A great article from The Burning Platform.
 It always sounds "old" to say that times past were better but in the case of the current state of the US is is profoundly true. As our linear view of history in Western culture is about to give way to a more realistic cyclical vision, it is amazing to see decline in action as rot slowly gnaws away at the foundations of the country erasing in a short few years decades of progress, the democratic process questioned as if there really was an alternative (all types of other arrangements have been tested over time, none are pleasant!) and corruption spreads like wildfire. A sad but good story as told below.
 
“All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.” – Edward Gibbon
“Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day.” – William Shakespeare, Richard II
We moved to our corner of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania 
twenty-seven years ago. We raised our three boys here. We spent hundreds
 of hours on local baseball fields, in hockey rinks, in school gyms for 
basketball games, concerts, plays and donuts-with-dads. It’s still a 
nice place to live, with virtually no crime, decent roads, and 
reasonable property tax rates. But I would have to say there has been a 
degradation in the overall quality of life in my community, which is 
consistent with the downward spiral of our society in general. When we 
planted our roots in this community it was still more farm-like than 
suburban. Family farms and open space were more prevalent than housing 
tracts, strip malls, fast food joints and cookie cutter commercial 
buildings. A beautiful farmhouse a few miles from our home, freshly 
painted white, proudly displayed the iconic yellow smiley face. It 
symbolized good times.
We’ve been driving on this road for twenty-seven years on the way to 
baseball games, hockey practices, the car dealer for service, and lately
 to our gym, as we try to fend off father time.  Driving by that barn in
 the early days would always brighten your day. A bright yellow smiley 
face against a white background represented a positive, happy view of 
the world.
We moved to this area in 1995 while Clinton was president, 
unemployment was 5.6%, CPI was 2.8%, GDP growth was 2.7%, the annual 
deficit was $164 billion, the national debt was $4.9 trillion, the Fed 
balance sheet was $500 billion, the U.S. population was 263 million, 
total household debt was $4 trillion, you earned 5.5% on your money 
market fund, the U.S. bailed out Mexico, the Oklahoma City bombing 
happened, and OJ Simpson was found not guilty of killing his ex-wife. 
The military industrial complex was being starved by lack of wars and 
the stock market soared by 33% as the beginning of irrational exuberance
 began under the reign of Greenspan and his Put.
A lot has happened over the last twenty-seven years and the faded, 
barely visible smiley face, on a now mold ridden decaying barn, is truly
 representative of a society, culture and economic system dying a slow 
torturous death, as apathy, technological distraction, myopic indolence,
 and the greed of powerful elites combine to ensure the eventual 
collapse of the short-lived American Empire. Much of this quarter 
century of decline is borne out in the change in economic numbers noted 
above.
The unemployment rate is reported as 3.5% today with 158 million out 
of 264 million working age adults employed. That leaves 106 million not 
employed, or 40% of working age adults not working. Back in 1995, 125 
million out of 199 million working age adults were employed, leaving 74 
million not working. Over a quarter century we’ve added 65 million 
people to our population, but only 33 million to the employment rolls. 
Either we’ve devolved into a nation of freeloaders on 
welfare/disability, or the BLS is lying about the 3.5% unemployment 
rate, or both.
The BLS currently tries to convince the ignorant masses inflation is 
only 8.5%, up tremendously from the 2.8% in 1995. Since the Fed/Wall 
Street induced financial crash of 2008, the government had been 
reporting inflation of between 0% to 3%, when in reality, as measured 
the way it was measured in 1980, it had been between 7% to 10%. Today’s 
actual inflation rate is 17% in case you were wondering. Revealing the 
true cost of living to the peasants might induce a revolting outcome for
 our overlords. The government prefers to treat the math challenged 
masses like mushrooms, by keeping them in the dark.

The corrupt Fed, feckless politicians, media mouthpieces for the 
empire, and Wall Street shysters were shocked I tell you by skyrocketing
 inflation after the Fed increased their balance sheet from $3.7 
trillion to $8.9 trillion and the D.C. swamp creatures increased the 
national debt from $23.2 trillion to $30.7 trillion since the beginning 
of 2020. This generated inflation in financial assets for the global 
elite and their minions, while destroying the finances of the middle and
 lower classes. The rot grows like a cancer in this empire of debt.

