Why the Depp-Heard case still "matters," for now

 

My blog is currently undergoing a second full frontal assault from Singapore, but this time bringing in the reinforcements and generally sapping my motivation to do anything but wait it out and watch all these “hits” wipe-out the undermanned defensive line, which hightailed out of Dodge at the first sight of them. 

Throwing up the white flag, I thought I should talk about a few items of interest to me. Yesterday on the front page of the Seattle Times there was a story by Lauren Girgis about fentanyl, which naturally downplayed the role of China, portrayed users as ignorant “victims” and highlighted people with Spanish names as the evil-doers.

In Europe fentanyl is not as big a problem, but that is only because people there have “upgraded” to even more powerful opioids, like nitazene and benzimidazole; they can’t blame the “Mexicans” for that, and of course the principle source of these opioids is China. Think China doesn’t have a “master plan” to destabilize the West? Or is the government just incompetent? China stayed silent as Covid spread all over the world and killed millions—and they still refuse to admit they did anything "wrong."

But who cares about who is responsible for millions dying around the world or Trump promising to imprison his political "enemies" if  he is elected when you have the “kiss seen around the world”? "Fury" over the infamous “kiss” by the president of Spain’s soccer federation, Luis Rubiales, after Spain won the women’s world cup, is of course being fueled by English-speaking countries’ hypocritical puritanism and by radical activists and their shills in the media. I mean, I wouldn't have done it, but who knows in a Latin culture known for its "emotion" if people "think" before they do something in the joy of the moment.

The “victim” laughed it off at first, but naturally she felt pressured to conform to the new puritanism whose principle aim is turn anything sexual into a crime and destroying men who don’t treat women as they would other men (i.e. not kissing them, unless of course you are another man—unless of course you are a "powerful" man like Kevin Spacey). 

You think this is an "exaggeration"? When I was in college I happened to stumble into an auditorium with a gender activist/academic guest speaker named Catherine MacKinnon (not to be confused with the former SNL comedian), where I happened to be one of only two males present. Among other things, the lesbian MacKinnon "suggested" that all heterosexual sex was "rape"; this wasn't a "new" idea, since a previous misandrist guest speaker, Andrea Dworkin, made the same assertion. MacKinnon only seemed "concerned" about her proclamations escaping the room when during a question-and-answer segment she discovered the other male in the audience was a reporter for the local newspaper.

I admit the kiss appeared to be unexpected by the “victim” and probably was not the smartest thing to do in a poisonous environment. This is especially true now, when in order to expunge all trace of hypocrisy such as supporting proven liars and domestic abusers like Amber Heard, radicalized activists and people with an inflated sense of self-importance in the media come off like all these “Karens” you find on YouTube, a few of whom are lucky they are not black, because they might have been deemed “dangerous” and shot dead for violently resisting arrest; many are racists, but others show you what kind of people one suspects comprises a great many of those “MeToo” self-made “victims”:

 

I admit that the human race is drowning in examples of men for which the world would be better off if they were doing something else (Hitler wanted to be an  “artist,” and blamed Jewish art dealers for his failure). But do we need more women in powerful positions without accountability, like Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Annette Ziegler, who no longer leads a far-right majority that turned a once “progressive” state into a hillbilly backwoods, and like a petulant dictator is now engaging in partisan whimpering in the press and unilaterally attempting to change the rules of orderly process on the court? 

And what about Florida judge Aileen  Cannon, whose only qualification for her position is that she is a MAGA fanatic who for the second time has been assigned to the Trump classified documents case. It has been noted that Cannon has little understanding of jury trial procedure, and the right-wing majority on the 11^th Circuit Court felt it had no choice but to save its own credibility by offering a stinging rebuke of Cannon’s “opinions” in the first go-round of the documents case. Most observers were “surprised” that a judge with her lack of experience or competence was given the Trump case; one suspects there is a method to this “madness” to benefit Trump.

