This is all brilliant and beautiful and beautifully-written and (as all things from you) full of truth.
Can we just form groups of bada$$ grandmothers who bang open the doors of all of these f***-ed up rooms and kindly but firmly push aside every power-hungry twit and take over already? We’re masters at organizing and coordinating effort, so if we all showed up at once, I think we could do it.
Of course we’d simultaneously throw open the doors of all the so-called “detention centers” — we’d need them empty and available to house the real “criminals” and “illegals” we’d be clearing out of all the rooms.
Sigh. Sorry. Went for a little walk in my daydreams there. I figured you were right behind me. ❤️
We could just use the shell of these buildings to create community centers with temporary housing for families in need. Once real crisis is how little our systems care about all the harm they cause. We’re so interested in preventing mothers from gaming the system, we don’t notice when the president mints crypto coins and manipulates the stock market for insider trading, but yeah. Make those people on snap have a work requirement. Got it.
I really resonate with this post. As a grandmother that just turned 66 a few months ago, I have seen decades of change for the positive and the negative. I spend my days trying to focus on the ever shrinking positive and hope I can be a small light in the world while the powers that be continue to destroy it. I think if “Ending state-sanctioned corruption” was first on the list, the rest would no longer be an issue. 🥰.
I see that. I feel it too. First on my list is ending the belief in dominance as a way to gain power. Our worldview is out of wack. I think that’s what leads to corruption. We could start with your list, though. It would change everything.
So much to think about here, and here you frame your perspective so well: “Mythologies are different ways of understanding the huge reality we find ourselves in. Some maps are better than others, but none of them are accurate. “ Keep shining your light, Susan.
It took me decades to see how it wasn’t all Eve’s fault. It wasn’t all Pandora’s fault. To see how the women denounced as witches would die no matter the result of their trial. How Medusa didn’t ask for her snakes. And wonder what Tiamat was like before she was compromised.
It’s a rude awakening, for sure. You go right to the heart of the matter. Then add a dash of… most of those mythological figures have stories older than the versions we were fed. Especially Eve.
I love all of it--Turning from forced influences into what it would be like--and sometimes, how people live right now, in other communities and places. This essay allows me to dream too, in ways I may not have known I was missing! Thank you so much for caring enough to write this brilliant essay!
Your post pretty much sums it up😉. Another idea: folks in communal living spaces, like “nursing homes” have skill sets and experience and could be teaching other residents - French language, weight lifting, piano or guitar, etc. We need each other, period.
I'm all for the Grandmothers stepping in. Women's labor should not be for free. Or considered biologically determined. That's just BS. That's part of the patriarchal/capitalist play book. This is a culture that literally hates women. If they could make us slaves they would. It's taken me awhile to see this. I didn't want to.
I recently went down a rabbit hole, looking into the polarity teachings of women surrendering to men as the way the genders are made. Then into PUA's and then into the Red Pill. Talk about men hating women, and purposely learning how to manipulate them for sex is just outright disgusting and should be illegal.
Yes may all the grandmothers dead and alive infuse this world with sane justice. A true caring of life and how it's nurtured and loved. And any person involved with the Epstein files be held accountable, condemned to the fullest for these most abominable of offenses.
Great post Susan! Excuse the ramblings, I couldn't stop...
I love your ramblings. Please don’t apologize for them. If you own women, you own life. Except we own ourselves. Radical caring is the answer. They don’t know how to respond to that. Love, always, is the answer.
Thank you for writing this, Susan. About a year ago, when I went to a monastery, I learned about the Beguines. It was a movement starting maybe around the 12th century and women created these walled in communities and cared for other women and mothers and children who had no protection for one reason or another.
I am greatly abbreviating here, but I became fascinated. One of the nuns, Dr Laura Swann, wrote a book on them and does fabulous research debunking a lot of the narratives around women in the early church.
Women in the early church were much more powerful than we are led to believe. The Beguines were an incredible community. There were abbesses who were the spiritual and temporal heads of 60 villages- that’s church and state. Our history has been tampered with.
I haven’t been able to read much of anything lately for several reasons…but this, this though it stoked that primal fire in my belly to uncomfortable degrees….i absolutely LOVE this Grandma!!!!❤️
Thank you Lila! We need that fire in your belly. It makes me hopeful, which is the opposite of what the fire hose of cruelty is designed to do. Women are the answer.
