patrick.net

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/signs-thursday-november-2-2023-c

For as long as I can remember, people have predicted the imminent Fall of America, comparing current events to the Fall of the Roman Empire. But I never credited it much, since the Roman Empire was falling for centuries, taking longer to clear itself off the world’s stage than America has even been hanging around bothering everybody.

But I’ve been thinking more about Falls recently. We sure seem to be on a civilizational speedway bypass of some kind, racing past the Romans going about 90 mph.

For example, I wonder whether the Emperor ever tried defunding the Roman Police Departments in Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and the Empire’s other big cities? I wonder whether the Empire deliberately knocked down parts of Hadrian’s Wall so that the barbarian hordes could clamber through more conveniently, not having to do so much climbing, per se, and so they could enter in larger, much more comfortable traveling groups? Et cetera, ad infinitum.

I’m thinking: probably not. Romans might have lacked A.I. and “smart” phones, and at times their emperors may have been crazier than sprayed roaches, but despite those handicaps the Romans were still smart enough not to do any of those birdbrained things like we are.

I know for a fact the Romans weren’t flying the barbarians all over the Empire, putting them up in hotels, and handing them $2,400-a-month EBT cards for doing nothing. I mean, they literally couldn’t have. They were good at war and plumbing, but the Romans never even considered using airplanes and fiat money to get to the end even faster.

Are the Barbarians inside the gates?

A couple highly-suggestive items popped up on my social feeds yesterday, which seemed to me much like signs of the times. At minimum, I think they show where people’s heads are at these days. We have transcended disbelief and anger and are entering some kind of apocalyptic acceptance phase.

The first example was a tweet from usually-secular Human Events editor Jack Posobeic (2.3 million followers), in a video clip interviewing someone about the Antichrist.

Shortly after spotting that one, I discovered a brand-new video podcast from Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk (1.2 million subscribers), interviewing the excellent, pro-America, Calvary Chapel Pastor Jack Hibbs … about how to recognize we’re in the End Times. It’s a good interview, actually. But it is telling about America’s psychology.

Nero was fucked up...so basically we have MILLIONS of Neros in various flavors now.

We are already under color revolution foreign occupancy by the foreign occupied foreign city state of Washington DC. They have already decided the route and course of the destruction of the Republic, including the various infiltrations and imported militia types.

There are going to be false flags along those lines, count on it, the playbooks are well known now to anybody with half a brain.

https://theamericansun.substack.com/p/2024-year-in-review-myth20c-ep284

Plutarch, who lived in a Greek province during the height of the Roman Empire, is widely regarded for his biographies of great leaders in the ancient world. In his work on Tiberius Gracchus, a Roman politician killed for his advocacy of land reform, Plutarch wrote, “The rich men of the neighborhood contrived to get these lands again into their possession, under other people's names, and at last would not stick to claim most of them publicly in their own. The poor, who were thus deprived of their farms, were no longer either ready, as they had formerly been, to serve in war or careful in the education of their children; insomuch that in a short time there were comparatively few freemen remaining in all Italy, which swarmed with workhouses full of foreign-born slaves. These the rich men employed in cultivating their ground of which they dispossessed the citizens.” Tonight, in review of the events of 2024, we discuss the many parallels between the American and Roman empires, in particular as it pertains to the use of foreign labor at the expense of its own citizens, and the continual destabilizing effects it has wrought on the people, politics and culture of the broader Western world.

Patrick says

last would not stick to claim most of them publicly in their own. The poor, who were thus deprived of their farms,

Investors buying up most of the homes.

DOGEWontAmountToShit says

Investors buying up most of the homes.

Are you talking about single family dethatched homes? Around here, apartments have always been owned by corporations and some of the smaller SFH "dropout" homes are owned by small firms or small-time investors. No corporations here own swaths of neighborhood housing. Is that different where your live?

HeadSet says

Are you talking about single family dethatched homes? Around here, apartments have always been owned by corporations and some of the smaller SFH "dropout" homes are owned by small firms or small-time investors. No corporations here own swaths of neighborhood housing. Is that different where your live?

https://luckboxmagazine.com/topics/is-blackrock-really-buying-up-homes/

According to that Blackrock article, Blackrock invests in companies that own about 61,000 homes. Blackrock is not currently out buying up houses that were privately owned.
https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/newsroom/setting-the-record-straight/buying-houses-facts

HeadSet says

According to that Blackrock article, Blackrock invests in companies that own about 61,000 homes. Blackrock is not currently out buying up houses that were privately owned.