The annual deficit of $164 billion in 1995 was racked up in 17 days 
in 2021. We have run annual deficits of $3.1 trillion in 2020 and $2.8 
trillion in 2021, and the scumbags in Washington just keep passing $700 
billion spending bills, writing off student loan debts for gender 
fluidity majors and sending billions in weapons to the most corrupt 
regime on the planet – Ukraine. The degradation and downward trajectory 
of this empire of debt, delusion and despair can be most clearly defined
 by comparing our GDP growth since 1995 to the growth of debt by both 
our government and the populace. Total U.S. GDP in 1995 totaled $7.6 
trillion and today checks in at $24.8 trillion. That is a growth of 326%
 over twenty-seven years. The national debt has grown by 626%. Seems 
unsustainable, but why question our glorious leaders.

The Fed balance sheet has grown by 1,780%. Household debt has grown 
by 400%. Median household income in 1995 was $34,000. Today it is 
$73,000. That is a 214% increase over 27 years. With real inflation 
averaging over 10% per year during this time frame, average working 
Americans have seen their standard of living methodically decline, 
replacing the income with debt. The only beneficiaries of debt are the 
banking cabal and the mega-corporations selling their cheap Chinese crap
 to clueless dupes who believe driving a leased BMW and living in a 
cookie cutter McMansion with an $800,000 mortgage makes them wealthy.
The selfie generation is too distracted checking in on Facebook, 
posting pictures of their food on Instagram, doing a dance routine on 
Tik Tok or counting their likes on Twitter to realize how badly they’ve 
been screwed over by those pulling the strings of this society. The 
propaganda and psychology of fear utilized by the powerful interests has
 reached a level that would make Edward Bernays burst with pride, as 
manipulating the masses to believe falsehoods is a key requirement in 
implementing their Great Reset agenda.
This entire charade seems to be bursting at the seams, with raging 
inflation, a recession in process (despite Biden’s lackeys trying to 
redefine recession), a Green New Deal Great Reset agenda purposely 
creating energy and food shortages, government agencies running 
roughshod over the Constitution, and a tyrannical administration 
attempting to crush their political adversaries using any means 
necessary. Smiles are fading as we head into either a hyperinflationary 
depression or a deflationary depression, with some world war mixed in.
The economic decay is easily provable, but our cultural and societal 
degeneration has exceeded our economic deterioration. Just as the Roman 
Empire exhibited particular traits of a dying culture, the American 
Empire displays similar characteristics, such as: concern with 
displaying affluence instead of building wealth; obsession with sex and 
perversions of sex; art becoming freakish and sensationalistic instead 
of creative and original; widening disparity between very rich and very 
poor; increased demand to live off the state.
Of course, our dying culture has also been turbocharged by the 
climate cult attempting to destroy our fossil fueled economic system by 
purposely sabotaging our energy and food systems as the driving force 
for their Great Reset. Weaponizing the annual flu as a means to inject 
billions of people with a DNA altering, sometimes lethal, concoction is 
part of Bill Gates’ depopulation agenda. They have taken the sex and 
gender perversion to new levels of child abuse, grooming and mutilation.
 The rampant pedophilia and child trafficking by the global elitists is 
the most despicable aspect of our cultural degeneracy. Anyone with a 
conscious can no longer be proud of this country and should be 
desperately concerned about its future.
“A growing sense of unease presently 
pervades the American consciousness. Americans are no longer as 
confident in their nation and self-assured as they once were. A sense of
 frustration and anger underscores American consciousness. Americans are
 looking over our shoulder at other emerging economic juggernauts and 
wondering if we can still be world’s social, political, and economic 
leader when Congress cannot even manage to balance the national budget. 
The thought that we are diminishing in stature in the eyes of the 
international community constantly torments Americans. Faded glory 
strikes a crippling blow to the American psyche. Analogous to an aging 
beauty queen, America might still possess a golden crown, but she lost 
her luster. In an eroding empire, Americans feel like second-class 
citizens in the union of nations.” ― Kilroy J. Oldster
The terms modern and progress have become warped and used as an 
excuse for destroying localization, small businesses, what worked, what 
was good, and what benefitted society, replacing it with globalization, 
mega-corporations, complex technology, profits at any cost, and benefits
 accumulating to the few with suffering borne by the many. Two examples 
come to mind within a few miles from my home. Just a couple miles from 
the fading smile barn is a property that was once a thriving family 
farm. I snapped a picture last week as I was driving past.
