Month: December 2023

by Travis Mateer

How was your year? Mine, it wasn’t that great. I ended two relationships this year and almost blew my top like Mt. St. Helens. One relationship produced three amazing kids and lasted 25 years. The other produced work for cops and lawyers and will require me appearing in court next year. Cool.

At the blog I wrote 375 posts, starting with this one calling out the LifeGuard Group:

It’s interesting to see the acronym LARP in the title of this post because the concept of Live Action Role Playing is definitely going to be a topic I’ll continue writing about in 2024.

While 2024 will see me updating a new blog and driving a new truck, I plan on having the same amount of fucks to give when it comes to local bullshit. I might not be in Montana for the first part of 2024, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still show-up local media with my timely use of a search engine.

Where will I be? I was asked that question recently by a cop who reads my blog while he scanned my fingerprints. My answer? Somewhere else, officer! 

If that answer isn’t satisfying for local law enforcement, then here are some clues about my 2024 plans.

White Lion? What does this barge referencing a slave ship in a movie produced by the Obamas have to do with my 2024 plans? Well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but I’ve got my sights on a WHITE LION myself, a lion who likes doing deals and may have Andrew Tate as his spirit animal.

Tracking down my white lion isn’t just about writing another blog post, it’s about taking my work to an entirely new level. More on that in 2024.

One BIG accomplishment I’m celebrating this year is the statewide effort it took to stop me and my fellow TIF activists from putting legal handcuffs on Ellen Buchanan and her Tax Increment Financing fiefdom known as the Missoula Redevelopment Agency.

That’s right, after helping make this documentary about Tax Increment Financing, which launched on January 5th, 2022, I teamed up with several members of that anti-TIF effort to lobby our legislators for some TIF sanity amidst a spiraling housing crisis. While we didn’t get SB 523 passed into law, we DID cause some serious consternation among the benefactors of the TIF slush fund.

Since almost the entire media landscape in Montana was too transfixed on trans-issues to notice the strange and effective bedfellows who share disdain for TIF abuses by local, non-elected oligarchs, here is some of MY reporting on what went down in Helena this year:

Are We Seeing The Sunset Of Tax Increment Financing Abuses In Missoula? (March 28th, 2023)

While I Track TIF (SB 523), Those LifeGuards Track The Traffick (HB 112) (April 7th, 2023)

What Should I Say About Tax Increment Financing To Convince Legislators To Vote YES On SB 523? (April 13th, 2023)

SB 523 Is Not The TIF Apocalypse They Want You To Think It Is (April 19th, 2023)

Week In Review: April 17-21, Part I (April 23rd, 2023)

Spring was a VERY busy season for me this year. In addition to my work on local/state tax issues, I also raised the alarm on “urban camping” months before our placeholder Mayor, Jordan Hess, declared a state of emergency about it. 

Did I stop at raising the alarm? Hell no, I rolled up my sleeves and actually DID SOMETHING about it–with my own money and on a short timeframe–because spring runoff doesn’t wait for the ineptitude of local government and pathetic non-profits!

I did solicit funds to recoup what I could through the creation of Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), but I didn’t meet my modest goal of $5,000 dollars, which is disappointing. And it’s not like I didn’t do the work! I even documented it, which you can check out here:

AA#1-Travis’ Impact Fund’s First Report! (March 29th, 2023)

AA#2-From North Russell To Camper Fire (March 31st, 2023)

AA#3-From Kim Williams Trail To North Hellgate (April 6th, 2023)

AA#4-From West Broadway Island To Silver Park (April 10th, 2023)

AA#5-Houseless Contact Conversations Plus Bonner And East Broadway (April 12th, 2023)

AA#6-Yoke’s To Southside Road And More (April 14th, 2023)

AA#7-The Meth Den Clean-Up That Synchronistically Culminated With A Press Conference On Homeless Camps (April 27th, 2023)

The Meth Den, Homeless Camp Clean Up Video I Spent $1,200 Dollars To Make Because Someone Needs To Step Up And Get Shit Done! (April 27th, 2023)

Stupid Trash Wars, A Political Non-Profit Pretender, And Me Showing Everyone How To Actually Get Shit Done! (June 21st, 2023)

July and August were particularly bad months for me, but instead of wallowing I took a trip (over 7,000 miles) and wrote a book (over 140,000 words), then came back to pretend Missoula had anything left to offer me save the turning of screws into my already battered life.