Yeah, never got that narrative. I would have seen it in my real estate days. 90% of real estate deals are between private parties. RESIDENTIAL. 5+ units are commercial. That's what Blackrock buys. If you buy 40 townhomes, that's a commercial deal. You buy the land and develop it as well. They aren't buying homes one off. That would be a massive waste of $$$$.

HeadSet says

According to that Blackrock article, Blackrock invests in companies that own about 61,000 homes. Blackrock is not currently out buying up houses that were privately owned.
https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/newsroom/setting-the-record-straight/buying-houses-facts

So what? They and others are doing this whether by proxy or directly.

WookieMan says

Yeah, never got that narrative. I would have seen it in my real estate days

Again, your anecdotal 'my real estate days' doesn't refute what is really going on.

WookieMan says

You buy the land and develop it as well. They aren't buying homes one off. That would be a massive waste of $$$$.

They buy the smaller firms/individuals that do. Many small investors set up LLCs that 'own' the homes and the big boys buy the LLCs up. Just like the bulk of mortgages get bundled up.

So on public records and RE transacrions, it is not obvious. LLC purchases are not RE transactions. They are fast and cheap to conduct, too. Until recently, as they having been also buying up huge portions of new development projects at a volume discount. Entire neighborhoods.

This has been extensively posted on PatNet and on the news. Where have you been?

Joy could hardly be more wrong. I read "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" and a bunch of original books from the Roman era.

The biggest problem was such extreme consolidation of wealth at the top that no one else gave a shit about the empire. Massive farms (latifundia) were worked by slaves, creating unemployment among free Roman citizens. Soldiers were forced into debt by their service for Rome.

Because no Roman cared enough to fight for Rome anymore, the elite imported and paid foreign diversity hires to be soldiers, especially German mercenaries. The German mercenaries eventually took over.

Currently, we also have extreme consolidation of wealth at the top and impoverishment of the former middle class. This time it's mainly a result of outsourcing to China and insourcing criminal alien labor, again essentially slave classes who work for the elite. The next step will be to actively recruit criminal aliens into the US military to replace Americans. I can imagine that a lot of those will be sympathetic to the Mexican cartels, and will use their position to take over.

I think the solutions are:

- strong borders
- mass deportations
- big tariffs on China
- abolition of the Fed
- silver currency by weight of pure metal alone, no "dollars"
- policies which deliberately lower land and house prices to encourage family formation
- banning AIPAC, which is a pernicious foreign influence on Congress

Patrick says

- banning AIPAC, which is a pernicious foreign influence on Congress

How can you ban an organization whose donations come from US Citizens?

Let's ban organizations that take any foreign financing - from individuals OR foreign groups OR Domestic Groups that received any money from a foreigner, foreign group, or group that received $1 in foreign money (you wouldn't believe how many EU Censorship groups get EU money to interfere in the USA, esp. pro-Censorship aka "Democracy")

With no lobbying by washing it through lawyer guilds too as a "Registered Foreign Agent". Only US Citizens can donate soft or hard campaign money or hire lobbyists.

Also restore the Smith-Mundt Act

Yellow. Everything is downstream from the Income Tax & Fed.

AmericanKulak says

How can you ban an organization whose donations come from US Citizens?

Nominal US citizens whose primary loyalty seems to be to Israel and who frequently have an Israeli passport.

We should have no dual citizenship and no lobbying Congress on behalf of foreign countries, unless openly and by representatives of that country.

AmericanKulak says

How can you ban an organization whose donations come from are laundered through US Citizens?

Fixed it for you.

Patrick says

The next step will be to actively recruit criminal aliens into the US military to replace Americans. I can imagine that a lot of those will be sympathetic to the Mexican cartels, and will use their position to take over.

Might already be happening:

https://x.com/amuse/status/1916601148695351502

TdA gang members employed more than twelve armed active duty US soldiers to protect their underground club engaged in human and drug trafficking in Colorado Springs. Army CID has custody of the soldiers working for the designated terrorists.

