How to commit election fraud: Maricopa County example

My background is in accounting, though thankfully I am retired now for several years. A trait accounting shares with many other professions is a system of control that weeds out corruption and shady players. In accounting, it is called “internal control.”

The election in Maricopa County, Arizona, was chaos. The problem, we are told, is with the machines, not the people.

In school I learned that any accounting system that depends on the integrity of the people who run it is an ineffective system. That is not a slam on humanity, even as it sounds like one. The idea behind effective accounting administration is to devise a self-regulating system, and to audit it often, at least yearly. One means by which self-regulation is achieved (imperfectly, of course) is by means to separation of duties. The person who opens the mail does not record checks, and yet another person deposits those checks. The idea is that it is far less likely to achieve fraud if more than one person is involved.

Vote counting is no different. It doesn’t matter if we rely on machines to count votes, or if it is done by hand. There has to be effective separation of duties. I’ve just been reading about Maricopa County, Arizona, and the system collapsed, and yet was certified as final and accurate. What they need is not a recount, but rather a new election where votes are actually counted.

Electronic voting machines came in vogue after the year 2000, and the Bush/Gore debacle in Dade County, Florida. I once read (or watched) an article or video by an investigative reporter who followed the paper trail. He literally followed the trail to find out where Dade County got its paper to use for ballots. What he found was a manufacturer who said that the county was supplied substandard paper, was warned about it, and elected to do nothing. Thus we had malfunctions of the tabulating machines, and invention of the term “hanging chads.” It was all a deliberate setup, he claimed, made to make it look like counting paper ballots, no matter how done, was inefficient.

Create the problem, fix the problem, as the saying goes in politics. The problem had long before been “solved” with a company called Diebold, which made electronic voting machines. These machines were deliberately insecure and easily hacked. That was the whole point. Once installed nationwide, we would never again have a secure election.

Of course, elections before were often stolen. Cook County, Illinois, comes to mind, said to have been the turnkey that got John F. Kennedy elected. That was not the case, as JFK would have won without Illinois, by seven electoral votes. But it was never investigated, we are told, because the Nixon people had rigged California as well. 1960 was not a showcase election, but JFK was slated to win, as his glamorization and then (fake) assassination was planned long before, even to the point where 11/22/63 preceded arrival of the Beatles, another psyop, by only a few months. A massive reset was underway.

So it goes. I wonder if we’ve ever had honest elections, but in the past the easiest way to rig an election was to make sure both candidates were under the same thumb. Bush v Gore in 2000 was the best example of this, two very corrupt men. Six of one … electing either made no difference.

Now we learn that in Maricopa County, the state attorney general is demanding some answers. The office has received hundreds of complaints, not speculative, but going to the root of the problem – 60 of 223 voting locations experienced problems with the machines. That’s unheard of.

There is no more simple task for a computer than to tabulate votes. In Arizona, as I understand it, a pre-certified machine prints the ballots that are used by voters, and then tabulated by other machines. However, the machines printing the ballots were putting out un-scannable ballots. That should not happen to one machine, much less sixty. The sting was on. Though the machines were all tested and certified the night before, by one-half hour into voting the following day, they began to crash. There was chaos, hours of waiting, voters walking away in frustration, and mishandling of ballots. Voters were encouraged to go to other voting locations, where they were, of course, turned away.

So control went out the window. The functions that must be segregated in voting are counting, tabulating, tallying, and transporting ballots. Non of these procedures were adhered to, and as a result, Democrat Katie Hobbs squeaked out a narrow win over Republican Kari Lake.

In the early days of election fraud in the electronic era, it was Republicans who benefited, and Democrats who sat by silently, knowing their day would come. These days it is massively Democrats who benefit. The supposed “red tide” was real, but avoided due to massive election fraud.

Lake is holding out, perhaps filing a lawsuit. That will get her nowhere. Once stung, the sting must stick. Remember that Al Gore sat in the US Senate that certified the presidential election that was stolen from him and given to Bush. Gore did not protest. There are no honest hands aboard, and no judge that cannot be corrupted in some manner to hide the truth.

Pretty cynical, you think? I’ve long thought that people in power have the ability to turn any election their way, but that most elections do not matter, and so are allowed to be free of fraud. On September 3rd, 2020, I watched as the most uninspiring and unelectable candidate imaginable, Joe Biden, won ten of fifteen primaries, assuring himself the nomination. What gives, I wondered. It was as if they just threw in the towel, got rid of the drama, and gave it to him. That is the power of electronic voting. There were no questions asked, no recounts. To ask for such measures of accountability is called “election denial.”

