An Hour of Wolves

On the Strength of Men

For any who have been following my writing for any length of time, or my appearances on various shows and podcasts, you’ll know that I have little patience for the amorphous, amplified blackpilled doomer crowd that frequents the information highways in this Info War. And, as I’ve written about in extensive detail in a more lyrical piece published here in recent days, ‘The Mind-Killer,’ this isn’t because I don’t understand what it is to fear, and what it is to worry.

All of us worry. All of us fear. But, in the words of the late Boromir of Gondor in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, “to let that fear drive us to destroy what hope we have … don’t you see, that is madness?”

Of course, the irony of Boromir’s address, herein referencing an iconic—infamous—scene in which he forgets himself and his oath and attempts to steal the One Ring from Frodo Baggins is not lost on me. In this moment, Boromir himself succumbs to doom. He gives in to the temptation of the ‘easy’ path, the one with the most readily available, obvious and reductive form of perceived power, thereby falling directly into the enemy’s trap.

The heroism of Boromir of Gondor, then, is not in his succumbing to fear, but in his rebound, and his return to the man he could have been, should have been, as he rejoins the flagging, failing Fellowship a short while later, ultimately falling in defense of its most vulnerable and innocent party members.

In his ending, there is a beginning. In abandoning doom and embracing hope, Boromir makes a final choice that is ultimately the only choice. He makes a choice to stand and to fight, doing so even as he believes in his heart and soul that there is no path before them—before humanity—that does not end in destruction. He admits as much in one of the most iconic death scenes in cinematic history, informing his would-be brother-in-arms, his would-be King, that “the world of men will fall, and all will come to darkness. And my city to ruin.”

Aragorn, an exiled, would-be King, himself prone to internal despair, chooses in his once rival-turned ally’s final moments to be a beacon of hope for Boromir, even when he does not believe it himself, ultimately telling Boromir, “I do not know what strength is in my blood. But I swear to you, I will not let the White City fall, nor our people fail.”

“Our people,” Boromir responds, a faint smile tugging the corner of his mouth even as his skin grows ashen, and as he fumbles for the hilt of his sword, wishing to depart an embattled life with his weapon—with his honor—in hand and intact, and in the warm embrace of a brother in arms.

“Be at peace, Son of Gondor.”

Those words have always hit me hard, not just because they cap off a tragedy, but because they provide a perfect coda to Boromir’s life, to his struggles, his betrayal and even his hopeful, heroic ending. Aragorn does not wish victory for Boromir. He does not wish solace and solitude. He wishes peace, knowing that the wayward warrior will not live to see the very real, codified and established peace Aragorn institutes when he ultimately leads the scattered, dwindling armies of the West to an unlikely victory over the forces of darkness.

I use this scene to set the stage today not because I’m particularly triggered by doomers this week, nor even to revisit the intent of last week’s special feature, which had quite an impact on some of you, for which I am grateful, but rather because I’d like to reiterate the WHY of the view myself and many of my peers hold regarding the ultimate turning of this war toward our side. Toward truth, justice, the American Way and the sovereign way.

And while I say I’m setting the stage, as is often the case with my writing, the idea that was meant to spark the beginning of this piece has found a way of becoming the part and the whole, and the point itself.

As simple, reductive or condescending as some may take the direction—and before we spend our next feature detailing the Actual in terms of the inevitable turning of this war in our favor by digging into data points that continue to explode into the public consciousness with force and frequency—I would first turn the minds and hearts of my readership toward the intent, and toward perspective, and the forging of each so that they might be wielded FOR us, and not used against us.

We are in a war for the future of humanity. Some cringe at those words because of their seeming exaggeration, but those who’ve been digging in the dark—who have wandered ‘The Darkest Path,’ in the Information War—know that this war may be fought WITH Information, but it is ABOUT anything BUT the dissemination of stories, narratives and politics.

This is a war for paradigms. This is a war that will ultimately determine—to borrow from Donald Trump himself—whether we control our own destinies, and those of our children and their children after them, or whether a failed, corrupt political establishment does so for us.

