Jeremiah Donaldson's Blog: This and That, page 5

February 4, 2021

Serial Killer Pursuit testing

‘Serial Killer Pursuit’ is for 1-4 players 12+, and plays in 5-15 minutes. In it, players (rival police departments) race the FBI to 30 Evidence before the Suspect gets 10 Attention and disappears. Anyone who would like to check out the final test version of this game has until 5.30.21 to send feedback to my email at the bottom of the playtest questions.

SKP PnP files: https://drive.google.com/drive/folder...

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Published on February 04, 2021 17:22

January 14, 2021

One Vote (short story reading)

One Vote by Jeremiah Donaldson
Reading on Youtube: https://youtu.be/PpsMgWY8ZZo
First published in 2014 by Horroraddicts.net
In the reprint collection ‘whatever’: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FUT8EUO

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Published on January 14, 2021 16:03

January 13, 2021

My 2020 Overview & 2021 To Do List

2020 was some year. 2021 is shaping up to be along the same lines, but more orderly (for me), even if not for many other people. The beginning of the year was spent in limbo with jobs in turmoil and the remainder was spent working OT, making arguments for hazard pay while repeatedly getting sick with everyone around me (but no worries since the tests were always negative, right? lmfao), and arguing with ‘patriots’ in my family that think being a patriot involves shooting other citizens. Between all that, I got many things done.

The projects that I completed in 2020 mostly have to do with my card game Death Derby. Death Derby titles completed: The Armory Expansion, High Octane Expansion, Militia and Biker Gang theme decks, and the 2-Player Sample deck. Other completed projects were R-Naught (a pandemic inspired card game) and the third Ott and Ren novella, Kingdom of Denver. All of my titles are listed on this page: https://www.ephiroll.com/storiesandbooks.html

My 2021 to do list looks like this: write Brute Squad (An Ott and Ren short story that will be featured in the collection Road to Denver that sets the stage for their future adventures), finish testing Serial Killer Pursuit (a 1-4 player card game in which you play a Police Department racing the FBI to catch suspects before they disappear, designed with my playtester and camera man Matthew Frazier), start and possibly finish Dead Bodies Everywhere (the second novella in The Hunt storyline), continue testing the 2nd edition of my RPG, produce two more themed decks for Death Derby (Barnyard and Natural Forces), and produce more essays and other content like short story readings (which means less/no Quora). I’ll also be doing more promotional stuff and, of course, working my 40+ a week job.

For those that mentioned it, here is a Paypal link for tips/donations.
https://paypal.me/ephiroll?locale.x=en_US

Maybe your 2021 be better than 2020 and thank you for reading.

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Published on January 13, 2021 09:45

July 24, 2020

Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition on the way

Art by Jon Wells.

The 2nd Edition is now in playtesting and is looking at a release date sometime in 2021. More art by Jon on the way.

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Published on July 24, 2020 09:51

March 23, 2020

Death Derby now on Tabletopia

Death Derby: A Post-apocalyptic card game is now on Tabletopia and playable for free.
https://tabletopia.com/games/death-derby-a-post-apocalyptic-card-game

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Published on March 23, 2020 18:46

November 23, 2019

New releases and updates

I worked to get some things done before the Thanksgiving holiday, including three releases and major inventory/website updates. New releases include the second Ott & Ren novella ‘Crevice’ (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081X12347), the first Death Derby expansion ‘Nature’s Rage’ (https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/death-derby:-nature-s-rage-expansion), a new short story ‘Highlelujah’ (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081PCVLS9).

A new short story, ‘A Whisper in the Air’ was added to my reprint collection ‘Whatever’ (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FUT8EUO), and ‘Aftermath’ and ‘Ruination’ have been discontinued and ‘Plague: Vestiges’ (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081X8Z346) created from Ginny Bowman and Jenner Michaud’s stories that were in them. This update to the ‘Plague’ books completes the update that was started a few months ago when all of my own material was combined into ‘Plague: Moss and John’ (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V4MK8SR) and ‘Plague: 10th Anniversary’ has been discontinued. My website has been updated to reflect the title changes. Remember to log out and log back into your Kindle reader for the latest updates to books in your library.

Have a great holiday!