Here in Colorado, we do not have voting stations. Everything is done by mail or dropped off at specified collection locations. I do not imagine that makes our elections cleaner, as all the other segregations of  duty must be observed, primarily holding ballots under 24-hour guard, under lock and key. But still, if they are run through electronic tabulators, and if those are tampered with, the outcome is the same, election fraud.

In a corrupt country such as ours, elections are somewhat a joke, but it is vitally important that voters believe in the integrity of the system. For that reason, there will be no change of outcome in any election nationwide, unless it is to remove control of the House from Republicans. The 2020 election was referred to as the “cleanest on record” even as it was easily seen to be corrupt. Trump may have won, but we cannot know. And anyway, what is he other than controlled opposition? Just as Bernie Sanders is a mere sheep dog used to keep progressives in the Democratic Party, Trump is allowed to do what he does to make sure that real opposition to our system never materializes.

So it goes here in the home of the once free. Legitimate skepticism about anything, aka having a “conspiracy theory” is forbidden, and the most outrageous frauds are committed right under our noses. I will continue to send in my almost blank ballot every two years. You never know. An honest person might run for office someday.

30 thoughts on “How to commit election fraud: Maricopa County example

  1. “An honest person might run for office someday.”
    Local, or County possibly – NEVER larger in scope. Even at the County “level”, if that County had any play in the big game, then NEVER would honesty be ELECTED.

    If you care to tell a fanciful story, tell us one in which an honest person might come to power. REAL power; clean the mess power. Why would it ever be allowed?

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    1. I do not know of any honest person who has ever survived the election process. I ran for office in 1996, beat down the doors, visiting every household. The factor that determined outcome was the blue light I saw emanating through every window, TV news. It controlled the public mind. I was disgusted, vowed never to touch the seedy process again. My opponent, a Christian right winger, would after her reelection fall in love, leave politics, and lead a normal life. She was not a bad person, but so much smarter than me, when she went door-to-door, she always left in her wake the notion that she was in agreement with the people she visited. I was more concerned about being right about things, even as I was not at all that. The big turn in the election was endorsement by Governor Marc Racicot, which was all it took. He was wildly popular, even thought to be a future star, and his word was final. Peggy clobbered me. I wish her the best.

      My most important lesson: Democrats in leadership positions are seedy people, paid liars. They creeped me out. Republicans had the luxury of advancing positions that were honest, even if stupid. If I had to choose, I would be the latter. I ran as a liberal. My true nature is a conservative.

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      1. I am still amazed that people assign attributes to one [political] group or another… they are ALL whores to money and power. They take orders of all colors from above – well above their tiny minds. So the slight difference in the color of their ties, or height of their heels makes not one bit of difference, EXCEPT to TV watchers, which, as you mentioned, is literally killing us all.

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        1. I found Republicans more possessed of humor and sincerity, even as at that time I was 180 opposed to their views. I had personal correspondence with Racicot, and he answered personally and seemingly sincerely. As much as I detested the fawning around him, he seemed a good man from a strong family of good men. His successor, a very stupid woman, was referred to as the “box of rocks,” and Racicot s daughter, student teaching in Billings, with humor mumbled those words so that people around her could hear.

          Racicot broke all the rules in steamrolling the legislature into a deregulation scheme that resulted in a selloff of some of the state’s most important assets. That was well planned in advance, backed by Goldman Sachs, introduced late in the game and against the rules, and succeeded. Had I won my bid for election, I would have been part of the clueless steamrolled majority that passed the bill. As much as I admired Racicot, his behavior was controlled and corrupt. But standing next to him was the leader of the Democrats, Max Baucus, a man so slimy that cockroaches fed off his skin. My only point is that Republicans were like Paul Simon’s elephants at the zoo, kindly but dumb. I could not help but like them and be repelled by Democrats.

