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The Perfidious Unreality Of The “New Normal”

The Perfidious Unreality Of The "New Normal"

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

So, what’s with all the fake crying?

Rachel…

Published

2 months ago

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The Perfidious Unreality Of The "New Normal"

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

So, what’s with all the fake crying?

Rachel Maddow pretended to cry about “kids in cages”. Matt Hancock pretended to cry about Covid vaccines. Sarah Sidner pretended to cry over covid. Anderson Cooper pretended to cry about Israel, so did John Kirby. Van Jones pretended to cry after Biden “won” the 2020 “election”. Adam Schiff and Adam Kinzinger both pretended to cry about January 6th.

Don Lemon pretends to cry about pretty much everything.

They all do it, and they’re all so bad at it.

And speaking of pretending badly, remember those early photos of people in China lying in the street, straight as planks, supposedly killed by “Covid”?

As if this scary new virus just snuffs you out mid-step to topple backwards flat on the ground in a perfect silent movie pratfall.

And it’s not just “Covid”.

During the run-up to the 2020 election “pretending badly” was happening everywhere.

We were told, over and over again, “It’s going to look like Trump won, but then Biden will win at the last minute because of postal ballots”.

And gosh darnit – they were right!

Out of nowhere Joe Biden – ‘Creepy Uncle Joe’ – who in early 2020 was obviously the least popular democratic candidate, and even more obviously going senile – is transmogrified into the most popular presidential candidate

of ALL TIME…

…shattering the popular vote records by over 13 million votes.

Such is the power of bad pretending , when you just don’t give a crap about plausibility or boring details of historical precedent.

That was, of course, following Biden’s “miracle turnaround” in the primaries, where massive defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire left his campaign “teetering on the abyss”.

On election night they presented us with badly pretend graphs like this:

They reported that counting the first 99% of the vote took a few hours, and that counting the last 1% in a couple of swing states took two weeks.

…and told us this was all totally normal and that anyone who said otherwise was an “election denier”.

On January 6th 2021 they showed you an “insurrection” – a word that used to mean “an armed attempt to seize control of a government by force” but now means “some guy in a Buffalo hat putting his feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk”.

Then they told you to be afraid for the fate of a “democracy” which their previously blatant election-rigging had just demonstrated does not exist.

Bad pretending at its most brazenly ballsy.

Let’s be honest the airwaves have been saturated with this since at least 2020.

Remember those lovable doctors and nurses shooting increasingly elaborate music videos during a supposedly deadly pandemic.

Or doctors saying BLM protesters don’t have to stay home or social distance because “racism is a worse pandemic”.

Blatantly bad pretending.

The Israel-Hamas war has already produced similar scenes.

I mean what is this Busby Berkeley 4K drone footage routine supposed to be telling us?

Dozens of perfectly synchronized & choreographed women doing yoga poses over posters of supposed hostages as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, when it’s just NOT, is it?

Who responds to a loved one being taken hostage by calling all their friends and arranging a synchronized yoga session?

So, what are we looking at? How is this related to the real world?

And don’t forget “terrorists” on motorized hang-gliders chuntering along at a leisurely pace into some of the most defended airspace on the planet.

And of course Hamas – operating out of the world’s “largest open-air prison”, with only a couple of hours of electricity a day and limited food and fresh water – but somehow putting together professionally edited high definition music videos of them making improvised weapons.

…and we’re not supposed to ask “how?” or “why?”

After the alleged bombing of Al-Ahli Arab hospital, doctors held a press conference surrounded by dead bodies:

So did they bring the bodies to the podium or the podium to the bodies?

And WHY exactly in either case?

Is it sensible? Is it respectful? Is it even sanitary?

Stacking corpses, then running electrical and audio cables over them. In very hot weather, under bright television lights.

Presumably the mourning families had to wait to collect their dead until after the press conference. Hopefully they didn’t mind.

I mean you’d be ok with your deceased loved one being used as set-dressing for a presser wouldn’t you?

All the while, Israel continued carpet bombing a relatively small and very densely populated urban area in the name of “saving hostages” that a) they had made seemingly no effort to recover and b) Could EASILY have been inside one or more of the buildings they are levelling.

And NO – please – I am not claiming people are not dying. Don’t grab for that easy lazy assumption as a reason to switch off.

People are dying. People are being murdered. And degraded. And their corpses used as set-dressing for globalist agenda-drives. That’s both the goal and the method.