It’s been quite a year, and my appreciation for how much is NOT covered by local media continues to grow. I was 8 months ahead of local media in using my search engine to discover Sean McCoy, a City Council candidate, had a criminal record, and I’m still the ONLY person who wrote about the man involved in the 3 hour armed standoff with the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office.

And then there’s synchronicities.

I picked up this book yesterday at a local thrift store and the connection that jumped out at me was very specific and personal, and it fits in nicely with the colonial/native social tension hinted at in the film Leave The World Behind. 

Paying attention to synchronicities is a way for me to extract meaning from unconventional sources, something I’ve written about recently in my series on building a new credibility. I’ve written five posts on this topic so far, and will probably write a few more in 2024. Here they are:

On Breaking With Convention And Building A New Credibility (December 22nd, 2023)

Leave The Social Engineers Behind: Part II Of Building A New Credibility (December 22nd, 2023)

LARPing, ARGs, And A Cultural Relativism Tipping Toward Nihilism: Part III Of Building A New Credibility (December 27th, 2023)

Decoding The Believers From The Pacific Northwest: Part IV Of Building A New Credibility (December 29th, 2023)

Predictive Programming Or A River Of A-Casual Time? Part V Of Building A New Credibility (December 29th, 2023)

Yes, I think there’s significance in synchronicities, but I don’t always know what to do with them when they pop up. The story in the book that hit me yesterday is titled The Manitou Grand Cavern Mummy, and the familiarity started for me when I saw the word MANITOU, since I worked many years ago in Manitou Springs, Colorado. 

It’s the name of the Irish character who became this alleged “mummy”, though, that really fucked with me, because my first time ever visiting this area of Colorado was during high school, and it was a camping trip in the Pike’s Peak National forrest with my friend Tom O’Neil. And the character’s name? Tom O’Neel. 

Even stranger, two other words in this story jumped out at me: HOMELESS and CORONER. If you don’t know the significance of these words to me, then maybe this post featuring over 40 links on the Sean Stevenson case will be illuminating. 

If this sounds nuts, then just dismiss it and go about your day. But if your gut is telling you there’s something to this, then some of what I’m working on for 2024 should be pretty damn interesting, so stay tuned.

To wrap up this final post of 2023, here are the two links that weren’t part of my new credibility series this week:

Reading Between Their Lines As It Relates To Crime In Missoula + Shit Talking ALL Media In Montana (December 26th, 2023)

Could A Detective Guy Baker Fan Club Land Missoula Police Some Vaccine Money? (December 28th, 2023)

And here is Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), which is still accepting donations, so if you value what I’m doing, direct some funds my way!

Here are some stats for 2023, can I hit 95,000 views by the end of the year? 

If you were one of the 25,667 visitors checking out content at Zoom Chron this year, thank you! And if you were one of the many readers who DID direct some monetary support my way, I can’t convey enough how much I appreciate those contributions. I might not continue posting at the same frequency I’ve maintained these last few years, but I’m definitely going to continue exposing what I can, regardless of where I find myself in 2024.

Thanks for reading!!!

by Travis Mateer

"I am haunted by waters."
-Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

What the fuck is going on here? When I yell this question to myself, I try to keep the yelling in my head, especially now that I have a paper-thin wall and someone on the other side of it who I assume doesn’t want to hear the outbursts of someone plagued by synchronicities while trying to do somewhat normal things, like going to the bookstore, or watching a documentary.

Haunted by waters? Sure, among other things, water, and what some members of the psychopath class might be up to with it, is definitely a subject I feel a little haunted by, especially when I realized the Three Mile Island disaster happened amidst the waters of the Susquehanna river, where I spent time earlier this year. Not just that, but it was anticipated in a movie release that I find incredibly synchronistically suspect.

That’s right, less than two weeks before Three Mile Island had its little accident, a movie came out that planted the concept of a nuclear power plant experiencing a catastrophic meltdown that could theoretically put overheated nuclear fuel on a nuclear-heated path straight into the ground and, eventually, all the way to China.

From the link (emphasis mine):

The China Syndrome is a 1979 American disaster thriller film directed by James Bridges and written by Bridges, Mike Gray, and T. S. Cook. The film stars Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas (who also produced), Scott Brady, James Hampton, Peter Donat, Richard Herd, and Wilford Brimley. It follows a television reporter and her cameraman who discover safety coverups at a nuclear power plant. “China syndrome” is a fanciful term that describes a fictional result of a nuclear meltdown, where reactor components melt through their containment structures and into the underlying earth, “all the way to China”.

