“What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.”
― Pablo Picasso
The toughest and most challenging task I’ve ever taken on in my life is the day that I decided to start my own business.
Look I know I talk about this a lot on this show, but if you’ve been a regular listener, or reader, to the show then you know that I am always intentional about why I bring such things up and that the purpose of bringing up such a thing is not by mistake in terms of the reason behind it with communicating an important point. Keep that word intentional in the back of your mind as I’m going to be coming back to that here a bit later on in the episode.
Back in 2005 when I made the leap to jump out and start my own business I did so with the main motivation being that I didn’t want to be beholden to someone else. I realized, at least in my own experience, that the work I was doing in the fitness business was making some other guy richer off of my own blood and sweat.
In addition to the unsatisfying pay and the lack of reward I also found myself having a difficult time with having to put up with someone else’s assessment of what was best for growing a business, especially when I would prove otherwise with my own performance over and over as an employee.
In short, I never liked the feeling of being under someone else’s thumb while, at the same time, lacking the independence from being able to call my own shots while always being beholden to someone else’s whims. This was my central motivation for taking the leap to go out on my own into the world to build the life that I wanted by embracing all the risks and all the rewards.
However, in choosing to travel this path I’ve witnessed and learned that people in society don’t want to have to factor in the possibility of unwanted risks. Granted, mitigating risks is a totally understandable consideration when you have skin in the game of any respectable business pursuit.
Now having said that there’s a HUGE difference between mitigating risks when playing by the rules of the free market versus mitigating risks by developing cronyistic relationships with people in high executive positions and the government in order to rig the game and to pervert the market to eliminate unwanted risks in one’s favor.
Enter Hostile Cronyism
In case you were not aware that the word cronyistic, or cronyism, has to do with the spoils system's practice of partiality by jobs and other advantages in business where they end up being awarded to friends and colleagues, particularly when related to politicians and supportive organizations of political institutions. This generally serves as a corrupt feedback loop that walls off the prospect of outside competition and isn’t an open free market competitive environment in the least. In fact, it’s a closed, or captured environment in this case.
In short, a cronyistic environment is a corrupt system typically involving an environment where there is a merger between the private and public sector. In such a system you would have certain businesses within a given market that would solely benefit from this public private relationship in a way where the rest of the private sector would not.
In fact, a good example of the cronyistic nature of a perverted market would be the majority of the ‘climate change’ model. In this example, the market is not a true free market, particularly in the way that the federal government pushes and forces it through the financing involved in the purchase of EV’s as a singular example.
You’re probably wondering, Brandon, how can you say that?
Well the reason I can say that is because of the level of subsidies that flow from the government to the so-called private enterprising projects that push the climate change agenda at every turn. As an example you don’t have to look any further than the manufacturing of the electric vehicles, or the EV movement as only a large, but singular part of that cronyistic market.
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research Federal subsidies totaled $725 million for the year 2014 where they would offer tax credits for EV buyers that would range between $2500 and $7500 on the backs of taxpayers and that was nearly a decade ago. It’s grown to be substantially more now and that doesn’t even factor in how corn subsidies for gas powered vehicles involving ethanol have perverted that market in the name of ‘climate change’ which is something that isn’t even needed for a gasoline engine. The point here is that these subsidies have infected both the artificial EV market, as well as, the independent stand alone gas powered car market.
In case you never thought about it before, ethanol is a fuel additive that is derived from corn and is regulated to be blended into gasoline for your car. The absurd reality about ethanol is that the business ONLY exists because of your tax dollars.
In fact, when it comes to ethanol it doesn’t even make sense as it costs more to produce than it’s worth and is solely propped up by yours and my tax dollars that flow into the farming and all of the other related industries that are tied to the ethanol subsidies as a resulted requirement of having to blend it with your fuel.
To give you some perspective on the massive amount of money that flows into the ethanol industry, the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit was signed into law by George W. Bush back in 2004 and went into effect in 2005.
This particular subsidy is often referred to as the blender’s credit and is offered to ethanol blenders that are registered with the IRS by giving them 45 cents for every gallon of pure ethanol that they blend with gasoline. (Source: ThoughtCo)
That particular subsidy cost taxpayers a whopping $5.7 billion in 2011 according to the nonpartisan congressional watchdog agency the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
What’s so frustrating about this is that, just like with the EV market, the ethanol subsidies are simply a massive waste of money and a completely unnecessary tax on the American public which only exists now because we have managed to create a cronyistic environment that is feeding a hostile leviathan that doesn’t want give up its position and cease to exist.