Susan, this is very powerful writing and I second your ideas. My own biography is not in mythology and the maternal connections in my life have been highly dysfunctional and there is a lot transgenerational trauma involved, not wisdom, so your "grandmother" analogy (even in the black and indigenous sense, maybe because the black community is very small in Germany and the indigenous non existent) to me feels very foreign.
Nevertheless, many of the services you ask for are already implemented in Germany. Our government is consistently spending over 25% of its GDP on social protection, one of the highest rates in the world.
To give you an idea:
Universal Day Care and Pre-K: Germany has a legal right to a childcare place for children over the age of one. Starting in the 2026/27 school year, a new law grants all first-graders a legal entitlement to all-day care, which will expand to all primary grades by 2029.
Free Public Education: Tuition at public universities is free (with only minor administrative fees) for both domestic and international students. This aligns with Susan's desire for the government to "subsidize intellectual curiosity."
Universal Health Care: Germany has a dual system of statutory and private insurance. It is mandatory for all residents. While Susan laments paying for Medicare, Germans pay a percentage of their income (approx. 14.6%), but this coverage includes extensive maternity, paternity, and "sick child" leave.
Housing Cooperatives (Genossenschaften): Germany has a massive network of over 1,800 housing cooperatives managing approximately 2.2 million apartments. These are non-speculative; members are "user-owners" who pay "usage fees" rather than traditional rent to a landlord.
Baugruppen (Building Groups): This is a popular German model where individuals act as their own developers to build communal apartment blocks with shared kitchens, gardens, and workshops, bypassing the profit margins of corporate developers.
Political Funding: Unlike the U.S., German parties receive significant public funding based on their success in elections. There are strict transparency rules; any donation over €50,000 must be reported immediately to the President of the Bundestag and published.
Mail-In Voting: Germany has a robust Briefwahl (postal vote) system. In recent federal elections, nearly 50% of voters cast their ballots by mail. It is highly regulated and widely trusted. We also have a system where voters are registered automatically because everybody has the obligation to register your place of residence with the relevant local authority within two weeks. If you are eligible to vote you are registered.
Wealth Caps: Germany does not have a wealth cap or a current wealth tax (Vermögensteuer), despite some party time and again asking for it. Germany has a higher top income tax rate than the U.S. and a strong "social obligation of property" written into its Constitution (Grundgesetz Art. 14).
And still, we have very much the same general challenges and problems, just still on a lower level, than the U.S. because no founding assembly ever questioned the general foundation (which lies in the 17th/18th century Prussian authority and obedience culture, and of course patriarchy, strict hierarchy amongst other ideas). The main difference is that our philosophical background is already communal and communitarian, relational. That creates a positive duty for our government. It HAS TO provide all those services. That is constitutional.
I have friends in Germany, near you, Jay. Who say the same and are shocked whne I talk about the lack of care here for the supposed richest country in the world. Hogwash!
Prajna, your friends, like most people and politicians, do not remember that the U.S. and every other democracy in this world are not one and the same.Just because they are called democracy, does not make them equal.
All other democracies, like Germany follow a more or less communitarian system that includes the mentioned duty of care from our governments. It is their duty to care and provide social security for there citizens, all citizens, even those who apply for asylum. They have basically the same basic rights as any citizen.
In America there is no such duty, only the obligation NOT TO INTERFERE. That is the crucial difference. Your constitution tells the government not to interfere and SCOTUS decided already in 1886 that property trumps always people. Both is the crux.
This is brilliant, Jay. Exactly what I was pointing to. Thanks for writing it. I love the way you wrote it, too, answering point for point. I hope that we, in the US, can wake up in time. I have big hope. I think things are converging in ways our treasonous fascists won’t be able to control I think it’s already started.
Susan, yes I agree that it started, and yet, I think if would not be helpful put a timeframe on this or raise hope already. More like having faith. If you look into history: the movement that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall started actually in 1982. The wall fell in 1989. The decline of the Weimarian Republic started in 1926, Hitler took over 1933. There are many more examples that change, as much as we wish for the contrary, takes time.
You sniffed my heartbreak. I keep hoping that the allies have our backs, that they have the multi-national evidence of what was going on in the Epstein pedophile ring and they will take our fascists down for the sake of NATO, or some story line like that. Perhaps a forensic accounting of Deutsche bank? I know you are right, but I need my hope.
