109 Comments
Feb 24, 2023·edited Feb 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

"Cancel culture is a way for a new generation of people to practice free speech." LOLOL

"Euthanasia is a way for a new generation of doctors to practice medicine...Poisoning is a way for a new generation of chefs to practice cooking...Farting is a way for a new generation of musicians to practice trombone..."

These people write their own parodies!

Whatever you do don't tell Ernest Owens that his stunning & brave revolution is produced & directed by such evil white Klansman as Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Soros & Gates & Bezos, the Sulzbergers, Bob Chapek, Gavin Newsom, Larry Fink and those crazy Leninists at Black Rock, and that ideological vanguard called the trustees of the Yale & Harvard corporations...

Our reboot of the Bolshevik Revolution needs a scene where Lenin arrives at Finland Station to take selfies w his fans and incite a group-therapy session where the rebels cry about how no one understands how hard it is being so edgy.

But I shouldn't give them any ideas!

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founding

Bravo. Best rants on the stacks!

Coming in hard with Pig Pen, leaving like Fred Astair

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thx!

all praise to chris, he always gets me riled up

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Thank you for leading with this:

“Cancel culture is a way for a new generation of people to practice free speech.”

Probably just a typo -- instead of “free speech,” maybe Ernest Owens meant to say “censorship”

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is easy to get confused, w reason and logic being white-supremacist constructs and all....

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In those thrilling days of yesteryear, soviet kitchen-table philosophers used to quip: The bright future is sealed clear, it’s only the past that’s unpredictable, keeps changing all the time.

Might as well be said of nowadays US. Or the whole New Bravely Ordered World, for that matter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Feb 24, 2023·edited Feb 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Amazed to see you back writing so soon, man! Hope you're holding up....

Remember when Rolling Stone did music? And, when it wasn't doing music, did actual journalism? Only the edgy kind of journalism that thumbed its nose at the squares and didn't give a shit about speech codes?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

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Watching someone you love die is very very very strange. You still notice life. You wake up seeing other things, sometimes without the sadness for a few minutes, but then the sadness comes pouring back in. It's a constant shock. It's like I split into two people. I have no idea what to think about it.

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It's totally disorienting. I've come to believe it's because our material self and our higher self come face-to-face. The material self is wrecked, devastated, shattered, because we can't fathom that the person we interacted with every day on this silly planet has just left the building for good. Meanwhile, the higher self can notice life and see other things because we KNOW that our connection with the person hasn't been severed, not really, because it can't be... and that nothing is "for good." And slowly, the shock recedes as these two selves learn to dance.

My two cents, Chris. Thanks for this essay -- mordantly funny, as always! xox

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Feb 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Mary, love your response that deserves more than an emoji. I was thinking about how surreal my Mom’s funeral was. I felt like my consciousness was split. I recognized people but couldn’t respond as I usually would. I felt like running away while knowing I had to greet people outside the church. I couldn’t handle being comforted which felt so strange.

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I understand. I felt that way, too. Everything feels surreal when your mom dies. I can remember thinking, "Why are the stores open? Why are the buses still running? Don't they realize the world has ended?" Hugs to you, Cyn.

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Feb 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Mary, thanks so much for your beautiful and heartfelt message. I’m sorry for the loss of your Mom. They carry us for 9 months; mine had a c-section. It’s such a profound connection. Before she died I asked her to send me a sign that she was OK. “Don’t worry, I will.” The day of her funeral I sat on my couch looking out the 3 windows of my city apartment. Sixteen hawks flew by, 15 flying in 2 concentric circles, the 16th on the side flying to catch up. Suddenly they all turned and flew west. I knew she was the 16th hawk. Raptors are signs of the ancestors. She was with her peeps on the other side. She loved birds as I do. I felt this peace come over me that I still have about her passing. I miss her but am happy she’s no longer trapped in a body. Free as a bird!

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Beautiful

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Major goosebumps over here. Thanks for that, Cyn!

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For me at least, the funeral was a blessing. It kept me busy, and the whole thing was a blur.

It was the quiet moments in the weeks and months after that were the worst.

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John, thanks for sharing your experience. I’m sorry for your loss. Chris gave us an opportunity to share a painful, human experience in a safe space. Have a peaceful day.

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I am sincerely sorry for your great loss and grateful for the levity you can still muster to share with us. Going through this right now with my 51 year old brother. He'll be the second brother I'll have lost at 51. The forgetting for a brief moment and remembering with a gut punch every time is as exhausting as it is heartbreaking.

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Yes to that forgetting/remembering gut punch, and I'm very sorry for your loss, or for both losses.

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Feb 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

I lost both of my parents to cancer when we were all far too young. Sleep was the best time for me in the early days of grief. I would dream of my mom or my dad, or both, and for a very brief moment after waking, I was peaceful because the unbearably heavy sadness had lifted, and my brain was lulled into believing they were still here. The "split self" you described is painful but utterly normal. Our souls can only take so much sadness at once, and I think our brains dole out a bit at a time so we can still breathe. Gradually, the sadness melts into good memories, and all those stories that made you laugh, smile, & fill with pride in your dad will prevail. You are a better man because of him, and he will always be with you.