So what do I mean by Hostile Cronyism?
Well remember the one thing that I always talk about is absolutely critical in regards to this show. That thing I’m referring to always goes back to both you and I constantly being able to recognize and understand our environment. In that context I admit that the environment can change, but with that change it’s up to us to be able to recognize and keep up with it in order to understand it.
So given the change that we’ve allowed with these huge federal subsidies that have wormed their way into our markets in regards to the environment concerning energy production in the name of ‘climate change’ we’ve now created a position where a huge cronyistic and artificial environment ONLY exists due to the sole support of our tax dollars.
Given that these businesses and special interests will do whatever it takes in order to maintain their gravy train of wealth flowing into their bank accounts it shouldn’t be surprising to us when we see the hostility of the climate activists and governments that want to continue driving the climate agenda.
Not surprisingly the driving ahead with this agenda has resulted in the diminished production of energy across the country which, in the state of California, has been the direct cause of continuous rolling power outages. Keep in mind that the government of California is also looking to do away with the sales of gas powered cars in that state by 2035 and if you happen to be a citizen of that state you’ll more likely be forced to purchase an electric vehicle either out of diminished options, or by government mandate. (Source: NPR)
Now with the rolling and consistent power outages in that state you’ll also be able to experience the joy of owning an expensive electric vehicle in a state where there’s a good chance you won’t be able to maintain a charge on that vehicle due to the constant power outages. You couldn’t even make up this insanity in a sequel to the movie Idiocracy, but I digress.
The other concern that you and I are seeing with this hostile cronyistic environment (aka Climate Agenda) is that there are stories circulating about how cattle, which is a rich food supply, is causing too much of a carbon footprint, therefore they are looking to go after the food supply.
On that note in the Netherlands we’ve already witnessed in the past year a direct seizure of farmland by the government there with what they, and the European Union, refer to as an attempt at reducing Nitrogen emissions. This blatant hostile cronyism (aka Communism/Fascism) is where the government manufactures a crisis in order to steal land away from people which, in this case, are the Dutch farmers. (Source: Euronews.Green)
Useful idiots would say that since the government is offering to buy the land from those farmers that there’s obviously no issue. However, such simplistic and shortsighted thinking can be applied to any government attempt to usher in legalized theft under the guise of a societal crisis, or emergency, which in this case involves climate change.
This is the problem when it comes to the population just willfully dismissing the true nature and intention of certain large movements that exist and gain a lot of steam within the corrupt functions of government.
After all, human nature has proven to be consistent in two areas that I want to point to for a moment. The first observation about human nature is that people in general are quick to dismiss a major problem as a non-issue if the problem doesn’t impact them in the present time, or in the short-term. The second observation is that people simply have short and selective memories.
The Mandela Effect
Both of the previous aspects of human nature that I pointed to involving the way people actually are at their core often serve to be a problem for society at large and we’re seeing that play out right now in our modern world.
So what exactly am I referring to in regards to the aspects of human nature where people have this irresponsible ability to dismiss major problems simply because they don’t see these problems as an issue they should address today, or with the other characteristic that people have short and selective memories?
Well, with both of these human characteristics I could also counter with the question of Which examples of human history exist where people do NOT exhibit these two attributes?
Don’t worry you don’t have to bother answering that because I’ll get back to making the point because it’s easy to make.
First of all, I'll take a moment to illustrate the issue with people dismissing major problems that they don’t feel are major problems because individuals may not necessarily perceive that they are impacted by them at the present time.
To illustrate this I want to dive into a fable that communicates this in the most profound way.
Once upon a time long ago in India there was a king that enjoyed playing chess and challenging others to play against him.
So one day a sage came through to visit and as he passed by the king the king challenged him to a game of chess. In the king’s challenge he told the sage that he would wager any reward the sage could imagine.
The sage took the king up on his offer, but to the king’s surprise his choice of reward was quite surprising because it involved rice.
