"George Carlin: The American Dream" (opens in separate window)
the war on reality is over
friday, september 5th, 2025
Unwittingly, that New York Times headline (below) is a wondrous case of the self-solving mystery. You come here to understand the many social and political mysteries of the day. I will attempt to unravel this hairball.
"Minneapolis Suspect Knew Her Target, But Motive Is A Mystery
The shooter who attacked a Catholic School on Wednesday, posted social media videos and writings that betrayed a littany of grievances and obsessions."Most obviously, the suspect, now dead, in Wednesday’s Minneapolis school shooting was not a “her.” He was a him, a 23-year-old male, Robert Westman, who had been pretending to be a female for some years since undergoing puberty, with the encouragement of his parents and the cultural leaders of his city, including Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, backed by the expressed principles of the national Democratic Party. Remember NORMAL?
The essence of all that was a gigantic game of pretend, a broad and deliberate dissociation from reality for the purpose of maintaining a political racketeering operation, which is what the Democratic Party had become. Pretend that men can become women. Pretend that Covid vaccinations are safe and effective. Pretend that national borders don’t matter. Pretend that crime is not a social problem. Pretend that riots are mostly peaceful. Pretend that our elections are free and fair. Pretend that “Joe Biden” is president. Pretend that Ukraine is fighting for democracy. And so on. All pretend.
Since the Democratic Party has zero useful ideas for improving the lives of this country’s citizens, all it has is pretend theater, which is public performative psychopathology, otherwise known as acting-out. Mass murders of school-children by so-called trans people are the most garish and horrific actings-out, the most offensive to society, a slaughter of innocents. Such an act grabs everybody’s attention. The New York Times pretends that all this is “a mystery” because to tell the truth would inculpate them in the ongoing criminal racketeering operation of their patron, the Democratic Party.
They all know what the truth is in this matter: that Robert Westman became insane, at least in his time of puberty, possibly earlier, and that his parents resorted to persuading their child that he was born in the wrong body — as the trendy theory goes — to remedy his psychological distress. He was thereafter influenced to play-act as a female. Possibly, he was induced to go through some stage of medical “treatment” to supposedly advance his transition to the opposite sex — for instance, a hormone regimen. This has not yet been reported. (Has it even been investigated by police or the news media?)
Of course, “gender-affirming medical care” is a vicious fraud, as is the preposterous idea of “sexual assignment at birth” (as if it is some kind of error-ridden clerical function). Males cannot be changed into females no matter how much their hormones are altered or how much surgery they endure. It is all just costuming and makeup, to an extreme degree, to enhance the game of pretend. It is also bound to be nightmarishly disappointing to the person undergoing such malign rigors.
As in the case of psycho-killer Robert Westman, he discovered his tragic mistake in exactly the period of life — emerging into adulthood — when emotions tend to be most labile. If he also happened to be on psychotropic drugs such as SSRIs (Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, etc.), known to produce suicidal and homicidal thinking, combined with his emotional instability, there you have an obvious recipe for disaster. None of that is mysterious.
Nor was the record he left behind in his “manifesto” or in the videos and social media postings he put up. Westman evinced stark rage and despair over the poor choice he was induced to make at a time in his life before the judgment region of his brain had fully developed. “I’m tired of being trans,” he wrote. “I wish I had never brainwashed myself.” It was hardly his own fault, though. He was pushed to do it by his own family and strongly supported by the culture that surrounded him in Tim Walz’s “trans refuge state” of Minnesota — the state that also gave us George Floyd, the fake martyr to black victimhood, whose death provoked a years’ long national race-hustle. And, of course, Tim Walz was a recent standard-bearer for the Democratic Party, a signature figure for all their insanity.
Wednesday’s shooting in Minneapolis looks like a hinge event in American politics. We’re done pretending. Trans is done as a political fashion-statement. Doctors will have to give up their pretenses about “gender-affirming care” if they don’t want to be bankrupted by lawsuits or prosecuted for criminal malpractice. Politicians like Walz and Frey will eventually shut-up about trans. But you can sense something else beyond that.