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  2. I just finished a book called “We” by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin (short book – I finished it in a day). It’s a dystopian novel written in 1921, predating Brave New World and 1984, in which society lives in a perfectly controlled, perfectly soulless society where everyone and everything is reduced to mathematical equations, down to the exact number of times they chew their food and the exact second they must all, in unison, swallow.
    To have fancy, imagination, dreams, or a soul are considered very grave illnesses and must be ‘treated’ immediately. Anyone who steps out of line, even a little, is sentenced to torture or death – what they consider a beautiful and logical solution to protect the machine from failure. Of course they are constantly monitored by The Guardians and anyone who does not snitch unseemly behavior to The Guardians are deemed guilty as well.
    Anyway, every year they have an “election” ceremony where their leader, The Well-Doer, is always reinstated, this being his 48th year. These “elections” have gone on without a hitch for centuries, no one daring to ever question the process believing it a perfect system – what’s to question? There is no opponent, of course, and everyone sits in the square and raises their hand in vote – always unanimous, always a wonderful day when they get to reinstate their beloved leader, everyone acting in unison, sharing the same goal, the same mind. The question of “and anyone who opposes?” is a mere formality, never taken literally, just a token to impress upon the people how no one opposes, there is no disagreement, we are a perfect, uniform machine.
    Except now an underground resistance has formed, and on this day, not everyone raises their hand in favor. For the first time in centuries, when the question “and anyone who opposes?” is asked, hundred and hundreds of hands silently go up. There is chaos – the machine has a glitch for the first time in eons. The ceremony is disrupted, violence breaks out, and everyone flees. The next morning, the paper printed this:

    “The Celebration of the Day of Unamity, long-awaited by all, took place yesterday. The same Well-Doer who so often has proved his unshakeable wisdom was unanimously re-elected for the forty-eighth time. The celebration was clouded by a little confusion, created by the enemies of happiness, who by their action naturally lost the right to be bricks for the foundation of the renovated United State. It is clear to everyone that to take their votes into account would mean to consider as a part of a magnificent heroic symphony the accidental cough of a sick person who happened to be in the concert hall.”

    See, it was unanimous! This reminds me so much of the COVID censoring and cancelling. These dissenters are mentally unhinged and their opinions and thoughts should not be condescended to or taken seriously as you would not write a cough into the symphony’s music just to appease the sick man. The public truly believes this, “They are a danger to the machine, they do not count.” And I can see “elections” being the same way – say they really did count votes, for real, and someone won that they did not want to win (this could only be on a lower, local level where maybe some real people run). Even if this outsider won 90-10 and everyone saw it, they could simply say the next day that that never happened. It was a landslide for the favored candidate, and the votes for the outsider do not count because they were cast by people who do not count and should not have the right to voice their opinion, for the safety of the greater good. And everyone would go along with it and nod their head saying “yes yes, quite right. the machine is safe another day!”

    Spoiler: In the story, all the dissenters were of course offered a beautiful medical operation that will cure them of their illness. They are encouraged to come and get their lobotomies, for the greater good, and to become normal and sane once again. When not enough people volunteer, they then force the operations on everyone (avoiding is punishable by death), starting with the school children. Hmm….

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    1. Nice synopsis, you just made me really want to read that! I’ve read quite a bit of Russian/East European authors myself, been a while, but I found them mostly excellent. You sound very knowledgeable, I remember that as well from a previous post on another work.

      I’m curious, have you ever looked into any of these authors in more of a ‘PoM-style’? As in, trying to find out their possible untold agendas/angles/connections/affiliations, what might be fake or spooky about them, that sort of thing? I’ve been thinking about trying that myself, which is why I ask. I speak some Czech, so I was going to start there, maybe with Kafka or Kundera.

      Thanks for sharing, look forward to more like that!

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      1. Hi, thank you! I haven’t looked into this author yet mainly because I am sure I will find the usual: a member of the ‘club’ and highly connected as with Huxley and Orwell (and every other known/promoted author). I do wonder why these people write these stories as they seem, on the outside, to be deriding the hellish world that is being planned for us. Were there really club members in the past who were not in favor of the plan, and were attempting to warn the masses? But then, why would modern schools still require children to read them if they were truly meant to foment distrust in the holy leaders? Is it simply a revelation of the method? Show the masses what is in store for them as a sort of informed consent? Or to soften the blow, massaging these ideas into young minds as a a sort of ‘inevitable’ trajectory that there is no use resisting? Getting them comfortable with the idea so when it comes to fruition people will just shrug apathetically and say “yeah it’s just like that book said would happen. Oh well, what’s on netflix?” Maybe if these ideas hadn’t become so common place (by promoting these stories loudly and constantly) as to become quaint cliches, the masses would be truly shocked and angry (and therefore resistant) when these dystopian plans reveal themselves – the ‘predictive programming’ hypothesis?