The China Syndrome premiered at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d’Or while Lemmon received the Best Actor Prize. It was theatrically released on March 16, 1979, twelve days before the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, which gave the film’s subject matter an unexpected prescience.

Yes, I’d say a 12 day lag time between fiction becoming reality would have certainly given the film an “unexpected prescience” that was probably not all that appreciated by those impacted by this nuclear accident.

Is there a 2023 corollary to this event? Yes there is, and that’s the connection of the Netflix production of White Noise and the REAL train derailment. The “unexpected prescience” of this movie was hard to ignore. Here’s how the New York Post covered it (emphasis mine):

It seems that the Netflix movie “White Noise” somehow eerily predicted the train derailment in Ohio earlier this month, as the fiery crash and fictional blockbuster share some of the same details.

East Palestine, Ohio, resident Ben Ratner, who also played an evacuee extra in “White Noise,” told People that the situation was “scary.”

“Talk about art imitating life,” the 37-year-old father-of-four told the outlet.

Yes, talk about ART imitating LIFE. Or maybe, just MAYBE, time is not the linear progression our cognitively-limited brains con us into thinking it is.

So, I’ll ask again, what the fuck is going on here? And should it be explored or ignored? 

Obviously, having written five posts trying to justify my approach to establishing credibility where not much currently exists (part I, part II, part III, part IV) I think this high strangeness should be explored, but I also think there is a cost, so I don’t do so lightly.

This will be the last official post for 2023, but you can still expect the week in review on Sunday, the actual last day of 2023.

And 2024? I’m not sure how frequently I’ll be posting here, but I’ve got something cooking for the first week of January that should be pretty interesting. Also, there’s my new online project to check out, so I plan on staying busy. 

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

While the main movie I’ll be looking at for this post takes place primarily in New York City, I’m including the location of the DECODER of this movie (me) in the title because I think the geographical location where I was born, and currently reside, is important for what I’m going to be claiming. 

The Pacific Northwest is also, based on a t-shirt, important to the creators of this film, a film about obtaining material power through child sacrifice. And who is involved in this film worth noting? Mark Frost, the guy who helped David Lynch create Twin Peaks, that’s who.

Yes, the 80’s started with quite a boom when Mt. St. Helens blew. I was two years old and living in Spokane, a city David Lynch spent time in with his family after being born at St. Patrick’s hospital in Missoula, Montana.

In 1987, the year The Believers came out, I was 9 years old and living in a suburb outside Seattle. Was my mother aware of Johnny Gosch, the young kid in Iowa who went missing in 1982 while delivering newspapers? I assume she was, since Gosch’s disappearance was a catalyst for using milk cartons to raise awareness about missing children. From the link:

During the late 1970s and 1980s in the United States, missing child cases garnered a great deal of news media attention. Chief among these were the disappearance of Etan Patz (1979) and the kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh (1981), whose story was told in the 1983 television movie, Adam. These reports developed into a type of moral panic called “stranger danger”. In 1984, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was founded.

In September 1984, Anderson Erickson Dairy in Des Moines, Iowa, began printing the photographs of two boys — Johnny Gosch (age 12, missing since September 5, 1982) and Eugene Martin (age 13, missing since August 12, 1984) — who went missing while delivering newspapers for the Des Moines Register. A similar milk-carton advertising program for missing children launched in Chicago, Illinois, with support from the police and statewide in California with support from the government.

Why am I talking about milk and missing children? Because the movie opens with the traumatic death of a young boy’s mother, and that death is facilitated by milk spilt from a carton and a malfunctioning coffee machine. Here’s more context from the plot:

After his wife Lisa dies from an accidental electrocution, psychologist Cal Jamison relocates with his young son, Chris, from Minneapolis to New York City, where Cal begins working as a police psychologist for the New York City Police Department. The city has been plagued by a series of brutal, ritualistic child murders. The first victim is a young boy found murdered in an abandoned movie theater. A policeman named Tom Lopez frantically phones in the discovery of the body, and claims the crimes are being committed by members of a Hispanic cult practicing a malevolent version of brujería. Cal is appointed to examine Tom, who raves about the cult’s powerful leader.

