House of Cards Against Humanity: Cheap Oil, Chess & Hunter S. Thompson

submitted by Gabrielle Jones-Price

I heard someone utter, "George W. Bush was pretty cool on the Ellen DeGeneres talk show yesterday."

The Edge...there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

We can't stop here. I invite you to go over the edge rather than stay in bat country. After today, I'll only be sharing excerpts from Michael C. Ruppert's book, Crossing the Rubicon, blistering social critique and announcements about a collaboration for an audio book [or several] for archive and download. I'm working on more podcasts where I plan to bring back some Gonzo. Donations help keep these coming. The political shit-show has hit the fan and is best left in the rear view mirror. Good riddance.

There's no sense resisting what one has no control over. I'm not talking about what you can -- and should -- do locally, that's where it will count. I'm talking about limits to growth. Have control over mind and heart growth...and no longer suffer fools who believe this system can be salvaged with George Dubya's kind of magical thinking. Willful ignorance is a disease and there aren't many inoculations left in America unless you look to the arts. They don't exist in the media-infotainment complex. Mutually assured destruction? Only if you stay locked in the tower like Rapunzel waiting to be saved by a corporate system that bangs on nuclear warheads with stupid hammers.

Post-petroleum Jesus Freaks who hate basic liberties and worship money on the right -- meet the post-petroleum shell of a left now war-mongering with a nuclear power for $15 an hour justice from a nearly bankrupt country creeping with McCarthyism while the rest of the world watches in horror.

Stick a fork in the two-party goose. It's cooked in cheap oil. Can I get a witness? I might be asking too much from this insane asylum...

"Let go or be dragged" reads my favorite Zen proverb. Damn fine advice I took up 7 years ago when I learned of peak oil. The only information left worth sharing is the kind that will help decent people prepare and stay sane. You'll not find me 'resisting' in the streets. I tried peaceful protest during Occupy and saw good people pepper sprayed, bloodied and others involved in media behave like the monsters they railed against. Anyone getting arrested for protesting now runs the risk of entering for-profit-prisons in a police state that just deported immigrants -- many who had labor-intensive jobs which privileged white folks won't do -- most of those in big agriculture. Those same privileged folks aren't going to give a social justice fuck if prison inmates are picking their organic produce. As long as comfortable people are comfortable, there will be problems for the marginalized. Until this president dismantles the deep state's apparatus, assume you're being watched.

This new president is a total wildcard. The last one turned out to be a wildcard for those involved in Occupy and other social justice movements that followed and no one paid attention to those warnings then, either. Because Obomber was pretty cool, too...even after signing the NDAA which allowed brutalizing of water protectors in North Dakota. The left is worried about Russia because they are COMFORTABLE. Ask a water protector, a homeless vet or a black family in Detroit if they're worried about Putin. I'll wait...

Prison labor replacing deported immigrant labor is just one symptom of collapse that Mike Ruppert predicted with stunning accuracy. I saw it when cheap prison labor was used to clean up the Gulf after the BP disaster in 2010, rather than hire locals for decent pay who needed the money because of income lost from environmental damage done to seaside businesses and fishing industries. What has been seen cannot be unseen. To ignore the truth is one man's small step backward but mankind's giant leap into the nuthouse. Some folks stroll right in like morons falling in manholes because they can't be bothered to look up from their iDevices -- the same idiots that claim they have nothing to hide, share their whole boring-ass lives online, 'check in' at a bar on Foursquare and wonder why they've been robbed when they get home four hours later.

Privilege makes people stupid. A woman I worked for [who thought she was above everyone] once tried to sue the local police department for 'pain and suffering' because she was strip searched after a DUI. I sympathized until she told her story. She was driving drunk on the interstate when a rock hit her car's windshield from an overpass. She was so affronted, that in her mind she was better than the rock throwing delinquents [she assumed were there] and promptly called the cops. She expected justice! Instead, they were happy to escort her drunk ass to jail.

It was a female cop who strip searched her...