        Even the bible, one of the original dystopian stories, lays out what exactly is going to happen in the ‘end times’ – along with many other religious texts of course. Is that just the plot of this place? Are we just in some sort of storybook where there is a pre-written story line and we were inserted into it/chose to participate/whatever for no other reason than the fact that it is an exciting and thrilling story to be apart of? Are we all playing out our own personal Jesus story, with the awakening to the truth, the crucifixion for defending and choosing the truth, the resurrection when we realize we exist outside of this matrix and this is not the end all be all to existence (assuming you believe in a spiritual reality separate from the material realm – I do), and then an “apocalypse” where the physical illusion eats itself alive. And then do we wake up after we die and say “wow that was a pretty cool dream, I can see why I chose to be apart of it”? Is it a test of sorts or a boot camp or a school or a playground? The questions humans have been mulling over for ever, and never getting any closer to an answer (which leads me to believe that not knowing these answers is part of the point of this experience).

        I can’t help but feel that one of the tenets of this place is to always present us with a choice. The truth isn’t ‘hidden’ in plain site – it is literally in plain site. We always have a choice, every single time a new psyop is presented, to see what is right in our face or turn away and let the magician continue his trance, not wanting to break the illusion that we have grown so comfortable with. At a magic show, I am not looking for the stings and wires, I am not looking at his other hand or looking for trap doors. I don’t want the trick to be ruined, I *want* to be tricked and fooled and believe what he is telling me to see. And so when people see a plane melt into the twin towers like a hot knife through butter, see the nose pop out the other end then rewind itself back into the building, the trick is right there for all to see – it is not hidden. We have a choice to believe what we are seeing and what we know to be possible, or to pretend we didn’t catch a glimpse of the quarter already hidden in the magicians hand before he pretends to pull it from behind our ear. Every psyop is littered with opportunities for people to say “now wait a minute” if they so choose. I am one of the few who do not believe the psyops are messy on accident or due to laziness- I believe it is some sort of law of this place where we are always presented a choice to choose truth over fiction, every minute of the day (but again, I believe there is more going on here than physical matter, people, and money so my views will probably be different from staunch materialists). And by choosing the truth, we are choosing freedom because we are no longer strung up like marionettes, being pulled and prodded into every direction the puppeteer decides we must go. However, oddly, it seems humans do not desire freedom. We are a very strange breed indeed, to desire freedom. And I have no idea why the concept of freedom and truth is so repugnant to the 99% – humans are not at all what I was led to believe they are….but I digress, lol.

        On a less lofty note, one common theme I seem to find in older dystopian novels and stories (so perhaps the purpose of the propaganda) is the futility of resisting. No matter how hard the protagonist tries to fight, they always get caught and “re-educated” in the end. The machine always wins and little flare ups of revolution do nothing, in the long run, to stop it. (Although, oddly, in modern YA fiction – Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Divergent, even Harry Potter – there is a ‘happy ending’ – they really do begin to break the machine. So even that propaganda has changed lately, which is odd). Another point of the propaganda may be to embed people with the idea that someone else will fight the bad guys for you. You just have to wait – some savior will eventually come and once they’ve done all the hard work, you can piggy back on and walk easily and effortlessly through the walls they’ve broken down, no work needed on your part. Just sit there and wait, do nothing, help is coming sometime, someday …. which just reinforces the same propaganda that you as a human, have no power, no freedom, no say in your own life.

        (And again, this is how the majority of humans seem to want it. I think it’s erroneous to project and assume that everyone else wants the freedom that we want. Humans truly love their chains and bondage and is it morally ethical to break them from it, simply because we don’t want it? Wouldn’t we then be forcing our way of thinking onto them, the way the rulers do to us, because “trust us, we know best?” Perhaps we should let the zombies stay in their smart cities, leave them be, and focus more on breaking away individually and in small groups to our own little “savage” communes. Why wake up a sleeper who is so happy, so safe, so content in their dream simply because we desire freedom and abhor the dream? They love their dream the way it is. Absolute 1984 control is their utopia, not dystopia. I’m starting to believe they are literally wired differently, maybe on a soul level, where they are actually incapable of thinking for themselves and to try to force them to do so would be like trying to throw a dog off a roof and hoping it will eventually learn to fly. Of course, I’m not supposed to say that “not all humans are the same deep down” because that is dangerous hate speech, so I’ll leave it at that lol)

        Sorry for such a long response lol, just musing aloud (er…virtually) I do tend to ramble haha!