Meanwhile, over at House Inhabit, hosted by Jessica Reed Kraus who previously told us about Heard’s wild sex parties with billionaires and her frozen embryos with contributions from Elon Musk’s “donated” sperm, there is a new “blockbuster” posting about how Heard’s web of lies has ensnared many people who once they were caught, are apparently unable or unwilling to free themselves of her spell, almost wholly based on their need for Heard to be representative of their hypocritical radicalism; Kraus provides this graphic which seems a bit convoluted, but that’s probably the point:

 

Kraus' main point here concerns how corrupted the UK judicial process was in the Depp libel case, and that Judge Nicol had many “interested party” connections that made a fair hearing of Depp’s case all but impossible. We saw him allow Heard in what appeared to be violations of court rules to insinuate her false allegations into the trial (instead of forcing The Sun and Dan Wootton to prove their "innocence" based on the "facts" they had in hand), and allowed Heard to “update” her accusations to cover-up another lie exposed, while Depp’s evidence was ignored for being “biased.”

Reports like those from House Inhabit simply don’t get enough attention, and although I agree with Colonel Kurtz that it would be nice to move on from Depp-Heard, that means ignoring what Kraus warns us about that has obvious implications for similar cases that the shill media claims “damages” victim culture:

If you’ve been paying attention, perhaps you’ve noticed how the media is working strategically to frazzle our perception of a trial we witnessed between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard last year. Mainstream outlets are unfolding a calculated campaign to repair and reclaim Heard’s reputation by painting her as an unrequited victim of abuse and him as an abuser who “got away with it.” The Netflix documentary is the latest example; It offered nothing new or compelling — in fact it was decidedly boring — but showed exactly where the narrative is headed, to shift public opinion by planting doubt through big media productions and news conglomerates that are all influenced by the billionaires Heard is still conveniently tied to. 

While on twitter—or what is it now, “X”?—there is “Johnny Depp Love” where some fan has posted nearly 10,000 video clips and photos of Depp in his various successful enterprises, while Heard’s “fans” have to be content with her “goddess” looks (when she is wearing makeup and just had her latest Botox injection) since she isn’t doing much except living off Musk’s "child support" payments (tell me I’m wrong)--so finding “work” really isn’t a “problem” for her at the moment--and that constant pity-party whining by Eve Barlow and Kat Tenbarge and the like. How boring, but some people get off on that "feeling good about feeling bad" stuff.

Yeah, people like Lucy Morgan in Glamour think that “public opinion” is “finally turning” in Heard’s “favor,” although Morgan purposely glosses over the fact that  “documentaries” like the Netflix debacle are only representative of  the “public opinion” of a few self-proclaimed "fence-sitters" who are in fact Heard supporters in sheep's clothing; in reality hardly anyone watches them, and outside the pro-Heard shills who feel these documentaries  "justified" their ignorance of the facts, most of those who watched them only saw their own suspicions of the mainstream media justified. 

No, people in the know still have the voice of the demented, demon-possessed Heard tormenting Depp like his mother used to do ringing in their heads. While Depp shows genuine compassion here with someone the narcissistic Heard wouldn’t be caught dead being seen with…

 

…we remember her distressing the doctor and nurse of an infant just out of surgery in a hospital in Mexico after grabbing it from the arms of the nurse and holding it awkwardly, the doctor and nurse obviously wondering who the hell is this insane gringo speaking bad Spanish looking for a self-serving PR stunt photo-op and acting like she has anything to do with anything:

 

The reason why Heard is so “important” to the shill media and her supporters is because she lost in a high profile case, and something has to be done to "fix" that. `While I hate to break it to those people, the fact is that the vast majority in this world either don’t know, are vaguely aware or don’t really care, but the one problem for Heard supporters in and out of the mainstream media is that the only thing “newsworthy” about the case is that Depp won the U.S. trial, and all the rest is just white noise. 

Thus they need people to "listen" to them; whether people will listen or not is another matter. After all, a jury found unanimously in Depp’s favor, so these Heard shills must have missed something, and the jury wasn't buying as  “evidence” the “believe all women” mantra.

