From Cult Leaders to CEOs: How Power Turns People Into Monsters

 What would you do if you woke up to find yourself surrounded by a group of devoted followers who believed you were holy, divine... God himself?  Men, women & children ready to die or kill for you, wait on you hand and foot & subjugate themselves totally, all because they thought you were somehow superior?  

We know what would happen because we have cults:  Jonestown, Rajneeshpuram, Heaven's Gate, NXIVM, Scientology, Children of God, The Manson Family, the Branch Davidians, Warren Jeffs' FLDS, Anne Hamilton's "Family"... the list goes on.  Even in less culty "religions" like the Assembly of God, pastors and preachers like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart ended up abusing their power.  But it's a chicken or egg situation:  did those people become cult leaders due to their pre-existing narcissism & psychopathy, or did they start out normal(ish) and only become evil due to the (CIA-supplied drugs) and power going to their heads?  Put another way, could anyone become evil if granted a certain amount of power and control?

Again, we know the answer is yes due to the Stanford prison experiment, which transformed normal people into abusive monsters by simply granting them power over other humans.  So why do we continue to intentionally place humans in positions of unchecked power and immunity from prosecution?  We preach about equality and justice while defending capitalism, which is based on the "one slavemaster/99% of the population in chains" hierarchy.  Religious leaders are given insane amounts of power due to our religious freedom laws, which also allow cults to get away with things secular individuals never could.  We give our politicians the power to make laws that affect public health and safety with no input from scientists, medical professionals or the people they serve.  Why? 

Trump: Made in America

President Evil

Pretending Trump is some random aberration is absurd.  In actuality, he's a manifestation of everything America promotes and rewards:  ruthlessness, ambition, capitalism, greed, cruelty, proud ignorance & narcissism.  Ditto Elon Musk and every other billionaire born into privilege who likes to cite the virtues of "hard work" & sacrifice.  The truth is, you don't get to that level of wealth & power via "hard work" but by unremitting psychopathic behavior + being born into privilege.  Paying people starvation wages & keeping the "excess", overworking employees in unsafe conditions, firing long-time workers days before retirement for undisclosed reasons, not paying a dime in federal taxes that everyone else has to pay, using your money to influence law and politics & rewarding bad behavior is psychopathic by definition.  It lacks empathy & compassion for other people & is often coupled with a "nice guy" charming persona that a blind man could see through.  Yet for some reason, many Americans cannot.  Instead, they worship at its altar as if sucking its asshole will make them rich/powerful by osmosis.

These same hypocrites often cite the "sanctity of human life/marriage" when trying to restrict the reproductive freedom and marriage rights of others. The CEO caught on Jumbotron with his 6th mistress while spewing platitudes about "family values", the politician raping children a on private island, the billionaire whose factory workers financed his trip to the moon while they pissed in bottles and died on the factor floor... these animals are not in a position to discuss the "sanctity" of ANYTHING.  They are the anti-Christ, literally.  The opposite of Jesus Christ, whose religion Americans like to claim this nation was "founded on".   

Bullshit.

Amazon driver's piss bottle near an L.A. highway. 

The only solution to this insane extremism is a more equal distribution of wealth and power.  Put more things up for a vote of the people instead of letting politicians decide with the stroke of a pen & influence from lobbyists.  Form more unions and co-ops, focus on mutual aid instead of charity.  Either make everyone pay their fair share of taxes, or no one does.  Stop granting tax exemption to religious organizations that get directly involved in politics, which is most of them.  Either drug test everyone at every job (including lawmakers) or nobody is tested.  Everyone gets the same shot at a fair trial, not just those who can afford bail & private counsel.  And so on. 

This is not communism, it's just basic fairness and justice.  It's common sense if you want a happy, well-adjusted society.  Not even that--a functioning society that isn't constantly ripping itself apart at the seams due to feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness and misguided rage.  The fact is, those in power don't give a shit about the mood or well-being of the country or in fact the survival of the planet--they're only in it for themselves.  For the here and now.  For the stockholders.  For the nookie.

Nobody likes to admit that they would become a soulless, dopamine-chasing sadist if they had a little wealth/power because it's not pleasant to think about.  We like to think more highly of ourselves and others, to "see the good" in the human race.  Unfortunately that's just not borne out in the scientific literature.  But sometimes science is redundant.  Just look at the reality in which you live!  

Scopolamine: Date Rape Drug of the Elite?