But that doesn’t change the fact the narrative rationalization for the killing & for so much else is literal madness.

And they’re conditioning people not to say it, and eventually not to even see it.

Look around you – see it while you still can.

  • They kill people while claiming to save lives.

  • They push vaccines while admitting they don’t work

  • They present the physically impossible as an ongoing reality

  • They completely invert the meaning of words and yet claim nothing has changed

  • They attack reason as irrationality and tell you insanity is sense

  • They paint farce as tragedy and real tragedy as “necessary evil”.

  • They laugh, and tell you they are crying.

  • They almost literally report 2+2=5 and call anyone who claims it’s 4 a “five denier”.

Is this just the symptom of an establishment and media so far removed from normal human experience they no longer understand it well enough to fake it?

Perhaps. But I think it could be something more.

Just hear me out…

I have argued before that a primary goal of the new normal agenda to disrupt each human individual’s relationship with the real world.

In my piece on the UN’s “Global Digital Compact” I described it thus:

the final aim of globalist policy [is] control of all aspects of life, achieved by inserting a digital filter between people and reality. Banking, communication, media consumption, shopping. Every interaction you have will be through a digital membrane which can both monitor your exchanges with the world and – if deemed necessary – deny you access to that world.

By making every purchase remote, every interaction digital, they can effectively disrupt everybody’s ability to interact with reality.

However, it could be there’s also a more subtle and potentially destructive policy at play – one that attacks people’s ability to understand or even perceive that reality.

A war on, for want of a better word, realness : the physical laws that govern our world, the emotional responses of human to human, the very existence of rational thought.

This is the perfidious unreality of the “new normal”: Nurturing and normalising a pervasive persistent state of non-real.

Why? What is the benefit of cultivating unreality?

Well, that’s a complicated question with a twisting trail of intertwining potential answers.

I have written before about the psychopathic individual’s tendency to lie to no purpose, to lie even when the truth would serve their interests better. This is because psychopaths are control addicts, and the ultimate expression of control is to create a fake world and make people live in it.

This applies to institutions as well as individuals. Perhaps more so. To an authoritarian ruling elite insane narratives serve as both loyalty test and humiliation ritual.

If they give you something impossible to believe, and you don’t question it, you are demonstrating greater loyalty to the authority above you than to the reality around you.

The more absurd the lie you believe – or claim to believe – the more loyal you are to the Party. The more you pretzel your own mind at the command of the establishment the lower you sink in obeisance, the more you humiliate yourself.

The more you humiliate yourself, the more you are no longer your own person.

Humiliation is the ultimate demonstration of control, and demonstrating control is important to a grasping power structure built on insecurity and forever teetering on the edge of collapse.

This idea of social control via collective belief predates Covid by decades.

Take “The magic bullet theory”, an explanation which is no explanation at all. Theoretical physics stretched to near-breaking point.

It literally has the word “magic” in it.

And people repeated it, maybe even believed it, rather than deal with the real world in which such an idea was clearly ridiculous.

Trading in their sanity for the comfort of belonging.

Telling outrageously nonsensical lies allows you to demonstrate your power over people. But it also allows you to cultivate that power. To prepare soil where useful lies can take root easily.

Because it’s easiest to lie to people who have no idea what truth means. Because if I can convince you to abandon sense, my narratives are no longer bound by the crushing monotony of causality, linear time or the laws of physics.

In a world of no reason or rule, everything I tell you becomes inherently believable. In a world where nothing is true, anything could be.

I can tell you that me taking your money makes us both richer, and you’ll never realise I’m robbing you.

I can tell you that bars and chains are an expression of freedom, and you’ll never realise you’re my slave.

In short, they use crazy narratives to erode the idea of objective truth, because if you don’t even know such a thing exists you are a lot easier to control.

This is the perfidious unreality of the “new normal”. It’s not just about deception or fakery or propaganda.

It’s about breaking your spirit and your mind.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/06/2024 - 21:35

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United Airlines adds new flights to faraway destinations

The airline said that it has been working hard to "find hidden gem destinations."

Published

7 hours ago

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March 8, 2024

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Since countries started opening up after the pandemic in 2021 and 2022, airlines have been seeing demand soar not just for major global cities and popular routes but also for farther-away destinations.

Numerous reports, including a recent TripAdvisor survey of trending destinations, showed that there has been a rise in U.S. traveler interest in Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea and Vietnam as well as growing tourism traction in off-the-beaten-path European countries such as Slovenia, Estonia and Montenegro.