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Beautiful, Catie. Your words remind me of this quote from Rilke: “Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.”

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For me, the shock of each loss was followed by a long period of sharp and painful repeated daily reminders. It was startling to discover how many mental paths would lead me right back to the previously wide-open - but now forever-closed - door where each of these persons once lived inside of me. I have no conscious memory of when it changed or how long it took but eventually the forever-closed doors evolved into something more like photo albums that could be opened and memories relived. That initial feeling of loss has never left me but, in each case, the realization of my good fortune at having had them in my life grew until it overwhelmed the loss.

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That's beautiful. I love that image of feelings of good fortune slowly overtaking you...

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It took me a long, long time to come to terms with it. I'd have these moments, even weeks after, "oh this is cool I should show that to dad, he'd like it. Oh wait." And then it would hit me like a truck again.

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After the death of my father I am STILL walking through fog two years later. When you truly care for someone the emptiness will always be there I’m sure. I think it’s Gods way of keeping them alive and well as every persons life brings something. It is so important and must not be forgotten.

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It took many, many years for me to not miss my parents. People always say "time heals all," but I don't think it's time alone that heals. Time is essential, for sure, but other things help, too. Purpose, nature, love for and from others... and maybe the biggest one of all: allowing the grief, no matter how many days or months or years have passed, to move through whenever it comes calling... xox

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Feb 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

So the "writers" at Rolling Stone did not write that drivel: AI did, right?

Also, good timing on your post, as today Angela Davis of kill-all-the-white-folk fame is outed as a descendant of one of the Mayflower passengers!

My 4th great grandfather was an Irish slave in the Pennsylvania colony so I think Angela owes me some reparations. BTW, 4th great grandfather did not comply: he ran away! 👏🏼

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Poor ol' Piers Morgan, the first person to ever get fired from a TV show for criticizing a black celebrity. I thought I remember Norm MacDonald getting fired from SNL in the 90s because he kept making OJ jokes on the Weekend Update segment after they told him not to, but that was before social media, so I guess it doesn't count.

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We need to bring back pamphleteering. But then perhaps that's what Substack is.

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This paragraph of yours is some of the best writing I've come across: It’s a plague of twits, narcissistic adult children who have no context for anything in the present because their knowledge of the past ends at Stranger Things. “We’re the very first,” they say, having never once looked behind them.

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Feb 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

"THINK ABOUT IT."

Social media is a deliquescing pustule on the genitalia of America.

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Thanks for the imagery. I think I'll skip lunch.

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Feb 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

That subhead may be the most confusing thing I’ve read in a while.

Yes, poor Meghan. A wealthy attractive actress married into royalty is a superb example of oppression. Leave her alone. But watch her do this next interview ...

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Meghan Markel is the whitest "brown" person I've ever seen since Rachel Dolezal! Then again, I see LOTS of naked Emperors and elephants in the room...yet somehow noticing that makes me "racist?" In today's society, "victimhood" is far, FAR more contagious than any "virus." Sadly, no mask or vaccine or claimed pharmaceutical remedy can ever combat weak people's base inability to cope with their own mental problems...meanwhile, don't you DARE think of speaking out about it!

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Feb 24, 2023·edited Feb 24, 2023

Precisely correct. Notice critters—nude or otherwise, inside or outdoors—all you want, just be sure not to name 'em out loud. Speaking your mind, *that* would be patently crazy 😜

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Let’s not forget that she didn’t invite the white woman who raised her to the wedding.

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We are cursed with over credentialed midwits being promoted as thoughtful. I miss Hitch.

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MASSIVE overproduction of overcredentialed midwits. They should all we working at Safeway.

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Feb 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Don’t ruin Safeway.

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You have a point.

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Safeway is owned by Albertson's. They're trying to blend your medical history into their apps--to better "recommend" what you should buy. For profit. They integrate your fitness tracker data and combine it with prior purchases to determine "suitable" recommendations for diet and offer incentives to buy those products. For profit.

Your data. THEIR profit. But it's easy & convenient, so therein lies the problem. Oh, and Safeway's in negotiations to merge with Kroger, to become the largest grocery (and drug) chain in the country. But hey, did you hear about that balloon we shot down?

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For me at least, it's pretty easy. I make it a point to ignore all advertising, run ad blockers in my web browsers, never ever click on an advertising link, and don't have a TV. That helps a lot.

It's still amazes me that advertising works. If people become aware that advertising is just a form of brainwashing, how can they let it influence them? Even subconsciously?

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So don't use a fitness tracker, don't have any apps on your phone. We can't do too much about the non sense being conducted in our name these days, but you should be able to at least do that.