"Ask Chris about my trumpet plants" reads an email by Jeffrey Epstein.  It sounds innocent enough, especially when lost in the sea of other more blatantly troubling media and communications included in the Epstein Files.  But like most things in this case, once you scratch the surface, things suddenly become a lot darker.  

The Devil's Drug

Colombian woman on scopolamine

Trumpet plants ("Angel's Trumpet") are the common name for Brugmansia, a bell-shaped flower that contains scopolamine.  This substance is also goes by the names "the Devil's Drug" and "the World's Scariest Drug" for its ability to turn a person into waking zombies.  In Colombia, scopolamine is used to spike tourists' drinks or blown into their faces, after which time they can be prompted to drain their bank accounts or taken to the ATM and robbed blind.  It's also a perfect date rape drug due to its powerful deliriant effects and the fact that it doesn't show up on drug tests.  It also causes near-total amnesia of the events after the fact.  Very convenient.  

Brugmansia belongs to a family of plants known as nightshades, which includes harmless things like tomatoes and potatoes but also toxic drug plants like Datura (Jimsonweed), Henbane and Belladonna.  These plants are deliriants that contain tropane alkaloids such as atropine, hyoscyamine and scopolamine.  In small doses, scopolamine has medical uses like treating motion sickness and nausea after surgery.  But in larger amounts it causes powerful and long-lasting effects like stupor, confusion, agitation, impaired memory, confabulation and akathisia.  It can even cause death by triggering tachycardia (rapid heartbeat) & severe overheating--a horrific way to die.  Scopolamine's effects have been compared to sleepwalking or fugue states, which is nothing at all like the more typical psychedelic drugs (LSD, magic mushrooms).

Learn more about this nightmare drug here:

The World's Scariest Drug by VICE (2013)

Epstein Connection

Brugmansia ("Angel's Trumpet")

A 2015 forwarded email to Jeffrey Epstein by Antoine Verglas (a famous photographer of models) contains an article on scopolamine with the title "Scopolamine: Powerful drug growing in the forests of Colombia that ELIMINATES free will."  Fucking YIKES.  But it gets worse:  the article says "scopolamine makes people 'highly suggestible'. "You can guide them wherever you want. It's like they're a child."  🤢

Manzaro victim impact statement referencing scopolamine (click to enlarge)

But it gets weirder.  The Epstein files contain a victim impact statement sent to US Attorney in South Florida in 2022 by a man claiming he was drugged with scopolamine.  His name is Joseph Manzaro.  Ring any bells?  Manzaro also showed up in a Diddy lawsuit, claiming he was raped at a freak-off in 2015.  More on that here.  So why tf is this included in the Epstein Files?  Nobody knows, but it seems safe to say that Epstein most likely used this drug on at least some of his victims.  "My" trumpet plants suggests he was in the process of buying or growing this toxic nuisance.

Love for him to photograph my daughter (Antoine Verglas) 🤢 .

The bigger implication here is that scopolamine is a well-known, commonly used date rape drug among elite rapists and pedophiles in the U.S. and abroad--not just in  the slums of Colombia.  And that's bad because it's so toxic, in a whole other league from "roofies" and other downers.  Why would Antoine Verglas, a well-known photographer who launched the modeling career of Melania Trump, send such a creepy email to a convicted child sex abuser?  Has Verglas used it on women himself?  I know someone who was drugged at a club in Florida, though the offending substance was never determined.  Why does Florida keep coming up in these creepy rape/pedo cases?  So many questions.

Of course, the deadly nightshades are completely legal in the U.S., a testament to the pointlessness of our drug laws.  A string of tourist deaths--many American--have occurred in recent years in Medellin, Colombia, and many are linked to the drug.  

Here's an excellent episode of Sidebar that discusses this whole sordid matter in more detail than I've seen elsewhere:  

Law & Crime w/ Jesse Weber

The Death of Fun 💀

Do people like to have fun anymore?  Not like sitting in a dark room and doomscrolling while watching gay-ass Netflix, I'm talking real fucking fun.  Music and junk food and running naked through the woods on shrooms in the daytime & collapsing in a cuddle puddle on pure MDMA at night and watching the stars turn to sunbeams as you discuss the nature of death and God and receive the best head of your life before passing out only to do it all again the next day. 