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        1. Great stuff there Sarah… much I agree with.
          EXCEPT this bit: “wow that was a pretty cool dream, I can see why I chose to be apart of it”
          I will fucking strangle my higher self when I rejoin,,, fucking asshole sending me to this shit-pile for all these decades. Exactly how many years of the “school” are needed before people like you and I have had enough; have leaned what local evil is? Even if it was a mutual decision, back before current carnation, why so many years of this cesspool? Kill me off after the lesson was learned.

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          1. LMAO I can totally relate to that! I wonder about it constantly, just how long does it take before I can close this storybook and move onto other “lessons” or experiences or whatever the point of physical manifestation is. Sometimes I wonder if I, and people like me, are actually the dunces. Like everyone has already moved on long ago, the realm being filled now with mindless bots and us “real people” are the late bloomers, the F students who are taking way longer than everyone else to figure it out hahah

            On the other hand, some of my favorite dreams have technically been “nightmares”. The dreams where everything is just ladeeda, I tend to wake up and feel “Huh that was pretty uneventful, what a waste of a dream” and it tends to just fade off as the day goes on.
            Meanwhile, the dreams that are filled with drama, suspense, action, risk, consequences, and yes, even ‘scary stuff’ are the ones I wake up from exhilarated like “whoa that was crazy! That was awesome! What a wild experience!” and the details of the dreams stay with me for years after. The second I wake up, any fear or negative emotion I was feeling disappears immediately as it is so obvious that it was fake, so obvious that it was just a ride, so obvious that any threat of danger is over and actually never even existed. I feel we think this place is hellish because we are in the dream still, but the minute we exit we’ll feel this almost comical sensation of understanding – “what in the world was I so worked up about? Why was I taking it so seriously? What a trip”. Or maybe I’m just morbid lol.

            This realm is made of contrasts – how would I feel relief, happiness, pleasure, joy, comfort, safety, laughter, beauty if I didn’t have the opposite experience to compare it to? If everything is beautiful, is anything beautiful? If everyone is kind, is anyone kind? Sometimes I think souls (or whatever we are) long for sensation for sensation’s sake – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Almost like an addict, we just want to feel it all because at least we’re feeling something. A world without pain or struggle or suffering would be boring as all hell, just like a book or a movie without drama and obstacles would be about one chapter long and utterly vacuous and pointless.

            There is this great Twilight Zone episode called “A Nice Place To Visit” where a sinful, criminal type dies and is sure he is going to hell. Upon arrival, to his surprise, he is greeted by an angel. He is in heaven! Every wish he has is instantly fulfilled. He can drink all day without getting sick, win every game in the casino, sleep with as many beautiful women he wants, ask for a million dollars on demand. Every whim is granted and not before long he realizes how meaningless life is when there is not a hint of challenge or error. He becomes so bored, so miserable from the monotony and predictability of a perfect life that he is driven to the brink of madness. He can’t imagine spending all of eternity in this world so he begs the angel to bring him instead to hell and the angel laughs evilly and says, “Heaven? Whatever made you think this was heaven?”

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            1. Interesting, I had not read this before I replied. But, you are talking about the same thing I was thinking there—this conflict/contrast embedding. That we should be grateful for the adversary. I’m not giving any judgement as to whether or not this is the case—only that this is an ongoing underlying assumption that is rarely questioned/deconstructed in the dystopian fiction authors that are most highly regarded. This is the black/white checkerboard of masonry, right? So, were these Russians and Slavs also part of that brotherhood? Because this is the dominant worldview, not just in the West.

              As for dreams, mine are not like yours. They haunt my waking hours mercilessly. They change my mood for the day regularly. Also, there is a difference between feeling and sensation. Sensation is shallow and fleeting, feeling—true feeling—is beyond time and space. My dreams are more intense than my living sensations/feelings and to recollect that intensity (in my body) is impossible—like a surge of insane, intense jealousy or some other powerful emotion that makes you do something stupid that you later regret. You know?