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There are financial incentives tied to "digital coupons" and deals made exclusively through the app that entice the average person just looking to save money. Especially under the record inflation we're experiencing—and supply chain manipulation. My point is that "most" people are unaware and will just install an app to save a few bucks without realizing what they're actually giving up to get the deal. Yes, we absolutely CAN take steps to avoid it. I certainly do. But it costs more and takes an understanding of how the companies are able to manipulate people, to trick them into sharing their data. The conglomerates are profiting wildly while Mom & Pop shops are drying up—and the middle class is being decimated in the process.

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"There are financial incentives tied to "digital coupons" and deals made exclusively through the app that entice the average person just looking to save money."

Yes and their are financial incentives to going into debt. And their were financial incentives to getting the jab. Its nice that many of you woke up with covid, but the system didn't just get that way over night. Some of us woke up in 2008 and have been going on about it since, to the derision of many who now "understand" what we were going on about. After 15 years of this, not just the past 3, i'm starting to understand why and how the "elites" view humanity as cattle. You aren't going to be able to change the mind of the vast majority of the people until those who provide for them (the system) hurt them too badly. You believe in something and that is probably why you are here, what you believe doesn't matter. Most people only believe in status amongst other humans and being popular. I love Chris's writing and that i'm not alone with regards to opposing tyranny, but i'm convinced at this point that the only way we win is by losing.

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Wec really need to decrease the number of college students except in the STEM fields. We would all be better off if the grievance studies majors died.

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What have you got against Safeway?

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It's delicious trying to imagine the kind of comments Hitch would be making.

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I used to read Rolling Stone back when it actually had something to do with the counterculture and interesting new music; before most popular music became derivative, commercialized schlock and RS “journalism” served at the pleasure of Wall Street and the spy-industrial complex running the world.

The Leftist- Billionaire Douchebag Alliance is gonna keep doubling down: parading identitarian, moral relativistic dingbats painted in the pouty patina of poseur victimhood out to deconstruct our world with half-baked social inversion gobbledygook. All done in order to sell us on a shiny new pod at Happy Slave Acres, a chip in your brain, a jab in your arm, grasshopper sandwiches in a recycled lunch pail, and a pass on the solar powered subway to the digital salt mine. Fact-checkers, sassy feminized biological males all over the sexual spectrum, highly paid mental patients, athletes with CCP lucre, celebritards, governors, Presidents, , all bought off, all scripted for the sleepwalking public.

We’re gonna have to drag them out kicking and screaming. There will be no rapprochement. They can’t surrender, even if they wanted to, which they don’t. They’ve gone to far to turn back now. Clowns cruising for a bruising.

Chris, this type of post providing historical context, is one of your best forms for ridiculing and edifying. Keep it up.

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Tell us how you really feel Tanto. Great rant!

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That was BEFORE coffee. 😳

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Feb 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

.””We’re the very first,” they say, having never once looked behind them.”

Ever shorter attention spans, no sense of history whatsoever and irreparably narcissistic. This is young people today, the people taking over the world. Ugh. At least I’ve raised a couple of good ones, so don’t blame me.

Research shows that today's young adults are more narcissistic than ever before. More than 10 percent of people in their 20s are believed to suffer from subclinical narcissism, according to Psychology Today.”https://www.newportinstitute.com/resources/mental-health/social-media-narcissism/

Thank you for writing, and better than ever, Chris. My deepest condolences on the passing of your father.

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Dunning - Kruger phenomenon. They think they are smart, but they are idiots.

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Condolences Chris. My father passed one week of turning 90 five years ago. I often think he was spared all the recent nonsense. We have to push back however we can with the dumb insanity.

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Feb 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

On what’s likely one of the worst days of your life, that you’re capable of writing something like that blows my mind. I think you might be a galactic passing as an Earthling. ❤️☮️

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It's good see you at the computer once again—even if just off and on since staying busy is somehow healing. It helps people navigate the shock of loss in a way that's more gradual and I think a more healthy way to eventually recover some semblance of equilibrium. The other thing, once your Dad gets settled in, he won't really be that far away. It's amazing how undying love really is just that and connects us even across dimensions. Sending blessings and loved your article, Chris.

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Feb 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

I literally laughed out loud at the fact that Markle was his example. Especially after we know she paid Chris Bouzy to attack the royals and make stuff up. Not surprising that guys claim to fame is a tweet. Que vergüenza. I immediately think the line “Kids an idiot. Parents were prolly idiots too. Comes from up bringing.” Having been brought up in a good home, I don’t want to erase the past or those who came before me. I realized I am knowing or unknowingly under the influence of the giants that came before me. But I think that’s why the sexual revolution had to come first. The Owens of the world either consciously or unconsciously hate the people they came from so they don’t want to think about them. Generations of parents abandoning their responsibilities to their children. Are we surprised those children want to erase their parents?

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In the best Hilary tradition…

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Feb 24, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

"A land was full of wonder, mystery, and danger. Some say, to survive it, you need to be as mad as a hatter. Which, luckily, I am."

- Mad Hatter, 'Alice In Wonderland'.

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