America is done being bullied and guilt-tripped into the matrix of untruth altogether, and the racketeering that thrives in it. And we are going after the racketeers. This week, President Trump suggested a RICO investigation and potential prosecution of George and Alex Soros, for using their vast philanthropic Open Society empire as a colossal money-laundering operation to fund Democratic Party activities, including all their efforts to disorder the legal system, sponsor riots, pay illegal migrants, promote trans activism, rig elections, and underwrite sedition. Without that money-flow — much of it used to winkle taxpayer dollars out of Congress — the party can’t keep paying its Antifa foot-soldiers in the streets, or the lavish salaries of its middle managers in a world of corrupt non-profit orgs.
Between that and the coming prosecution of its many stars from the Clintons to Adam Schiff to New York Attorney General Letitia James and many other names you are familiar with, the Democratic Party — and its war against reality — may be truly done.
© 8.29.2025 by James Howard Kunstler, "ClusterFuck Nation". (H/T Pastor Tom)
A Day In The Life.
Up at 8:03a on Friday, another beautiful, overcast sky, sun breaking thru around 10, windy, cool 65°F, and forecast to hit 78°. Nice start to the Labor Day Weekend. I made coffee, fired-up the Ol' Win-7 Pentium HP Desktop (w/ new SSD technology), to let the 32 million lines of code load, had a couple smokes in the garage and checked the day's list of errands. I scanned the news and weather, and tuned into the "CP Show LIVE", from 9-12. Yesterday's school/church massacre is still dominating the news.
The problem is not OUR GUNS; it's YOUR SONS.In light of yesterday's Minnesota school-church horrible massacre, this video (H/T ppc) applies more than ever. Even Gutfeld nails it, perfectly.
I had breakfast and after the talk radio program ended, went out to nearby Saubel's Market to get a couple things, and to the post office and bank, traffic was very heavy at the start of the Labor Day Weekend, and I was finally back home around 3, for some lunch. I took a 90min snooze, drank coffee until 6, watched the news, and switched to History's "Ancient Aliens", called Sherry, and finally unplugged at 1:30a.
Up at 9a on Saturday, another beautiful, sunny, blue sky, cool 52°, breezy morning, I made coffee, fired-up the desktop to check news and weather, and remembered that it's the frenetic Labor Day Weekend, for the outside world. Heavy traffic, millions flying somewhere, more millions driving somewhere, and I choose to stay out of that mess.
I did do a quick drive to the nearby WEIS Pharmacy, at the WEIS Market, but they were closed, so I got a lot of fruit, and while coming back home, noticed that traffic was almost zero. The roads emptied out by 2p. After some Poached Eggs In a Bowl w/ Toast, I did a couple condo chores, and tried to take a 2hr nap on the LR couch. NG (No Good) on that. I had some minor condo chores to do, watched the news, had dinner and switched to Discovery's "Expedition X" until 1a. Lights out. It's a big club, and we're not in it.Up at 9:30a on Sunday, another beautiful blue sky, sunny, cool 62° morning. I made coffee, tuned into the F-1 Dutch Grand Prix -- after a 3 week hiatus in races -- on ESPN, and relaxed. Good race. After a shower, I started laundry, made Sausage & Gravy over Biscuits for lunch, did some condo chores, and took a 2hr nap on the LR couch.
I had some small condo chores to do, watched the evening news, and switched to MotorTrend's "Iron Resurrection" until 1:30a, and unplugged.
Sleeping-in again, until 9:30a on Monday, another cobalt blue sky, light breeze, 67° morning, I made coffee, fired-up the desktop to scan the news and weather, and tuned into the "CP Show CLASSIC" replay for Labor Day -- no one on radio except Rush used to work this day (I never had any holiday off in 23yrs, either). I opened-up the whole condo, to get some cool, fresh air thru, as I've done for the past 6-7 days.
Around 12:30p, I left to run some local errands, primarily the waiting Rxs at WEIS Pharmacy. Traffic was heavy, but I wasn't doing my usual Monday trip down south of York. With activities planned for tomorrow and Wednesday, I'd schedule that trip for Thursday, and get back on "schedule", next week. No biggie. I did a lap around the condo complex, just enjoying the beautiful Fall-like day, skipped a nap, and did some work on the garage after moving the Jeep. The evening news was on at 6p, and I watched the two following FNC shows, then switched to MT's "Iron Resurrection" until 11:45. Lights out. My cleaning lady's in at 8:30a.