Susan, there currently is a lot of noise in Europe and I think Norway, Great Britain and France, as well as in Poland investigations are well under way. Germany so far is another matter. The Deutsche Bank is and has since 1933 been a holy cow that has been reprimanded but never slaughtered. The Swiss slaughtered their Credit Suisse, but the Germans still think they cannot be successful in this globalized world without the Deutsche Bank.
A banking corporation that operates more like a "fortress of the elite" than a financial utility:
The 2026 Crisis: As of February 14, 2026, Germany is gripped by a major legal crisis.
The January 28 Raids: Just two days before the DOJ unsealed 3 million "Epstein Files," the German Federal Police (BKA) conducted spectacular raids on Deutsche Bank’s Frankfurt headquarters and Berlin offices. Roughly 30 investigators entered the "Twin Towers," seizing evidence under a money laundering probe targeting the years 2013–2018.
The Abramovich-Epstein Link: While prosecutors initially cited ties to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, the timing is "bitterly ironic." That 2013–2018 window corresponds precisely to the bank's relationship with Epstein. We now know the bank managed over 40 accounts for him during this period, acting as his primary financial engine.
The "April 2019" Revelation: New evidence shows the bank continued serving Epstein well into 2019, long after they claimed to be "offboarding" him. Most shockingly, internal files reveal the bank quickly arranged a request from Epstein for €50,000 in large bills in April 2019—just months before his final arrest.
A "Settlement Echo": While the bank paid $75 million in 2023, new "Jane Doe" lawsuits filed this month (February 2026) allege the bank "fraudulently concealed" the true extent of its involvement.
The Political Shield: Despite these horrors, the political will to act is stifled by the "National Champion" doctrine. Under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the CDU largely views the bank as a systemic utility—like the power grid—that must be preserved at all costs to protect German sovereignty. While younger lawmakers fear the "reputational contagion" of the Epstein link, the current leadership prefers "forced purification" (replacing individuals) over "slaughtering the cow" (breaking up the bank).
Susan, this bank is the “bailiff” of the modern era—the collector for the distant lords in Germany. It has become a structural pillar of what you call the patriarchal death-culture, so deeply woven into the "Staatsraison" (state reason) that the elite believe the integrity of the German legal system is a price worth paying to keep their "National Champion" on the global stage. And if has survived since 1933 15 to 20 "existential" or major global scandals including most shockingly:
The Holocaust & Aryanization: The bank facilitated the "Aryanization" of 363 Jewish-owned businesses and financed the construction of the Auschwitz death camp.
Survival: After 1945, the Allies initially broke the bank into ten regional entities to destroy its power. However, by 1957, the "National Champion" doctrine won out, and the bank was allowed to re-merge into the single entity we know today.
So you can see the dimension this might take in Germany. This is not just a Bank. This is a state within the state.
Thanks for this. I knew the connections were deep, but I've never understood it so clearly. It's my not-so-secret hope that these institutions will not be able to withstand what is happening now, because it feels to me sometimes as if we're already in WW3, and the U.S is captured. It's just being fought in such covert ways. When you lay it out like this, I see why my country has never had the courage to hold anyone accountable except Maxwell. Also, Epstein was at Trump's Florida club as late as 2019, so they continued doing business at least that long. There are so many horrible things still to come out.
Susan, I am glad to have brought at least some clarity and light. Trumnp himself is known to be a very good Deutsche Bank customer himself, actually so good, that only a handful of people ever got insight into his many accounts. Also was he exempt from any compliance and ethics reviews. They made more money with them than they risked to pay as penalties, so they gave them absolutely free reign with their accounts against all European, Global or American regulations.
Wow, Susan, I second all the BS and all that is DONE. Yes to the grandmothers. Imagine if we repurposed empty spaces, extra homes...
I love simple, smart, solution-oriented writing. This could never be imagined by the Zillionaires. I don't want to say never.
Have you read Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation? I have had to listen over and over again—this book is a masterpiece, showing social darwinism as BS, as you say. Capitalism is about owning women's bodies without our bodies; what would they have power over?
I am entrenched in her work as well as Barbara Ehrenreich. I think Barbara is still alive. I am fascinated by her lived experience. I'm reading her memoir right now.
Wonderful accomplishment in this stream of consciousness.
I, too, love this feeling of being done, the relaxation, the lack of interest in prior hooks. Nothing hooks me. All of my life I've just wanted to curl inot books about real women, now I am.