Related: 'No more flying for you': Travel agency sounds alarm over risk of 'carbon passports'

As a result, airlines have been looking at their networks to include more faraway destinations as well as smaller cities that are growing increasingly popular with tourists and may not be served by their competitors.

The Philippines has been popular among tourists in recent years.

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United brings back more routes, says it is committed to 'finding hidden gems'

This week, United Airlines  (UAL)  announced that it will be launching a new route from Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) to Morocco's Marrakesh. While it is only the country's fourth-largest city, Marrakesh is a particularly popular place for tourists to seek out the sights and experiences that many associate with the country — colorful souks, gardens with ornate architecture and mosques from the Moorish period.

More Travel:

"We have consistently been ahead of the curve in finding hidden gem destinations for our customers to explore and remain committed to providing the most unique slate of travel options for their adventures abroad," United's SVP of Global Network Planning Patrick Quayle, said in a press statement.

The new route will launch on Oct. 24 and take place three times a week on a Boeing 767-300ER  (BA)  plane that is equipped with 46 Polaris business class and 22 Premium Plus seats. The plane choice was a way to reach a luxury customer customer looking to start their holiday in Marrakesh in the plane.

Along with the new Morocco route, United is also launching a flight between Houston (IAH) and Colombia's Medellín on Oct. 27 as well as a route between Tokyo and Cebu in the Philippines on July 31 — the latter is known as a "fifth freedom" flight in which the airline flies to the larger hub from the mainland U.S. and then goes on to smaller Asian city popular with tourists after some travelers get off (and others get on) in Tokyo.

United's network expansion includes new 'fifth freedom' flight

In the fall of 2023, United became the first U.S. airline to fly to the Philippines with a new Manila-San Francisco flight. It has expanded its service to Asia from different U.S. cities earlier last year. Cebu has been on its radar amid growing tourist interest in the region known for marine parks, rainforests and Spanish-style architecture.

With the summer coming up, United also announced that it plans to run its current flights to Hong Kong, Seoul, and Portugal's Porto more frequently at different points of the week and reach four weekly flights between Los Angeles and Shanghai by August 29.

"This is your normal, exciting network planning team back in action," Quayle told travel website The Points Guy of the airline's plans for the new routes.

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International

Walmart launches clever answer to Target’s new membership program

The retail superstore is adding a new feature to its Walmart+ plan — and customers will be happy.

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7 hours ago

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March 8, 2024

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It's just been a few days since Target  (TGT)  launched its new Target Circle 360 paid membership plan. 

The plan offers free and fast shipping on many products to customers, initially for $49 a year and then $99 after the initial promotional signup period. It promises to be a success, since many Target customers are loyal to the brand and will go out of their way to shop at one instead of at its two larger peers, Walmart and Amazon.

Related: Walmart makes a major price cut that will delight customers

And stop us if this sounds familiar: Target will rely on its more than 2,000 stores to act as fulfillment hubs. 

This model is a proven winner; Walmart also uses its more than 4,600 stores as fulfillment and shipping locations to get orders to customers as soon as possible.

Sometimes, this means shipping goods from the nearest warehouse. But if a desired product is in-store and closer to a customer, it reduces miles on the road and delivery time. It's a kind of logistical magic that makes any efficiency lover's (or retail nerd's) heart go pitter patter. 

Walmart rolls out answer to Target's new membership tier

Walmart has certainly had more time than Target to develop and work out the kinks in Walmart+. It first launched the paid membership in 2020 during the height of the pandemic, when many shoppers sheltered at home but still required many staples they might ordinarily pick up at a Walmart, like cleaning supplies, personal-care products, pantry goods and, of course, toilet paper. 

It also undercut Amazon  (AMZN)  Prime, which costs customers $139 a year for free and fast shipping (plus several other benefits including access to its streaming service, Amazon Prime Video). 

Walmart+ costs $98 a year, which also gets you free and speedy delivery, plus access to a Paramount+ streaming subscription, fuel savings, and more. 

An employee at a Merida, Mexico, Walmart. (Photo by Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Jeff Greenberg/Getty Images

If that's not enough to tempt you, however, Walmart+ just added a new benefit to its membership program, ostensibly to compete directly with something Target now has: ultrafast delivery. 

Target Circle 360 particularly attracts customers with free same-day delivery for select orders over $35 and as little as one-hour delivery on select items. Target executes this through its Shipt subsidiary.