Winning the 2016 election was a part of this journey, just as losing in 2020 was a continuation of it, because, unpopular as the truism may be to those bent toward doom, sometimes you must walk through the darkness before you can see the light. And sometimes, the people must be SHOWN the truth rather than told it.

After all, the best stories, the ones that stick with us and that we pass down, embrace the showing rather than the telling of truths in tales.

And I truly believe that is what’s happening right now, as we continue to parse the wandering, sometimes worrying ways of the Information War, the War of Stories … the Mind War. The People are being shown bit by bit, crisis by crisis, exposure by exposure, collapse by collapse—from the financial and fiscal to the political and social—who the true enemy is and has been, and how we might turn them back when we retake the public levers of power, and when we retake and reform the very fraudulent systems in place that have kept us from doing so in the interim.

The Great Awakening, much like victory, happens very slowly … and then all at once.

This isn’t hopium or naivety, in my view, but rather an accurate observation of and accounting for some of the moves we’re seeing play out on an international game board that is both escalating and accelerating in a way we—and our chosen leaders and influences in this movement, from Donald Trump to anonymous accounts on decentralized image boards—have projected, predicted and, some would say seeded into the Collective Mind for just such a time as this.

And those twin, congruent and yet, distinct concepts—tactics, I would argue—are at the heart of this observation: escalation and acceleration, if only our cognitive cyphers are calibrated with the recognition of both in mind, and with a mind and a will directed toward a Net Effects mindset so as not to get lost in the reductive rabbit hole that comes with playing white hat-black hat guessing games, or worrying over the wrong aspects of questions such as, ‘Who Controls the Biden Admin?’ something we explore at length—and with directed minds—in the ongoing ‘Layer Cake’ series.

Escalation and acceleration.

I talk about both with frequency at Burning Bright, especially at the turn of the calendar year from 2022 to 2023, in which I claimed that, if nothing else—and without falling into the familiar and alluring trap of trying to make specific, date-focused and ultimately futile and meaningless predictions—these tactics would define the coming year as we continue to both engage with and observe the Information War, as the one side seeks to control sovereign minds, wills and even nations the world over, while the other seeks to educate, awaken and ultimately free the very same.

But what do they mean?

In a general sense, escalation refers to the ratcheting of psychological, political, social, cultural and sometimes even kinetic tensions on the international game board. From the political machinations of the Globalist Deep State both at home and abroad that this community is more versed on than any in the world to the less-explored, but still significant Culture War being waged both in the classroom across this once great and future great land AND in the realm of storytelling, tension is the name of the game, because, as I explored in my personal favorite piece I’ve written, ‘The Mind War,’ when we are in a war both FOR and AGAINST the Collective Mind, trauma-based mind control can only be thwarted and turned around through the use of trauma-dispelling catharsis, in my view.

(For my recent deep-dive thoughts on the current state of the War of Stories, check out ‘Culture Shock & Awe.’)

And that is EXACTLY what I believe is playing out on the world stage, both nationally and internationally, as the Deep State’s System of Systems—from the fiat central banking system to the subversive rot at the heart of storytelling and cultural control represented by a war on gender, on reality itself—is rendered exposed, stark, cold and ugly for the world to see like never before, while solutions wait in the wings, creeping in at the edges, not like jackals, but like lions, each mighty and lasting on its own, terrible and inevitable together.

In the end, I believe that the Deep State’s subversive, corrupt and ultimately evil Hegelian Dialectic—the ‘Problem, Reaction, Solution’ theorem—has been turned around on them, as patriots have both overtly and covertly guided the Collective Mind toward an embrace of sovereignty, individualism and even international cooperation (NOT Collectivism) through the exposure and disclosure phase of the Info War that continues to swirl all around us in the digital ether. This ‘Reverse Hegelian Dialectic’ is something I refer to as the ‘Good Reset,’ and it’s the ultimate name of the game to me, as patriots have both ESCALATED and ACCELERATED the Globalist Controllers’ playbook, heading off their most damaging deployments while revealing their plans to an increasingly restless and awakened populace grown weary AND wary of the Beast’s illusory system of control.

