I have mentioned several times in these pages the uneasy feeling I have been experiencing since I woke from an induced coma in July. Granted, a freak allergic reaction that required intubation for three days on a respirator left me a bit disoriented. And it was quite an experience to awake in a hospital after I thought I had been crouching in the corner of a dark room in front of what I thought was a movie screen. In short, I thought I was dead, an experience I hope to share one day.
The uneasy feeling, however, has not left me. It is as if I woke up in an alternate universe. The steroids they give you in the circumstances inhibit sleep. After I emerged from the coma, I was up for four days straight, watching the BLM and Antifa riots unfold all day. When you can’t sleep, read or surf the Internet due to anesthetic amnesia, you end up watching the same shows repeatedly at night. Echoes of Orwell’s “1984.”
On one night, Israel (or someone else) was taking out Iranian nuclear facilities. The next night one of our destroyers apparently was nose to nose with a Chinese destroyer in the South China Sea. No doubt the steroids and other medications enhanced the experience, but the news on television seemed dystopian nonetheless.
Sure, this universe is similar to the one I left, but there are certain quirks, just enough to make me suspicious about where I landed. The feeling is like riding in a falling elevator, but it never stops on a floor. If you have ever seen the show “The Man in the High Castle,” – it somewhat describes this new universe. In the show, Germany and Japan win World War II. The show is set in an alternate America in the early 1960s, dominated by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. That is how it feels to me here. No offense intended to those of you born here.
Perhaps the crescendo comes next week. This universe is headed for a dangerous (and I believe) unconstitutional impeachment attempt. In fact, the constitution is being shredded so fast you will be lucky to remember it. Can you really imagine if a precedent is set to impeach and castrate a despised opponent after they leave office? What comes next?
Then I ask myself, If your Trump was so resoundingly defeated in the popular vote and Electoral College, what is the establishment so scared about? If he runs, can’t they just beat him again? Shouldn’t his next defeat be even more decisive after the left implements their new, utopian, and outstanding programs? Won’t all of you feel better after you sock it to those billionaires and corporations with new regulations and taxes? Think of all the new jobs!
While we are on the subject, what is with all the walls and soldiers around the Capitol and related buildings? We did not have that where I came from. I thought walls didn’t work in this universe – like on your southern border. Maybe all the people cheering these new, popular programs and taxes have too much enthusiasm. With all the rock stars in Congress, security is needed for this concert of bliss. After all, you haven’t seen the population this happy in such a long time!
If I even give some credence to the assertion that the election here was manipulated, it is not a big step to seeing the rest of this story unfold. It would seem that the election was an important part of a much larger and longer-term plot. The victors are not behaving like winners, but maybe that is part of the distortion that makes me uneasy in this new paradigm.
By not stopping the summer riots, the folks here conceded that mayhem was the new normal. By letting the rioters free afterward, without charges, good people all around lost hope. Don’t worry though, 177 Trump protesters at the capital have been jailed and are facing 10-years in prison each. Where I came from, we tried to dispense justice equally. We had this statue of a lady balancing scales. This is what I mean about this universe. It is similar, but with these twists. Here, justice is different depending on your caste, class, party, or who you know.
I also find it interesting that the names of all the deplorables caught up in the riots are widely published, but I can’t find the names of the anarchists who obviously pre-planned the Capital breach? I cannot find the names of the Antifa or BLM protesters either. All but one have remained anonymous. The true organizers of the Capitol riots have never been charged, including after the January 6th ‘insurgency.’ Even your New York times acknowledge their existence. Where I come from, we would say the “fix” was in. This is what I mean. Everything kind of looks the same here, but there are weird twists like this.
The other day, I was trying to find the name of the officer who shot Ashli Babbit, one of the Capitol protesters who died. I guess it is a secret. That is unusual because when I first got here after the coma, they were publishing officer names left and right. I learned the police were bad, and you needed to defund them.
But now I just learned that an officer who died in the protest would be laid out and honored in the Capitol right before the impeachment trial next week. Bless this officer for his service – and this is definitely a step in our direction. But the schism in how these officers are treated here is another anomaly. I am also wondering why they waited for this display until right before your impeachment trial?
Does anyone have any idea who led the charge into the Capitol building? Has anyone from your 2008 Financial Crisis been arrested? Have they been charged? Are they in jail? Have their Lear Jet parking fees at least been raised?
In this alternate universe, free speech – the hallmark of the America I came from – is under vicious assault. Average people supporting traditional values are being labeled as insurrectionists. Reporters on the leftist channels are taking lawmakers through “struggle sessions” to coerce them to adopt the “party” line that there was no election fraud. Nothing to see here…
People I previously respected in my world are advocating (unapologetically) for communism here. The country here is drowning in lies. Where is Walter Cronkite when you need him? Our country seemed so simple – so innocent. Here, I see friends set against friends and family members against one another. Children are turning their parents in for attending the Washington D.C. protests. In my world, we saw this in Mao’s Communist China.
We used to believe that the establishment actors in Congress were just incompetent losers and fools. But here, I watch in horror as they get away with every outrageous ploy. I am confident you will never see indictments for the Russian collusion plotters or the Ukrainian impeachment sham. Corruption is the soup de jour across party lines here. Frankly, I wouldn’t trust anyone in power here. Attorneys General, White House Chiefs of Staff, the FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department are impotent at best. At worst, your leftists have taken full control.
One other quick gripe – we hid under our desks in my universe for nuclear drills when we were kids. We hated communism. Yet here, communism is coming in through the front door with no shots fired. It appears you will be surrendering your sovereignty to the globalists’ Great Reset. It would all sound like a conspiracy theory in my old universe, but I am running out of them here because they all come true. We call these bad dreams, but at least in my universe you wake up and it isn’t true.
As to the financial markets, my friends over at Kimble Charting Solutions have a way with words and charts, as you can see above. Some short-covering over the past few days gave us an awesome bounce off the 50-day line. We have only seen the 50-day line three times since March. With some follow-through, we might stick our toe back in the water. The market could be in a blow-off stage bubble, at least short-term. Alternatively, maybe everything is just fine. I am not sure how to interpret it in this alternative universe.
Where I come from, we would be really, really careful here. It is a giddy, strange crowd out there. A bunch of mad people have been buying stocks on Reddit – to punish Wall Street and Hedge Funds. Their loyal broker, Robinhood, apparently worked under cover. You see, they were actually Wall Street themselves after all. The wolf in sheep’s clothing. Where I come from we like to buy stocks to make a profit. We protest in other ways. Anyway, I am learning the nuances here. But I am still going to be careful.
Thanks for allowing me to ramble a bit – I needed to get this off my chest. We will leave it there for tonight. I will dabble in the technicals tomorrow.
What I can say for sure now is that buy and sell signals will come more often in this volatility. Holding periods will be shorter. You will have to be attentive if you participate – this is a fast market. I wouldn’t blame anyone for sitting this one out for a while.
Then again, perhaps you are all used to this behavior in this universe. In mine, it would be considered a high-risk environment.
A.F. Thornton