To make the request even stranger the sage asked to receive the rice in a particular manner. If the sage won he requested that the king take a single grain of rice and place it on the chessboard’s first square, and after that he would double the amount of rice placed on every subsequent square until every square of the board was accounted for on the chessboard.
When looking at the offer the king viewed it as a humble offer and gladly accepted the offer and obliged the sage in a game of chess.
The two played the chess game and the sage won.
True to his word the king ordered one of his servants to bring out a bag of rice. The king grabbed a single grain of rice from the bag and placed one down on the first square of the chessboard, and then two grains on the next square, and then four grains on the next, and so on. However, it wasn’t long at all before the king realized that he had a very big problem.
The king realized that he not only didn’t have enough rice to satisfy filling up the board on hand, but that he didn’t even have enough rice available in his entire kingdom to fulfill the debt.
By the time the king had reached the 15th square on the chessboard he would have to issue 16,384 grains of rice to the sage. By the time he reached the 25th square he would have to issue 16,777,216 grains of rice to the sage. Ultimately by the time he fulfilled all 64 squares on the chessboard he would essentially be looking at 200 billion tons of rice, or basically enough rice to cover the entire country of India with a meter of rice. (Source: Analyzing Alpha)
The sage would live out his days as one of the wealthiest men of his time.
This is a perfect illustration on demonstrating the power of the concept of compounding interest. However, the inherent flaw in human nature is that people often fail to recognize that even though compounding interest can work for your benefit (like with the sage) it can also work AGAINST you (like the king).
This is precisely why it’s important to be intentional when examining life decisions and life problems. Ah, I told you I would come back to that word intentional.
You see in this example when looking at the fable with the king and the sage the king wasn’t intentional at all in his examination of the potential payout of the bet just prior to playing the chess game. However, the sage was very intentional in his request and had obviously thought through the math and the payout of his reward should he go on to achieve the victory in the chess match…which he did.
When I reference the king here in this story this is exactly what I mean when referring to people lacking the ability to tackle problems without intention in the moment that they occur. To preserve his livelihood the king should have taken a longer amount of time to examine what the sage was offering instead of acting out of haste and accepting the bet surrounding that chess match out of excitement.
This is exactly the reason why our society is now experiencing the global corruption that we’re witnessing in regards to the hostile cronyism that we’re seeing in relation to the ever expanding climate agenda. The green movement climate agenda is now a major player in crushing the world markets right now.
What was once viewed as a humble venture coming from those claiming to want to strive to save the planet with a virtuous statement known as the green movement are now the direct cause of us paying a huge price possibly involving our very lives. The price of not having examined that movement more closely just as the king failed to do the same in our little parable here has resulted in being a major driver for global instability.
As a result, the green movement is now a major factor in driving the 40 year record high inflation due to mandated cuts on energy production, and putting the Western world on the brink of World War III.
Additionally there are stories in the newscycle nearly everyday that communicate the economic and dangerous ideology that opposes natural gas and oil production literally everywhere at all times.
To be intentional is to be smart when it comes to addressing problems that may seem harmless, or even humble in nature. In regards to the climate agenda and the green movement society has failed to do this as we’re seeing in reality everyday right now.
So what about that second characteristic of people having selective and short term memory that I mentioned?
Well, let's not pretend that we don’t understand the true motivation behind the corrupt activity involved with the hostile cronyism (aka Communism/Fascism) that we’re witnessing with the green movement, the widespread corruption of the financial markets, the control of energy, etc..
All of this is being driven by two things and those two things are simply power and greed. The problem I pointed to with the flawed attribute of human nature involving people having both a selective and short-term memory is that oftentimes a short-term or selective memory can create a culture of normalcy around something that isn’t normal at all.
One key and common example of this selective memory, or people misremembering, is when I hear people misquote the bible verse saying that Money is the root of all evil. You might have even bought into the quote because if you’re like me you have probably heard this stated on a frequent basis for many years.
However, as always you must be aware of your environment and one way to ensure that you are is to always go to the source of such a statement rather than taking it from some third party. So if you exercise that very thing right here and now then all you have to do is simply go to the Bible verse 1 Timothy 6:10 and it reads For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.
That first key part of the phrase ‘For the love of money’ makes all the difference in terms of the meaning of this phrase, yet people think and remember the first misquoted example that money itself as an inanimate object is the root of all evil which on its face is an absurd statement.
