AMERICAN CULTURE IS OFFICIALLY LOSING IT

     So, as predicted this has been an 'interesting' week in the news. The nominal Heads-of-State in the US and Canada seem to be playing a high-level arcade game of shooting balloons. The score so far is Biden 3, Trudeau 1. When all of these objects were shot down, nobody in the Pentagon actually knew what they were; but acting first and thinking later seems to be how Americans operate these days. The Pentagon didn't even rule out the idea that the craft were extraterrestrial in origin: I can't imagine that killing citizens of a highly advanced civilization is a smart idea, but I'm presumed to know nothing, not having gone to West Point. We can all rest easy, since we now know that one was a Chinese weather balloon (since China admitted to that one). Two of the other three have been identified as a weather balloon operated by the US National Weather Service and the other a test balloon released by a ballooning club in Chicago. 

   The Super Bowl was predictable too: having watched enough World Wrestling Federation matches in my youth, one can fairly accurately guess how postmodern-era NFL games are going to come out. I didn't watch the spectacle; but surprisingly the halftime show wasn't as weirdly cultish as usual (relatively speaking of course) other than having pregnant celebrity as its centerpiece. Apparently there was also an ad run at some point that portrayed Jesus that some interpreted as too positive, bringing down the ire of Congressional Democrats. Meanwhile, an NFL player named Juju (no really, his real name) arrived at the game wearing a dress. 

   On the subject of praying and Congress; the media has been hyping mass-shootings again this week. After yet another suspiciously timed and executed shooting at Michigan State University, an exasperated State Legislator pushed the 'Berserk Button' online and demanded that people stop praying and pass more gun laws. Not to be outdone, Left-Wing Whacko extraordinaire Keith Olbermann called for an economic civil war against so-called 'Red States.' 

   I can't help but think that it's got to be the drugs. Decades now of high-potency pot; prescription SSRI's and over-prescriptions of opioids, amphetamines, and barbiturates---not to mention ever more potent street drugs and God-only-knows-what toxins are dumped into processed foods may indeed be the reason behind what is now obviously a national Nervous Breakdown bordering on outright Schizophrenia. 

   People, especially those of the Boomer and Gen X ages ought to reflect on this very carefully. At the turn of the last century, did any of us imagine that less than 25 years into the future, we'd be panicking over weather balloons and influenza outbreaks to the point where it became a National Security issue? Did we envision hideous men winning beauty contests and NFL stars wearing dresses at the Super Bowl? Who among us predicted that going to Church would be equated with Right-Wing Extremism or that migrant sharecroppers picking strawberries in California would be believed to be spearheading an invasion of the United States? 

  It's gotten so bad that the foreign press is openly starting to ask serious questions about it---questions that our media ought to be asking. Actually, it was starting to become apparent just a few years ago. President Trump was making actual progress in turning back our national problem with drug abuse, and we saw the first significant decline in overdose deaths in years. But 'Orange Man Bad' and today we're back to---and exceeding--- pre-2016 levels of drug-related fatalities. It's isn't even the fatalities that are the whole problem: it's the increasingly self-evident effects on the human mind of the survivors. The article cited above noted that in 2008:

  “Once psychiatrists started putting ‘hyperactive’ children on Ritalin, they started to see prepubertal children with manic symptoms. Same thing happened when psychiatrists started prescribing antidepressants to children and teenagers. A significant percentage had manic or hypomanic reactions to the antidepressants. And then these children and teenagers are put on heavier duty drugs, including drug cocktails, often do not respond favorably to treatment and deteriorate. And that is a major reason for the 35-fold increase between 1987 and 2007 of children classified as being disabled by mental disorders."

    So it isn't exactly as though Americans didn't know what was going on or where any of this was likely to lead. As another indicator, consider that there have been nearly 16,000 overdoses in the US Military over the last five years, 332 of them fatal. As the study released by China showed that, while the MSM is pushing gun violence onto the front pages, the death toll from narcotics overdoses is eight times higher than deaths from firearms. The Chinese experts attributed the reason behind our addiction rates is "social malaise" which is probably not far from the truth. 

   My own feeling is that this is part of a deliberate Strategy of Tension, whereby the Elites are intentionally fomenting mass-hysteria, fear, chaos, despair, violence, and general insanity to obtain a strong enough plurality of Americans to demand a dictatorship simply to restore order. Before the rent-a-skeptic crowd begins knee-slapping and hooting about tin-foil hats, read this poll first and prepare to eat crow. Bear in mind that the source here is not exactly a site that tends to lean Conservative. Their findings? "Anti-democratic statements are embraced by members of both U.S. parties, but more commonly by Republicans. For example, around 90% of Republicans would support tough leaders who crack down on groups that “undermine American values” – however the survey respondents define those values. More than half of Democrats take the same position."

   In an upcoming article, we'll break down these poll numbers and analyze it in further detail. But for now, we should see the drug problem as part of a larger issue that is systematically dragging down our culture. Others have noted that breaking down of traditional institutions like religion and family are contributing factors; but we also have to understand the breakdown of these personal support networks is part of the same deliberate strategy. If the end goal is to coerce the populace into accepting a dictatorship, then obviously undermining alternative support networks---family, faith, community, and education---is to the Elites' advantage.