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Published on November 23, 2019 15:29

November 22, 2019

United State of Problem Denial

“Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back.”― Piet Hein, Grooks 1

“Theproblems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arrangingwhat we have known since long.”― LudwigWittgenstein, PhilosophicalInvestigations

Problems are something people like toavoid. It’s a rare person that will leap headfirst into a problemwithout being prodded to do so by others like a stubborn mule. It’srarer that the person will find a simple solution without a greatdeal of self investigation and the stripping away of preconceivednotions. Solutions to any real problem do not come easily, andsolutions are much harder to find when fouled knowledge andpsychological defense mechanisms are between the person and solution.Right now, the United States has an abundance of problems that aren’tbeing addressed due to denial and excuse making.

Propaganda News- News organizationshave become fully untrustable. When they aren’t pushing news aboutpeople dying, they’re pushing their political stance and trying toget people to ‘see it their way’. Opinion has therefore replaced realnews coverage. This includes hyperbole and blatant lies combined withthe will to cover up crimes, such as the Epstein story that was cutand the leaking of which that got a reporter fired without anyevidence she was even a part of the leak. They willfully push pollswith questionable results such as the ones leading up to the ’16election that showed Hillary with a large lead, and also pushNeo-McCarthyism by fueling the Russophobia that has taken hold ofpeople who don’t actually stop and think about our own problems: thecountry has an increasing obesity rate, increasing overdose rate,increasing suicide rate, increasing prescription drug use, increasinghomelessness, declining educational standards, colleges bloated withideology instead of learning, increasing debt load, a government thatbarely functions between taking money from lobbyists, all whileexporting our manufacturing and along with it our real economy. (Seesome of my other essays for more information on those subjects.) Andpeople think Russians could do something worse to us. Yeah, theycould do worse, they could nuke us, which is the only thing remotelyworse than what we’re doing to ourselves.

Strategic Overstretch- The UnitedStates has ~800 military bases spread throughout ~80 countries,depending on the source and what people want to call a ‘base’. Nonation has ever survived such strategic overstretch. The ability tobe strong on all fronts does not exist. Ask the English. The Spanish.Portuguese. The Dutch. Rome. All their empires fell due to not havingthe resources to properly defend the territory they set up shop on,combined with confrontations with all the enemies that went afterthem that were created from them carving pieces of influence out ofthe world around them. This is made even more troublesome with thefact that even many of our allies have problems with us. South Koreais tiring of the whole ‘Korean War’ fiasco. Europe is tiring of ouroutdated thinking that says the ‘USSR’, which hasn’t existed fordecades, is still a problem. Iraq wants us kicked out of thatcountry. Japan is weary of our undisciplined troops killing theircitizens. We don’t have the means to maintain the status quo as it isfor much longer with a military that can’t win a war against peoplein Toyotas. Not to mention the questionable dealings with militantswhich always end with them turned against us and trying to bomb us.Americans have a notion that WW3 would be us and our allies againstsome ‘bad guy’, when in reality, it’s shaping up to be us and acouple satellite nations like the United Kingdom against the world,with us being the ‘bad guy’. And we will lose spectacularly if thathappens, because we’ve turned out too many people who are soemotionally weak they’re hurt by words alone and will fold like papermache in the face of an actual fight.

Calcified Government- So many of thepeople in our Federal government have been there so long it’s nowonder they still talk like the USSR is a thing, because it was whenthey first entered office. Our governments, both at the state andFederal levels, are full of people bloated on lobbyist money due topandering to special interest groups for decades. They’re sodisconnected from the world and the country in general that theydon’t even realize that trying to say something like in Bolivia isn’ta ‘coup’ is like someone trying to say Epstein killed himself. Onlypeople that habitually buy such nonsense on a regular basis withoutany thought believe it anymore. The Deep State gave up trying to besecret and essentially made itself fully visible, which is the bestthing about the Trump Presidency that would never have happened ifHillary or Bernie had won ’16: Hillary pandered to the Deep State andBernie pandered to people for votes. Our government still thinkspeople believe what they say, rather than rolling their eyes. Thegovernment still thinks we have a network of allies across the globe,rather than a few nations being bullied into being allies. They stillthink people think they’ll be able to retire one day. Of course, somepeople in the country still think those things, especially those whoare older who want to deny the situation we’re in and those who arebarely adults that swallow propaganda like it’s breakfast cereal.

