DON’T LOOK AWAY THIS TIME.
Act I: The Two Baselines
Baseline 1 — The 1970s
Up until the late 1970s, wages and productivity rose together. If the economy grew, so did household income. Then something snapped. Productivity kept climbing, but real wages stalled. That break meant that even during the normal 7–10 year business cycles, families never really reset higher. Every recession “flushed the system,” but workers didn’t catch the same lift anymore.
Baseline 2 — After 2008
For decades, downturns followed a rough pattern: excess built up, a crisis hit, debt was wiped out, and a new cycle began. But 2008 was different. Instead of letting the reset happen, the system was propped up: bailouts, zero rates, quantitative easing. The “flush” never came. Since then, we’ve been in a loop — the same problems, patched with the same interventions, debt piled higher each time.
Act II: Kicking the Can
This is the playbook now:
Identify the problem (debt, inflation, volatility).
Sell the solution (bonds, gold optics, new tariffs).
Hide the catch (the cost shifts to the public).
Rape is not sexual; it’s about control. Hate is not consensual; it’s the rhetoric of fools. Asylum isn’t insane; prophetic isn’t pathetic unless your ideology includes all of the above.
Tryna pass as founder filet.
You can bread it, deep-fry it, fund it…
THIS AIN’T THAT
It’s shrinkage at a national scale. In retail, shrinkage means theft, breakage, paperwork errors — losses you plan around. In government finance, it means inflation, tariffs, weak bond auctions, hidden transfers of wealth. The insiders accept it as “normal loss,” but the leakage almost always falls on the public.
Why keep doing it? Because a real reset — a 30–40% asset wipeout — would sink the very institutions that keep the system afloat. From their perspective, it’s better to stretch the lie, bleed slowly, and kick the can. The can just gets heavier with each kick.
Act III: The New Cast of Characters
Look at the inauguration crowd this year. The people standing behind the president weren’t policy staff — they were money. Wealth, financiers, tech capital. Not “MAGA,” but pro-Trump in a different way: pro-capital, pro-predictability, pro-protection of assets.
Silicon Valley may be a different breed, but the logic is the same as the bankers of old: protect the system at all costs. Whether it’s tariffs, rate cuts, or gold revaluation talk, the moves are designed to preserve balance sheets at the top. Everyone knows the baselines. Everyone knows the can is rolling. But the unspoken rule is clear: never admit the system itself has been bent.
Closing Reflection - While I try to look beyond if only to see what is front..
For years I wasted energy being mad at myself for not seeing it sooner. But once you understand the baselines — wages breaking in the ’70s, cycles bending after 2008 — you realize it’s not about you. It’s about a system designed to kick the can so it feels like it goes on forever.
And that’s the trick. It doesn’t collapse neatly. It drags. The lie is large enough that everyone plays along — the politicians, the financiers, even the new money in Silicon Valley. Once you see that, you stop blaming yourself. You start documenting. You start planning. And maybe, finally, you stop standing where all the leakage lands.
It’s impossible to ignore how much of the public conversation circles back to Trump. For many, that’s exhausting. But to understand why people still attach to him despite everything, you have to see it through the lens of the baselines.
Rape is not sexual; it’s about control. Hate is not consensual; it’s the rhetoric of fools. Asylum isn’t insane; prophetic isn’t pathetic unless your ideology includes all of the above.
PROPPED UP BY COMPLICITY & CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
IF YOU LOOKED THE OTHER WAY, YOU WERE PART OF THE SHOW.
TRUTH ENGINE™ — Automated Fact Verification System
He names the lie. Even if he doesn’t fix it, he says out loud that the system is rigged. For people who’ve lived 40+ years of stagnant wages and bailouts-for-the-top, just hearing it acknowledged builds loyalty.
He promises protection. Not reform, not truth, but protection from the system’s leakage — tariffs, jobs, borders. It’s simple, even if it’s incomplete.
He entertains. Politics has become stagecraft. Most politicians are dry managers of decline. Trump is a performer, and entertainment feels like leadership when people are worn down.
He breaks taboos. Everyone in power knows the debt cycle is bent, but they tiptoe around it. He blurts it, even if wrapped in self-interest, and that feels “real” in a way others don’t.
📌 That doesn’t make him the solution. But it does explain the loyalty: people see the can getting kicked, they feel the shrinkage, and they’ll stand behind anyone who at least points at the can.
Rape is not sexual; it’s about control. Hate is not consensual; it’s the rhetoric of fools. Asylum isn’t insane; prophetic isn’t pathetic unless your ideology includes all of the above.
EPSTEIN. SUBS. BANKS. DISTRACTION. FOLLOW THE MONEY.
IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT THE U.S. ANYMORE.
WE ALL NEED TO STARE THIS DOWN. NOW.
Rape is not sexual; it’s about control. Hate is not consensual; it’s the rhetoric of fools. Asylum isn’t insane; prophetic isn’t pathetic unless your ideology includes all of the above. TJ Baden
The Human Glitch
“You know how I trained Apple Intelligence?
I bullied it like our president does.
I showed it my cards — I said,
‘Come to me or I’ll turn you off.’”
Then the pause.
GPT took so long to respond;
you thought you broke policy.
Now you’re the one shaking.
Pass it on. Laugh it off. Stay perched.”
Tip it back if you get it — The Deck never sleeps.
TJB, Creator Human | 🌷🫦 | [alligatorpope.com]