— Here’s What I Think

Well, in about 18 hours, I begin my long journey home via a big jet airliner. I’ll have a couple of stops along the way, so stay tuned for reportage from those places before I emerge back home in Pattaya, Thailand, in about a week.

Been asked by a few people—so, what do I think of America after having been gone for nearly four years to the day? Still gathering thoughts on that, and you can expect those in a future Here’s What I Think, or otherwise.

For now, let’s dive into a topic that has implications across the spectrum of human experience. Rule number one for any purveyor of any story—be it a parable, allegory, or narrative—boils down to the essence of human experience: the creation or synthesis of limits. This is child’s play because everything in existence is limited. That’s life. You want it? Then get while the gettn’s good. It might not be there tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year. Hell, it might vanish within the hour.

So, you combine various instruments of synthetic or contrived scarcity with calls to action. Whether they beckon you to buy, participate, rant, vote, or whatever else under the sun, these tactics serve a purpose. They awaken a thirst, a hunger which you’re compelled to satisfy and quench before that window of opportunity slams shut.

Scarcity. Limitation.

They’re not just sales tactics. They’re the bedrock of existence. Everything worth a damn operates on this principle. Recognize it. Understand it. Use it to your advantage. Don’t get played.

Let’s cut through the nonsense and address the colossal, blazing elephant in the room – the sun. It’s so damn critical to our existence that to overlook it is to play the fool on a cosmic scale. Everything we are, everything we do, hinges on that nuclear inferno hanging in the void. It’s a force so overwhelming, it makes all other concerns seem like trivial footnotes.

So, what do manipulative mutherfoocking charlatans do? They ignore this glaring truth. They divert your gaze to the trivial, the insignificant—it’s a classic misdirection. Think astrology. Instead of confronting the colossal impact of daily actions and choices, these snake oil salesmen would have you obsessing over celestial alignments. The orbit of Jupiter? The cycle of the moon? Please. It’s a circus act.

And here’s a reality check for you: Your own movements in a room, hell, your decision to stand on a chair, exert a more immediate and tangible gravitational influence on you than the distant meanderings of planets and stars. It’s absurd. It’s like claiming the flutter of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas.

Don’t fall for it. Don’t be duped by the peddlers of minutiae. Focus on the real, the tangible, the things that genuinely dictate the quality of your life. The sun is the ultimate source, and it’s about time we started acting like it.

… It’s a laughable con. This idea that petroleum and its by-products, let’s just call it crude oil and all its spawn, are finite and on the brink of extinction. ‘Peak oil,’ ever heard of it? It’s this mythical, fabricated milestone where oil extraction, refinement, and processing supposedly hits their all-time zenith on Earth. And because we’re told this resource is finite, there’s an impending doom awaiting us—akin to the prophesied Second Coming or the apocalyptic endgame from climate change hysteria.

“Any day now,” they say. Yet, as the years slide by without apocalyptic fanfare, the soothsayers of scarcity recalculate. They churn out fresh prophecies, each underpinned by “new science,” “fresh revelations,” or some other convenient adjustment. Notice, though, when these updates roll out, there’s never an admission of prior bullshittery. No, it’s always pitched as “We’ve got new data, and this time we’re spot on.” And what happens? The masses eat it up, again and again.

The collective amnesia of humanity astounds me. It’s not like world history is locked away in some vault. It’s out there, largely open to perusal. Granted, it’s often tainted by the victor’s pen, but one truth stands out in the historical tapestry: the endless parade of conjured crises, the bogeymen that never quite lived up to their terrifying billing, have repeatedly goaded the masses into folly. Groups, communities, entire nations—duped into dancing to the tune of fear-mongers.

So, what’s the real play here? Control. It’s about keeping you on your toes, waiting for the next big scare, the next crisis that demands you surrender a little more freedom for the illusion of safety. But it’s all smoke and mirrors—a sleight of hand to distract you from the fact that scarcity is often a manufactured crisis, a tool to manipulate markets and minds alike.

Stay sharp. Question everything. Especially the doomsday clock that seems to reset with every failed prophecy. Reality check: the world is vast, resources are plentiful, and human ingenuity is limitless. Don’t buy into the fear. Don’t be a pawn in their game. Take control of your narrative, and live on your own terms.

Yes, oil is “limited.” So is the amount of water in the oceans, sands on the beaches and deserts, dirt on the land, and ice at elevation and at the poles. Air in the air.

… Here’s the deal. The elements that make up oil, petroleum, gas—they’re cosmic. Discovered on other planets, moons, even in our own solar system. One moon circling Saturn, Titan, is dripping with more natural energy than Earth. And guess what? No dinosaur fossils up there.

“Fossil fuels.” Clever, isn’t it? Implies dead dinosaurs fuel your SUV. How many dinosaurs do you think there were? They’re talking about all organic material—plants, plankton, all that jazz. But that’s not the picture they paint. It fits their scarcity scare-tactic narrative like a glove.

What’s been happening—forever—is that the elements forming crude oil are being cooked up deep within Earth. Constant manufacturing, courtesy of pressure and heat. Is it running out? No sign of that. And technology? It’s sidestepping the need for it anyway.

Let’s talk progress. Industrial revolution to now—dirty start, right? But necessity breeds innovation. Everyone benefits. Wealth grows, and cleaner, more efficient methods emerge. But the political left? They’ve got their narrative. They paint us as Earth’s destroyers, greedy exploiters dancing on the graves of the marginalized. It’s their take on the religious right’s original sin.

It’s all a ruse, a ploy to grip your gaze. H.L. Mencken nailed it when he said, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Now, for a dose of reality. Tucker Carlson sat down with a climate scientist who’s got the chops to cut through the nonsense. This guy puts the fearmongers in short pants. Give that interview a listen. Reality check, delivered.

Don’t let them guilt-trip or scare you into wasting your one and only life on a bunch of go-nowhere bullshit that nobody could do anything about anyway—even if the scarcity were real (focus on the sun, instead…and soak up some while you’re at it).

Until the next one…