I won’t bog this post down with all the details that jumped out at me while watching this movie, because there were a lot, but some interesting ones include a joke about drowning in a bathtub, the mentioning of “trickster” and the phrase “consecrate the ground”, a German Shepherd dog (Son of Sam reference?), and other things relevant to my interests, like a rabbit, a clown face, the number 19 (in the morgue), and the Native doll the kid carries around, a doll he calls “Chief Black Cloud”.

Oh, and the name Lisa–that name has a STRONG connotation of death for me, and it was the proliferation of that name that recently kept me from considering a relocation to Spokane. So there’s that.

Going back to that t-shirt, the phrase ROCKIN’ IN THE NORTHWEST is obviously a reference to the volcano that blew its top in 1980, Mt. St. Helens, but why use this t-shirt in the movie? Are volcanoes sometimes associated with human sacrifice or something?

Before returning to my neck of the woods, let’s get even MORE Pacific with a comedy about human sacrifice and a volcano, starring Tom Hanks, titled Joe Versus The Volcano. From the link (emphasis mine):

Joe Banks is a downtrodden everyman from Staten Island, working a clerical job in a dreary factory for an unpleasant, demanding boss, Frank Waturi. Joyless, listless and chronically sick, Banks regularly visits doctors who can find nothing wrong with him. Finally, Dr. Ellison diagnoses an incurable disease called a “brain cloud”, which has no symptoms, but will kill him within five or six months. Ellison says that the symptoms he has been experiencing are actually psychosomatic, caused by trauma in his previous job as a firefighter. Ellison advises him to live the few remaining months of his life well. Joe tells his boss off, quits his job, and asks former coworker DeDe out on a date. Their date is a success, but when Joe tells DeDe that he is dying, she tells him she cannot deal with the revelation and leaves.

The next day, a wealthy industrialist named Samuel Graynamore makes Joe an unexpected proposition. Graynamore needs “bubaru”, a mineral essential for manufacturing superconductors. There are deposits of it on the tiny Pacific island of Waponi Woo, but the resident Waponis will only let him mine it if he solves a problem for them. They believe that the fire god of the volcano on their island must be appeased by a voluntary human sacrifice once every century, but none of them are willing to volunteer this time around. Graynamore offers to pay for whatever Joe wants to enjoy his final days, as long as he jumps into the volcano within 20 days. With nothing to lose, Joe accepts.

Isn’t this curious? I’d like to say more, like how this makes me think of the disappearance of MH370 and the connection to semiconductor technology, but there’s more REAL ground to cover, so let’s move on to a show that takes its name from a CALDERA volcano by the name of Yellowstone, and the actor peddling whiskey, who is from Hollywood royalty AND has deep Montana roots.

Ok, I admit it, at first I clicked on this article to hate-read it for Missoulian/mockery purposes, but by the end I was like DAMN, we’re not young and stoned watching Dazed And Confused anymore, are we. 

I mention Dazed and Confused because that is the context most people will have when it comes to the actor, Cole Hauser. But thanks to the Missoulian, I have a much better idea of how Hauser’s Montana roots influenced Hollywood, and NOT the other way around. 

From the link:

His great-great-grandfather was Samuel Thomas Hauser, who served as the seventh governor of Montana Territory from 1885-1887. Granddaddy Hauser arrived in what would become Montana in 1862. He tried his hand at mining in Bannack and Alder Gulch, but soon learned the same thing that copper King William Andrews Clark picked up on: the easiest way to get rich in Montana Territory wasn’t prospecting — it was banking.

The S.T. Hauser Bank opened in 1865, one of Virginia City’s first banks. Hauser later built Montana’s first smelter. Pretty quickly he was invested in railways, mines, cattle – pretty much anything he could make money with. He was part of the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition, the first large group of white men to explore what would become Yellowstone National Park.

Hauser was in the banking industry during Montana’s boom, but he was also holding the levers when the system busted. When silver collapsed during the panic of 1893, Hauser’s First National Bank of Helena failed, and as its president, he was investigated by a federal grand jury.

Afterwards, he invested in hydroelectric dams, and was instrumental in the series of obstructions that slow and swell the Missouri around Helena, including Holter Dam, Canyon Ferry and, of course, Hauser Dam. Hauser died in 1914, but that last dam and reservoir still bear the family name.

Yes, this is pretty damn impressive, but I forgot the Hollywood connection. Have you heard of a little movie house called Warner Bros.? Well, Cole Hauser’s GREAT Grandfather is Harry Warner, the founder of that little movie house. So there’s that.