We've seen this lightning-fast delivery speed only in snippets from Amazon, the king of delivery efficiency. Who better to take on Target, though, than Walmart, which is using a similar store-as-fulfillment-center model? 

"Walmart is stepping up to save our customers even more time with our latest delivery offering: Express On-Demand Early Morning Delivery," Walmart said in a statement, just a day after Target Circle 360 launched. "Starting at 6 a.m., earlier than ever before, customers can enjoy the convenience of On-Demand delivery."

Walmart  (WMT)  clearly sees consumers' desire for near-instant delivery, which obviously saves time and trips to the store. Rather than waiting a day for your order to show up, it might be on your doorstep when you wake up. 

Consumers also tend to spend more money when they shop online, and they remain stickier as paying annual members. So, to a growing number of retail giants, almost instant gratification like this seems like something worth striving for.

Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024

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International

President Biden Delivers The “Darkest, Most Un-American Speech Given By A President”

President Biden Delivers The "Darkest, Most Un-American Speech Given By A President"

Having successfully raged, ranted, lied, and yelled through…

Published

10 hours ago

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March 8, 2024

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President Biden Delivers The "Darkest, Most Un-American Speech Given By A President"

Having successfully raged, ranted, lied, and yelled through the State of The Union, President Biden can go back to his crypt now.

Whatever 'they' gave Biden, every American man, woman, and the other should be allowed to take it - though it seems the cocktail brings out 'dark Brandon'?

Tl;dw: Biden's Speech tonight ...

  • Fund Ukraine.

  • Trump is threat to democracy and America itself.

  • Abortion is good.

  • American Economy is stronger than ever.

  • Inflation wasn't Biden's fault.

  • Illegals are Americans too.

  • Republicans are responsible for the border crisis.

  • Trump is bad.

  • Biden stands with trans-children.

  • J6 was the worst insurrection since the Civil War.

(h/t @TCDMS99)

Tucker Carlson's response sums it all up perfectly:

"that was possibly the darkest, most un-American speech given by an American president. It wasn't a speech, it was a rant..."

Carlson continued: "The true measure of a nation's greatness lies within its capacity to control borders, yet Bid refuses to do it."

"In a fair election, Joe Biden cannot win"

And concluded:

“There was not a meaningful word for the entire duration about the things that actually matter to people who live here.”

Victor Davis Hanson added some excellent color, but this was probably the best line on Biden:

"he doesn't care... he lives in an alternative reality."

*  *  *

Watch SOTU Live here...

*   *   *

Mises' Connor O'Keeffe, warns: "Be on the Lookout for These Lies in Biden's State of the Union Address." 

On Thursday evening, President Joe Biden is set to give his third State of the Union address. The political press has been buzzing with speculation over what the president will say. That speculation, however, is focused more on how Biden will perform, and which issues he will prioritize. Much of the speech is expected to be familiar.

The story Biden will tell about what he has done as president and where the country finds itself as a result will be the same dishonest story he's been telling since at least the summer.

He'll cite government statistics to say the economy is growing, unemployment is low, and inflation is down.

Something that has been frustrating Biden, his team, and his allies in the media is that the American people do not feel as economically well off as the official data says they are. Despite what the White House and establishment-friendly journalists say, the problem lies with the data, not the American people's ability to perceive their own well-being.

As I wrote back in January, the reason for the discrepancy is the lack of distinction made between private economic activity and government spending in the most frequently cited economic indicators. There is an important difference between the two:

  • Government, unlike any other entity in the economy, can simply take money and resources from others to spend on things and hire people. Whether or not the spending brings people value is irrelevant

  • It's the private sector that's responsible for producing goods and services that actually meet people's needs and wants. So, the private components of the economy have the most significant effect on people's economic well-being.

Recently, government spending and hiring has accounted for a larger than normal share of both economic activity and employment. This means the government is propping up these traditional measures, making the economy appear better than it actually is. Also, many of the jobs Biden and his allies take credit for creating will quickly go away once it becomes clear that consumers don't actually want whatever the government encouraged these companies to produce.

On top of all that, the administration is dealing with the consequences of their chosen inflation rhetoric.

Since its peak in the summer of 2022, the president's team has talked about inflation "coming back down," which can easily give the impression that it's prices that will eventually come back down.

But that's not what that phrase means. It would be more honest to say that price increases are slowing down.

Americans are finally waking up to the fact that the cost of living will not return to prepandemic levels, and they're not happy about it.