You just wrote a wonderful chapter. Yes — you named it the 'gentleman's agreement', avoiding neglecting treason, enforcing slavery... so sick.
Do. Caliban and the Witch is off the chain. I've never heard of that podcst but I'll check it out. They Presbyterians in Scotland were particularly harsh to women they accused of witchcraft, so I already love the title.
Caliban and the Witch opened my eyes in ways nothing else could. Then The Immortality Key filled in the rest about witch trials, capitalism and the church. For me, it’s about every monotheistic patriarchal religion. It’s all about trying to own life, the means of production, which is what women are. Since I was a kid, I rebelled against the recieved history of social Darwinism and the Agricultural Revolution as being some kind of magical shift to something better. Sheesh. The other book that speaks to that is The Dawn of Everything, by Graber and Wengrow. Our ancestors were smart adults with complex societies. Their brains were just like ours. Their cultures were different, but not their capabilities. In many cases, what they made with it was better. We could learn a thing or two from them. I’m so happy you are my sister crone.
Brilliant Susan! Yes, "it’s about every monotheistic patriarchal religion. It’s all about trying to own life, the means of production, which is what women are." I am going to look up The Dawn of Everything.
Powerful stuff. We need to know where we have been to chart a different course and protect life. xoxo
This is all brilliant and beautiful and beautifully-written and (as all things from you) full of truth.
Can we just form groups of bada$$ grandmothers who bang open the doors of all of these f***-ed up rooms and kindly but firmly push aside every power-hungry twit and take over already? We’re masters at organizing and coordinating effort, so if we all showed up at once, I think we could do it.
Of course we’d simultaneously throw open the doors of all the so-called “detention centers” — we’d need them empty and available to house the real “criminals” and “illegals” we’d be clearing out of all the rooms.
Sigh. Sorry. Went for a little walk in my daydreams there. I figured you were right behind me. ❤️
We could just use the shell of these buildings to create community centers with temporary housing for families in need. Once real crisis is how little our systems care about all the harm they cause. We’re so interested in preventing mothers from gaming the system, we don’t notice when the president mints crypto coins and manipulates the stock market for insider trading, but yeah. Make those people on snap have a work requirement. Got it.
I really resonate with this post. As a grandmother that just turned 66 a few months ago, I have seen decades of change for the positive and the negative. I spend my days trying to focus on the ever shrinking positive and hope I can be a small light in the world while the powers that be continue to destroy it. I think if “Ending state-sanctioned corruption” was first on the list, the rest would no longer be an issue. 🥰.
I see that. I feel it too. First on my list is ending the belief in dominance as a way to gain power. Our worldview is out of wack. I think that’s what leads to corruption. We could start with your list, though. It would change everything.
Thank you for your written words and ...YES.
Thank you for your YES. It means so much.
So much to think about here, and here you frame your perspective so well: “Mythologies are different ways of understanding the huge reality we find ourselves in. Some maps are better than others, but none of them are accurate. “ Keep shining your light, Susan.
Thanks Amy. Every time I see proof of your happiness, I glow too.
Grandmothers for the win. I’ve got 9 grandkids and 6 great grandkids. Enjoyed this!
That sounds like poetic justice to me.
Thanks, and you’d be excellent on the Supreme Court, too.
Supreme Court coven!
I love your fierceness. Yes, I read the whole thing. Good to hear you roar.
Some days, the evidence gets caught in my throat, and I have to roar to get it out of there before I choke.
It took me decades to see how it wasn’t all Eve’s fault. It wasn’t all Pandora’s fault. To see how the women denounced as witches would die no matter the result of their trial. How Medusa didn’t ask for her snakes. And wonder what Tiamat was like before she was compromised.
It’s a rude awakening, for sure. You go right to the heart of the matter. Then add a dash of… most of those mythological figures have stories older than the versions we were fed. Especially Eve.
It’s such a relief just to hear others calling out “dominator culture” as the problem. 💜 ✨
Yes. It’s THE problem.
I love all of it--Turning from forced influences into what it would be like--and sometimes, how people live right now, in other communities and places. This essay allows me to dream too, in ways I may not have known I was missing! Thank you so much for caring enough to write this brilliant essay!