The decaying abandoned farmhouse, dilapidated barn, and rusting farm 
machinery are being engulfed by weeds, as the memories of a productive 
useful family farm fade like that yellow smiley face. I don’t know why 
it was abandoned, but I’m sure the corporate farming conglomerates and 
the corporate meat processing plants were a major factor. When you can 
buy cheap meat at Wal-Mart produced in China or some industrial farm, 
why pay a little more for fresh non-GMO meat sold by a local farmer?
Gone are the roadside vegetable stands and buying fresh meat from 
your local farmer neighbor. Maybe the patriarch of the homestead got too
 old, and his sons had been indoctrinated by the government schools to 
get corporate jobs in some of the commercial office campuses that have 
replaced open space and farmland. Whatever the reason, it provokes 
melancholy about a better simpler time whenever I pass by.
The governmental actions taken in the early 2000s still irk me to 
this day. The area around the intersection of Forty Foot Road and 
Sumneytown Pike in the late 1990s was still reminiscent of simpler 
times, before smart phones, hyper-consumerism, and proliferation of big 
box retail. Small businesses were important and viable. There was a 
family run diner near the turnpike entrance where all the locals ate 
breakfast and talked sports and politics.
Township police were friendly, driving older basic vehicles and 
housed in a small unassuming one-story township building. Nicely kept 
older homes lined one side of Forty Foot Road and the other side was an 
eclectic mixture of old-time baseball fields, with no lights and little 
to no ground’s maintenance, and the old Henry Sprecht grade school, 
built in 1909 to honor a long-time educator and local historian, which 
had been replaced by newer schools and creatively repurposed into a 
quaint antiques mall.
We spent many a summer evening watching my oldest son play little 
league baseball on those fields while trying to keep our four-year-old 
and three-year-old sons from getting into trouble. We loved wandering 
through that antiques mall as individual vendors selling all manner of 
antiques, hand crafted woodwork, baseball cards, toys, occupied nooks, 
and crannies in this ancient school. We bought a handcrafted cabinet by a
 local artisan for our kitchen, which we still employ today in our 
storage area.
My fondest memory was at Christmas time when it would become a 
Christmas wonderland and I would take the boys there to see the 
spectacular miniature train show, where local train aficionados would 
set up amazing displays. The kids were mesmerized. There was also a 
family-owned home center in Hatfield called Snyder’s that sold 
everything for your home and also had a great train display at Christmas
 for kids to enjoy. All this unpretentious delight ended abruptly in the
 early 2000s, as progress, commercialization, and greed took hold of the
 country and our little community.
As you may remember, Greenspan coined the term irrational exuberance 
in 1996 to describe financial markets, then turbocharged stocks by 
cutting rates, causing the dot.com bubble and responded to the stock 
market crash by cutting rates and causing the biggest real estate bubble
 in history, until now. These ephemeral paper riches caused local 
government bureaucrats to use phantom tax revenues to envision delusions
 of grandeur by building useless unnecessary projects.
This is exactly what the government drones running Towamencin 
Township did. They produced a grand master plan, gave it a fancy name, 
spent tens of millions of our tax dollars, and produced an embarrassing 
mess. They used eminent domain to acquire homes, forced the dozens of 
small business owners out of the antique mall and flattened the 
building, closed off the baseball fields to little kids, and closed 
Forty Foot Road for over a year to build a glorious $13 million bridge 
to nowhere. This bridge stands as a tribute to all those Chinese ghost 
cities, as it serves no purpose except as an example of government 
incompetence, wastefulness, and misuse of taxpayer funds with no 
consequences for the government drones.

Rather than wait for actual retail tenants to sign on to their 
glorious project, the government geniuses built the bridge knowing they 
would come. They never came. The real estate retail bubble popped. It’s 
now fifteen years later and those four baseball fields are still sitting
 there, untouched, undeveloped, and unused. They stuck a Walgreens where
 the charming antique mall once sat. No pedestrians cross the pedestrian
 bridge because there is nothing on either side. A four- story 
commercial building was built on spec a block from the bridge and stood 
vacant for five years.