Laughing until your sides ache at stupid inside jokes with old friends; dancing until your legs feel like Jello with strangers who feel like friends.  Soaking your cares away in a natural hot spring.  Reaching a near-transcendent state in a desert drum circle; partaking in the sacred medicine of the Native American Church around a fire in a tee pee.  Road-tripping with the top down and the volume up.  Dancing in the rain and scattering like cockroaches when lightning strikes.  Sliding backwards down a water slide in an innertube with 3 other screaming maniacs in the summer and then doing the same down a snowy mountainside in the winter... 

These are the moments that make a life.  Not the selfies posted, the overtime worked, the test scores made, the money spent or other superficial shit.  It breaks my heart to see kids going through the motions & focusing so much on appearances that they forget to live.  Perfectly-coiffed Gen Z clones who regurgitate the same lame catchphrases, poses and clothing styles--nary an independent thought between them.  Paying hundreds for concert tickets only to spend the entire show with their lame-ass cell phones in the air.  I could understand 5-10 minutes as a souvenir to remember it by, but not the WHOLE. FUCKING. CONCERT. 

It's like going to the beach on a beautiful day with your friends only to spend the entire day with your head down searching for seashells to take home.  Never talking to anyone, not setting foot in the water, bodyboarding or soaking up the rays next to an old boombox while you watch hotties walk by.  Just obsessively scanning the sand for shells.  Alone.  But when you get them home, they're just some stupid fucking shells.  The same is true of photos and videos:  They could never be as magical as actually living in the moment & recalling it with your own brain.

Hey Siri, what is "off my phone?"

It's far better to enjoy the proverbial "concert" while it's happening--to dance, sing, mosh, chat with the cool chick next to you, fight with some drunk bitch in the lobby & actually enjoy the band than do a shitty job of documenting the concert for later.  But try telling that to anyone born after 2001 and prepare for the buffering screen of death.  (Wow, there's even a name for it!  Give you one guess what it is).  

Sure, I might be an introverted autist who spends 90% of my time alone and indoors, but no matter where I am, I'm 100% present.  And all that fun shit I listed above?  Actually did it, and lots of other cool stuff.  There may not be many pictures or Snaps to prove it, but I and all the other people who were there remember it which is what counts.  Despite the tomfoolery, I somehow still managed to get a degree, maintain a 12-year relationship (over now, but nevertheless), make and keep the best friends in the world, live independently & stay out of jail/rehab/debt.  If I died tomorrow the only thing  I'd regret is getting stuck on people who weren't worth the tears & didn't feel the same about me.  Kinda happens a lot.  But at least I'm not a fake drone living a hollow ass life.  🤷🏻‍♀

Now off to buy snacks for girls' night.  

Global Burden of Disease + A Warning for America

*70q0 is the probability of dying before age 70.

The Global Burden of Disease Study is the most comprehensive global death probability calculation estimate in the world.  It's published in The Lancet every few years and is extensively researched and meticulous.  You can read the whole thing here.  It includes not only health-related causes of death but all other causes as well (accidental injury, war/terrorism, extreme weather, suicide, etc).   

From 1990 to 2023, ischaemic heart disease and stroke consistently ranked as the first and second leading causes, respectively—except in 2021, when COVID-19 temporarily ranked as the leading cause of age-standardised deaths.


Here are Top 20 killers in various years:

Click to enlarge

First, the good news. The global all-cause age at death increased from 46.8 years in 1990 to 63.4 years in 2023.  The global reduction in dying before age 70 due to tuberculosis from 2000 to 2023 is a success story.  There was an overall decline of 60·0% in females and 58·0% in males.  Lower respiratory infections declined 51.2% among females and 47.4% among males between 2000 and 2023 due to reductions in various risk factors, including reductions in household air pollution, a decrease in the prevalence of childhood wasting, and improved vaccine coverage.  Global improvements were also observed in diarrheal diseases, with declines of over 70% for males and females. 

Over the past three decades, there were large improvements in life expectancy where four causes of death were concerned:  respiratory infections and tuberculosis, nutritional deficiencies, other infectious diseases, and enteric infections—which had individual declines ranging from 58.9% to 79.0%. This achievement was facilitated by many years of sustained international cooperation with local governments.

Now the not-so-good:  70q0 due to drug use disorders increased by 56.8% in males and 68.0% in females globally.  Between 2020 and 2023, COVID-19 had an immense global impact, resulting in 18 million total deaths.  Among these, 10·5 million deaths were in males, and 7·53 million (6·98–7·96) deaths were in females. 