Perhaps no theater has more directly provoked and revealed the international, Globalist System of Systems than Russia’s Special Military Operation in Prussian Ukraine, an operation that kicked off in earnest in February, 2022, and whose exploration in the ‘Righteous Russia’ series kicked off this publication in the first place, but which was seeded LONG before that, for those paying attention to other sovereign leaders on the international game board—those who seemingly stand opposed to the same Collectivist Beast Donald Trump drew the full fury of ever since he came down the golden escalator not so many years ago.

In our next piece, we’ll take a look at some data points currently surfacing in the War of Stories in terms of the Narrative War being waged within the Media Industrial Complex. Data points that demonstrate the fragility and vulnerability of the System of Systems, and that help to reframe the Crisis Cascade many in this community are observing and calling out, either in total or piecemeal

But Russia’s actions, along with those that preceded them on the national stage by Donald Trump demonstrate the mindset that I believe this community needs to adopt before attempting to engage with the Info War in a manner that is ultimately conducive not just to forming an understanding of the Game Theory of it all, but in directly assisting the decentralized, self-organizing (h/t to Cliff High) collective of sovereign patriots in taking back our lands from the sway of the enemy.

And before we can take back our lands, our governments, our societies and our cultures from those who would perform a ritualistic killing of each in front of our pried and peeled eyes, we must first take back our minds.

This is what we can learn from each other, and this is what we can learn from the best stories, from those in the Bible to those penned by Man, no matter our race, creed, religion or personal code. Stories stretching back into antiquity and even those whose inspired and inspiring rays shine in modernity.

It is what Aragorn embodies in the end: a hero who never embraced destiny, but who followed it nonetheless, because to do otherwise was to give in to the very despair that drove him into the wilds in the first place. Aragorn is not the hero of the story—one among many—because he succeeds. He is the hero because he fails first, and then again. And learns from it. He is the hero because he refuses to give up, even when he believes—when he knows—hope is lost.

Just as he sends his rival-turned-ally, Boromir into the halls of death carrying a gift of hope he did not truly feel himself, so too does he give hope to those who follow him, until their own redoubles his own, unearths it, polishes it and makes it silver and new, like the sword named Anduril, Flame of the West that he holds aloft in mockery—in defiance—of evil itself as it closes in around the world of men.

“I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me,” Aragorn says to men who are outnumbered, frightened … doomed. Men who recoil and tremble before the breaking of the world.

“A day may come when the courage of men fails. When we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is NOT this day. This day, we fight!”

Aragorn is a lordly name. A kingly name. But not so when he was a boy. Then, his mother renamed him in order to keep his identity a secret, and in order to keep what she believed to be his destiny safe and secure.

‘Estel,’ she named him, which translates to ‘Hope’ in the tongues of Man.

In so doing, she remarks, “I give hope to men. I leave none for myself.”

Almost 60 years later in the narrative, Aragorn is presented with the reforged sword of his ancestor—one who turned from the path of hope and doomed many lines of men to fall into ruin, despair and dishonor … the destiny Aragorn ran from, hid from.

“I give hope to men,” Elrond of Rivendell says to him after unveiling the sword of kings. “I keep none for myself.”

This is the very sword. The very hope that Aragorn holds aloft, bold and bright before the gates of Mordor and the seeming end of the world.

The beauty of the mirror of Aragorn to Boromir is that Aragorn did not believe in hope. He struggled with it. He even avoided it for much of his life spent wandering the ways of his own wayward soul.

He feels the same fear that would take the heart of us, that DID take the heart of Boromir, and many other lesser men. But in choosing to display hope, and give that hope to others, he finds it within himself, and he sees it reflected in the world around him.

This is not the New Age, karmic and existential nihilistic creationism rampant in much of modern spirituality. It is commitment and poise, resolve and courage, the projecting of the latter and the holding of the former until the world bends to it, and reveals itself to those with the minds, the hearts and the directed wills to see it, and to make it what they will have it be.

There may come a day when the courage of men fails.

But it is not this day.

Until next time, stay Positive, stay Based and most importantly … stay Bright.

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