I’m going to finish with a final “news” story that anyone studying synchronicities and the occult is sure to appreciate, and that’s the charges JAMES BOND (Pierce Brosnan) is now facing after allegedly stepping off a trail in a National Park. Guess which one?

If you don’t know how this ties in to occult research, that’s probably because you don’t know the original 007 was a man by the name of John Dee.

One of the foremost thinkers in England, John Dee combined science with spiritualism to rise to the top of Elizabethan politics and cast a spell over the queen with his counsel. And while his enemies would ensure that he was ridiculed and forgotten, he lives on in the codename for beloved superspy James Bond.

Ok, that’s quite enough for this fourth installment of building a new credibility. To catch up on what might seem like just crazy free-association, here’s part I, part II and part III.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

What the hell am I talking about? That’s probably what you’re thinking after reading the title of this post. How could transforming my growing admiration for Detective Guy Baker into an official fan club help get our local police department money? Am I high?

Before I get to my idea, let me explain something about Missoula for those who aren’t familiar with the community I’ve spent the last 23 years living in. Missoula likes to think of itself as INNOVATIVE and CUTTING EDGE when it comes to talking about how we approach difficult issues, like crime, drug addiction and homelessness. But are we?

The biomedical startups in Missoula are certainly thinking about cutting edge technology when it comes to injecting shit into your body, and one company in particular has been getting money AND attention for their work. And THAT is when I got an idea, an idea that could solve all kinds of problems.

One looming problem facing law enforcement–and EVERYONE in Missoula–is the problem of balancing a budget. Public Schools are losing their Covid money, businesses are closing, property taxes are soaring, and local government is busy buying mountains and handing out TIF money to banks and Mexican restaurants. 

Not only is money tight, but the optics for local law enforcement continues to be NOT good. Take the woman who has been burglarizing houses recently. Here is the meager reporting from the Missoulian about “investigators” finally identifying and arresting this woman.

After several home intrusions in the East Broadway and Rattlesnake neighborhoods, Missoula police officers arrested a suspect Wednesday afternoon.

“Our investigators have successfully identified the suspect as a 43-year-old female,” Missoula Police spokeswoman Whitney Bennett wrote in an email on Wednesday. 

Bennett said the woman had not displayed aggression toward residents she encountered, and had made excuses for her behavior when confronted by homeowners. Police advise homeowners to keep their home and vehicle doors locked and provide adequate outdoor lighting to deter criminal activity. 

While local media hasn’t named this person, I’m pretty sure it’s this repeat offender:

I have sympathy for law enforcement and the vicarious trauma they take on doing a high-risk job for shitty pay. That’s why a Detective Guy Baker Fan Club would advocate for the creation of a new police unit, led by Baker, to better address the network enabling chronic offenders, and this new unit would be equipped with the latest in OPIATE VACCINE TECHNOLOGY.

Here’s a recent story about the University of Montana getting EVEN MORE money to help develop cutting edge biomedical technology. From the link:

The University of Montana recently earned a four-year, $4 million Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub (REACH) award from the National Institutes of Health.

The award will establish the L.S. Skaggs Institute for Health Innovation–Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub (SIHI-REACH).

The UM-based hub will accelerate commercialization of biomedical innovation across Montana, Alaska, Idaho, and Wyoming, as well as help academic innovators develop medical products that address unmet medical needs across the U.S.

Is dealing with chronically offending addicts an unmet need across the U.S.? Hell yes it is, so let’s get INNOVATIVE, Missoula, and take advantage of our SUPER COP, Guy Baker, a guy who knows LOTS about drug trafficking, human trafficking, missing persons, and how to get media to think you’re doing EVERYTHING you can to accomplish the goal of catching the bad guys (and gals).

This idea is still in the forming stage, so I’m hoping 2024 will give me the opportunity to flesh out how this new police unit might operate. The only problem I can foresee is the potential of a member of this new unit having a pre-existing taste for opiates. Yes, that could be a problem, but I’m sure we wouldn’t have to worry about our SUPER COP, Guy Baker, because he’s a goddamn professional.

I’ve been collecting stories about the amazingly professional conduct of Detective Guy Baker, so another benefit of creating a Detective Guy Baker Fan Club would be to archive these stories for posterity. I’m sure someone who has appeared in a book by a well-known author, and a nationally syndicated podcast series, would be HAPPY to have his accomplishments achieved. Right?