In the East: lose your illusions. In America: delusions reign

America needs to snap out of its fossil fuel addiction. We've acted like zombies in the eyes of the old world, including Russia. Like the woman in the story above, we're behaving like rude awakened children who just learned Santa Claus isn't real. Russian people know about collapse better than spoiled Americans do and we can learn a great deal from them. Trump happens to be the peak oil president in charge of decline [whether he knows this or not. I'm betting not]. Many analysts saw this coming and many hoped for at least a Libertarian decline. The only hint of those values in this administration, would be move to dismantle the damage done to the Bill of Rights under The Patriot Act, continued loss of liberties under NDAA which all started with Bush Jr. [If you think that's 'pretty cool' you can eat shit with a side of bullet...if you can find bullets.] If any of the aforementioned things are considered less than civil rights, it is as bad as I thought. In fact, it is worse.

My silver lining? I'm thankful a woman won't be blamed throughout history of the oil crash, even one as repulsive and corrupt as Hillary. The DNC rigged a primary election, unless your cognitive dissonance won't allow you to read the emails that Russians didn't write and still believe whistle blowers are "conspiracy theorists" when it suits your political narrative. I'm moving on to more important things happening at the adult table, Dorothy. We're not in Kansas anymore. Clicking heels is for kids.

From Things that Can and Cannot Be Said
Arundhati Roy & John Cusack

What we are witnessing, along with the acceleration of cheap energy decline, is societal collapse. In a globalized economy, Mike Ruppert warned about this. At home, Hunter Thompson saw the political/cultural aspect with collapsing of liberties and predicted perpetual war with an unseen enemy in his ESPN column right after the Twin Towers fell. He knew. Mike and Hunter were worlds apart with similar visions and warnings of what this country might become. They both loved this country and both left this world in the same manner. I had hoped to see Wall Street bankers jumping out of windows instead but those swine learned to fly after 2008. Now they're tapping phones and smart TV's. They'll get another pass at the remaining social and environmental funding while feeding at the zero percent interest trough. Who will bail them out next time?

You got it, Rapunzel. I've practically had to sell my hair to get out of debt. Though, my soul never had a price. I've found that this is what I have in common with people who truly love liberty. Now that IS pretty cool.


I can't judge how Mike and Hunter chose to leave this mortal coil and often wonder what Hunter took to his grave after that prescient ESPN column. I know what I know because of whistle blowers. I choose to remember and honor the American spirit, wisdom and grit of Hunter S. Thompson and Michael C. Ruppert as 'road men for the lords of karma'.

I've distanced myself from this increasingly insane and complex society, toward a simpler way of living, being, and loving. Hopefully others will follow suit but I'm not holding my breath for the willfully ignorant. I like breathing more than beating my head against brick walls. I'll enjoy watching mother nature take them back like so many abandoned places that capitalism forgot.

Which brings me back to the tarot card of radical transformation: The Tower. Change is inevitable whether from outside forces or choices we make ourselves. Both Mike and Hunter lived as far from the shadow of empire's tower as they dared while flipping it off. I'd recommend the same to anyone wise enough to see the cracks in the foundation and instead of fear and self-loathing, take action for your loved ones and local communities now. Preparing is always preferred over the shock and awe of a lightening-bolt fate you believe you have no control over.

Religious folks believe in angels, miracles and 'acts of God'.  Mother nature deals in science; laws of physics, gravity and mathematics. Yet science has become an economic religion content to poison water, air and soil...after building nuke stockpiles and teaching children to 'duck and cover' under little wooden desks. Do we really need cartoon turtles from the 50's to educate adults in 2017? We very well might. Science is still too pompous to imagine humans can conquer nature with more man-made techno-saviors in a debt-based economy for another 100 years without the miracle of cheap oil. It's the same lunatic hubris that built the Titanic and believes in a different benevolent god: 'the invisible hand of the market'. [Psst: It's not too big to fail.]

My dear departed friend, Otto the Comic used to say: "Numbers don't lie, people do."

I've been called an alarmist. I don't talk to those folks anymore. If you're not alarmed now, you're fucking brain dead and I prefer to stick with people who have gone over the edge. They're funny, honest, generous, helpful, wise, love music and are pretty cool for refusing to normalize war and war criminals. If that's really what it means to be politically correct in America, we should be fitted for straitjackets.

Audio excerpts are coming soon!

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