But as Kraus points out, that isn’t stopping Heard supporters from being persistently annoying. Perhaps this is in the hope that people will just say “whatever you say” and hope they will just shut-up and go away. However, they may still remember the few clips that the MSM deigned to show them, and wonder what was more “genuine”: Heard’s eye-rolling “tears” and hopelessly convoluted reimagining of the past told in contradictory tenses that only a pathological liar can create...

 

 

...or her sneering smugness not only during the trial when she called everyone else a "liar," but during her 2016 deposition, when Heard appeared to be anything but a PTSD "survivor":

 

 

Rather than willingly retell her "story," Heard reportedly had to be dragged in kicking and screaming in an effort to avoid having her lies exposed. The fact that Heard's version of events were short on "detail" when they should have been still fresh in her memory then only undercut her credibility later.

Meanwhile, we find in the UK people like musician Lily Allen who are wishing that Wootton overcomes his present troubles and finds “a place of happiness, peace and truth.” Oh god, what hypocrisy. Allen is another one of those feminist types who is dripping with self-importance and feels that what she calls “harassment” over her views is the reason she hasn’t been able to write “new” songs in a long time; her problem is more likely she can’t think of any more ways to repeat the same tired lines, although that isn’t a problem yet for Taylor Swift and her fans.

Allen also adds herself to a list of names of people she falsely claims were “abused” and “bullied”: Peaches Geldof died of a drug overdose that had nothing to do with anything save her own “issues” with drug abuse. Amy Winehouse was also a drug addict whose problems were self-created. Caroline Flack was the woman who couldn’t handle the truth that she was a domestic abuser, and apparently thought that committing suicide would “save” her "reputation" rather than be seen as an admission of guilt (you know, like Jeffrey Epstein). 

By the way, it also "amazes" me that a gay man like Wootton, a black man like Clarence Thomas, and a Jewish man like Stephen Miller all see the far-right as their personal "salvation" and turned themselves into corrupt bigots. Or maybe it doesn't amaze me all that much, because some people with victim complexes have this need to "prove" to their haters that they can hate even "better."

It is frustrating we live in a world like this where only the people who yell, scream and kick the loudest are the ones with the best chance of being “heard.” Even if it is just one person in the crowd who actually “believes,” the effect of gaslighting is just too powerful, and generally silences the rest who doubt what they are told. Anyone who dares to speak the truth can expect the usual list of pejoratives meant to shame them into submission or cancellation. It won’t end until we are all “equally” boring and stupid on someone else’s terms, meaning the end of thinking for one's self. 

Or we could follow the lead of the Japanese, who current statistics show that more than half of couples live in "sexless" marriages, 25 percent of young people today will likely never marry or have sex, and for those who have the "urge" for real sex and not masturbation, it is available from legal prostitutes operating out of what appear from the outside to be "coffee shops" for "walk-in service" at relatively inexpensive prices.

What goes around, comes around

 

As they say, what goes around comes around, and former KGB and FSB operative Vladimir Putin knows all the tricks, which is why during his regime anyone with a gripe about the way he is running things tends to fall out of windows—or in the case of Yevgeny Prigozhin, out of the sky. If in fact reports are true that Prigozhin did die, while a passenger in a model of aircraft that has a near perfect safety record, from what witnesses and U.S. intelligence say was an "unexplained" explosion—and Putin himself seems to be confirming his death—the only question is why it took so long, given Putin’s bloody proclivities.

At least one analyst believes Putin wanted to “smoke out” Prigozhin’s allies in the government before he made his move, but it also appears that he was targeting the Wagner Group as a threat to his regime, since the presumed dead also include Wagner founder Dmitry Utkin, and Wagner's logistical "mastermind," Valery Chekalov. Thus Putin literally decapitated the heads of the group, leaving it at the mercy of Putin's whims. Putin now presumably controls the resources in African countries where the Wagner group has caused mischief; Putin’s recent summits with African leaders also suggest as much.

