Month: December 2023

by Travis Mateer

When you read local media as closely as I do stuff that might not register with casual readers stands out. Part of the value I bring to my readers is pointing out the ways in which local media facilitates a sly manipulation of local data to give you impressions that might not be as accurate as you assume.

One of the factors that should be considered when reading anything from local media is the TIMING of what is being reported. For example, the idea of a “Friday news dump” was derived, I would assume, from critical thinkers noticing the pattern of sensitive information being released at a particular time of the week for a particular reason. From the link:

Releasing bad news or documents on a Friday afternoon in an attempt to avoid media scrutiny is often called a “Friday news dump” by members of the media.

This timing is often chosen strategically, aiming to minimize media coverage, public attention, and potential scrutiny that may arise from the news being released.

The concept of the Friday news dump is rooted in the understanding that news cycles tend to be slower over the weekends, with fewer journalists and news outlets actively covering breaking stories.

I wasn’t consciously thinking of this notion as I read the weekly crime statistics reported by KGVO. Before we get to what is being reported at the end of 2023 in Missoula, let’s take a quick trip down memory lane to 2015, when Kirsten Pabst was doing damage control about Missoula being unfairly designated as the Rape Capital of America (emphasis mine):

Explaining the incalculable trauma sexual crimes cause victims is valuable for our community. Oversimplifying the many factors properly considered in deciding if a person should be formally charged with committing a sexual crime is disingenuous, destructive and, in the end, harmful to victims. It is not enough to cast blame. To start to solve this challenge together, we need to begin by understanding the facts. 

A widely held misunderstanding is that sexual assaults were not being prosecuted in Missoula; Missoula was unfairly referred to as the “Rape Capital”. The actual numbers show that our offense rates are typical and our prosecution rate has been much higher than the national average.

If you don’t think Missoula’s prosecutorial machine is sensitive to how its perceived through the lens of media after being raked over the coals by national media scrutiny, then you are an ideal consumer of local news because you will read the following information and more than likely NOT understand the important takeaway you’ve been given. 

Here’s the quote from the KGVO article with NO emphasis from me because I want you to try thinking for yourself why this framing of a busy week is important:

The Missoula County Attorney’s Office charged 30 new criminal complaints this week, which is 11 more than last week and way higher than the weekly average. According to Chief Deputy County Attorney Matt Jennings, that doesn’t necessarily mean there were more crimes this week.

“This is a time of year where things actually slow down a little bit in our office and allow us to catch up on some cases that have been sitting there for a couple of weeks that might take a little bit more time to charge,” Jennings said. “We had 15 in-custody arrests. That means somebody was out getting the police called on them or observed by law enforcement and actually getting arrested at that moment. Then about 15 of them were out of custody and those are often property crimes, things like embezzlement or something that took a little bit longer to investigate, but nonetheless, this was one of our busiest weeks of the year.”

Who is reading this stuff, much less WRITING about it, amidst the craziness of Christmas and New Year’s? I mean, besides someone with no life and a burning desire to expose the way his home community is being manipulated?

For more hints of media manipulation I waded into a recurring Missoulian schtick that frames GOOD things as “huckleberries” and BAD things as “chokecherries”. The nugget of manipulation I found came from some editorial shit-talking on the atmosphere of violence in Billings. Is this you, Kiggins? (emphasis definitely mine):

Criminal activity does not command Missoulians’ interest the way it does in say, Billings. Here only two law enforcement incidents made the top 20: a lockdown at Hellgate High School following online threats was No. 12 and the arrest of a suspect in a Westside neighborhood that also prompted a police chase and lockdown at Lowell Elementary School was No. 20. Billings had four crime-focused stories in its top 20.

But the contrast is even more stark when seen through another lens: Stories that prompt a reader to buy a subscription. In Billings, 18 of the top 20 stories that inspired people to subscribe to the paper were crime incidents. In Missoula, only five of the top 20 fell in that category. Put another way, 30% of new subscribers to the Missoulian did so after reading crime stories, while such stories drew 93% of new readers in Billings. Not to cast aspersions, but Missoula’s relative lack of sirens makes a huckleberry sound.