Social Security fund- Some people under50 still think they’ll retire. I assure you that is a joke of cosmicproportions for everyone that isn’t disciplined enough to save moneyand pay everything they have off. And the joke is on almost everyone.The Social Security fund is running out of money. Meanwhile, we’respending billions on war machines while sending billions more toother countries to buy them as allies for a short amount of time.There’s your retirement and disability: up in smoke because of somebullshit ‘Commie’ threat that doesn’t exist (except for Marxistprofessors on campuses). Chances are those that think they’ll retirewill really join the ranks of the homeless or those that work untilthe day they drop dead on the job, while those entirely dependent ondisability will end up eating pet food like some of those alreadyliving entirely off SS payments, which isn’t a pretty sight. I’veseen it for myself in Florida.

Failed ‘Education’ System- I won’t getinto how the rest of the world is ahead of us in math and science.That’s so old news it’s not funny. But I will point out that manycolleges have reduced themselves to bastions of hooliganism andignorance based on ideology. I won’t get into the ‘professors’ thatwant to push Marxism or those that want to claim there’s nobiological difference between males and females (even though theseare evidence of what I’ve said for a while now: the entire‘education’ system needs revamped, except I don’t think people reallyunderstand what I mean: I mean the entire system needs reduced tofundamental basics, all ideology removed, and then rebuilt intosomething that benefits society instead of working against society asit’s currently doing) but we certainly have hooligans running rampanton campuses because of the ignorance they’re swallowing. (I won’tdigress to how I refuse to go to college due to not wanting to riskcoming out stupider and with a narrower view than when I entered,because as Aleksandr Solzhenitsynsaid, ‘Education doesn’t makeyou smarter.’ and what we see on these campuses is proof of that.)The latest demonstration of this is the ‘protesters’ at Ann Coulter’sBerkeley appearance yesterday. Protesting is one thing, physicallybarring people from entering a building is another. That’soppression. Pure and simple. Protest all you want against who youwant, I could care less, but you’re actively oppressing people onceyou try to keep them from something they have the right to go to.That falls back to the essay I wrote the other day, ‘Freedom: A GreatLie’, in which I point out the moment you say you can make the rulesyou’re saying someone else can’t, which means you become theoppressor. Argue with circle talk all day long about how ‘they’restanding up for bigotry and it’s their right’: it doesn’t matter,because they’re making themselves the bigots, and if I accept theirview that Coulter is a bigot for the sake of argument, it’s bigotsagainst bigots, which is called ‘even’, meaning neither has a rightto claim having ‘a higher moral ground’. Not only that, but usingyour free speech to try taking away another person’s free speechbreaks the ninth amendment that says you can’t use your rights totake away another person’s rights. So forcibly keeping someone fromspeaking or others from hearing them speak is bigotry, oppression,and a violation of the constitution.

None of these problems can be sortedout and fixed until people stop denying them and pushing the blame onothers. We’re not special. No one is ‘after us’. No one is screwingup our society except ourselves. Why these problems have gotten tothe point they have gotten is because of denial and sticking of thehead in the sand so far only toes show. The ‘Russophobia’ is aperfect example of it: let’s blame some other country for messingwith our elections instead of admitting the person that lost laughedat a man’s brutal murder and made decisions that lead to the brutaldeath of one of our diplomats in response to Gaddafi’s death. Thismentality is pure denial and excuse making, and denial and excusemaking always lead to catastrophic failures (just go ask Boeing howit worked out for them). The only way to start turning this around isto take responsibility for our own bad decisions and the baddecisions of our government and the people that are part of it.Nonsensical excuses aren’t going to work much longer. Pushing blameon others isn’t going to work much longer. Circle talkrationalization that doesn’t really say anything isn’t going to workmuch longer. Shrugging and saying ‘it’ll be okay, something will getfigured out’ isn’t going to work much longer. Until we takeresponsibility, I stand by the answer I gave to a direct question twoyears ago: ‘Do you think Trump will be our last President?’ ‘No, butI think the one after him could be.’