All of this, of course, is just a fact of life in Russia, where people know if they do anything openly that isn’t approved by the regime, there is a good chance they will be arrested or killed, especially if it something captured by the media and can be disseminated publicly. When asked, "ordinary" Russians didn’t wonder why Prigozhin and his cohorts were not simply arrested and put on trial for treason; that’s just not done in Russia: if you do anything that could undermine Putin’s authority, you either fall out of windows or out of the sky. It is just a question of knowing better than to do something like that. There are those who believe, however, that it is only a matter of time when Putin's time is up as well, as Wagner fighters have taken to issuing threats against his life.

Of course in the U.S. people don’t generally fall out of windows if someone wants them to be “eliminated”—we have things like the “MeToo movement” and “cancel culture.” TUG recently revealed a story about how another accuser out of the woodwork named Sarah Brady has been hospitalized four times for mental illness attacks in which she presented a danger to both herself and others. It is easy to assume that her “victim” claims are entirely the result of her interpretations of the reaction of others to her behavior.

Naturally, these things are generally not reported by the mainstream media and certainly not by those with a political ax to grind, but at least in social media there is a bit of that “goes around, comes around” feeling. The mainstream media won’t tell you that Evan Rachel Wood suffers from some psychological defect that forced her to give-up custody of her son, because revelations that call into question her and her confederates claims of being “victimized” by Marilyn Manson would embarrass politicians who paraded her testimony to justify laws that aided false accusers like her and subverted the due process rights of the falsely accused.

But we know the truth, and unlike in Russia you won’t be arrested or killed for speaking the truth—especially when you have the facts on your side; you just have to stand your ground before the pathetic attacks of those who refuse to open their eyes for fear of being exposed themelves. 

Of course we like to assume that in this country—unless you belong to a mob family or a gang—“talking” won’t find you falling out of windows or out of the sky, but you never “know” for sure, do you? And even if people ‘know,” do they even care with all the "conspiracy theories" floating around that are mostly bullshit?

Take for example all those people who have died under “mysterious circumstances” who were allegedly related to some nefarious doings of Bill and Hillary Clinton at around the time he was governor of Arkansas. I’m not going to go through the whole list of those cases, which at worst seem merely “coincidental,” although it is “odd” that so many people—including a former governor—were convicted and jailed for fraud in Arkansas involving activities in which the Clintons at least had an “interest’ in. The fact that the Clintons were not ultimately found “guilty” of a crime in the Whitewater case likely had more to do with associates not willing to testify against a sitting president.

One case I will mention is that of Vince Foster, who allegedly committed suicide by gunshot in a Washington D.C. park.  We were told that he suffered from “depression”; he probably did, but the media doesn’t discuss what he was “depressed” about. His alleged suicide “note,” which was “discovered” torn-up in a briefcase while Clinton associates kept FBI agents at bay as they ransacked his office, was of questionable authenticity or value—except maybe to the Clintons, since its contents could be interpreted as Foster having a desire to unload his conscious rather than to kill himself.

After all, what we know is that Foster did not want to join the Clintons in the White House, but he was apparently “persuaded” under pressure to do so. No doubt they wanted to keep a close eye on him. Why? He was Hillary’s colleague at the Rose Law Firm, and their relationship was rumored to be something more than “business.” What “secrets” did he know, say, in regard to Whitewater? All we know is that we won’t know, because he died before he could “tell.” 

Another person who conveniently committed suicide (or so we are told), Jeffrey Epstein, was certainly of benefit to many people (including Bill) who preferred he take his “secrets” to the grave rather than in open court. Still, if there was any “comes around” for the Clintons, it was that few actually liked or trusted Hillary, which accounted for her “shocking” defeats in 2008 and 2016 after the mainstream media tried to gaslight voters into doing their "duty" and make "history."