Knowing what I know, especially the stuff I have NOT written about, makes this bullshit stink worse than a rotting corpse hanging from a tree. 

If we’re using berry metaphors to shit-talk communities competing for tourist dollars, I’m giving a BIG CHOKECHERRY to the entirety of the media in Montana, every single one of them, even the ones I only pay some attention to when they literally receive money from funds earmarked for promoting tourism. From the link (emphasis mine):

Destination Missoula and the Missoula Tourism Business Improvement District awarded event grants to five local organizations for 2024.

The University of Montana Native American Law Student Association, Montana Grizzly Lacrosse, the University of Montana Grizzly Marching Band, the Montana Institute of Sport and the Montana Free Press received grants.

Don’t worry, Montana FREE Press, it’s not JUST because you’re getting tourist dollars that you’re getting my attention. You’re getting my attention because you ALSO produce shitty reporting that I can point to and mock because of what’s NOT in there.

I went to the Montana Free Press and used the search bar to see what came up when I entered CRIME. One of the articles I found attempts to cover the weird pull-out from Public Law 280. 

Maybe I missed it, but no where in the article do I see a particular name from a particular law firm that’s involved in this case. The reporter, Justin Franz, is someone I’m familiar with because he interviewed me for his podcast on David Burgert, a presumed dead militia man still wanted by the FBI.

The name, if you’re interested, was actually included in the Missoulian’s coverage of this odd case that’s only odd if you follow the reporters paid to apparently NOT connect dots and see the larger forces at work here in Montana.

Who do I see pictured above? I see Lance Jasper, of Reep Bell & Jasper, involved in the kind of cases his law firm appears to enjoy taking, cases that pay them to work law enforcement against local and/or state government. There are Mandamus cases and pay parity cases and a profound lack of curiosity about the connection from local media.

If I was a fat nordic man with magical mind-control powers over creatures with fuzzy antlers, I would have spent a long night visiting everyone paid official paychecks to inform communities across Montana about what’s happening and dropped serious lumps of coal into their stockings. Instead, I’ll settle for documenting how effectively one informed and persistent person can be at connecting dots in anticipation of what’s coming.

Before THAT fun commences, 2023 may have a few more surprises left before the year wraps up, so stay tuned.

And, as always, thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

It’s the day before Christmas, so I’m sorry to report that my first reaction at seeing the smiling faces of these two men was this: FUCK THESE MOTHERFUCKERS AND THEIR MOTHERFUCKING SMILES!

Why the visceral reaction? Because it seems the last few weeks I’ve had to use the term “globalist” for good reason, and these men with their smiles are just the latest example of our local officials taking their marching orders from the psychopath class.

Here’s a little “reporting” about this event from the Missoulian (emphasis mine):

COP28, the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference held recently in Dubai, featured an assortment of world leaders — and two familiar faces from the Missoula community.

Former Missoula Mayor Jordan Hess and Missoula County Commissioner Dave Strohmaier joined the event as representatives of sub-national governments fighting climate change. Their trip was sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies. 

That acknowledgment of local influence came as a product of COP28, and it’s the first of its kind. It’s important to Hess because of the overwhelming role cities play on the climate front. He shared that 70% of the world’s population lives in cities, and that figure is growing. The amount of carbon emissions produced worldwide trends closely with those numbers, too.

My takeaway? It appears BLOOMBERG is the entity actually running this town. Prove me wrong, local ELECTED officials.

Sometimes I get fiction and non-fiction confused, and that’s probably because I study the psychopath class and their occult droppings. Was Bloomberg associated with Mithras? The answer is yes.

It’s because of these fascinating and international tie-ins to our local power structure that I’ve slowly built an incredible library of hardcopy context for what is happening. One of my books, for example, has a character based on Mike Bloomberg, and the occult stuff going down in those pages (subsequent copies have had over a hundred pages removed) is considered a possible reason for why the author, Tracy Twyman, was found dead in 2019.