Up at 6a on Tuesday, a ZERO-DARK-THIRTY, very cool 52°, morning. I made Kona Coffee, had a couple smokes in the cool garage, fired-up the ol' HP Desktop to scan the news headlines and weather, and got ready for the day ahead. I opened the eMail queue, and Sis had sent a note letting me know that our 84yr old cousin, Buddy, here in York, had died yesterday morning. He was just in hospice care, and is finally out of pain and suffering. RIP, Buddy.
JoAnne arrived at 8:30a and got to work cleaning. I had some paperwork and loose ends to tidy up, and took an hour's snooze on the LR couch, as she finished. Sis arrived at 1p, and we set out to visit our Mom's Mother's, sisters' and brother's homes, from back in the 40s, 50s, 60s & 70s, for a relative's genealogy project. After that, we had a late lunch at the famous Lyndon Diner in West York, and I drove back to my place. Sis left for home, I grabbed another hour's nap, tired from the huge meal, woke to the evening news and switched to History's "Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" until 12midnight, and bagged it.
Up at 9a on Wednesday, a sunny, high clouds, windless, 64° morning. I made a new brand of Monarch Coffee Farm's Kona Coffee -- "Farm Hand" -- by using iHeart.com's website, dialed-up the "CP Show LIVE" on WMAL-105.9 FM in DC, scanned the news and weather headlines, had some breakfast, and did some minor condo chores, in anticipation of Sherry's 1p visit. She arrived around 1, and we talked for a while, then left for nearby Springettsbury Twp Park, a 52ac facility less than 1/8th of a mile from my condo. After a brief walk, our first in months, we left for a nearby garden center, to get a couple bags of orchid redwood potting bark, and herbicides, and came back to repot her 2 healthy Phalenopsis ("Moth") Orchids.
Sherry left around 6, I watched the evening news, had dinner, and switched to Discovery's Ghost Adventures until 12:30a. Lights out.
Up at 9a on Thursday, a clear sky, sunny, 69°, breezy morning, with t-storms forecast for the afternoon. I made breakfast, tuned into the "CP Show LIVE" until 12noon, had a delivery from WEIS Market in Enola (PA), and had some lunch. Around 1, I checked the weather maps, saw that huge t-storms coming our way, so I did an errand, garaged the Jeep and took a 90min snooze as the storms and rain hit the area.
The storms and rain continued past 8p, and after watching the evening news, I made Pasta Alfredo for dinner, watched "Caught On Camera" on Fox (local) until 11:45, and unplugged.
Tomorrow starts a new week here in the "Journal", and it's another clear one for me. I'll talk to Sherry over the weekend, as she's still got a lot on her plate, and I can work around her schedule.
Back to School
Yellowed leaves were already dropping here in August with the lack of rain and tomatoes won’t turn red when the air hits the mid-forties at dawn. Summer is trying hard to end, though technically there’s almost a month left. This is the real new year, of course, not the noisy one in January with all the drunken commotion and confetti. Tomorrow, it’s back to school, back to the job, the grind, the responsibilities, the worry, the rage, the hope, the yearning, as we gyre toward cold and fire. Enjoy ye burgers and hot dogs while ye can this Labor Day.
Anyway, the geniuses of Silicon Valley are attempting to end labor, at least any labor of the mind. A-I is coming for your job, ye middle managers, ye info manipulators, ye engineers, copy-writers, clerks, and numbers-crunchers, coming for whatever remains of the American bourgeoise. I’m telling you now: A-I will be a huge disappointment. Not only will it wreck the scaffold of our social order but, after it makes everything stupid — even worse than today — it will hallucinate so badly that anything it touches will become crazier than the Democratic Party.
That’s not a hard goal to reach either, with literacy at about what used to be age-eight-level for over half the US population. In such a milieu, gnostic communism is sure to flourish. The immiseration of all becomes the greatest good for the greatest number. We’re already halfway there — though it is a pretty sure thing that the story will turn sharply. It’s not for nothing that we call this moment in history a “fourth turning.”
