I stole the title for this post. It comes from John Berendt’s famous non-fiction novel about a murder in Savannah, Georgia. Berendt portrays Savannah as synonymous with the modern decadent and dystopian South. Midnight is a boundary condition in the magical form of thinking found in hoodoo, the religion described in the book. In hoodoo, the time for good magic is 11:30 p.m. to midnight and the time for evil magic is the time from midnight to 12:30 a.m. This is the same kind of magical thinking involved in Manicheanism, the dominant axiom of all propaganda, perception “management,” and approved public discourse now in the United States. We are now in a boundary condition, defined both by the ongoing economic collapse and the threat of nuclear war emergent from the Anglo-American war against Russia in Ukraine. Both conditions are caused by a totally false construction of reality concocted by leaders who live in the echo zone of their own arrogant and ignorant pronouncements.

Witness the main theme of all current globalist propaganda, “Autocracy versus Democracy.” It is the slogan under which we are all supposed to march gladly off to probable human extinction because it is the “right thing,” and Vladimir Putin is the epitome of evil. It is foisted upon us by those who openly seek to destroy or imprison any alternative leaders, while imposing emergency decrees, mandates, and prosecuting the population for thought crimes. It falsely claims that our Constitution enshrines “democracy” when our founders knew that “democracy” was the road to the fascist tyranny we currently experience.  They founded, instead, a republic. Hence, my title refers to the manipulation of the public mind, not to the cemetery in South Carolina in Berendt’s novel.

 St. Augustine, a former Manichean, attacked this heresy rigorously in both the Confessions and the City of God. Evil does not have an independent existence, Augustine says. The apparent satanism of our present elites might seem to seriously challenge this idea. But, evil, Augustine insists, is the absence or privation of the good.  The current Manichean propaganda barrage paralyzes the imagination’s ability to define the good and to bring it into being, or to resolve paradoxes with the new discoveries which have powered every step in human progress. We are stuck railing against present evil, providing it the sustenance it requires to exist.  But our ability to define the good, the future, and bring it into being will determine whether we survive or not.

Wednesday was last week’s monumental day. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced measures which will change the course of the present Russia/NATO war in Ukraine. As outlined below, it was an escalatory response to the open escalation by the U.S., the British, and NATO now openly fighting Russia in Ukraine. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates another .75 basis points. Interest rate hikes across the world’s central banking systems followed on Thursday, generating continuous stock market crashes. Then, late Wednesday, the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the Biden Justice Department to utilize 100 documents, which had been marked as classified and seized from Mar-a-Lago, in order to expedite the DOJ’s witch hunt against the 45^th President. That was followed by a civil suit on Thursday by New York Attorney General Leticia James against Donald Trump and his children, which even former Attorney General Bill Barr called a “political hit job.”

These are completely interrelated dynamics. Writing in The Federalist about the 11^th Circuit ruling against Trump, Margot Cleveland sounded exactly the right battle cry. President Trump should take all of this to the People, who, as part of his growing MAGA movement, are now mobilizing and educating themselves to take their government back—starting with the Midterms on November 8th. With each over-the-top National Security State attack, Trump’s approval ratings rise. The People are judging their candidates now on whether they will fight present Washington on their behalf. They invoke the pledge of our founders who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor-to the task of creating our new republic. Donald Trump only, at this point, meets that test. Because of his obvious connection with the People and his exercise of actual leadership, Trump has been labeled an “autocrat,” “an authoritarian,” and an “extremist.” The same or similar labels have been used for the same reason against all our great presidents, from Washington, to Lincoln, to Franklin Roosevelt. One of this century’s greatest geniuses, Lyndon LaRouche, was similarly demonized. LaRouche joked that “extremist” had become his middle name. By contrast, the elites beatify their puppet, Ukraine’s President Zelensky, a comedian whose previous claim to fame was a skit in which he pretended to play the piano with his penis.