Now, on the links for the week. Here they are:

Why I Hope The Griz Lose Big In Texas (December 18th, 2023)

On Squeezing The Pulp To See What Kind Of Juice Comes Out (December 19th, 2023)

No, Brendan, Becoming A Globalist Won’t Help Montana (December 20th, 2023)

Developing Missoula For The Deep Pocketed People (December 21st, 2023)

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)

Turning Failure Into Opportunity, And Poetry (December 23rd, 2023)

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Two days ago, during the shortest day of the year, my new blog went live. One3twenty is part of my plan to turn my bricks and mortar failure into a mobile project better positioned to break the local narrative control that exists around the death of Sean Stevenson.

One3twenty? What does that mean? Let me rewrite it in a way that is more familiar: 1-3-20. 

Yes, it’s a date on the calendar, and you can read more about the meaning at my new virtual location for documenting this long, strange trip of mine.

I’ve touched on the more esoteric ways in which I extract meaning from the world around me, especially as it relates to synchronicities, but this summer and fall have taken things to a whole new level for me, and mobility was a BIG reason why.

The effort to save Holland Lake here in Montana has been a true inspiration for me, so I’ve taken a page from that wildly successful campaign and applied it to my new project. The result? A big magnet that transforms my box into a mobile billboard. 

Doesn’t that look nice? I think it looks GREAT! And by having this magnet I’ll be doing SOMETHING, even when doing virtually nothing else. I like the idea of promoting my work while idling in traffic, or gassing up at a gas station, or sitting in the parking lot of a football game in Frisco, TX. 

How else have the Keepers of Holland Lake inspired me? 

Well, by showing me what this community can accomplish when they REALLY care about something–like, you know, care enough to SPEND MONEY on it–I did what the University of Montana trained me to do, and that’s putting a strong emotional reaction into a more tolerable form other than YELLING. 

Please enjoy this poem as the light returns to our hemisphere. 

IF SEAN STEVENSON WAS THE LAKE WHERE I WAS MARRIED

if Sean Stevenson was the lake
where I was married
the magic explanation of the chokehold 
would evaporate like mist 
and like a child's belief in Santa
the REAL eater of the cookies 
would be exposed 

If Sean Stevenson was the lake
where I was married 
billboards would scream his name 
and show a smile broader than
Salma's perky mountains
selling Dogma

how many privileged oars
shuddered at the blasphemy 
of losing their calm waters?

how many high-placed calls
made government bodies squirm 
as Boomer retirement plans flexed
serious muscle?

if Sean Stevenson was the lake
where I was married 
police reports & stick-figure storylines 
would be eviscerated 
by a team of well-paid lawyers 
with drops of blood sneaking out
the corners of smiling mouths

if Sean Stevenson was the lake
where I was married 
maybe a different kind of baptism 
would have found me
washing out the high ground I thought
I stood on

now watch me try 
to web my feet
and amphibian over to a different patch
of land
croaking bullfrog warnings 
until Wally's cows sober up, and Jeremiah 
steps outside
his shadow

Tomorrow, on the eve of X-mas, I’m afraid I did NOT avoid a YELLING reaction to the smiles of some local globalist-bootlickers, so if that earns me lumps of coal in my stocking so be it!

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

On the longest night of the year I watched a piece-of-trash film on Netflix with two of my kids and bonded over this latest effort by social engineers to mind-fuck us.

In part one of this two-part post I use the series Mr. Robot to show how I apply different methods of extrapolating meaning from mainstream content, and how these methods are a way of trying to build a new credibility for an unconventional journalist like myself trying to understand an inexplicable death in his own community.

I confirmed how deeply Leave The World Behind has penetrated our culture by asking my kids if they had heard about it, and my middle kid immediately mentioned the involvement of the Obamas. I confirmed this (even mom was skeptical), and further explained that the creator, Sam Esmail, is also the creator of Mr. Robot.

This movie takes place within Esmail’s Mr. Robot world. How do I know? Julia Robert’s character, Amanda, is reading the book Beach Towel, which is authored by one of the fictional characters from Mr. Robot. Also, the near-meltdown of a nuclear facility in New Jersey–the culmination of Mr. Robot’s fourth and final season–is also referenced.

What other references popped out to me? The white family has two kids, Rose and Archie, and they have FANTASTIC t-shirts. Rose goes with NASA, and Archie is sporting the OBEY image I covered in this post. Is there a connection to Obama AND Jeffrey Epstein? Yes, yes there is.