HeadSet says

AmericanKulak says
How can you ban an organization whose donations come from are laundered through US Citizens?

Fixed it for you.

Should be easy to prove with bank transfers and hard numbers. Of course, it it was happening, Paleocons, Hamass Supporters, etc. would have found it long ago. See below.

We know, for example, that European based NGOs give money to US NGOs that then give money to lobbyist groups.

Patrick says

Nominal US citizens whose primary loyalty seems to be to Israel and who frequently have an Israeli passport.

Got numbers on that? Do they ALL have Israeli passports? What does the 1st Amendment say about having political opinions, of which foreign policy is a part of?

I'm all in favor of ending dual citizenship and requiring people to surrender any and all other loyalties as a requirement of getting US citizenship. Or being denaturalized if they refuse after being warned to give up citizenship elsewhere.

If anything, it's always been non-Israeli Jews giving money to Israel, rather than Israeli Jews giving money to Jews outside Israel.

We also need to ban foreign governments and their NGOs from giving money to Public Universities, and requiring any University that gets $1 of federal funds or takes federal student loans to fully publish all foreign donations down to the penny.

Which will say a lot about Qatar and CCP, who are making sure every student thinks Shi'apocalypse Twelve Islam is about peace, but Israel is secretly pulling the strings by telling the colleges what Islamicist professors to hire and to make Islam Is Great 101 part of the mandatory core curriculum.

And of course paying the tuition year after year of 14 and 17 year student-activists with forever visas that never earn a degree in all that time but spend all their time 'on campus' engaging in agitprop

We should also ban State propaganda from the USA, like Al Jezeera, as well as reimpose the Smith Act banning the USG from propagandizing Americans.

States aren't people and aren't citizens, so they have no 1st Amendment rights.

Patrick says

We should have no dual citizenship and no lobbying Congress on behalf of foreign countries

AmericanKulak says

We should also ban State propaganda from the USA, like Al Jezeera, as well as reimpose the Smith Act banning the USG from propagandizing Americans.

Patrick says

Patrick says

We should have no dual citizenship and no lobbying Congress on behalf of foreign countries

And the BBC and CBC! Ha!

Actually, I'd prefer a every 30-minute mandatory "Station Identification" like the radio, but "This podcast/stream is sponsored by the Government of UK/Qatar/Russia/Canada " FCC rule.

For example:
"And that was the widow of Hassan Nassrallah, calling for the death of Infidels and celebrating yet another attack of righteous Jihad on the USS Atlantic Freezer in the Red Sea while thanking Russia for helping Assad all these years. This broadcast is sponsored by the Government of the Russian Federation. All opinions thereof can be considered the opinions of the Kremlin ."

Transparency is always better than censorship. But the USG should be banned from interior-facing broadcast propaganda.

What happened with @bubbabeefcake ?

MolotovCocktail says

What happened with bubbabeefcake ?

He had a four ignore limit.

Ceffer says

MolotovCocktail says

What happened with bubbabeefcake ?

He had a four ignore limit.

Huh?

MolotovCocktail says

Huh?

Joke. He skipped after he got four ignores, couldn't stand the heat.

Ceffer says

MolotovCocktail says

Huh?

Joke. He skipped after he got four ignores, couldn't stand the heat.

Pffft

He's very welcome back any time.

AmericanKulakMaximumTrumper says

Yellow. Everything is downstream from the Income Tax & Fed.

Oops, I at them all!!!

MolotovCocktail says

have MILLIONS of Neros in various flavors now.

Roman Empire stretched out and thin. Also had a lot of immigrants and too diverse.

People became more lazy and less committed to support the empire and incompetency set in like with failing infrastructure and a weak army. They lost their zeal like they had when it was the Roman Republic.

Eventually the center of gravity as far as power shifted to Constantinople (now Istanbul). At least the empire technically existed until around 1430 AD when it fell to the Ottoman Turks.

I'm not sure how that applies in the USA as technology can help a lot like with cleaning up water, air, etc. and improvement in agriculture / food production, as well as we occasionally get someone like Reagan and Trump to prevent the figurative ship from sinking.

.