The Burning Platform - “Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All […]

The Burning Platform - “Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you”. – Orwell’s 1984 “They do not even need evidence to condemn someone they believe is guilty”. – Orwell’s 1984 Many people have joked that […]

The Burning Platform - Twenty years of schoolin’ And they put you on the day shift Look out kid They keep it all hid Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues As we accelerate towards whatever disastrous outcome awaits our debt-ridden, delusional, decadent, despairing society, I seem to be drawn to the anti-establishment lyrics of Bob Dylan, written during the […]

The Burning Platform - “All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed, they must rely exclusively on force.” – George Orwell “The future’s becoming muddled. The lines of vision are narrowing. But now they’re desperate. All paths lead into darkness.” – Frank Herbert – Dune Trying to decipher the path ahead becomes more difficult […]

The Burning Platform - Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Leonard Cohen – Everybody Knows Having heard this Leonard Cohen classic on the radio a few days ago, the lyrics have been rattling around in my head as a perfect […]

The Burning Platform - “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”  – William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981) The always mysterious question when trying to figure out what is happening in this insane world and why it is happening is who are “they”? In the current chaotic atmosphere, “they” are in […]

The Burning Platform - “Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.” – Josey Wales “To hell with them fellas. […]

The Burning Platform - “At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move all the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.” – Frank Zappa “In the past […]

The Burning Platform - “Americans today are increasingly polarized, as if they constitute two separate nations.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning “THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and […]

The Burning Platform - “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” – General Smedley Butler I don’t need your […]

The Burning Platform - “Truth is treason in an empire of lies.” – George Orwell “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are […]

The Burning Platform - Hold tight Wait ’til the party’s over Hold tight We’re in for nasty weather There has got to be a way Burning down the house Talking Heads – Burning Down the House If you haven’t noticed, we’re in for nasty weather. The swirling winds of a cloudy Fall day, as darkness descends upon the world, […]

The Burning Platform - “The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the […]

The Burning Platform - In Part 1 of this article, I explored how Huxley, Orwell, and Bradbury foretold the use of technology by totalitarians to subjugate and control the masses. Now we move on to a currently hot topic – censorship. “Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Censorship “There was always a […]

The Burning Platform - “Those who don’t build must burn.” ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World “Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against […]

The Burning Platform - “The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the […]

The Burning Platform - “I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, […]

The Burning Platform - “The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer […]

The Burning Platform - “We’ve got strong financial institutions…Our markets are the envy of the world. They’re resilient, they’re…innovative, they’re flexible. I think we move very quickly to address situations in this country, and, as I said, our financial institutions are strong.” – Henry Paulson – 3/16/08     “I have full confidence in banking regulators to take appropriate actions in response […]

The Burning Platform - “Folly is a child of power.” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam “A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity. In […]

The Burning Platform - In Part 1 of this article, I laid out the mass formation psychosis theory postulated by Mattias Desmet in his book The Psychology of Totalitarianism and how totalitarian minded politicians and bureaucrats manipulated the masses by creating the covid crisis. Now I will focus on how this will impact the Fourth Turning we are currently […]

The Burning Platform - “Four things need to exist or need to be in place if you want a large-scale mass phenomenon to emerge. The first thing is that there needs to be a lot of socially isolated people, people who experience a lack of social bonds. The second one is that there needs to be a lot of […]

The Burning Platform - “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” – George Orwell, 1984 “Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World I wish I could go through a day without having to reference Orwell and Huxley when observing how the […]

The Burning Platform - “Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. Within the next […]

The Burning Platform - “Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off […]