Further, every judge presently sitting on the federal bench has backed the shredding of the Constitution which occurred after September 11, 2001. The judiciary failed to take on the creation of an unaccountable National Security State and all its subsequent iterations. Their cowardice and corruption govern the continuing confrontation between Donald Trump and that National Security State. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who challenged the raid on Mar-a-Lago and was overruled by the 11^th Circuit, is a happy exception.

But it is the burgeoning grass roots movement now awake and activated that has caught the elites off guard and put their knickers in a total knot. Increasingly confident, candidates like Michigan Gubernatorial candidate, Tudor Dixon, are mocking and joking about the Democrats’ use of the FBI in an attempt to intimidate and spread pessimism ahead of the election. Dixon’s ridicule of her opponent, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and Whitmer’s FBI allies, provoked stunned outrage by such as the New York Times. As this movement prepares itself to govern, their emerging confidence and determination are kicking over all previous political calculations.

In addition, whistleblowers are sallying forth from within the FBI itself to report on its corruption and malfeasance. It turns out that the same FBI corruption which permeated the FBI’s American Muslim entrapments and prosecutions in the wake of 9/11 is at work now with respect to January 6^th. FBI whistleblowers are telling Congress and others that cases are being made up and hyped in order to manufacture a non-existent threat of white supremacist terrorism linked to the MAGA movement. This non-existent threat is, of course, required to exist for the political purposes of the Biden collective and for the funding requirements of the FBI. The case of FBI whistleblower Steve Friend, covered by Miranda Devine in the New York Post, gives you the gist of the stinking corruption operating here. 

Ending the war on Russia now can and must become a key demand in these elections. It is now an existential requirement for our country and the world. Donald Trump, alone, among major U.S. political leaders, continues to call for this, noting in his interviews and rallies this past week that Vladimir Putin has been dangerously “mishandled,” and that this war must stop now before everyone is killed. Put differently, if you can’t figure out how not to blow up the world, how can you possibly be deemed competent to hold public office?

The economy? Begin the American System revival now. It can’t wait until 2024. As Lyndon LaRouche stressed, credit must be issued now through a Hamiltonian national bank or through a national banking system as with Lincoln’s Greenbacks, for advanced energy production (emphatically meaning clean coal, oil, and gas, and with major advanced fission and fusion development projects put on line), and for development of modern infrastructure, manufacturing, and fresh water platforms to make us a full set industrial power again. This also means upskilling our labor force to meet the demands of a technologically advanced economy, and urgent mobilization of our universities to reward degrees in the hard sciences and engineering. Tax and regulatory policies need to be focused on developing science and technology and building the real economy while protecting the people from the financial predators and speculators of the current Wall Street and City of London regimes. This was the promise of Trump’s campaign in 2016. Building our way physically into a scientific and industrial power again is the only way to end the present financial implosion.

Putin’s New Geometry

In his speech on September 21^st Vladimir Putin announced that four Ukrainian oblasts on the Russian border which are presently controlled by Russia or its allies (Luhansk and  Donetsk in the East and  Zaporizhia and Kherson in the South) would conduct referenda to determine whether the 5 million citizens who live there want to become part of Russia.  Those referenda are occurring now. If they vote to join Russia, Russia’s legislature will recognize that vote, and they will be assimilated into the Russian state as soon as October 1st. Continued attacks on them will be considered to be attacks against the Russian state.  At the same time, Putin announced a partial mobilization of his military reserves. The number cited in an accompanying address by Defense Minister Shoigu is 300,000, a small portion of the available trained and experienced reserves.

Putin noted that a peace agreement had been reached between Ukraine and Russia when they met in Turkey in February 2022 but that Western politicians had sabotaged it. (He is referring specifically to then British prime minister Boris Johnson, and the sabotage is openly admitted). Now, Putin said, Western politicians are organizing the delivery of long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine which “could strike Crimea and other Russian regions.”  He said that the Belgorod and Kursk regions of Russia were under attack by terrorists using Western weapons, and that NATO was conducting reconnaissance throughout Russia’s southern regions. He said that the West had encouraged the shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant—threatening a nuclear disaster—and that politicians in NATO countries were speaking of using nuclear weapons against Russia. In that context he “reminded those” who make such statements that “our country has different types of weapons as well, and some of them are more modern than the weapons NATO countries have. In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country, and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff.”

