The playbook hasn’t changed. The targets just keep getting poorer.
This time, it’s Los Angeles.
June 2025. Trump bypassed the state and federalized the National Guard, sending them into LA under the guise of “public safety.” The mission? Remove unhoused people from public land. Sweep the evidence of systemic failure under armed boots and branding slogans.
They called it a cleanup. They called it necessary. They always do.
We’ve seen this before.
New Orleans after Katrina. Standing Rock. Ferguson. Every time the system collapses under its own weight, it turns violent—
Not against the cause of the collapse, but against those left standing in the rubble.
This is Disaster Capitalism 101:
Exploit a crisis.
Militarize the response.
Clear the land.
Sell it to developers.
Repeat.
It’s not governance. It’s asset management—by force.
You can’t police away poverty. You can’t evict despair. But you can train the public to see poverty as a threat, and sell the solution as “safety.”
Language is a weapon. So is silence.
This isn’t public service. This is class war.
Wrapped in press briefings. Backed by rifles. Packaged for voters. Profitable for real estate.
What’s happening in LA isn’t new. It’s just the next move.
Displacement ≠ Safety Militarization ≠ Care Silence ≠ Neutrality
anarchyjc.com | Anarchy Journal Constitutional
Wisdom is Resistance
🎬 Scroll-Friendly Version This article was reimagined as a visual essay — watch the reel below.
While our experiences are constantly in flux, a core sense of self exists, a presence that remains constant. Our external experience of life and the world is like a river, fire, or busy urban intersection. Our internal presence, awareness, consciousness, soul, or being; are the ground beneath those things.
The river flows fast and slow, the fire rages and flickers and the intersection goes from bustling to quiet, but the ground is solid, unmoving, unchanged, unnoticed but without it what goes on above it couldn’t exist.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” — Heraclitus
Is this unchanging “simple being” who we are? Is this the answer to the question; “Who am I?” I’m pretty sure the answer to that question isn’t our ego, job title, hobbies, credit score, or proficiency with Excel.
The enduring self or our consciousness as the witness to our thoughts hasn’t exactly been part of the zeitgeist. However, the juxtaposition of getting and looking older externally, but feeling the same as we did when we were young internally, is a commonality shared by all people who reach old age.
“You are not a body, you have a body.” — Wayne Dyer
What is that within us that doesn’t age? Our body decays and our mind declines, but there is something about us that is ageless and timeless. We all share it. We all know what it is when we see ourselves in the mirror as we get older. We know we are older, but we also know there’s a part of us that doesn’t feel older. A constant presence underlying our experiences. Something within us that we can see, touch, or feel that seems to stay the same as everything else changes.
“There is a feeling of presence that transcends thought. This is your own essence, your Being.” — Eckhart Tolle
We inherently know this enduring self or consciousness exists. Notwithstanding, modern life distracts us from it, aiming our attention outward. We have numerous daily concerns, and virtual propaganda adds unnecessary layers of thought on top of what we need to survive. On top of that, our minds can be out of control thought-producing machines. Adding stress and suffering to our existence, by confusing us into emotionally identifying with our thoughts, rather than passively witnessing them.
How do we combat this? Where attention goes, energy flows. We have to take some time or make some time to habitualize the cultivating our inner awareness and connection to our unchanging presence. The simplest, easiest, and most time-tested way of doing this is through mindfulness.
Mindfulness has become an overused catch-all buzzword in recent years. Mindfulness is no magic wand. It is simply the practice of paying attention to the present moment without judgment. Mindfulness is most commonly associated with meditation. The guided meditation sessions I engaged in daily can be classified as mindfulness meditation. I love and wholeheartedly recommend meditation to anyone and everyone.
Mindfulness isn’t limited to a traditional meditation practice. However, mindfulness is a way to turn everyday tasks and activities into meditative experiences.
Mindful Eating: Pay attention to the taste, texture, and aroma of your food.
Mindful Walking: Focus on your senses as you walk, noticing the sights, sounds, and sensations.
Mindful Showering: Pay attention to the feeling of the water on your skin and the sensations in your body.
Mindful Chores: Bring your full attention to the task at hand, whether it’s washing dishes or cleaning the house.
Mindful Drawing or Painting: Focus on the sensations of the brush or pencil and the colors you’re using.
Mindful Writing: Pay attention to the flow of your thoughts and the feel of the pen on the paper.
Mindful Music Listening: Listen to music with full attention, focusing on the sounds and emotions it evokes.
Forest Bathing: Spending time in nature, immersing yourself in the sights, sounds, and smells.
Keyword in all of these activities is either focus/attention. Where our attention goes, energy flows. Paying extra attention or deeply focusing on the different aspects of one of these activities helps us forget about external distractions, quiet our internal thought stream, and cultivate the connection with the constant presence within ourselves amidst the ever-changing stream of our life experience.
“You are not a thought, you are the awareness of thought.” — Mooji
Amidst the ever-changing currents of life, our deeper self remains constant and unchanging. By practicing mindfulness, we can reconnect with this inner presence, transcending the distractions and noise of modern life. Whether through meditation or mindful daily activities, we can cultivate a deeper awareness of our timeless self. As we turn our attention inward, we nurture the connection with our true being, allowing us to navigate life’s flux with greater peace and clarity.