One turning point might lie directly ahead. You are now in the season of financial fiascos, and boy-oh-boy are we ever set up for a humdinger. Are you following the money-bloggers? Those boys and girls are staring into the abyss staring back at them, with their hair on fire and their eyes bugging out. Just about everything is unreal and out of whack: equity markets, bond rollovers, the fun-house of shadow banking, the value of collateral (if it’s even there), the fate of currencies, perhaps even the fate of nations. France, for instance, is chattering about an imminent IMF bailout. Well, if that one goes, what do you think happens in Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium . . . Western Civ, that is?
The cliché these days is that looming financial chaos and potential economic collapse is what’s driving the EU countries to all their loose war-talk. As if. . . as if they were even marginally capable of prosecuting any sort of war except the war against their own citizens currently underway — which requires only bureaucrats declaring new restrictions on liberty, not missiles, drones, bombs, bullets, and live human troops and, most of all, some comprehensible reason to fight.
Paranoia about Russia seeking to invade Western Europe is not a comprehensible reason to launch a war against Russia — because it’s just paranoia, political crazy, in the absence of any rational aspiration in current European governance. The Germans have tried “green” energy planning, shutting down their nuclear power plant fleet, applauding the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines. Where did that get them? I will tell you: it got them to a crashing standard-of-living. It got them to their current (maybe not-for-long) chancellor Friedrich Merz telling them last week to wave auf nimmer wiedersehen to their social welfare system, you know: cheap, subsidized medical care, free college, six-week vacations, cushy pensions. (And, meanwhile, do you mind if we spend whatever’s left of your taxes on free stuff for the hordes of third-world savages we stupidly imported into the country?)
But then, we’re not Europe. Mr. Trump has other ideas and is trying to lead a movement for re-ordering the economy back toward the production of real goods. It’s been tough-sledding, with every half-educated federal judge attempting to nix any-and-all executive actions in that direction. Anyway, if Europe’s banking system blows (and the accessories of banking, like markets and currencies, with that), then the damage is sure to spread to America, indeed probably all over the world, and then the fourth turning will rev-up to turning and churning at full speed. What will that mean?
A universal fall in global standards-of-living . . . the collapse of governments and sharp contraction of economies (Europe especially) . . . a period of very uncomfortable flux, how long, no one knows . . . and then the re-ordering of life that anyone with half a brain has expected, though perhaps not the way they expected. Here’s what I expect: the failure of most things organized at the giant scale: global corporations, national chain retail, distant supply-lines, and consequently the laborious, painful reconstruction of far more localized economies. I expect radical simplification of everyday life, including less high-tech, less intrusive government, irregular electric service, falling oil production, and a notable drop in population levels.
I expect a surprising shift in social relations, including a return to divisions of labor based on gender; de-pornified courtship manners and a revival of trad mating behavior, with priorities on motherhood and child-rearing in a crisis of infertility; a revival of religious communion (already underway in America’s youngest generation); a necessary return to the ethic of personal responsibility as government support withers; and a return to swift justice, including execution for significant crimes. I expect some nations to fracture into smaller regional and ethnic units, certainly Canada, possibly even the United States.
That’s a lot of upcoming action and, of course, it won’t all happen right away or at once, but it will get underway in earnest this fall. It’s not exactly Mr. Trump’s “Golden Age,” and surely not what a lot of people had expected in the way of a “Singularity” or a tech utopia or a unicorn nirvana. But it will have its charms and, for a while anyway, we will have to stop being stupid and crazy.
© 9.01.2025 by James Howard Kunstler, "ClusterFuck Nation".
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4338110/posts https://www.kunstler.com/p/back-to-schoolReparations For Slavery
Several Democratic presidential hopefuls are calling for Americans to make reparations for slavery. On June 19, the House judiciary subcommittee on the constitution, civil rights and civil liberties held a hearing. Its stated purpose was “to examine, through open and constructive discourse, the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, its continuing impact on the community and the path to restorative justice.”
Slavery was a gross violation of human rights. Justice demands that all participants in the trans-Atlantic slave trade make compensatory reparation payments to slaves. However, there is no way that Europeans could have captured millions of Africans. That means compensation would have to be paid by Africans and Arabs who captured and sold slaves to Europeans in addition to the people who bought and used slaves. Since slaves and slave traders and owners are no longer with us, compensation is beyond our reach and it’s a matter that will have to be settled in hell or heaven.