Moving on, I caught the quick mention of Donnie Darko (a personal favorite), and there was a reference to the strange illness that hit US officials in Cuba–crickets, said the TRUST THE SCIENCE crowd at the time. Yeah, right. But nothing is like what is going on with the tv show, Friends.

SPOILER AHEAD!

This movie starts and ends with Friends. What does the little girl immediately do when she finds a bunker with everything a prepper could possible want to survive? She finds the huge DVD collection and immediately sits down to finish the tv show. You see, her inability to finish watching the show has been an ongoing point of anxiety for her after the screens go dark. 

And that’s how the movie ends.

If you go to any conspiracy podcast, Youtube channel, or website, you will find odd synchronicities, like the relationship Julia Roberts had with Matt Perry, and the fact her birthday is the same day Perry died. There is also the matter of how much weird shit was being posted on Perry’s Instagram page before his death, which “Vigilant Citizen” does a decent job documenting.

What else? Self-driving Teslas crash, an evil cabal that meets on the winter solstice is referenced (I watched this on the solstice), and a Jenga tower falls to provide a jumpy moment. What did the falling Jenga tower make me think of? You know, just a totally normal painting of Bush that Epstein seemed to like.

One more thing I found before wrapping this up comes from another connection between this movie and the show, Mr. Robot, and that’s the rapper/actor Joey Bada$$. This one is pretty interesting, and involves a symbol that looks like a Swastika. Are you ready for this?

Joey Bada$$ meets Mr. hoodie-hacker in prison, and he LOVES to talk about the show Seinfeld. He also references 3 Days Of The Condor, which I wrote about here. In “real” life Joey is a rapper, and it’s his song, THE REV3ENGE, that is playing as the movie gets going. Isn’t that interesting?

I also find it interesting that Bada$$ Brooklyn crew, Pro Era, got some heat for using a stylized image of the number 47 to promote themselves. I wonder why?

Cool sigil, dude! I’m sure the right people in “the industry” appreciate it!

Now, how about some lyrics to conclude this post. I’m going to select the ones that include the word CORONER because, well, fuck these motherfuckers. Ya feel me?!?

That is all for now. Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

I was surprised to see a word I’ve been using in some private conversations recently pop up as Merriam-Webster’s word of the year. Here’s what came up at the top of my search result:

When I received a cash donation from a local politician it was because this person thought I was authentic. This person didn’t always agree with what I wrote, and even acknowledged that my critical focus could land upon them (I’m being coy with the gender to protect a source), but because of the authenticity this person felt I exhibited, a donation was given.

A recent comment thread on my post about a young man being groomed to be a globalist got me thinking about authenticity, credibility, and the accusation that my “guilt-by-association” approach to one particular commenter is a fallacy I should avoid. To the other commenter who brought this up, I have a question: why?

Here’s a portion of the comment so you can see the framing Mr. Hunt’s criticism takes:

Mr. Hunt can be forgiven for not understanding why I think the provenance of Missoula’s elite has significance, and part of that significance if familial. Is this fair? I don’t give a shit if conventional thinkers, like those of Mr. Hunt’s generation, think it’s fair or unfair to point out familial connections in the context of power and how it’s shared and exerted. 

I have a different example of how familial connections are significant, from my perspective, one that I think is more interesting and useful in exemplifying how I’m approaching this idea of “new credibility”. Why? Because it has to do with actors and popular culture, so hopefully this will be less antagonistic for those who hate-read me.

What are some elements of this “new credibility”, and how am I applying it to the show, Mr. Robot? Great questions! Get those open-minds ready for lift off! Also, spoilers ahead.

The lenses I apply to mediated content include looking at symbolism, numerology, memes, who/what provides financing, synchronicities, potential for predictive programming, and curiosity, or intuition. Instead of dwelling on whether or not these lenses represent credible approaches to understanding the impacts of a tv show, how about judging the results? On that note, let’s begin examining this narrative.

The first thing to note is the creator of this show, Sam Esmail, is ALSO behind the much talked about Leave The World Behind. Why is it being talked about? Because it’s produced by the Obamas, and involves a cyber attack, that’s why. With that point made, here are two of the main characters of our story, Mr. Robot.