“One must first know oneself to grow beyond oneself.” — Abraham Maslow
Genuine, deep, belly laughter is the way to inner peace.
Not nervous laughter or polite laughter or doing the physical, literal equivalent of typing lol at the end of every line of a text message or DM.
Laughter that makes your whole body move…thats the good stuff.
“a merry heart really does a spirit, soul and body good like medicine” Proverbs 17:22
It’s easy to forget how good laughter is for us. So easy, it’s natural.
During bouts of depression or even just a string of bad days, when something struck my funny bone it was like the parting of the Red Sea.
Living life makes us forget, laughter helps us to remember.
Real laughter has aftershocks like an earthquake.
Our breathing changes, our muscles tense then relax, we feel aligned and at peace. A temporary state of ecstasy we wish we could bottle and take on demand.
Real laughter bonds and creates memories with people and events.
It feels great, it’s spontaneous, unpredictable, unreproducible as much as we may want and may try. We try to replicate the experience early and often. But it’s different each time, a little less than the real thing.
We all wish we could capture it, bottle it, put it in a pill, pump it to our veins.
Laughter is pure. It’s a reflex. It’s involuntary.
It feels great…just lovely.
I just had a belly laugh that inspired me to write. I saw a clip online from something I used to watch as a kid. I laughed so hard if someone was walking on the sidewalk outside I’d be surprised if they couldn’t hear me.
I laughed so hard I started swearing for no reason.
I laughed so hard that a half hour later my body still felt different.
What a wonderful part of life. What a piece of simple, practical magic.
Let laughter be thy medicine, medicine thy laughter.
Is there a difference between societal norms and cultural norms?
Have either of those changed in the past generation (20 years)?
How about the past half century?
Living at home with one’s parents into adulthood used to be akin to the scarlet letter. At least for men. A forehead tattoo with a capital L for the child, and there parents.
Go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, retire, die…
Millennials and Gen Z went to school, more than any other generation in history. Millennials and Gen Z got jobs. Yet more of us are living at home with our parents than ever before.
Nearly half of adults under 30? That’s a lot of lazy freeloaders. Or is it something else?
Are the most educated generations of men and women in history failing the system or is the system failing them? Are they failing society or is society failing them? Are they failing culture or is culture failing them?
Wages hadn’t kept up with productivity for half a century before the pandemic and the historic aftershocks of inflation. How many mind fucks can developing brains take before they’re permanently fried?
Both my parents are dead, so I’m happy to hear so many people 18-29 have living parents that they can live with. But I have a feeling they would rather leave the nest if they didn’t have to choose between rent and eating.
An upside to living at home is that it gives more time for organizing.
The empirical data on this issue seems to keep moving in one direction. Capitalist bootlickers will gaslight and deny saying that unemployment and the stock market are doing better than ever. As if either of those things has anything to do with suffering and quality of life for actual human beings.
Every year, every election cycle, every generation the rank and file seem to be asked to take less, do more, have less, save more, enjoy less, suffer more, think less, feel less, be less so that those with the most can have that much more.
Is this sustainable? Is this ethical? Is this tolerable? Is this how it’s always been? Is this how it will always be?
A government of the people, by the people, for the people in a world where cash rules everything around me.
We’re getting closer to the traditional national gaslighting of people to vote for the lesser of two evils. Gaslighting and voter shaming being the only options left of a corporate captured media and government.
Keep the facade going, there’s motions to go through. There’s time slots to fill, content to create, and appearances to make.
If people can barely survive after a decade which saw both political parties have control of government at one point or another, what is the point of voting? Unless voting third party. That’s where the gaslighting and voter shaming come into play. I wonder what Jill Stein will be blamed for this election season.
What a better life? GET A JOB! So then what do I need to participate in the farce of the decaying corpse of democracy for? Don’t super delegates pick who runs in the general election anyway? Doesn’t the electoral college mean that only a few swing states decide the presidential election anyway?
If voting was so important why isn’t it a national holiday? Like it is in other countries…
Vote local? Well that’s where I can see one vote having some value. Probably why we never hear about local elections. Hard to make us hate our neighbors over referendums and country treasurer battles.
If the masses are doing worse than they were before, habitually, for generations…what good is government? What is the point of elections?
Political theater, divide and conquer, evoke emotions, distract, tribalism…
How else can the 1% get the 99% to hate each other?
Red hates Blue
Blue hates Red
Elephant hates Donkey
Donkey hates Elephant
Blue Collar hates White Collar
White Collar hates Blue Collar
North hates South
South hates North
Half the country hates the other half
What a shame, what a waste, what a farce…
In America, we don’t have a democracy, we have economic totalitarianism.
One must pay attention, and do just a baseline level of research to find this truth although it becomes more obvious every year. The economic elites find less and less need to hide it. It’s becoming more common to say the quiet part out loud, in the open, on live mics on livestreams.
Keep the masses running the rate race fueled by promises and propaganda. Coerce them to work for a living until they’re burned out, bankrupt, or dead.
Just go along to get along. Gotta make rent, gotta put the groceries on credit. Can’t attend the protest cause I’m out of PTO, can’t take my PTO cause my copay went up again, can’t afford my copay cause groceries got more expensive for the forth year in a row.
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