab or Asian child is perceived as being a lesser tragedy, one sanitized by geographical distance and media spin. This is why I like Caitlin Johnstone’s work so much: she recognizes the moral and spiritual dilemma at the heart of all of this, and she acknowledges that along with strategizing, organizing, and writing about our problems, we need people to evolve morally as well.

Fear not — I won’t drift off into woo-woo territory, and I don’t embrace much of this new age dogma because I see it as being one of neoliberalism’s main ancillary discourses, propaganda and narrative control for the working class: “Ain’t nothing wrong with the world or the system. It’s your shitty attitude, so get back to your desk, Betsy!”

I’m also not the type who can have an epiphany and then stare at his navel until dinner time. If I think I know something that will help someone, then I have a duty to share it. I don’t proselytize or harangue people. I put it on my blog, and everyone knows where to find my page and that I won’t pull any punches. I do believe that we have to be compassionate. If there are people out there ready to help me, I should be ready to help them. It’s kind of sad that the psychedelic community seems to have a faction that is proactively non-active when it comes to political engagement. The most engaged members of the community seem to be right-leaning libertarians, and on the left, the real anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist left, their absence is deafening.

Before I woke this morning, I hadn’t looked at the news in five days, which is a record for me. I'm still trying to untangle what’s happening and just what is behind Trump’s decision-making process, but make no mistake: the reason that Mango Caesar has his sights set on USAID is because it funded most of the intelligence cutouts, nonprofits, and NGOs that colluded against him during Russiagate. They were the ones busy helping the intelligence community as they issued falsified FISA warrants, spread fake stories about Alfa Bank, and pushed a media narrative to gin up public support for political show trials. This is revenge, and it will be both good and bad. For example, we just lost the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an important public resource that owed its existence to the only positive legislation to ever come from phony shitlib Elizabeth Warren, Democratic Party Troll & Propagandist. And I don’t think it’s about Trump hating the agency but rather exacting vengeance and putting the screws to anyone associated with USAID.

On the other hand, it’s hard for me not to get excited about seeing the intelligence agencies get screwed because as far as I am concerned, they sit at the nexus of Empire and Evil. I have been shocked watching Democrats, who in addition to being down with mass censorship, now embrace the CIA and the FBI: the ones who spied on, tortured, and assassinated the heroes they claim to worship.

The saddest truth in this whole bloody fairy tale is the truth about what happened in and to Ukraine: If Biden had been honest & admitted that NATO membership was never on the table (he didn't, despite all the bogus spin to the contrary), hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainians -- young men in the prime of life kidnapped and forced into vans and shipped to the front to be slaughtered -- would be alive, and Ukraine would have a future:

At least this bloody proxy war, fought by bought politicians (Biden, Zelensky, Boris Johnson), fatcat oligarchs, weapons dealers, and private equity firms, has come to an end. This was never about Ukrainian sovereignty or the Ukrainian people. Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate tell the truth in plain, simple terms: This was an attempt to deal a massive blow to the Russian oil industry, to bleed Putin and Russia by using Ukraine as the staging grounds for a perverse Battle Royale: Hundreds of thousands of men died in vain so that we would have cover to bomb Nord Stream II.

This ended exactly as I said it would, with Ukraine defeated and left in tatters, another vassal state dumb enough to dance with the devil and think they wouldn’t have to pay the price.

There’ll be more to come on Trump’s horrible policies, but I’ll be honest and give credit where it’s due. I am glad we are out of Ukraine, and I am glad that we will not be honoring Article 5 of the UN Charter. European troops will be handling the clean up and if there is any altercation, there will be no US backing. Hard not to like that: no US troops on the ground participating in oligarchic and imperial warfare.

Still, this is Trump, and he’s surrounded himself with a gaggle of neocons who are creaming their jeans at the prospect of a future war with Iran. Even Tulsi Gabbard is harping on about it, jumping on the bandwagon. That’s the finishing touch on their nasty little Fabergé Egg, the New American Century, a few minutes of all-powerful imperial gloating before we continue to disintegrate, on our way to becoming the Philippines or Brazil.

Hell, we’re already there.