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              1. I too feel like my dreams are more intense than my daily life. I am a bit obsessed with dreams and dreaming. (the fact that most people just brush off the reality that we lie down, go into a paralyzed coma for hours, experience a completely different, real, and vivid experience inseparable from this one while we are in it, and then wake up and go about our day just baffles me. Like does anyone realize wtf just happened? How is everyone not tripping out constantly from this like I am lol!)
                I have learned a lot from dreams and look forward to them every night – mine are so unbelievably detailed and I have lucid dreams spontaneously all the time, like several times a month. I feel like this reality is similar to one long, shared, cohesive (as in my house is still my house tomorrow and I look the same each day) lucid dream which is why I struggle to discuss my views of this place with people in the ‘truth’ scene who believe it can all be simplified into logical, rational, 0’s and 1’s. My perception of what is going on is going to just be so different from theirs when they believe it all boils down to meat suits lie because meat suits want money. It’s actually why I’m usually nervous to comment on public sites like this (and why I keep putting off starting my own blog) because I don’t want to trigger anyone or start any sort of debate or fight just because I tend to think a bit outside the box when trying to understanding what is going on here.

                Synchronicities, premonitions, “glitches” in the matrix, seeing “apparitions(??)” or whatever the hell that thing was I saw in my room that one time, and other dream like (aka not cold, mechanical, logical, rational) experiences I’ve had here makes me really feel this place is absolutely nothing like what we’ve been told on the most fundamental level.

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                  1. Awesome, I love stuff like this! Reminds me of the stuff Tom Montalk discusses re his experiences with the “other”. Funny, isn’t it, how this “woowoo” out there stuff and the truth scene never seem to intersect. The people who have these “out there” experiences tend to still believe the lies told to them by school, the media, science in general etc (although with maybe a bit of an Alex Jones-y level of controlled op conspiracy awareness) and visa versa: the people who are aware of the deceptions within the matrix seem to never have an experience or interest in the “other”. Which is just so odd to me because they are so inextricably linked in my mind – how can I know about one without eventually winding down the rabbit hole of the other?
                    I would be scared to tell someone interested in the “other” that we never went to the moon, politicians are actors, most of science and history is completely made up, and everything on the news is fake because they would label me as absolutely insane. And I’m scared to tell someone who knows all those things about my experiences and thoughts on the “other” for the exact same reason, lol! Curioser, and curioser 😛

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                    1. Curious indeed! I can think of one podcast I used to listen to who has tiptoed in that direction—Skeptiko. But also, isn’t that what David Icke does? That’s the ‘conspirituality’ angle. There’s been a couple of academic papers written on that, believe it or not!

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                1. Ah, so you are avoiding playing the adversary! Lol
                  Yet the people clearly need it! Shake things up, rock the boat, take a stand. You never know who you might get to open their minds just a tiny bit. 😁

                  I think there are natural ‘rascals’ who are here to do exactly that, and what has happened is that type of individual, that social role, has been usurped, inverted and institutionalized. Where a good father would nudge his child to try harder, go faster, do better—these fuckers laugh as they throw you down the Black Diamond run on the slopes.

                  And I agree with DSK here it would seem—a life well lived will give us plenty of natural adversaries, in man and nature. We don’t need an entire club of these types who do not ultimately have good intentions, but rather use that natural adversarial skill to the detriment of others and the benefit of themselves exclusively. Then make up a lot of excuses for what they do so they can sleep at night and enroll the next generation in their scoundrel behavior.

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            2. “A world without pain or struggle or suffering would be boring as all hell…”
              Nope, not buying that.
              I have plenty of interests that I would pursue – neither penalty nor reward required. Additionally, I need not see the dichotomy among others either.
              Must a [life] school have failure as a possible result? How about simply each individual’s attained level of understanding instead?

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            3. Fantastic comments. I would assume we really are in a prison planet, caged in ape like bodies. Perhaps for crimes we commited long ago as other beings. We are here to learn lessons. Is are soial status a level of punishment, or at least a portion of it? Hmm

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        2. Excellent, love this kind of convo! Your reflections parallel so many of my own. One of the recurring themes seems to be—the adversaries are actually doing you a favor, because without the conflict you’d all be fat useless slobs, or something like that. ‘They’ (the evil) are pushing you to a ‘better’ you, like the hero’s journey. They just leave out the part where that is exactly what malignant narcissists do—always pretend they are doing you a favor, no matter how much pain it causes you, because, ‘you’re worth it’.

          In this way I think of the Cross of Lorraine—the double-cross. In my mind this ‘adversary’ position, like Satan, right? This is the straight vertical line, the two horizontal lines are the other two ‘power positions’ (the Church and the State) which the straight line keeps both engaged and separated, if that makes sense—which also represents commerce/law.