However as such a misquoted statement permeates throughout society for years and years it will cause a lot of problems as people will build their opinions around a false claim and dangerously misplace the blame of what is evil onto an inanimate object such as a dollar bill rather than placing the blame where it belongs. In this case the blame should fall with those people who will use that inanimate object of money for nefarious purposes of their own.
People commonly misremember details about things and such a phenomenon can occur by accident with a concept that is known as the Mandela Effect.
So what is the Mandela Effect?
The Mandela Effect was something that some friends pointed out to me this past week that even I wasn’t familiar with so I decided to do a little digging.
Apparently the origin of the term was coined back in 2009 by Fiona Broome who started a blog to observe this phenomenon.
It started when Fiona apparently attended a conference and had a conversation with several others at the conference that pertained to the death and tragedy of the previous South African president’s death in a prison in the 1980’s.
However, if you do a little research you’d find that Mandela never died in a South African prison in the 1980’s, but rather peacefully passed away in his home in 2013.
What Broome learned is that she had spoken with several other people regarding her faulty memory on the matter and she began to realize that she wasn’t alone. In fact, several people had the same memory regarding the death of Nelson Mandela.
To make this even stranger many of the people she spoke to recalled having seen news coverage of the death of the South African president and even talked about remembering his widow giving a speech at his funeral on live TV.
This was quite a shock to Broome when she realized that such large numbers of people could remember an identical event in such detail even though it never actually happened. It was because of this strange phenomenon that Fiona decided to start her own website on the issue, as well as, with other similar incidents which are what she referred to as the Mandela Effect. (Source: Simply Psychology)
Some other common examples of this in pop culture involve the famous movie line from The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader says “Luke, I am your father.”
However, Darth Vader never said that in the movie. You might be surprised to learn that he says “No, I am your father.”
The reality is that many people have a distinct memory of this being the first phrase, but it’s actually the second line here that is accurate.
Another example in pop culture that we can point to would be the famous line that Forrest Gump uttered that everyone repeats saying “Life is like a box of chocolates.”
However, when looking at the scene closely you’ll hear Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) say “My mother always said life was like a box of chocolates.”
When it comes to the Mandela Effect one possible cause and explanation could be what is known in Psychology as priming.
This is where the exposure to a stimulus directly influences someone’s response to a succeeding stimulus. As a good example, if I asked you “Did you grab a red coffee cup from the cabinet?” That question is going to be more specific and evocative than if I asked you “Did you grab anything from the cabinet?”
Because of the way the first question is framed it’s going to be more influential and impactful on one’s memory recall than the way the second question is framed.
I’m not saying this is the sole reason for the Mandela Effect, but it could be a factor in producing such a unique and shocking cultural phenomena with the Mandela Effect when it comes to selective memory.
The Wrap Up
Once again, this all comes back down to each of us as individuals working harder at being a Zenith when it comes to investing in the growth and expansion of our understanding of our respective environments in our daily lives.
After all, take a moment and imagine the following scenario.
Imagine, if you will, that I had the ability to travel back in time to visit you in 2018 or early 2019. Upon my visit I would tell you that in the coming 4 to 5 years that you would experience a global pandemic that would literally shutdown the world, that it would be used as a Trojan Horse for global communism, that the U.S. elections would be compromised, that you would experience 40 year record high inflation, that government officials would come forward about UFOs, that your government would go to war against its own citizens, that AI would pose as a threat to all of humanity, and that the world would be on a razor’s edge for World War III.
Given all of this you would have probably laughed me out of the room, yet here we are and many people still have selective memories and want to dismiss the reality of all of this insanity. It’s because of all of this that this very platform exists because reading about those wild realities would cause any sane person from the past or present to demand some explanation in order to achieve a deeper understanding of why all of this is happening now.
At least now if you possess discernment and recognize the importance of understanding your environment that the concepts covered here in today’s episode involving hostile cronyism and the Mandela Effect certainly have played a role in the development of these insane realities.
What’s even more ironic is that these realities are so farfetched that even Hollywood would have tossed the script into the trash bin out of anger due to the fact that a tree was taken for the paper the script was printed on as it would be seen as a direct insult in the face of the green energy movement.
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Intentional Hostile Cronyism and The Mandela Effect