The character on the left is Elliot, a hacker with Dissociative Identity Disorder stemming from a core trauma his alters were created to protect him from. On the right is Angela, Elliot’s childhood friend who he trauma-bonded with him because they both had a parent die from toxic exposure facilitated by the E Corporation.

Already we have symbolism at work, with Angela often portrayed in white, and Elliot in his black hoodie. This represents the duality of the world we inhabit. Checkerboard patterns, which this show features plenty of, also represent this duality.

The colors blue and red also represent duality, and when combined create purple. In one scene Angela is being tested in a creepy room by a young girl and one of the questions she is asked is ARE YOU RED OR ARE YOU PURPLE. For those familiar with Kabbalah, there might be some significance here.

Among other things, blue is associated with water, which is in turn associated with life. In Kabbalah, blue is one of the colours of Chessed, lovingkindness. Red is its polar opposite, the colour of blood and fire, representing Gevurah, judgement and severity. Combining red and blue gives purple, the balance between them, Tiferet, seat of truth and beauty. On a mystical level, the purple argaman (ארגמן) also represents the chief angels Uriel (אוריאל), Raphael (רפאל), Gabriel (גבריאל), Michael (מיכאל), and Nuriel (נוריאל).

Let’s take what blue represents–water–a step further by adding the reflection/portal/Narcissus aspect of water. This is relevant to our story because our story includes the idea of alternate timelines, time-travel, and ultimately reversing the regret’s of one’s life, or so hopes the Chinese hacker/Security Minister, the White Widow.

Here’s a little context from the myth of Narcissus:

Narcissus, in Greek mythology, the son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope. He was distinguished for his beauty. According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book III, Narcissus’s mother was told by the blind seer Tiresias that he would have a long life, provided he never recognized himself. However, his rejection of the love of the nymph Echo or (in an earlier version) of the young man Ameinias drew upon him the vengeance of the gods. He fell in love with his own reflection in the waters of a spring and pined away (or killed himself).

I’m bringing in water and myth because my own attempt to understand some serious shit took me to the headwaters of the Susquehanna river recently, which is ALSO the location of Cooperstown, a town that grabbed credit for being the place where baseball originated. 

What does this have to do with Mr. Robot?

I take notice of names, and the repetition of names, so the name of the actress who plays Angela got my attention. Why did the name Portia DOUBLEDAY get my attention? Because I immediately thought about that story of baseball’s false origin, and a big name involved in that narrative subterfuge was a guy by the name of Abner Doubleday. 

While there doesn’t appear to be a direct family connection, looking into this surname did turn up some interesting stuff, like the geographical location where old Abner had some Theosophical connections.

In the summer of 1878, Doubleday lived in Mendham Township, New Jersey, and became a prominent member of the Theosophical Society. When two of the founders of that society, Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, moved to India at the end of that year, he was constituted as the president of the American body.

Another interesting connection came from Portia Doubleday’s father, Frank, and the filmmaker he worked with, John Carpenter. Why? Because the Carpenter film, The Thing, is playing on a tv in season 4 after Antarctica is mentioned. Here’s the Carpenter connection from Wikipedia:

Frank Doubleday (January 28, 1945 – March 3, 2018) was an American actor whose most notable roles were as film villains.

Doubleday was born in Norwich, Connecticut and moved to Los Angeles with his family as a child.

Doubleday is known for films including John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) and John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (1981)

Before I found the Doubleday/Carpenter connection, like the night before, I had an interesting realization while listening to DJ Shadow. What I realized is the track titled “Changeling/Transmission 1” has a sample from the John Carpenter film, Prince Of Darkness. This synchronicity–because of the content of that movie and its relation to what’s happening in this world–freaked me out a bit.

There are many other aspects of this show I’d like to document, but this post is already getting a bit long, so I’ll tease a part II instead and will continue this with a closer look at the movie everyone is talking about, Leave The World Behind.

If you would like to support my work, Travis Impact Fund (TIF) is still taking donations, but my donation button at my about page appears to not be working, so I’m going to try and fix that soon.

Thanks for reading!