November 21, 2019

Freedom: An International Illusion

“Agreat deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the needfor illusion is deep.”
― SaulBellow, ToJerusalem and Back

Most people like watching magicians. A good magician can pull off tricks that appear to be as real as the day is long through a series of methods involving subterfuge, sleigh of hand, and outright psychological manipulation that targets the propensity people have to not really pay attention when they think they are. I’d suspect that everyone has seen the classic trick of cutting someone in half. But I suspect fewer people know how it works and even fewer watch the crowds viewing such a thing with more curiosity than the act being carried out. If the crowd is watched, you’ll see three general reactions to such a sight: laughter and clapping from those that enjoy the trick, confusion from those that wonder how in the world the magician did it, and horror from those that actually think it’s real. The illusion of ‘freedom’ is one to which most people laugh and clap. But to ‘freedom’ they clap because they think it’s real. On the other hand, those that shake their head in horror at a show of ‘freedom’ are those that can see how the tricks are being manipulated. It’s the exact opposite of how people react to a magician’s tricks.

Icould explain how the US has more people incarcerated than any othercountry, which means we aren’t ‘free’. I could explain how the USpolitics are corrupted by a bully attitude that makes them thinkthey’re really in control, which would mean we aren’t free. I couldexplain how the existence of courts indicates we’re not free. I couldexplain how the political domination of only two major parties showswe’re not free. I could read the Pledge of Allegiance and point outthat ‘Republic’ is mentioned, but not ‘Democracy’. But the actualreasons that we aren’t, and by extension no one else, is even morefundamental. It’s so fundamental that people don’t even think aboutit, because they accept it at face value like those that recoil inhorror at a magician’s trick are accepting it at face value. And whenyou accept something at face value, you tend not to think about it,as the majority of people don’t think about the illusion of the word‘freedom’.

Alliances-The United States has a long history of entering into alliances. Thelongest running alliance is NATO, or The North American TreatyOrganization, which the US has been a part of for 70 years. Thistreaty specifically states that an attack on one is an attack on all,as most military alliances state in one way or another. The problemis that there are a total of 29 countries part of that alliance. Thatmeans that there are 28 other countries that have direct influence onthe United States through that single treaty. A prime example of thisinfluence is the conflict surrounding the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Wetell Germany, don’t do that, they responded with what amounts to‘bugger off, we’re done causing trouble’. Then the EU and othercountries get involved, why? Because Germany is in the EU, analliance itself, along with NATO, and those countries are worriedabout ‘Russian influence’. The alliance system means Germany isn’tfree of other countries influence. People like to forget that analliance is a rule structure that ties two or more countries togetherand therefore pushes influence both ways. There is nothing ‘free’about any alliance nor can any nation who’s in an alliance claim tobe ‘free’. It would be like a state in the US claiming to be ‘free’or like a county in a state making the same claim. They’re subject toa rule structure that precludes any notion of ‘freedom’.

Tradedeals- The US has free trade agreements with a total of 20 countries,not counting other trade deals with many others. Having a ‘free tradeagreement’ subjects the agreeing nations to rules that are laid outby the World Trade Organization. All countries in the agreement haveto follow those rules if they want to remain in the agreement. Thisputs their economies at the influence of each other. This puts theirtrade at the influence of each other. This puts their money systemsat the influence of each other. This means that their economies arefundamentally ‘unfree’ and subject to other nation’s interest.Calling a nation free that is part of a free trade agreement is likesaying a US nickle is free without taking into account all the rulesand regulations that surrounds that nickle in the larger currencysystem.

GenevaConventions- Not only is the US and other nations subject to the rulestructures of multiple military alliances and trade agreements, butthey’re also subject to the Geneva Conventions that has been ratifiedby every nation on the planet. This means in short that no country iseven ‘free’ when it comes to how they make war upon another nation.Everyone is tied to everyone else in having influence over them tokeep their war making in check.

Theidea of ‘freedom’ is an illusion like that created by a goodmagician. The purpose of the illusion of ‘freedom’ is to keep peopledocile and controlled, because the easiest way to keep people undercontrol is to present to them an illusion of freedom. I’m not sayingthis is fundamentally wrong. Few people can handle truths on thislevel, they get unruly when they realize their domesticated worldisn’t real, which is why the illusion of freedom exists in the firstplace. I’m just saying that before you start tearing your nation upfor ‘freedom’, you really want to examine what that actually means.Chances are it doesn’t mean what you think it means, but rather whatyou want to think it means. This also why the ‘woke’ culture is soannoying to others without the ‘woke’ understanding it: what they sayis based on illusions that most people don’t buy. You have to be ableto sell your illusion for people to buy it and some are more easilysold than others while some people are more easily sold to thanothers. However, that doesn’t mean everyone will always buy them,because some people think about things rather than regurgitatingwords and phrases some magician sold to them and they evaluate theirlives based on the rule structures around them rather than theillusions being sold to the masses.

