Posted on 02/06/2025 7:53:14 AM PST by Starman417
Yesterday, the Washington Post ran a remarkable story headlined, “DOGE broadens sweep of federal agencies, gains access to health payment systems.” In other words, after exposing the Deep State’s regime-change operation, DOGE is sprinting into the Swampy engine room: the CDC and Medicare / Medicaid Services, the domestic versions of USAID, how the Blob effectuates its aims here at home.
It’s impossible to overestimate the revolutionary significance of the abolition of USAID and its poisonous children. Emerging from the fog of bureaucratic and political war, we see dimly the rough outlines of the Golden Era that Candidate Trump promised, a sketch of a promise connecting waste, fraud, and abuse to a terminally ill global culture, or at least a stagnant culture arrested in time, a culture frozen in amber, a culture that has bafflingly and terrifyingly been wasting away for decades.
But at long last, our amber prison is cracking.
The more we learn, the clearer it becomes: the scandalous, quasi-governmental USAID agency might be the most audacious and destructive fraud in human history. That is not hyperbole. It is fully justified, even at this point.
Setting aside that we’ve only glimpsed the windswept tip of the rotten iceberg—and ignoring the shrieking outrage from legions of panicked leftists suggesting the scheme’s vast scale—we’ve learned a singular fact making USAID’s scandal uniquely monstrous and historic: the scope of its seditious harm is provably worldwide.
Never before has a single entity —a chimeric entity known by many names: the Swamp, the MIC, the Blob, the Deep State— managed to harm the entire world for decades, its barbed tentacles poisonously caressing every man, woman, and child on the planet.
Let me show you something interesting.
In October, 2023, the New York Times quietly ran a lone story about one of the most perplexing truths of post-millennial human existence. It bore the simple but misleading headline, “Why Culture Has Come to a Standstill.” Misleading, because of course the article never actually explained why. But never mind that.
The Times’ ponderous article spent about six pages warming up to its theme. But, “We are now,” the Times finally explained, “almost a quarter of the way through what looks likely to go down in history as the least innovative, least transformative, least pioneering century for culture since the invention of the printing press.”
Least, least, least. Since the printing press.
But why? What, or who, is holding the culture back? Global culture has indeed been stalled, a sociological failure, winning only at participation. You might now begin the whataboutism. What about X? What about Venmo? What about AI? What about Elon’s rocket ships? Stand by. Those gadgets are either part of the problem or exceptions proving the point.
Our modern world is populated by high revision numbers, stratospheric sequel counts, and recycled, geriatric celebrities. We check our iPhone Sixteen —now with three cameras— to find out when Need for Speed Ten starts, and then buy tickets online for an octogenarian Rolling Stones concert. In 2022, the hit Netflix show Stranger Things — a futuristic sci-fi series set back in the 1980’s — and in its season four — featured Kate Bush’s 1985 single Running Up That Hill. The 40-year-old song hit the top 10 in 34 countries.
It’s endless recycling. And it’s not normal.
There are many examples, but perhaps the most obvious symptom of cultural freeze is stalled fashion. The handful of writers calling out stuck culture focus on how distinct was each decade leading up to the Millennium, right before the Patriot Act passed in 2001. Tracing backwards, the cultural evolution trend holds. But from the 90’s forward, zip. Zero. Nada.
In 2020, writer Paul Skallas observed, “If you time travel back to 2007 wearing what you are now, people wouldn't know you're from the future.” They might notice your phone had more cameras clunkily stuck on the back than their phones did. That’s about it.
What about music? Did you know that the market for new music market is shrinking? All the growth in the music market comes from old songs. Today’s list of the most downloaded tracks on iTunes is packed with band names from the previous millennium. So-called “catalog music” —songs older than 18 months— is now over 70% of music streamed in the U.S.
Walk into any restaurant, grocery store, or mall, and you’ll hear background tunes from the 70’s and 80’s. Old music dominates the U.S. market. We aren’t getting anywhere. Until the eighties, DJs called a 20-year-old song a “Golden Oldy.”