The transcript is remarkable when compared to the hysterical version of the speech circulated in Washington, London, and Brussels. First, there is nothing false in the speech. All of it is reflected by official statements of “Western” actions by U.S., British, and NATO officials, except for the Zaporozhye Nuclear Plant shelling. NATO and Ukraine blame Russia for that. Most importantly, Putin did not threaten the use of nuclear weapons “out of desperation.” He simply repeated longstanding Russian nuclear policy. What has been removed is the illusion that the U.S., Britain, and NATO are only supporting heroic Ukrainian freedom fighters with weapons but are not engaged in direct conflict with Russia itself.

For months, Washington’s insane Senators, including Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton, along with other putative candidates against Donald Trump in 2024, like Mike Pompeo and Niki Haley, have been advocating that Washington call “Putin’s nuclear bluff.” Lindsey Graham has openly called for Putin’s assassination. The Washington Post claimed on Thursday that Washington has been issuing vague warnings to Russia for months about any use of Russian nuclear weapons, warnings which are deliberately vague to preserve “strategic ambiguity.” Now that NATO is directly involved in fighting Russia in Ukraine, such “warnings” can only be intended to heighten the strategic tension. In an interview with Tucker Carlson on September 22^nd, Colonel Doug Macgregor noted that Washington’s advocates of “limited nuclear war” used to be beaten back as “insane” but were now “ascendant.” 

Russia’s most critical weapon is economic. As the result of Europe’s magical thinking, their sanctions and cutoffs of Russian oil, natural gas, fertilizers, and other critical materials have delivered a death blow to Europe’s economies which are now energy starved, imploding, and facing the choice of continuing to support the failing Anglo-American war against Russia, or supporting their own populations—as Larry Johnson documented on his blog on Friday. Since Europe is a major market for U.S. goods, their depression will soon come here. Otherwise, Colonel Macgregor continues to demonstrate that the triumphalist rhetoric about Putin being on the ropes, burgeoning popular revolts within Russia itself, and dramatic Russian battlefield losses are the purest of fabrications. Russia now controls 95% of Ukraine’s physical economy. The Ukrainians, not the Russians, are suffering massive losses. 

The Fed Versus Physical Economic Reality

The Central Banks’ interest rate hikes have resulted in full panic by the globalist elites. There were endless media iterations of the headline “pain.” They say that Jerome Powell and others are creating the hardest of hard landings, a world-wide depression. Fed Chair Powell, for his part, says that he does not give a tinker’s damn about the repercussions for the stock market which continued to collapse throughout the week. He insists that he is the new Paul Volcker, who famously crashed the U.S. economy in the early 1980s. Volcker’s strategies were part of a plan at that time for “controlled disintegration” of the U.S. industrial economy. Powell confronts an economy which has already been looted to the bone. Powell realizes that focused popular anger often leads to discoveries by those he considers “rubes” which are very threatening to elite control. In this case, the discovery an angered population is making is that the Fed created the current economic implosion by its continuing bailout of the collapsed post-1971 globalist financial system from 2007-2008 forward. Thus, the Fed’s legitimacy is the hottest of issues in “flyover country.” The obvious gulf between the horrendous difficulties now faced by most in living everyday life, and the Biden collective’s insistence that grand sacrifice is in order to save the world from “autocracy” and salvage the present “rules-based system,” is only feeding the sustained popular uprising led by Donald Trump and aimed at reclaiming Washington.

Inflation continues to rage for reasons beyond the Fed’s control, and even beyond control by monetary policy at all. As a result of the Green New Deal, Western sanctions on Russia, and the financialization and takedown of the productive economy, energy costs, with follow-on price rises in all sectors of the economy, continue to surge. In Massachusetts alone, electricity rates for the majority of customers are scheduled to rise some 60% this winter. Desperate European governments are seeking to prevent popular revolts this winter by issuing subsidies to citizens from funds gained from taxing energy producers. Such a scheme, of course, only further cripples supply.