Home Depot and Lowes built within a few miles. There are now cookie 
cutter townhouses where Snyder’s stood. Another successful retail center
 in the 1990s up the road, anchored by a family owned Genuardi 
supermarket and a Sears Hardware, along with a pizza place, drugstore, 
Blockbuster, and kids play center has been vacant and rotting for over a
 decade, as bankruptcies, mergers, and the relentless downward economic 
spiral made it untenable.
In addition to wasting taxpayer money on the ghost bridge to nowhere,
 these financial government geniuses decided their police station built 
in 1975 no longer met the needs of their fast-growing police force in a 
township with no crime, because it is 88% white/Asian. They built 
themselves a complex three times the size of their old station. Lucky, 
because they now have a police force of 23 officers, all decked out with
 souped-up brand-new SUVs.
You need that level of manpower and firepower for all those speed 
traps, fender benders and writing tickets for illegal basketball nets. 
There hasn’t been a major crime in Towamencin in over a decade, but the 
taxpayers pay over $1 million per year to be harassed and pay for their 
donut budget This level of government waste is happening in every 
locality and state in America. And the Feds put them all to shame with 
their corrupt, wasteful, traitorous spending, bribing, and war mongering
 across the globe, to the tune of trillions.
The decline I’ve personally seen in my local community is not just a 
localized cancer but has metastasized across the land and around the 
globe. As our economic system accelerates towards inevitable implosion, 
either as a planned demolition or due to the hubris of central bankers, 
the fraying social fabric of our civilized society is unmistakable, as 
the moral state of our country has deteriorated to a level seen only in 
debauched empires on the brink of failure.
The global elite and their moral depravity have engulfed the world, 
as their ravenous greed, insatiable appetite for dominion over the 
masses, immoral deceit, manipulative use of propaganda, and satanic 
decadence have created economic, social, political, and military 
distress across the globe. As Toynbee and Solzhenitsyn note, the lack of
 morality and courage among those who profess to be leaders has 
permeated throughout society, leading to a dearth of citizens taking 
civic responsibility for the path of the country.
“Of the twenty-two civilizations that
 have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached 
the moral state the United States is in now.”
― Arnold Joseph Toynbee
“A decline in courage may be the most
 striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. 
The Western world has lost its civic courage. Such a decline in courage 
is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, 
causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.” ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
We are a lost society, ruled by emotions, captured by technology, 
misinformed, uneducated, indifferent, fearful, passively accepting of 
whatever government and media tell them is true, and entranced by 
materialism funded by debt. We are a sick dying culture where common 
community standards, self-responsibility, hard work, kindness, and 
manners have been superseded by the worship of abnormality, celebration 
of degeneracy, living off the government, spreading hatred, and waging 
undeclared wars across the world.
There is an empty shallowness to our civilization, with the vacuum 
filled with gadgets, pathetic displays of fake affluence, trivialities 
like social media, and superficial displays of virtue signaling 
regarding the latest woke craze shoved down our throats by those 
controlling the levers of society. There is an overwhelming feeling of 
hopelessness, fear, and foreboding mood of impending doom, as this 
Fourth Turning accelerates towards its bloody denouement.
The aura of pessimism about the future and fear that our superpower 
status, only in existence since 1946, is rotting from within permeates 
the psychology of those actually willing to think critically and see 
what is really happening. The existing social order will be extinguished
 during the waning years of this Fourth Turning. We are in the interval 
between the decay of the old and formation of the new, whatever that may
 be.
This transition will be one of uncertainty, turmoil, miscalculation, 
fanatical misrepresentations, war (civil & global), false prophets, 
bloodshed, and clear winners and losers. Decay and death of empires have
 happened for centuries and are necessary to expunge the excesses and 
abuses which always occur as empires expand and its leaders exhibit a 
hubristic arrogance towards their people and the world.
“Just as floods replenish soil and 
fires rejuvenate forests, a Fourth Turning clears out society’s 
exhausted elements and creates an opportunity.” – The Fourth Turning
It is hard to believe the prognostications of Strauss & Howe a 
quarter century ago, just after I moved to my community, could be so 
eerily accurate. But, when you are sure of the catalysts: debt, global 
disorder, and civic decay, the volcanic eruption of distress can only 
flow along certain channels, preordained by choices made over decades by
 our leaders and ourselves.