But the old music is so ubiquitous now they quietly retired the label “oldy.”
Paul Skallas explained it like this:
If you are under the age of 30 you may think things are normal. But to someone who has lived 3 decades or more you may notice something odd: we haven’t had a shift like we did in the past. Culture is frozen. Throughout the 20th century we had changes almost every decade. Changes in fashion, in music, in aesthetics, hairstyles, style of comedy, television shows and movies. If I show you a photo or play you a song from the 20th century, you’d probably be able to guess the decade. It was that clean of a break.It’s almost like someone is controlling the art, music, and fashion industry, keeping it right where it is, thank you. No changes allowed. Or put another way, nothing is allowed that isn’t carefully controlled.But I haven’t felt that change since the mid 2000s.
USAID didn’t just export regime change. It exported cultural control, a worldwide bureaucratic freeze that ensured only “approved” ideas, artists, and innovations could break through. We weren’t just ruled; we were programmed.
Another excellent and obvious example is the corporate news. By now, everyone has seen this mockingbird media clip, which made the rounds last year:
According to the Columbia Journalism Review, USAID supported 6,200 journalists, 707 news outlets and 279 media sector civil society organizations in 30 different countries. According to the British Broadcasting Company itself, USAID was one of its ‘top 10 donors:”
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net ...
Excellent article.
“DOGE’s task is like finding every star in the galaxy—endless.
Before this is over DOGE will have referred to DOJ thousands of cases of corruption—and they will still just have scratched the surface.
The dirty little secret about the Biden pardons—for every dirtball he pardoned he left a thousand corrupt Deep State creeps hanging out to dry.”
Quite right. I know how deep the swamp truly is, and it’s probably an impossible, insurmountable feat to completely drain it. But at least Trump is making a dent and a good start, eh? And who knows... perhaps the trend will catch on... and linger into the next (JD Vance) presidency.
Agreed—this is a twelve year Trump/Vance project.
At that point the Beltway culture will have made a permanent shift.
Here is my latest post from last July that contains a link to the entire video.
-PJ
“I am not sure exactly where they are located...”
They are scattered like a cancer, but I’m pretty sure Portland has more than it’s allotment.
Bookmark
“Agreed—this is a twelve year Trump/Vance project.
At that point the Beltway culture will have made a permanent shift.”
Hoping and praying that the miracle of America’s recovery and salvation continues and is extended well into the next decade. Go Trump.
“Did you know that the market for new music market is shrinking?”
You mean to tell me gang banger, brain numbing, ghetto pimp “music” isn’t selling?
Yes very good article! Bookmark.
I’ve been trying to tell this to co-workers about music. There are literally no bands in the top 100 music anymore.
Oldies are the biggest sellers, movie soundtracks, downloads, streaming...
New stuff has no shelf life. You used to get a new album once a year from your favorite group or singer. Now its 3-4 year wait.
True this and it is why I stopped attending church 40 years ago. Satan has captured the top and it filtered down to almost all of the churches.
Churches now make excuses for literal sins as being OK. Not to me...
We went to the moon in 1969. Right now, we can’t. That is not progress...
Who even knew about this before Trump outed them?
Well they sure opened it up and said men can be women...
Every federal agency lives to perpetuate itself and grow. Look how many started off small and then grew and grew like a raging cancer eating up tax money as fast as it can.
The problem with that is Satan has won over you to not follow Christ’s call for Christians to gather in his name.
The church is Christ’s followers whether they meet in a large building or someone’s home or in a park.
I finished the article beyond the excerpt. It’s long but spot on and well worth the time to read — and to pass on to others.
\/
. its academia
ive had students say to me
“Jesus was a socialist/communist “
and i have to correct them by saying
jesus asked us to give voluntarily
socialism/communism demands we give at the barrel of a gun pointing at us.
one is voluntary
the other isnt
Jesus was NOT a socialist or communist.
.
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