In another “what comes around, goes around” story, today’s Washington Post editorial is about the Chinese government’s efforts to conceal the reality of the COVID outbreak until it was far too late to stop it, ignoring its own transmission reporting standards under threat of punishment to the point that it lost all sense to how far the virus had spread—and the government knew the claims that it made to the world were lies, but it faked the numbers as “true” based on deliberately faulty reporting that they knew put their own people--and the world--at risk:

What happened in Wuhan was not a single slip-up or misjudgment. It was a result of how the system works, demanding fealty and imposing control in all directions. It was a deliberate choice to order doctors not to wear masks that could have saved lives; to slow-walk the reporting and thus impede early warning; to shut down communications with the public; and to instruct doctors not to write anything down about the spreading danger. The consequence was death and misery for the Chinese people and the rest of the world on an unimaginable scale.

I suppose in this case what “comes around” is that no one trusts the Chinese to tell the truth about anything, that they are just a self-serving bunch for whom the rest of the world is just a cesspool to throw their toxic sewage and other garbage in. The same can be said about Donald Trump and those who joined his clown show, and are now finding out that if you shit on the world, and it will dump back on you, except even worse.

The "gift" of thinking

 

We live in a world where certain people, once they have been given the power to “speak” and use it to destroy lives out of pure malicious intent, have created a world where even after "minor" stumbles—say, throwing in their entire stake betting on a pathological liar—they hope that given time, people will “forget” the truth and “remember” the lies if they push them long enough. A world based on lies and self-serving fantasy where there is no justice save for that which they reserve for themselves is the kind they want us to believe is a “better” world.

Of course, you can’t alienate the co-sponsors of whatever fantasy you live in by making them feel “guilty” about that world they’ve created. Take for instance Rosanna Arquette, who went from what director Mike Hodges says in his audio commentary on the Arrow Video Blu-ray release of Black Rainbow (a rarely seen film even then, but definitely an interesting psychological horror/thriller) as the “It Girl” of the time, but now who is what Megan Reynolds in Jezebel referred to as the “memba her?” girl. 

Rosanna hasn’t done much of interest to me since 2000, according to my video collection and IMDB, which was the year The Whole Nine Yards was released, which I recently added the Blu-ray version to my collection. There are a lot of actors who made their name for themselves back in the Eighties during the “Brat Pack” years, but among the female actors (are we not allowed to use the term “actress” nowadays?), Arquette hung around a wee-bit longer than most, but in today’s boring politicized atmosphere, there just aren’t that many roles available for quirky (older) women anymore. 

But not that Arquette hasn’t tried to stay “relevant,” or at least until 2019, when she locked her twitter account after receiving “nasty” replies to this tweet:

 

I don't know how much "thinking" went into that. When I first read that, I thought she was just being another self-indulgent white woman upset that she could be accused of “racism” when she was another—what was that song John Lennon wrote to "impress" that self-absorbed Yoko with? “Woman is Nigger of the World”????

Admittedly there was “context” to Arquette’s political commentary (after hopping on the Harvey Weinstein accusation bandwagon), frequently making anti-Trump comments (calling him a racist), and referring to children housed in “concentration camps" on the border before deleting that tweet (why?) and that she would “never stand for the flag” anymore.   

Arquette claimed that the FBI had “advised” her to lock her twitter account after people questioned her “sincerity,” although like that Evan Rachel Wood FBI letter, many believe she made that up too. There seemed to be a lack of "courage" in her "convictions."

But all that would be in her future. On the Roger Ebert website earlier this year, Caroline Madden commemorated the 40^th anniversary of John Sayles Baby It’s You, which she describes as “underappreciated” and “one of the most genuine coming-of-age stories” set in the 1960s amid social change.  Madden further asserts that “It is one of the few films to explore the liminal space between high school and adulthood” as “kids” who may have once been best “friends” or something more personal, but where one party no longer even knows, or wants to be seen in the company with, someone who is not moving on to “higher” circles, say into college.

It may also have racial aspects: a Hispanic high school friend of Jewish white nationalist Stephen Miller recounted receiving a phone call from Miller, who said they couldn’t be “friends” anymore; Miller had come under the influence of far-right extremism of a variety in which veneration of race "purity" did not permit “fraternization” with non-whites, and particularly with “Mexicans.”