Let’s pretend for a moment that the reparations issue makes a modicum of sense. There’s the question of responsibility. More explicitly, should we compensate a black person of today by punishing a white person of today, by taking his money, for what a white person of yesteryear did to a black person of yesteryear? If we believe in individual accountability, we should find that doing so is unjust. In other words, are the tens millions of Europeans, Asian and Latin Americans who immigrated to the U.S. in the late 19th and 20th centuries responsible for slavery, and should they be forced to cough up reparations? What about descendants of Northern whites who fought and died in the name of freeing slaves? Should they pay reparations to black Americans? What about non-slave-owning Southern whites — who were a majority of Southern whites — should their descendants be made to pay reparations?
Reparations advocates make the unchallenged pronouncement that United States became rich on the backs of free black labor. That’s utter nonsense. While some slave owners became rich, slavery doesn’t have a good record of producing wealth. Slavery existed in the southern states and outlawed in most of the northern states. Buying into the reparations argument suggests that the antebellum South was rich and the slave-starved North was poor. The truth is just the opposite. In fact, the poorest states and regions of our country were places where slavery flourished: Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. And the richest states and regions were those where slavery was absent: Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts.
The reparations movement would be an amusing sideshow were it not for its damaging distractions. It grossly misallocates resources that could be better spent elsewhere. According to the state Department of Education, 75% of black California boys cannot meet state reading standards. In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state’s mathematics exam. In six other high schools, only 1% tested proficient in math. The same story of low education outcomes can be told about most cities with large black populations. I’d like to see lawyers bring class-action suits against public school systems in cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Detroit and Los Angeles for conferring fraudulent high school diplomas. Such diplomas attest a 12th-grade level of academic achievement when in fact those youngsters often cannot perform at sixth- or seventh-grade levels.
The nation’s most dangerous big cities are Detroit, Oakland, St. Louis, Memphis, Stockton, Birmingham, Baltimore, Cleveland, Atlanta, Chicago and Milwaukee. The common characteristic of most of these cities is that they have predominantly black populations and blacks have considerable political power as mayors, city councilmen and chiefs of police. Energy spent on reparations should be used to solve those problems.
As of 2014, U.S. taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, that’s three times more than was spent on all military wars since the American Revolution. If money alone were the answer, the many issues facing a large segment of the black community would have been solved.
There’s another possible reparations issue completely ignored: Blacks as well as whites live on land taken, sometimes brutally, from American Indians. Do blacks and whites owe American Indians anything?
© 6.26.2019 by Walter E. Williams, "walterewilliams.com". (H/T ppc)
Abandoned Shopping Carts, Litter, and the Decline of Black America
The black community’s disengagement from ordinary acts of civic responsibility is harming America as a whole, but mostly, it’s harming blacks. To save their communities, blacks need to reengage with what was once normative polite conduct across American society. To appreciate this point, consider the tales told by abandoned shopping carts and litter.
Shopping carts were invented in Oklahoma in 1937 and changed the face of retailing. No longer were customers limited to what they could carry around the store. Now, they could leisurely stroll through the store without having to worry about how much they could fit in their cloth bag or how tired their arms might grow. Today, we’re largely indifferent about carts because the idea of them is so ingrained in our shopping experience that we can’t imagine a time when they didn’t exist.
As functional as carts are for the shopping experience, however, there’s a different function that they serve that is equally important, but in a completely different context.
Shopping carts serve as a great proxy for observing conscientiousness. What one does with a shopping cart tells a lot about a person. Most stores that have shopping carts have a bin for you to return them, so you don’t have to go all the way back to the actual store. But here’s the thing about shopping carts. You get no compensation for returning them. Nor do you (normally) suffer any consequences for not returning them. The only people impacted by your returning the cart to the bin are others. Returning it is just the right thing to do.
As such, most people return their carts to the bins as one would expect a normal person to do. But others simply leave them in the next spot or put them on the curb next to their car. There are consequences of such behavior, of course, but rarely for the person who left the cart. The cart can take up a space, so someone else must get out of the car and move it to park. It can start rolling in the parking lot and hit a car or a person. Employees must go around and collect those stray carts and return them to the bin or the store.
