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Yes and think the root of the problem is that the whole broad population is ignorant of the fact they live in a mansion that required planning and building with no small measure of science and skill and requires constant maintenance.

The inhabitants of our mansion love to swan around and boast they live in the greatest mansion in the world but they have no real understanding of how great it is nor of what's required to maintain it.

Which is why in the last two years the population has totally failed to play its natural role in a democracy and call to account all pertinent parties.

They failed to monitor. They failed to fulfill their half of the social contract. They failed to use the levers of control: their elected reps and their control over them.

Malfeasance is the one common thread through all the improprieties and injustices rampant in the USA and most particularly in the last two years.

Malfeasance.

Which essentially means: Keep your word. Do your duty.

But keep your word and do your duty are meaningless phrases in today's world I think.

A fine mansion was constructed and the constructors naively thought everyone who inhabited it would understand how fine it was and how it needed looking after and how they'd have to play their part in keeping it clean and good.

But it didn't work like that.

The level of the mansion far outstripped the level of the inhabitants.

Like a bunch of stone age savages moving in. Well that's an exaggeration.

But it's in that direction.

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Apr 10, 2022Liked by Chris Bray

This is one of the most outstanding pieces I’ve read in my almost 60 years on this planet. Thank God for you.

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Apr 10, 2022Liked by Chris Bray

It’s consistent with a fourth turning of generational cycles. This generation doesn’t understand what it took to build the mansion, the institutions, society, wealth, etc. so they fall into or actually create the crisis that is the fourth turning. Then, after the crisis, we will have a first turning - an awakening or rebirth, if you will. Those coming of age post crisis will build the next cycles institutions.

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Some of this woke shit will solve itself economically.

Those law students will seal their own fate. The people they hate most are exactly the people who hire lawyers.

These little idiots claim to love the people who can't afford to hire lawyers. But after they try to work as a public defender, they'll find to their horror that poor defendants are highly religious and culturally traditional, extremely unfriendly to feminism and "trans" and "LGBTQQ2AFJLDFJKL".

So the little idiots will have to choose between making lots of money defending people they hate, or making only a little money defending people they hate.

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Apr 10, 2022Liked by Chris Bray

“A republic if you can keep it”. Great piece, and nice illustration with the mansion. We once had a grand mansion, but you are right. Places like that need virtue, wisdom and work to maintain.

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That we have "fact-checkers" who unironically fact-check critical geopolitical developments like why someone laughed and at what they were laughing is the bone-dry dipstick inside the motor of what was formerly known as civilization.

Thanks for yet another one, Chris.

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Apr 9, 2022Liked by Chris Bray

Thanks Chris, great exercise for my weak mind, sent here by eugyppius.

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Apr 10, 2022Liked by Chris Bray

Excellent. Sent here by Alex Berenson.

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Nov 30, 2022·edited Nov 30, 2022Liked by Chris Bray

Great analogy re: Grey Gardens, and it's all so hard to watch - a blood-drenched theater of the absurd reinforced by 24/7 propaganda gaslighting us into believing this is all normal. Few stop to interrogate the supposed goodness or inevitability of all this - or the malice behind it, lest they be called crazy. Much easier to go along to get along. But it IS crazy.

As for me, I tend to my physical and spiritual health the best I can. I read and listen to (and engage in) long-form journalism and discussion to get as deep a sense of understanding of our sick world as I can stomach on any given day. And I head to the beach at every opportunity to let the waves carry my troubles away. I look for beauty, goodness, inspiration and a good reason to laugh. I must find spiritual and human connection and peace on this Earth while I can in spite of it all.

But there's no stopping this runaway train, I fear. It spans the globe in such a way now that no one of us can dismantle it. It will have to crash for us to remember how to build functioning track again.

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Apr 10, 2022Liked by Chris Bray

To add to the metaphor on behalf of the “broad population,” I think the elite titleholders (including the ubiquitous media monsters) have convinced an ever-increasing number of the said population that maintenance on the mansion truly isn’t necessary when it can be knocked down and rebuilt way better. And if we choose not to believe it, we will be sent to the basement where the shackles are awaiting.

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I haven't laughed so hard at the lawyer reference in days. Bravo! Chris, you nailed it..I hold up a 10 card from my judges podium, even though I'm not a judge and have no podium, but gosh I went college 55 years ago and am judge worthy.

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California is Grey Gardens. The infrastructure fails all around us because the people in charge cos-play at being knowledgeable. Newsom knows he's incompetent. That's why he goes on vacation every state emergency.

But they don't maintain the "house" They instead keep spending on the HSR but not fixing the roads. Stopped expansion of 99 in Central Valley. "We won't need that everyone will be on HSR in 10 years" 20 years later not one piece of track laid and 99 is a death trap.

Stopped expanding the CA water system which planned for future water storage as the population grew. Didn't maintain the dams Oroville Spillway fails.

Biggest rain system in years but water storage we paid out for in 2014- not one project is completed to take advantage of the atmospheric River. Instead 10 million acre feet of water out into the ocean.

They coerce utility companies to build Wind & Solar Farms but never improve or maintain the transmission lines that carry that power we rely on from Colorado and Nevada (21% of our electricity is imported from coal fired generation plants. But it's not created here in California so it's Green Energy.

Highway 168 still closed after a week. Caltrans, no workers and no Gas snow blowers, no longer legal to buy in the state.

Like Grey Gardens, they live on the legacy

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Mmm... to be fair, more and more people are peering behind the curtain, finally seeing this country's warmongering and propaganda for exactly what it is (and has been for a very long time now). So, we have a mansion that looks deceptively grand, and functional. But upon closer inspection, we realize it was constructed of bones, and blood, and horror. Some move in and rightly declare, "What the fuck!?!" and are bitter about the bill of goods they were sold. And now they don't know how to keep the mansion erect without the materials it was originally created with.

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Having learned what fascism is in the early eighties the results of this trend towards totalitarian top down society governed by the fascist elite was easy to predict. Every innovation that made life easier to live just another loop in the snare. But take heart, the machine system vastly over uses resources and is due for a complete collapse here soon enough. Prepare yourselves by learning how to become a free tenant peasant to avoid the rush of it

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Great piece, Chris. Even more relevant today than when it was written. Thanks.

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Feb 19, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Excellently expressed and so accurately described. How have we as a nation, come to be led my such jokers and fools, that are supported by so many jokers and fools?

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