“Imagine some national (and probably 
global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress 
that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the 
catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts 
free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of 
an earthquake. All you know in advance is something about the molten 
ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:
- Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement 
trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade 
wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
- Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, 
or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and 
mercenaries hired by walled communities
- Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax 
revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, 
authoritarianism, and altered national borders
- Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction” 
This Fourth Turning has created tremendous distress in all four 
categories noted by Strauss & Howe. With over $200 trillion of 
unfunded liabilities, the country is already in default, but unwilling 
to admit it. The Social Security fund will run out of money in a few 
years. State and local pension funds are underfunded by trillions. With 
Powell and his minions in control, hyperinflation and deflationary 
depression are on the near-term horizon, with financial assets crashing 
once again, for the fourth time this century.
The social distress has been initiated and promoted by the global 
elite through their complete control of the media propaganda outlets. 
They are attempting to spur violent upheaval, as this will give them the
 excuse to disarm and electronically imprison dissenters and Great Reset
 resisters. Class, race, religion, and gender are all being used to 
stoke unrest.
The political distress is the biggest gaping wound in our national 
body today. If critical thinking individuals didn’t acknowledge the 
existence of a Deep State before, they surely can’t deny its existence 
now. It has existed for decades, but has been forced out into the open, 
as threats to their power and control multiply due to their arrogance, 
ineptitude, wickedness, and avarice.
Anyone who dares to deviate from their directives and threatens their
 fiefdom is either killed, neutered, or destroyed (JFK, RFK, George 
Wallace, Perot, Assange, Trump). Russiagate, two impeachments, J6 witch 
trial, and now the rogue DOJ/FBI raid on Trump’s compound has driven the
 political stress to heights not seen since 1860. The desires of the 
globalist elites for a Great Reset into a new world order where you own 
nothing, and they own everything is the goal of all this engineered 
chaos.
The military distress may be the most concerning and potentially most
 destructive aspect of this Fourth Turning as we enter the normally 
bloody phase. The flailing U.S. empire is provoking and stoking global 
conflict to keep feeding the Deep State military industrial complex. The
 Ukraine conflict was initiated by the U.S. in 2014 and is being used as
 a justification to fight Russia without getting our hands dirty.
Continuing to poke the nuclear armed bear, has the potential to 
escalate the conflict to a point of no return. Throwing fuel on the fire
 by provoking China over Taiwan’s independence is irrationally reckless 
and the mark of a desperate empire seeing the sun setting on its 76-year
 reign as the one global superpower, and willing to risk global war in a
 fruitless effort to remain king.
The U.S. can let its empire expire with a whimper (e.g. British 
Empire) or a bang. Based on their ham-handed, stumbling, absurd 
endeavors to maintain their dominance over the world, they have 
initiated global food and energy shortages, caused unbearable economic 
hardship upon the middle and lower classes, and have pushed the world to
 the brink of nuclear war with countries run by serious men. While we 
are supposedly led by an ancient fossil lost in a fog of dementia and 
unable to string two coherent sentences together, even with a 
teleprompter. Obama, the Deep State, and a plethora of diversity hire 
apparatchiks are really calling the shots.
The smile has faded on this empire of debt, delusion, denial, and 
destruction, just as it has on the barn near my house. The coming trials
 will require levels of courage, fortitude, and sacrifice which many 
might think they are not capable of summoning, but we have no choice. 
You can’t sit out Fourth Turnings. Sides will need to be chosen and life
 or death decisions made. The future of this country and the world hang 
in the balance.
Choosing your allies and forming local communities of like-minded 
people with the skills to survive and thrive in the world created after 
the coming conflict is resolved, is all you can do at this point. 
Preparation may not be enough, but not preparing guarantees a bad 
outcome for you and your family. Whatever you do, put absolutely no 
faith in any government solution to our predicament. They are the enemy 
and you can’t vote your way out of this.

I hope after this is over to see a fresh coat of white paint applied 
to that old barn and a brand-new yellow smiley face resurrected on the 
same spot, marking the start of a new High.