In the absence of such paranoid thinking, high school is supposedly a place where individuals who inhabit disparate places on the social and economic scale are "equal," or at least have an equal chance to "succeed" in the world. Thus the most “popular” or those occupying the higher social rungs may not be the brightest bulbs in school; they might be star athletes, the “prettiest” girls or merely the best dressers:

 

“Tough guys” and “mean girls” may hold as much “respect” as those at the top of the academic class. Drug dealers, delinquents, truants and low achievers all still have the same “chance” in life if they choose to get their act together; they may even be "cool" in their own way. The only people who seem to have no “place” are those who don’t belong to any group, are isolated and have no friends.

Sayles wrote in American Film that in Baby high school “is the last bastion of true democracy in our society, where you have classes and eat lunch with the guy who’s going to be picking up your garbage later in life, to the year after, when she goes to college and runs into the fact that he’s going nowhere. It’s about class in America, and where the divisions are. It’s about the how certain things are possible in high school, but when people enter the real world, they become impossible.”

Madden notes that even though Sheik is beginning to realize he is a dressed-up “nobody” washing dishes, a lip-syncing “singer” and petty thief, Jill in college realizes that in a way she has also become something of a “nobody” too among superstars-in-their-own-minds, no longer at the top of her class academically or socially, or the star of school plays  (she is told to “forget” everything she was taught in high school drama class and is left off the cast list); the male Princeton student only thinks of her as an “easy” lay and "shoots" her down when she is forced to ask him if he wants to go to a dance with her, and she ends up with the hippie crowd smoking pot, and up in smoke along are her fantasies about being “special.” 

And yet even then Jill is still thinks she is far “above” Sheik socially which she tries to "explain" to him...

 

...and despite having the “prom” dance they were denied in high school at the film’s end (which Jill is OK with because Sheik would be the "best-looking" and "best dressed" guy there, and she will "impress" her classmates), we know they both know they will likely never meet again, because "thinking" causes this awareness of "social status." But even her classmate and the other Princeton guy (on the right) who didn’t shoot her down can’t help but notice that, in the absence of "thinking," these two would be happy:

 

In the between all of that Sheik, having lost his “singing” gig (which Jill, upon seeing it, was less impressed with than were the older people in the bar) and quitting his dishwasher job, is told that all he wants in life is to get married and have kids. What is wrong with that, he wants know. After all, wasn’t that the way of the world forever? Except for how human beings sheltered, fed and claimed “territory,” they are no different than other animals, right? Of course, some humans just prefer to be "lone wolves" and not have to be concerned about how other humans  "rate" them on the social scale, but they don't really "count," or are even deemed "dangerous."

But humans have always had this “problem”: they can “think” these "deep" thoughts that makes some of them think they are more "special" than others of their species, this need for those on the so-called "higher" social strata to "impress" their "peers," an issue those on the "common worker"  strata don't seem to trouble themselves with; after all, to warehouse workers, those working in the office don't do any "real" work. 

Other animal species, according to Walt Whitman, seem perfectly "happy" not being burdened with questions of social status or the need to impress others of their kind with the ownership of "things" or trying to justify their existence:

 

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and

self-contain'd,

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of

owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of

years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

 

It isn't such a great thing to "think" too much (I think), especially if it makes you unhappy. Rosemary Kennedy was developmentally "slow," but mainly in comparison to her siblings, which made her "aggressively unhappy" according to one relative; although told she suffered from a serious case of depression because she couldn't "keep up," her father, Joe Kennedy, eventually decided that a lobotomy would "help"; instead it merely turned her into someone who could no longer think or have dreams (or control her own bladder). 

Rosemary lived another 64 years like this under the care of nuns in Jefferson, Wisconsin at the specially-built for her "Kennedy Cottage." Was she "unhappy" during those years? Only if she had the ability to "think," which was unlikely since after the "surgery" she had the mental and physical capacity of a two-year-old. Of course she was never allowed the "choice."