Another such measure is littering. Littering is another of those little things where the cost of doing the right thing is usually minor, while the consequences for the individual who fails to act are generally nonexistent. Meanwhile, litter has negative consequences for the community, ranging from the cost of pickup to aesthetic issues to clogging drains and polluting waters.
Whether it’s leaving a shopping cart in the middle of a parking lot or throwing trash on the street, both are among the most basic measures of citizenship. Doing what’s right typically takes but a few seconds of the person’s time, and they do so even knowing that it’s rare for anyone to suffer immediate harm if they don’t act.
It’s instructive when one notices that people aren’t taking those few seconds to do the right thing. It’s like the old saying, “If you want to know someone’s character, watch how they treat people who can do nothing for them.” We’ve all seen people who are rude to waiters or store clerks, and usually they’re self-centered jerks. Same thing with shopping carts and litter.
Across the country, every day, you see communities covered in litter and innumerable shopping carts that were not only not returned to the bin but were outright stolen. Here’s the thing: Shopping carts and litter are just the most benign signs of conscientiousness and citizenship. The lack of such betrays itself in far more malignant ways as well, and we’re seeing that across the country, particularly in videos: Spirit Airlines airport counters. Six Flags parks. Carnival Cruise Line ships. Seemingly every restaurant chain in America. Malls. Schools. Subways. And of course, street takeovers. This bad behavior seems to be everywhere, and one segment of society is perpetuating most of it: Blacks.
It appears to be the case that for a very large segment of black America, the ideas of conscientiousness and good citizenship are simply nonexistent.
This might sound like a peripheral issue, but in reality, it’s anything but. It’s what’s called the Tragedy of the Commons, individuals acting in selfish ways that harm society as a whole.
The perfect example of this is when individuals or packs of looters steal from stores. When it becomes expensive enough, either through having to implement security measures, replace damaged property, or buy new inventory, eventually the stores close. The result is that citizens of the community have fewer shopping options available to them. Then, when storefronts remain vacant, they become magnets for graffiti and vandalism. More vacant properties scare off potential customers, attract the homeless, drug addicts, squatters, and, eventually, more crime. The final outcome is usually that property values and, therefore, tax revenues decline, ending in community decay.
This tragedy, which used to be largely confined to black or urban neighborhoods, is today spreading into the suburbs and the rest of the country. The consequence of this problem, and the fact that most of it is being done by blacks, is shredding civic order and, frankly, increasing the division of races. The meme “Black Fatigue” has taken hold for a reason and seems to be almost ubiquitous. Black sportscaster and commentator Jason Whitlock says of it: “It is the antithesis, it is the yin to the yang of Black Lives Matter. It’s white people boldly expressing their fatigue with black people… This was inevitable.” He’s right.
As this anti-social behavior expands, it hits companies that are perceived to have significant black clientele. Carnival Cruise Lines has come under fire because of recent rule changes that are said to target black customers. Spirit Airways has seen its stock collapse 85% in 5 years, and Six Flags recently implemented chaperone requirements due to problems with “teens,” resulting in a decline in attendance and a $100 million loss. These companies are trying to survive, and their black customers are making it difficult.
But this uncivilized behavior shows signs closer to home as well. It’s results in schools in black neighborhoods where kids can neither read nor write, which in turn results in half of black high school graduates being functionally illiterate, not to mention the third-world level of murder and violence among blacks, regardless of their economic status.
The bottom line is that a civilized society requires that citizens respect a certain level of behavior and decorum, and we’re seeing too many black Americans ignoring that basic responsibility. When people on the edge of the Overton Window of the culture wars (that is, people most normal Americans would find deeply offensive) start saying things that significant numbers of people agree with, that suggests a tipping point might be near.
If black Americans want to enjoy the full spectrum of the gifts of freedom America has to offer, they must, individually and en masse, recognize that violence, anti-social behavior, and trashing communities, both literally and figuratively, will have to stop. In the corollary to the Tragedy of the Commons, by exhibiting better behavior, blacks will not only benefit themselves, but they will also help improve the wider community.
© 8.28.2025 by Vince Coyner, "American Thinker".
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