Additional info:

Historyof United States and Its Alliances:https://www.realclearhistory.com/articles/2019/04/01/history_of_united_states_and_its_alliances_428.html

NordStream 2: Go-ahead for Russian gas pipeline angers Ukraine:https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50247793

FreeTrade Agreements:https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements

Whatare Rules of Origin and how do they apply to Free Trade Agreementsand tariffs?:https://www.austrade.gov.au/contact/faqs/what-are-rules-of-origin-and-how-do-they-apply-to-free-trade-agreements-and-tariffs

GenevaConventions and their Additional Protocols:https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/geneva_conventions

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Published on November 21, 2019 06:04

November 19, 2019

Freedom: A Great Lie

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Ican’t say for sure where the notion of ‘freedom’ originated, I canonly see that it’s pure propaganda. It’s the type of propaganda lotsof people prefer to believe since it dulls the pain of theirexistence in a world that is fundamentally unfree. A world that isfundamentally oppressive and orthodox. A world that doesn’t care ifyou’re free as long as you think you are, so you don’t tear up thesociety you live within that makes the rules that ensure you’re never‘free’. Freedom of action has never existed. Freedom of expressionhas never existed. Freedom of thought only exists until it’s spoke tothe wrong people. The closest anyone ever gets to ‘freedom’ iswillfully choosing the path they follow, whether that path iscontained within the rules outlined by their society and is deemed‘acceptable’ or not contained within those rules and considered‘unacceptable’, which leads to them being punished in some way. Thisis an idea I’ve had for quite some time, far longer than the riots inHong Kong have been taking place, but those riots and the circle talkpresented by those defending them convinced me that this idea shouldbe spoken.

Basically, ‘freedom’ doesn’t exist, what exists are ‘rule structures’, and even the people with their circle talk defending the HK riots know that is the truth (regardless of their ability to comprehend what they’re saying). Their arguments always circle back to ‘a new constitution’, seemingly without proper realization that a ‘new constitution’ is just a different rule structure, probably only slightly different, than what they have now. Their very argument for ‘freedom’ is an argument for freedom not existing while trying to claim it does. The irony in their words is as palpable as the fists they beat a woman with and the Molotovs they threw at cleanup crews.

One of the earliest mentions in history that I am aware of in which ‘freedom’ was used as propaganda is the conflict between the Greeks and Persians. The Greeks went to war to defend their ‘freedom’. But what type of ‘freedom’ did the Greeks have? Not much. The Spartans had a strict rule system based around their military that killed any child that wasn’t deemed strong enough or that had any deformities while laying out concrete guidelines on the place of men and women in society, all of which was supported on slave labor. Athens, the birthplace of ‘Democracy’, limited voting to male citizens only and only then after completing their military training. Some of the other Greek city-states also formed ‘democratic governments’ upon the same lines as Athens, but tended towards local kings, perhaps the most famous of which is Philip II of Macedon who fathered one of the greatest military leaders in history: Alexander the Great, who tried to make his subjects worship him as a god. As such, the ‘freedom’ they were fighting for wasn’t ‘freedom’, it was the right to their own rule structures. They had systems of punishment that were the predecessors of modern court systems, further proof that citizens of Greek city-states weren’t free to do as they wished.

Inshort, ‘freedom’ for one person means ‘oppression’ for another. Tosay you have the right to make the rules means that you’re sayingsomeone else doesn’t. There’s nothing ‘free’ about a fight for‘freedom’. It’s a form of oppression. Modern examples of this includethe concept of ‘freedom of religion’, which isn’t ‘freedom’, it’s aconcept that oppresses those that don’t agree that someone else canworship who/what they want. The gender pronoun laws are an even moremodern example, since saying someone has the right to be called whatthey want means that someone’s thoughts to the opposite are beingoppressed. Same thing with the Politically Correct culture that triesto limit words people can use, which oppresses those that have noissue with them. All of these things are examples of human being’sdesire to control others while trying to make it appear they aren’t,as they attempt to explain away their own control freakishness sothey don’t have to face what they’re really doing.

