Time Eating App

Daily writing prompt
What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?

I had to look up “app” since I wasn’t sure which, if any, of the sites I pay attention to are apps or just websites. While WordPress, does have an app, which I used back in my traveling days, I only use the online website to write, edit, post, and respond to comments. Other than that, there is a hidden object game I play, and apparently, it’s considered an app. I don’t feel bad about playing the game. I used to play a lot, even spent money on game tokens, but I don’t play as much as I used to and don’t spend any money, so I’m okay with whatever I feel like doing. Besides, it’s something interesting to do, gives me a feeling of connection to a few people, and helps keep my focus narrow and away from the world at large.

Which brings me to my other main app. X is considered an app, not a website, at least according to Google AI, so who knows the truth of it. (Google AI is not only terribly biased but I have found it dead wrong on many occasions. As the saying goes, “Garbage in, garbage out.)

The only reason I pay any attention to X once I stopped promoting my books (which, come to think of it was way before Twitter became X), is that a news aggregator I follow is on there. I found him on Facebook originally, but FB has had some issues with the videos the aggregator posts, and considering my own Facebook issues, I followed him over to X.

I don’t feel bad about paying attention to his posts because I like his summaries and commentaries of the videos I don’t have the patience to watch. There is a lot going on in the world today that I am interested in, mostly because the USA is trying to undo generations of globalist control of the country — something I’d been studying for decades. I thought the control was a foregone conclusion, so it’s been great to see the push back. Considering the stakes and how much of the backstory I know and considering how unbelievable the whole thing is (both the long-term, word-wide conspiracy — not a theory, a real conspiracy — as well as what is happening to undo some of that) it’s as if I’m reading a thriller in real time, not just seeing history repeating itself.

JFK also tried to take on the outside controllers of this country. Two and a half years before he was assassinated, he was irate at having been lied to by his own intelligence agencies, and he said, on April 27, 1961, “We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice. . . . Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”

A hundred years before that, Lincoln lamented that he was fighting two wars, the one in front of him and the one behind. The one in front was his attempt to keep the union together so they could together fight the one behind — the globalists who were already trying to take over the USA through control of its money, as they had from the very beginning. And after all that, in 1913 the USA ceded control of its money anyway.

So, it’s been interesting watching new players in this ancient fight, though I do pray for the people of this administration since those who previously fought this same battle were killed or had their reputations destroyed. It’s a harrowing time, more than most people know.

Eventually, I will have to give up paying attention. For every step the USA moves away from the controllers, the controllers (via the leftists, domestic terrorists, the one-sided media, the money people, to name a few in addition to global forces) pull us two steps back, which isn’t exactly good for my peace of mind since there’s nothing I can do about it anyway.

For now, I don’t feel bad about this expenditure of my screen time because it gives me a modicum of hope, but if the battle is ever lost for good, I will turn off the outside world and go back to paying attention only to what is my immediate vicinity as I did for most of my life.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Stepping on Toes

I stopped paying attention to partisan politics when, as a young adult, I learned about shadow governments, globalists, an international elite of some sort that was running things behind the scenes.

Even if I hadn’t researched the histories hidden in books, some of the sense that both parties were working toward the same agenda is obvious when you see how often policies changed to reflect the losing candidate’s point of view. It seemed so contrived — a play put on for the benefit of the voters who otherwise didn’t count in the rulers’ grand scheme of power and political leverage.

The way I saw it, when a tiger and a lion fight (or an elephant and a donkey), the poor rabbit always gets trampled. Or devoured.

Trump’s first term caught my attention because he seemed an outlier, not a politician but someone who had a different agenda, something more than just accruing power and money as politicians so often do. But I never really thought much about him and his presidency until the personal attacks on him began, most of which have subsequently been litigated out of existence or are proving to be false as more information comes out. (Many of those lies are still believed despite proof to the contrary.)

Those attacks continue. There’s an almost constant barrage of lies, hatred, vilification, name calling, more than any other president in my lifetime. Even if the current president is as bad as they say he is, it still comes down to why he’s not being protected from the outrage. Almost all presidents were corrupt (or corrupted) in some way, almost all overreached their power, but (with a couple of exceptions) the system protected them, hiding their transgressions from the voters, or at least downplaying their corruption. But not him. He’s out there on his own. The traditional media will not report anything he does that benefits people, and if they do, they spin it so it’s a bad thing. And news apps perpetuate this bias.  A content analysist, Media Research Center, reviewed the news that was presented in January to Apple News’ 140 million subscribers, and out of more than 600 articles during the most popular time slot, not a single article was from a conservative point of view.

Since this is history as it’s happening rather than books, I have no recourse but to do my research online to try to find out why the power brokers, the opposition party, and those who influence public opinion are treating this president differently from previous presidents. I’ve found many in-depth articles showing how he’s making his deals. Like with any dealmaker, he starts out with a brash opening, and it’s that opening that gets reported and excoriated. The steps that come after the opening salvo are ignored, so people only see how outlandish that first statement is without noticing the strategic moves he has already planned to get what he’s really aiming for.

I suppose it’s possible that the globalists let him continue doing his thing because of the chaos his presidency causes, which I’m sure furthers their agenda. But why do those in powerful positions hate him so much if he’s just the reverse of the same globalist coin presidents have always been? Is it possible that he’s actually doing something to upset or at least delay globalist policies that have been playing out for over a hundred years?

The first 150 years of the United States, there was no income tax. There were tariffs to support the various government programs, tariffs that were so successful, there was money to spare. Then, at the instigation of a cabal of bankers, the US money system was turned over to the newly created Federal Reserve Board, which Woodrow Wilson later admitted he regretted: “The Federal Reserve Act, which I signed, allowed our system of credit to become too concentrated. The growth of the nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved. We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world — a government run by the opinion of small groups of dominant men.”

Not only did the government of the time create the Federal Reserve Board (which they kept secret from the public for more than a decade), but they amended the constitution to allow for an income tax, which just twenty years previously had been decreed unconstitutional. (At first, they only taxed the highest 1%. In 1942, Frankin D. Roosevelt increased the number of people to be taxed to 75% of workers.) Because of bribery, corruption, and influence from other nations, tariffs were rescinded and taxation and debt became the name of the game.

Tariffs were always meant to be the main source of income of the United States not, as it is now, directly and solely from American citizens through taxation.

So why the hatred of Trump and his tariffs? Why the hatred of his push for nationalism? Why the insistence on destroying the immigration policies that all of his predecessors had created and espoused? These things, in the main, seem as if they would only help the country, though people point to each of these things (as well as other policies he’s followed) as reason to hate him, forgetting that the hatred and vitriol came first. Even before he was inaugurated, before he did a single thing, there was already talk of impeachment. And in the years between his two terms, there was a concentrated effort to discredit him irreparably.

After weeks, months, and way too many hours on the internet trying to figure this out, I still don’t know the truth, but I do know that anyone who is so utterly vilified (someone moreover who once was loved by the very people who are now vilifying him), has to be stepping on someone’s toes. It could be all part of the play, but it seems too extreme to me. Too confusing. By the time enough years have passed to put this all into historical perspective, I’ll be long gone, so I might never know. I don’t suppose it matters anyway, since what is happening and what is going to happen will happen even if I don’t understand the play that’s being enacted.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.