Meanwhile, in Baby Jill’s “dream” is to become an actress (which is a kind of fantasy world as well), but she can’t even get on the cast roster, let alone the lead role. When asked to “emote” from anything in her past experience, the only thing that means anything to her is her relationship with this “crazy guy” in high school, whose “future”—if he can stay out of jail—is to become a garbage man like his father.

So we don't really know where Jill is going, and it may not be anywhere much higher than where Sheik is going within their separate social sets. According to a Washington Post story, also posted on thesmallbusinessblog.net a week ago, only 27 percent of college graduates work in a field in their degree, and 34 percent are working in jobs that do not even require a college degree.

The accumulation and use of money, if your brain is wired that way, can make fantasies come true, although money itself can be a fantasy if you are not very good at saving it, or have enough to invest in stocks that may or may not rise in price, or waste it on lotto tickets hoping for that big pay day that probably will never happen.

According to a Brookings Institute story in 2019, American households held assets and wealth in the triple-digit trillions, which was more than five times as much as the total goods and services produced in the U.S. in a year. “Almost three-quarters of aggregate household assets are in the form of financial assets—namely stocks and mutual funds, retirement accounts, and closely-held businesses. Real estate makes up the vast majority of nonfinancial assets.” China, by comparison, produces nearly double the goods and services as the U.S., meaning that its wealth is locked up in more “tangible” assets. 

But then again, money isn't "everything," at least not until you are looking in rear view mirror of life. According to Fortune, while Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are watching their billions disappear by being busy giving away their wealth in their philanthropic enterprises, others—like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, have seen their mainly stock-based wealth take relatively huge hits of late during the “rout” of tech stocks; last year, Zuckerberg saw his Meta stock nearly halve in value. 

And stock-based wealth isn’t “real” money anyways; it has value on paper, but it isn’t actual “cash,” which is the only real “liquid” asset that the vast majority of people in this country have, and in a country with an increasing wealth gap, just some more than others. A high percentage of households don't have enough "liquid" assets to hold them over for  3 months in an income emergency, and 40 percent can't cover a $400 bill at any given moment, unless they have a credit card that isn't already maxed-out.

Anyways, I’m sitting here watching this man talking to himself (or to some unseen companion), gesticulating with these weird hand gestures, obviously someone who has mental health issues. I suspect, however, that within his fantasy “world” he is perfectly content, somehow. After all, he still has that terrible "gift" of "thinking."

In the 2001 film The Emperor’s New Clothes, which posits that Napoleon escaped from St. Helena with a lookalike left in his place, but after returning to Paris, he insists that he is the real Napoleon but almost everyone he tells this to thinks he's nuts. He is taken on a visit to an insane asylum populated by men who imagine they are Napoleon, which makes him decide he’s happier living the simple life with a woman who prefers him just the way he is "now."

After all, what’s the point of living if not to live "happy"? We've got too many people in this world who live to be unhappy (Amber Heard, gender and race politics activists), the "feeling good about feeling bad" syndrome. Me, I might not be as "bright" as my half-siblings, but I never thought they were "better" than me, and I’m doing what I want I always wanted to do (just not being paid for it), so I am not particularly unhappy, which you can't avoid when you have to think too much. 

If you "think" about it, doesn’t everybody, in some way or the other, whether rich or poor, do essentially the same thing? They wake in the morning, they pretend to be somebody that means something to somebody other than themselves for a few hours, maybe shoot the breeze for a few hours with friends at a bar or someplace, go home and hope that someone is still there if they have a family, and go to sleep. Isn’t that the reason why people don’t really care what happens to this planet, and whatever happens, happens? But then again, if we didn't have the "mania" of owning "things" to make us "happy," then at least the planet won't dry up as quickly.

Well, we want to pretend our lives to “mean” something more than that, don’t we? I suppose that is the curse of being given the “gift” of “thinking.”