Someoppression is good. We oppress peoples’ will to rape and murder. Weoppress peoples’ desire to cause mayhem against those they disagreewith. We oppress peoples’ urge to keep certain members of societydisenfranchised. But to call any of those things ‘freedom’ for anyoneis an exercise in naivety: they’re targeted oppression for the goodof society. Oppression as people think of as ‘oppression’ is bestdescribed as ‘oppression that doesn’t better society’. Show me acountry with a constitution that bans any form of punishment nomatter the offense, and I’ll show you a ‘free’ country. Until then,make the best of your rule structure and know you’re not free, andnever will be regardless of the propaganda around you, unless you andyour neighbor have the right to beat each other over the head with astick without any form of social retribution.

Furtherinfo:

Chinaslams Hong Kong judges after mask ruling, raising pressure on city’sfreedoms:https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/china-admonishes-hong-kong-judiciary-after-mask-ruling-raising-pressure-on-citys-tenuous-freedoms/2019/11/18/3e3999de-0a51-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html

Womanattacked by protesters in Mong Kok, Hong Kong:https://youtu.be/ATO_roCP2BA

HKrioters throw firebombs at residents cleaning streets:https://youtu.be/uFOQB39juLc

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Published on November 19, 2019 07:37

November 2, 2019

Potential Sources of the Poisoned Mentality in US Politics

“The simple step of a courageousindividual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truthoutweighs the world.” ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

I like to watch people. People are interesting, even people that don’t agree with me. And twenty years of customer service experience has given me a lot of practice at it. As a CNA you learn to recognize when people feel good or bad or are drugged up. Doing construction, you learn how people react to strangers entering their homes to do work and how they react to a good or bad job. From food service, you learn how to recognize when someone is looking down on you and the subtle signs of being hungry. You learn how people react over money, both when receiving and when forced to pay it back, when doing check advances. When doing delivery work, you learn how to recognize the minute body language that could signify a threat and when competitive co-workers are edgy and looking for an advantage or are up to no good. While taking phone calls in service centers, you learn to operate without the vast well of information that body language provides about a person and to pay attention to phrasing and tone. As I tell people, and most people jump when told this to their face which creates an even larger reaction to read, I can read muscle twitches you don’t even know you’ve made. But as well as I can read people, which has allowed me to disarm many bad situations while in the infant stage, I’m unable to properly isolate the source of the mentality that has been projected into the US political environment starting just before the ’16 presidential election, which is the mentality the compels people to resort to personal attacks such as Hillary’s now infamous ‘deplorable’ brain fart that lost her the election and the accusations of ‘racist’, ‘misogynist’, and ‘extremist’ that are regular fodder in any dialog in which those part of the far Left doesn’t agree with which has led to a likewise response from people in the middle and on the Right. This isn’t to suggest that insults haven’t always been thrown back and forth between groups of people, but the rhetoric picked up serious steam after Hillary decided to label anyone that disagreed with her as ‘deplorables’ and pushed the idea that anyone disagreeing with her were ‘deserving strong condemnation’ per the definition of ‘deplorable’. Of course, some people just shout insults in return, but others write stories and essays, using the poison thrown back and forth (and at themselves) as social fodder to put the dysfunction of the political and social climate on display. It’s been a lot of fodder for people watchers and interesting fodder in a horror show kind of way.

Before getting into the possiblesources of the poison that has bubbled up, I’m going to state whereit didn’t come from. It’s not from the country being more dividedthan before, because the voter party affiliation has remainedrelatively constant between the major two political parties for sometime. It’s not because Hillary was attacked first, because she waswinning the ’16 Presidential election when the ‘deplorables’ commentwas made that resulted in her losing. It’s not from the generalconflict between Liberals and Conservatives, because that conflict isages old. And it’s not because some group was suddenly downtrodden,because the overall US society has remained reasonably stable sincethe civil rights movements in the 60’s other than some riots causedby police violence. The source is nothing so simple. But what is thesource? I have a few ideas, but since the truth is messy, I thinkit’s a bit of all of them in various degrees, plus more I’ve notconsidered.