If you are excited as I am about what 2024 has in store, then consider directing some monetary support to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). 

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Do you see what my oldest kid saw while we watched Leave The World Behind? I’m sure you do, because it’s a screenshot, but in real time I completely missed the QR code on the map of the cyber attack on America.

Before we get to what this QR code directs people to, I’ll note that part I and part II of this series might be helpful to consult if my jumps into synchronicity and other ways I ascribe value to cultural content seem confusing. Ok, let’s continue.

Fucking amusement parks. This is a part of what we’ll be looking at because of the QR code, and also because of synchronicities. Here’s what a Reddit thread turned up:

Maybe I should tell you what ARG stands for, since you’re now involved in one. ARG stands for Alternative Reality Game (or Augmented Reality Game), and it’s a phenomenon that can easily suck you in, like reading about what online sleuths find when they actively engage with this “movie” content at an ARG level, which is what you’re doing right now.

Since we’re defining terms, what does Live Action Role Play (LARP) mean? Here’s one way of thinking of it:

The word I would pay close attention to in this definition is the word GAME. Why? I’ll answer that question with another question: why am I watching and, more importantly, PAYING MONEY to watch old movies, like Halloween 3? Because I’m engaging with this content in order to FIND things, not just to passively consume the content as entertainment. 

An entire industry of podcasts and video channels has emerged to feed this new game of searching creative content for easter eggs, and the blurring of consensus reality with “fictional” reality is a method, I would argue, for seducing viewers into this process of gamification. Add synchronicity, like I experienced with amusement parks, and it’s game over; you’re hooked.

Amusement parks? Yes, there’s an abandoned amusement park in Mr. Robot that plays as a central location for the hacker drama, and there’s an amusement park I’ve had come up twice that once put Butte, Montana, on the map (Columbia Gardens), and then there’s some amusement park scenes in one of the most fucked up tv series I’ve ever watched, which we’ll get to in a moment (Euphoria).

First, a note on what I mean by cultural relativism and my problem with it.

I went online to see if I could find something that helps me short-cut what I’m wanting to say about relativism and nihilism, and I did! Here’s something from someone’s else’s blog that helps me do some quick heavy lifting:

Relativism leads to the absurd conclusion that there’s no normative difference between a sadist’s values and a humanitarian’s values. Hey, if tormenting people for fun is perceived as good and right by the sadist, then it’s good. Who are we to judge his values? The relativist might reply, “No, what I mean is you can do what you want so long as you don’t harm other people.” That’s a fine response but you’ve just given up relativism. You’ve just conceded that there is at least one objective moral truth.

Another response might be that people can do what they want so long as it makes them happy (however you define it). Once again you’ve conceded the argument because you’ve committed yourself to the objective value of happiness. I.e., when actions conflict with happiness, we ought to favor happiness; happiness is more important than all other things. You are actually a realist/objectivist.

Again, relativism leads to the unsavory position that the Gestapo and Medicins Sans Frontieres are organizations of equal moral worth. If the Gestapo thinks it’s good and right to “throw the Jew down the well,” then, hey, who are we to judge? Punching someone in the face is no less praiseworthy as giving someone a helping hand. I doubt very much that anyone truly thinks that, beyond personal beliefs and preferences, there are no important differences between the values in the above examples. If you think there are important differences you’re a realist because you just made a judgment about one set of values having more value than another. If you don’t then you’re probably a nihilist. But you aren’t a relativist. More on that later.

I think this path of cultural relativism is being pushed on us, and is veering toward nihilism, by design. And the worst part? By bringing attention to what I see happening, I might actually be helping the psychopath class achieve their goals by highlighting how their narrative assaults on us are being deployed through creative content.

If you approach shows like Euphoria with the understanding that it’s part of a war for your soul, then I think there could be some benefit in the risk of watching. But if you DON’T understand that, then watching this shit could be damaging. 

I’m not trying to be overly dramatic here. Two easy ways for the psychopath class to control our biological machines (bodies) are by using trauma and sex. Euphoria, created by Sam Levinson, is the epitome of how this potent combo can be utilized creatively to ostensibly “entertain” us, starting with the show’s use of the 9/11 attacks at the very beginning of this exploitive story.