The president has made some clumsy attempts at damage control, such as a Super Bowl Sunday video attacking food companies for "shrinkflation"—selling smaller portions at the same price instead of simply raising prices.

In his speech Thursday, Biden is expected to play up his desire to crack down on the "corporate greed" he's blaming for high prices.

In the name of "bringing down costs for Americans," the administration wants to implement targeted price ceilings - something anyone who has taken even a single economics class could tell you does more harm than good. Biden would never place the blame for the dramatic price increases we've experienced during his term where it actually belongs—on all the government spending that he and President Donald Trump oversaw during the pandemic, funded by the creation of $6 trillion out of thin air - because that kind of spending is precisely what he hopes to kick back up in a second term.

If reelected, the president wants to "revive" parts of his so-called Build Back Better agenda, which he tried and failed to pass in his first year. That would bring a significant expansion of domestic spending. And Biden remains committed to the idea that Americans must be forced to continue funding the war in Ukraine. That's another topic Biden is expected to highlight in the State of the Union, likely accompanied by the lie that Ukraine spending is good for the American economy. It isn't.

It's not possible to predict all the ways President Biden will exaggerate, mislead, and outright lie in his speech on Thursday. But we can be sure of two things. The "state of the Union" is not as strong as Biden will say it is. And his policy ambitions risk making it much worse.

*  *  *

The American people will be tuning in on their smartphones, laptops, and televisions on Thursday evening to see if 'sloppy joe' 81-year-old President Joe Biden can coherently put together more than two sentences (even with a teleprompter) as he gives his third State of the Union in front of a divided Congress. 

President Biden will speak on various topics to convince voters why he shouldn't be sent to a retirement home.

According to CNN sources, here are some of the topics Biden will discuss tonight:

  • Economic issues: Biden and his team have been drafting a speech heavy on economic populism, aides said, with calls for higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy – an attempt to draw a sharp contrast with Republicans and their likely presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

  • Health care expenses: Biden will also push for lowering health care costs and discuss his efforts to go after drug manufacturers to lower the cost of prescription medications — all issues his advisers believe can help buoy what have been sagging economic approval ratings.

  • Israel's war with Hamas: Also looming large over Biden's primetime address is the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which has consumed much of the president's time and attention over the past few months. The president's top national security advisers have been working around the clock to try to finalize a ceasefire-hostages release deal by Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that begins next week.

  • An argument for reelection: Aides view Thursday's speech as a critical opportunity for the president to tout his accomplishments in office and lay out his plans for another four years in the nation's top job. Even though viewership has declined over the years, the yearly speech reliably draws tens of millions of households.

Sources provided more color on Biden's SOTU address: 

The speech is expected to be heavy on economic populism. The president will talk about raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. He'll highlight efforts to cut costs for the American people, including pushing Congress to help make prescription drugs more affordable.

Biden will talk about the need to preserve democracy and freedom, a cornerstone of his re-election bid. That includes protecting and bolstering reproductive rights, an issue Democrats believe will energize voters in November. Biden is also expected to promote his unity agenda, a key feature of each of his addresses to Congress while in office.

Biden is also expected to give remarks on border security while the invasion of illegals has become one of the most heated topics among American voters. A majority of voters are frustrated with radical progressives in the White House facilitating the illegal migrant invasion. 

It is probable that the president will attribute the failure of the Senate border bill to the Republicans, a claim many voters view as unfounded. This is because the White House has the option to issue an executive order to restore border security, yet opts not to do so

Maybe this is why? 

While Biden addresses the nation, the Biden administration will be armed with a social media team to pump propaganda to at least 100 million Americans. 

"The White House hosted about 70 creators, digital publishers, and influencers across three separate events" on Wednesday and Thursday, a White House official told CNN. 

Not a very capable social media team... 

The administration's move to ramp up social media operations comes as users on X are mostly free from government censorship with Elon Musk at the helm. This infuriates Democrats, who can no longer censor their political enemies on X. 

Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers tell Axios that the president's SOTU performance will be critical as he tries to dispel voter concerns about his elderly age. The address reached as many as 27 million people in 2023. 

"We are all nervous," said one House Democrat, citing concerns about the president's "ability to speak without blowing things."

The SOTU address comes as Biden's polling data is in the dumps. 

BetOnline has created several money-making opportunities for gamblers tonight, such as betting on what word Biden mentions the most. 

As well as...

We will update you when Tucker Carlson's live feed of SOTU is published. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/08/2024 - 07:44

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