The first suspect is social media. Forthe first time in history, people are able to easily hide behind fakeaccounts and mask their identity. This allows people to say stuffthey wouldn’t otherwise say due to no consequences being attached tothose words. Don’t like a politician but don’t want your name known?Make a fake account. Want to support odious ideological concepts butdon’t want your name known? Make a fake account. Blocked or banned?Make a fake account. Want to harass a person or group? Make a fakeaccount. The worst in people comes out when they can hide behind afake name. No matter how harsh you can be when your name is attachedto the words, you can be a million times worse when knowing the realyou isn’t on display to be criticized. This emboldens people thatwould never say what they do otherwise. Mob mentality also seems tobe part of what happens on social media. Causing a ruckus and gettingsomeone banned from some platform is no different than a group ofpeople with torches and pitchforks forcing someone out of aneighborhood.

Identity politics is the secondsuspect. Identity politics seems to have caused a great number ofpeople to forget something important: you’re a citizen of the countryyou’re in first and foremost. Man? Woman? Teenager? Student? Gay?Poor? Rich? Christian? Liberal? Conservative? Libertarian?Irrelevant. Meaningless. To anyone but you the individual, that is.You’re not a citizen of any of that, you’re a citizen of the countryand of the state you reside in. Your ideological group does not lookafter your social security. It does not attend to your civil rights.It does not pass laws. It does not declare disaster relief. It doesnot deposit your disability payments. It does not provide you withMedicaid. The country does as a cooperative collective of states thathas agreed to work together to do so. Identity politics puts emphasison individuals and appears to create a mental state in which peoplestare intently at a single tree without seeing the forest aroundthem, and, in some cases, deny the forest even exists. It’s acompartmentalized state of being in which the box the person islocked inside is their ideological group that they perceive to be anentire world.

The third suspect is drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. Everyone knows about the opiate epidemic unless they live under a rock in the middle of the desert 500 miles from anyone else. Fewer people realize that nearly every mass shooter in the last two decades has been on some sort of anti-depressant, anti-anxiety, or anti-psychotic medication. Sometimes multiple ones. Nearly all of these types of drugs have suicidal thoughts and personality changes as side effects mixed with other things like anxiety, agitation, depression, and insomnia, causing a corresponding increase in mental illness as their use increases. Some have side effects associated with compulsive gambling, sleep suicide, and sleep driving. Some even have ‘sudden death’ as side effects. (But don’t expect your doctor to tell you about them since the over prescription of opiates that caused the opiate epidemic is evidence they’re in pharm company pockets and are willing to push a poisoned product.) And these things are being handed out like candy. Commonly used medications, including widely used anti-psychotic medication Seroquel, have been discovered to cause dementia like symptoms when used in conjunction with each other. Meanwhile, the average number of prescriptions used by people in the US was an average of 12.3 per person in 2013, with the lowest age group of 0-18 having an average of 4.2, and has only risen since, which doesn’t include OTC drugs like Zantac, which is currently being recalled due to cancer risk. The number of prescriptions per individual is far higher since these are averages and a lot of people like me and most people I know take a grand total of zero. That’s a lot of drug interactions that can cause all matter of physical and mental issues in the people taking them, and since those people are on the inside looking out, it’s highly unlikely they’ll be the ones to notice themselves acting odd since it merges with their reality. As someone that’s essentially ‘gone nuts’ twice in my life, once from an out of control thyroid and the second due to inhaling unknown chemicals in a workplace for months, I’ve personally seen that no matter how much you’re aware of yourself, you can’t properly examine what happened in your head until emerging from the darkness that type of thing creates. It’s like being in a tunnel but not knowing you’re in a tunnel until you stumble out one end and can look back on things.

The fourth suspect is that we’regrowing into a nation of bullies. That wouldn’t be too surprising,considering our international diplomacy has been on the level of aschool ground bully for decades now by threatening war and sanctionson those that disagree. But which is a consequence of the other isopen to debate. It’s a chicken and egg argument. What is less of adebate is that no bully only tells someone to hand over their moneyor to step off a cliff. They don’t simply say do ‘X’. That justdoesn’t work on a psychological level, and depending on the person,it doesn’t even work then and can have the opposite effect. Somepeople like to oppose bullies just because they’re bullies, no matterwho they’re defending. What bullies say is do ‘X’ or I’ll do ‘Y’.This isn’t limited to physical violence. The mental version of it isdo ‘X’ or you’re ‘Y’. But the psychology behind both is the samesince they can be reduced to‘to treat in an overbearing or intimidatingmanner’ which is the definition of ‘bullying’. This suspect inparticular could be related to drug use and environmentalcontamination since bullying is something that originates in themind, making it susceptible to external chemical manipulation.