I’m not going to get into graphic detail about how this show depicts unhealthy sexual relationships facilitated by technology and drug abuse. There are some interesting efforts by the show to explicitly link the proliferation of porn to this overtly traumatic way of young people becoming sexual beings with each other, but ultimately I don’t think it’s worth watching the show to get the “moral” of the story, especially considering who Sam Levinson’s Daddy is.

I don’t bring in family connections to indict (ok, Pete?), but to provide critical context regarding WHO the people creating these shows are, and who they were influenced by. When your Dad is a fellow creator, like Sam Levinson’s Daddy, Barry, I think it might be helpful to look at what kind of material DAD has had a hand in creating, so here’s what Wikipedia has to offer:

Barry Lee Levinson (born April 6, 1942) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. His best-known works are mid-budget comedy drama and drama films such as Diner (1982), The Natural (1984), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Bugsy (1991), and Wag the Dog (1997). Levinson won the Academy Award for Best Director for Rain Man (1988). In 2021, he co-executive produced the Hulu miniseries Dopesick and directed the first two episodes.

Hmmm, I see organized crime, gambling, drugs and war propaganda. Even the baseball movie with Robert Redford (who put Missoula on the map with A River Runs Through It) has some NOT so subtle drug references in the names of some of the characters, not to mention a pivotal scene that takes place at…you guessed it, a carnival! (emphasis mine):

In 1910s Nebraska, a young Roy Hobbs learns to play baseball from his father. After Hobbs Sr. suffers an early, fatal heart attack, lightning strikes the large tree next to which he died. Hobbs makes a baseball bat from the tree’s splintered wood, burning a lightning bolt and the legend “Wonderboy” into the barrel of the new bat.

Now 19 years old, Hobbs heads to Chicago for a tryout with the Chicago Cubs, leaving behind his girlfriend, Iris. While on the train, he meets legendary ballplayer “The Whammer” (based on Babe Ruth), sportswriter Max Mercy, and Harriet Bird, a mysterious woman who is following The Whammer. At a carnival during a stopover, Hobbs wins a bet that he can strike out The Whammer with just three pitches and easily does so. Hobbs later meets Bird in Chicago, and she asks if his boast that he can be “the best there ever was,” is true. Hobbs answers yes, and Harriet shoots him in the abdomen, then kills herself.

Sixteen years later, in 1939, Hobbs is signed as a rookie to the New York Knights, a struggling ball club in last place. Manager Pop Fisher is furious that Hobbs was signed without his approval, believing him too old, making him suspect of an ulterior motive by the team’s owner. He refuses to play Hobbs at first, but he later relents, electing him to pinch hit, after which Hobbs literally knocks the cover off the baseball. Hobbs becomes a baseball sensation, and the Knights’ fortunes begin to turn around. Max Mercy finds Hobbs vaguely familiar but fails to place him.

Assistant manager Red Blow tells Hobbs that if Pop loses the pennant this year, his Knights ownership share will revert to the Judge, the team’s shady majority owner. The Judge offers Hobbs $5,000 (equivalent to $105,000 in 2022) to throw the season. Hobbs, unlike Bump Bailey, refuses the bribe. While watching Hobbs pitch during a practice session, Mercy suddenly remembers him and introduces Hobbs to Gus Sands, a gambler who has been placing large bets against Hobbs. He also meets Pop’s beautiful niece, Memo Paris, who was Bump’s girlfriend. Their budding new romance causes a distracted Hobbs’ game to badly slump, all part of the Judge’s new plan.

What’s up with Red BLOW and BUMP Bailey? Maybe it has something to do with Barry’s roommate and his connection to drug trafficking.

That’s right, according to Wikipedia, Barry Levinson (who also studied broadcast journalism) was roomies with George Jung, a man who stumbled into a working relationship the Medellin Cartel. Isn’t that curious? (emphasis mine):

Levinson is of Russian-Jewish descent. After growing up in Forest Park, Baltimore and graduating from Forest Park Senior High School in 1960, Levinson attended Baltimore City Community College and American University in Washington, D.C. at the American University School of Communication, where he studied broadcast journalism.

He then moved to Los Angeles to work as an actor and writer and performed comedy routines. Levinson at one time shared an apartment with would-be drug smuggler (and subject of the movie Blow) George Jung.

I think this is a good place to wrap up part III of this ongoing series attempting to create a framework of new credibility in order to decode the creative content we are being influenced by.

Thanks for reading!