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          1. And that’s where it’s confusing because in one way, it’s true. Without evil, without bad guys pushing their soulless and dark agenda, would I, Sarah, have ever woken up to what I really am, where I really am, and learned right from wrong and what side I want to align with? Would I have made the growths in inner knowledge and spiritual recognizance if I was never confronted with a challenge that snapped me out of my reverie? Would I ever get better at piano if I stuck to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and never challenged my capabilities with tougher, harder, more uncomfortable work?
            Of course, the average person you talk to will admit that the rulers may overstep their bounds with laws and regulation, but it’s “for our own good” because without them, humans would devolve into chaotic, murdering, evil creatures, devouring their neighbors and raping and pillaging every chance they get.
            This is so clearly untrue (humans, like all of nature, are amazingly cohesive and symbiotic when just left alone…), but that lie works on just about everyone. Thank god for these draconian measures, forcing us into timeouts and policing us at every turn – the alternative would be brutal carnage! Wow what a misanthropic, self-loathing bunch humans are lol! They really believe they are disgusting amoral creatures that need a firm hand to keep their evil ideations in check. Talk about gaslighting from the true psychopaths – accusing you of doing the very thing they are doing. Part of this starts from believing we evolved from an f-ing fish and are but a meaningless speck in the infinite universe. Utterly meaningless, even pointless – just a random assortment of blobby cells that haphazardly sloshed its way out of the murky swamp.
            And speaking of narcissistic abusers – it seems the only option, once we realize we are in a codependent relationship with an abuser, is to permanently break ties and never look back. Yes we still live in this world amongst them and run by them (and amongst others who still worship and defend the abusers and even begin to take the shape and behaviors of the abusers – agent smiths) but we can individually choose to no longer bow before them. We can break up with them once and for all and reject any power or hold they have over us – in the world but not of the world and all that. Easier said than done of course, when they encroach ever more and more into our daily lives making it harder and harder to pretend not to see their ugly creation. Sigh.

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  3. “I have plenty of interests that I would pursue – neither penalty nor reward required.”

    Yes me too – a life devoid of evil does not necessarily mean utter and easy perfection. I think I was sort of using the idea of paradise in the sense presented in that Twilight Zone where there is no challenge, no work, no nothing whatsoever but of course that isn’t the only form of “paradise.” I could garden in my paradise, and a plant could still die or not fruit and I could still learn how to do better next time, and continue to grow in my knowledge. A failed crop is not in itself evil. And I could still crochet and mess up, having to start over and learn how to master the craft. Mistakes are not evil. (Although I’m still going on the basis of an “upward trajectory” of knowledge – mastering certain hobbies and skills and overcoming obstacles or failures simply because that’s what I would enjoy in my own heaven haha).

    I think the Twilight Zone episode is simplistic in thinking that paradise would be boring because everything would necessarily be handed to you with no learning, growth, or challenge required. But now I think of it, I really don’t think that’s what paradise has to mean. I could still burn my dinner in a paradise. To me a paradise doesn’t mean “nothing ever goes wrong”, it just means an absence of evil or, conversely, the ever presence of god (whatever that word means to you). Mistakes are not evil, failure is not evil, working towards a goal is not evil – so why assume a heaven wouldn’t have those same challenges to overcome? It would be heaven simply because evil would not be there. It could look very similar to living in a log cabin in the forest, barefoot, making homemade wine and cheese with your little babies running around and your dog at your feet snoozing. Who says anything has to be absolutely perfect and easy to be a paradise? It just means satan and his buddies are not invited to ruin the party.

    Interesting how I never really thought of that before and always defaulted to that Twilight Zone’s description of paradise as some mindless, easy, boring existence where nothing ever happens and there is no challenge or growth to be had. Very black and white the way heaven/paradise/utopia is presented to us. Good food for thought!

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  4. FYI:
    I logged in to check on RECENT COMMENTS.
    That list is overwhelmed – beyond its paltry display of 10 or whatever.
    I sure would like to know if Others Commented elsewhere and elsewhen since my last visit.
    Mark: is there a way to add a link to “More…”?

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        1. If you look at the list of writers n the left, you’ll find one named Volocet. He is supposed to be redesigning this blog, for a fee. I have not heard from him in months, but am told he moved to Australia and will be back at it. I do not know how to do anything behind the scenes.

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