The fifth suspect is environmentalcontamination. Pharmaceuticals, illegal drugs, industrial chemicals,and plastics have entered the ecosystem at every level. Researchshowed long ago that hormonal changes caused by chemicals can causetadpoles to turn into hermaphrodites. To think that these thingsdon’t enter human bodies and have some effect would be nearsighted,however, this issue hasn’t been taken seriously except when certainpockets of chemicals cause serious health issues in an area and thegovernment is forced to examine the problem. These chemicals havebeen linked to lower testosterone levels in men in some studies,making what they do to everyone else open to a debate that few wantto have since the majority may figure out something they don’t wantto know, so little of the research has been followed up on.

The sixth suspect is the growingeconomic gap. People have the common view that the genocide in Rwandain 1994 that killed ~1 million people was purely ethnic violencebecause that is the story presented. The Tutsi, ethnic minority,ruled the country and were overthrown in 1959 by the ethnic majorityHutus. Many Tutsi escaped to Uganda and formed a rebel army that theninvaded Rwanda and fought a civil war from 1990-93 before a peacedeal was brokered. On April 6th, 1994, the Presidential plane wasdowned, killing the Hutu President, Juvenal Habyarimana, initiatingthe methodical slaughter of Tutsi with machetes in which husbandskilled wives, neighbor killed neighbor, and students killed theirteachers. Calling it ethnic violence is the obvious option and theone most observers took. However, Jared Diamond presents a differentoutlook in his book ‘Collapse’. His research reveals a country thatwas massively overpopulated for available farmland and had a hugeeconomic gap. Adult children were unable to make their way into theworld and stayed in the household, which caused friction by breakingdown the traditional ways the people had followed due to lack ofincome and available land. The poor farmers got poorer and possessedless land as the richer farmers were able to better their positionsby buying land from the others and securing additional jobs for moreincome. The situation right before violence erupted in 1994 was onein which a great number of people were starving and desperate forsomething to give. As a surviving Tutsi school teacher said wheninterviewed, ‘The people whose children had to walk barefoot toschool killed the people who could buy shoes for theirs’. Currently,the situation isn’t so that the majority of the US is starving, butthe relative economic gap is widening. The fact that many of thosecomplaining they don’t have enough money because they spend the moneythey have on expensive cell phones they ‘need’ along with othertrinkets pushed by corporations and are weighed down by $1.6 trillionin student loans for useless degrees they never should have beenloaned money for is irrelevant. What’s relevant is that the economicgap between the haves and have nots is growing and that producesresentment in people that feel they got the short end of the stick..Resentment breeds discontent and violence over the long run withinany group of people it takes hold of, and dialog about ‘universalincome’ boils down to resentment and wanting more, which is a symptomof the economic gap.

Anyone that tries to claim that any single cause is leading to what we see in the US as a whole hasn’t thought the problem through. Anyone that claims the solution is simple hasn’t thought the problem through. Even if looked at in a conservative manner, we’re a minimum of two decades into the darkness, and probably closer to three or four. Due to the scope of the issues and the number of people in the country, it would take just as long to fix these issues in a civil manner. Politicians have to be removed from office that are paid off by large corporations. Lobbyists need banned. Stringent laws need put in place that say when and how doctors can prescribe certain scripts since powerful, mind altering drugs are being handed out for simple things such as weight control and sleep aids that they were never meant to be used for. The ‘education’ system and its corresponding student loan system needs a total revamp so they can’t prey on naive people and lock them into lifelong servitude for degrees that are the economic equivalent of underwater basket weaving. The environment needs cleaned up. The toxicity that is hate speech being masqueraded as ‘free speech’ needs addressed on social media. It’s not normal for people to be confused about their gender. It’s not normal for people to wish death on others simply because of an opinion that differs from their own, no matter how heated. It’s not normal for personal attacks to dominate the political landscape. It’s not normal to throw human life away for a buck. It’s not normal to tie people down in lifelong debt. Even though these things show up in societies all the time, they are always aberrant, caused by external stimuli, and get pushed aside once people come to their senses. Sometimes it happens because of a single work by a single person, such as when ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ultimately led to the fall of far Left Socialism in Russia. The political spectrum is a circle, with both ends terminating at a form of totalitarianism, which is why all far Left and far Right ideologies have failed until people had to relearn forgotten, harsh lessons by reinvigorating them or by reawakening them.

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