Differences between the sexes didn't end there.  Among the top 50 global causes of death for females, the 15 with the largest increase in 70q0 between 2000 and 2023 were (in decreasing order):

interstitial lung disease and pulmonary sarcoidosis;
drug use disorders;
 lip and oral cavity cancer, 
atrial fibrillation and flutter;
Alzheimer's disease and other dementias;
diabetes;
hypertensive heart disease;
pancreatic cancer;
Parkinson's disease;
ovarian cancer 
other cardiovascular and circulatory diseases;
breast cancer;
endocrine, metabolic, blood, and immune disorders (+29·9%; 0·1%);
chronic kidney disease (+27·7%; 0·6%);
and non-rheumatic valvular heart disease

For males, the 15 causes of death with the largest increase in chance of dying before age 70 included (in decreasing order):

diabetes
drug use disorders
AFIB and flutter
Interstitial lung disease & pulmonary sarcoidosis
Alzheimer's and other dementias
Parkinson's disease
endocrine, metabolic, blood, and immune disorders
pancreatic cancer
lip and oral cavity cancer
prostate cancer
non-rheumatic valvular heart disease
chronic kidney disease 
colon and rectum cancer
urinary diseases and male infertility 
other cardiovascular and circulatory diseases


Ten countries had an increase in overall chance of dying before age 70.  The largest was in Palestine (33.1% increase), more than double that of the next-largest increase in Lebanon with 15.3%. The staggering increase in Palestine is driven almost entirely by the conflict between Israel and Palestine, with an increase in 70q0 of 8980% due to conflict and terrorism.  Within the first year of the war, Palestinians lost an estimated 30 years of life expectancy.  



2026 and Beyond

What's in store for the next 10 years?  Nobody knows, but things aren't looking rosy in the U.S.  I stumbled upon this study while looking into the Lancet's recent article on RFK, Jr.  It's startling in its candidness and pulls no punches about how disastrous this administration has been to our already ailing healthcare system.  Here's a little snippet:

"Little hope for U.S. health and science"

Full article here.  This is one of, if not THEE most respected peer-reviewed medical journal in the world.  Med journals aren't known for getting involved in politics, so this is truly troubling. 




Endgame

Top 10 Richest fucks in the world.  Notice a pattern?

My theory is that, after seeing the way COVID-19 enriched so many of the top 1%, turning billionaires to centibillionaires for the first time in history, the U.S. government would love to unleash another pandemic on the public to aid in the further upward transfer of wealth to the donor class.  Who cares if we kill off a huge chunk of our own population?  We can just import more work-age adults from South America and Mexico (Democrat strategy), or do away with child labor laws (Republican strategy).  Heck, why not do away with those pesky labor laws altogether?  Not like most employers abide by them anyway. 

Sure, this also happens to be the anti-science crowd, but simply distrusting science and "mainstream" medicine is not an adequate explanation for the aggressiveness with which the government has done such severe harm to our already struggling public healthcare system.  There's only so much $$$ you can make pushing detox supplements and other alternative medicine horseshit.  This reeks of something more sinister. 

Ample motivation for another pandemic.

Once billionaires have stolen ALL the money in circulation, then they'll make poverty/homelessness a crime in all 50 states & incarcerate more people to get more free labor in our prisons.  Who needs healthcare when you've got 3 hots and a cot?  The new pandemic will kill off another million or so elderly, sick and feeble Americans so only the "good breeding stock" with "good genes" are left behind, simultaneously purging Social Security and the social welfare system of millions more poor and disabled people.  Think of it as a Jonestown Massacre for the 21st Century.  Then Elon and Bezos can race to Mars to determine ownership of the red planet, blasting off in their slavery-funded rocketships and leaving us all behind in waist-deep boiling sludge to fight over Earth's remaining resources.  

Whew, that spiraled quickly.  But we must assume these despots have an endgame in mind when they make sweeping cuts to our already ailing public healthcare infrastructure, fire scientists, reduce childhood vaccine recommendations/requirements and other shit that's 100% certain to trigger another mass wave of death that could make COVID look like the a head cold by comparison.  Ignorance alone doesn't explain such aggressive--and aggressively stupid--behavior.  Things that a literal retard could see are a bad idea if preserving human life is the goal (it's not).  At a certain point you've got to assume malice. 

What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall at Trump's secret cabinet meetings; to read their communications like we're now reading Epstein's emails.  I can guarantee terms like "apocalypse insurance," "Great Replacement" and "social murder" are littered throughout.   

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