I love you so much too! ♥️
Thank you. I love you so much
Your post pretty much sums it up😉. Another idea: folks in communal living spaces, like “nursing homes” have skill sets and experience and could be teaching other residents - French language, weight lifting, piano or guitar, etc. We need each other, period.
Community is the answer.
🥰
I'm all for the Grandmothers stepping in. Women's labor should not be for free. Or considered biologically determined. That's just BS. That's part of the patriarchal/capitalist play book. This is a culture that literally hates women. If they could make us slaves they would. It's taken me awhile to see this. I didn't want to.
I recently went down a rabbit hole, looking into the polarity teachings of women surrendering to men as the way the genders are made. Then into PUA's and then into the Red Pill. Talk about men hating women, and purposely learning how to manipulate them for sex is just outright disgusting and should be illegal.
Yes may all the grandmothers dead and alive infuse this world with sane justice. A true caring of life and how it's nurtured and loved. And any person involved with the Epstein files be held accountable, condemned to the fullest for these most abominable of offenses.
Great post Susan! Excuse the ramblings, I couldn't stop...
I love your ramblings. Please don’t apologize for them. If you own women, you own life. Except we own ourselves. Radical caring is the answer. They don’t know how to respond to that. Love, always, is the answer.
Yes it all comes back to love. Love is the way, it is the answer.
Thank you for writing this, Susan. About a year ago, when I went to a monastery, I learned about the Beguines. It was a movement starting maybe around the 12th century and women created these walled in communities and cared for other women and mothers and children who had no protection for one reason or another.
I am greatly abbreviating here, but I became fascinated. One of the nuns, Dr Laura Swann, wrote a book on them and does fabulous research debunking a lot of the narratives around women in the early church.
Women in the early church were much more powerful than we are led to believe. The Beguines were an incredible community. There were abbesses who were the spiritual and temporal heads of 60 villages- that’s church and state. Our history has been tampered with.
I haven’t been able to read much of anything lately for several reasons…but this, this though it stoked that primal fire in my belly to uncomfortable degrees….i absolutely LOVE this Grandma!!!!❤️
Thank you Lila! We need that fire in your belly. It makes me hopeful, which is the opposite of what the fire hose of cruelty is designed to do. Women are the answer.
Susan, this is very powerful writing and I second your ideas. My own biography is not in mythology and the maternal connections in my life have been highly dysfunctional and there is a lot transgenerational trauma involved, not wisdom, so your "grandmother" analogy (even in the black and indigenous sense, maybe because the black community is very small in Germany and the indigenous non existent) to me feels very foreign.
Nevertheless, many of the services you ask for are already implemented in Germany. Our government is consistently spending over 25% of its GDP on social protection, one of the highest rates in the world.
To give you an idea:
Universal Day Care and Pre-K: Germany has a legal right to a childcare place for children over the age of one. Starting in the 2026/27 school year, a new law grants all first-graders a legal entitlement to all-day care, which will expand to all primary grades by 2029.
Free Public Education: Tuition at public universities is free (with only minor administrative fees) for both domestic and international students. This aligns with Susan's desire for the government to "subsidize intellectual curiosity."
Universal Health Care: Germany has a dual system of statutory and private insurance. It is mandatory for all residents. While Susan laments paying for Medicare, Germans pay a percentage of their income (approx. 14.6%), but this coverage includes extensive maternity, paternity, and "sick child" leave.
Housing Cooperatives (Genossenschaften): Germany has a massive network of over 1,800 housing cooperatives managing approximately 2.2 million apartments. These are non-speculative; members are "user-owners" who pay "usage fees" rather than traditional rent to a landlord.
Baugruppen (Building Groups): This is a popular German model where individuals act as their own developers to build communal apartment blocks with shared kitchens, gardens, and workshops, bypassing the profit margins of corporate developers.
Political Funding: Unlike the U.S., German parties receive significant public funding based on their success in elections. There are strict transparency rules; any donation over €50,000 must be reported immediately to the President of the Bundestag and published.
Mail-In Voting: Germany has a robust Briefwahl (postal vote) system. In recent federal elections, nearly 50% of voters cast their ballots by mail. It is highly regulated and widely trusted. We also have a system where voters are registered automatically because everybody has the obligation to register your place of residence with the relevant local authority within two weeks. If you are eligible to vote you are registered.
Wealth Caps: Germany does not have a wealth cap or a current wealth tax (Vermögensteuer), despite some party time and again asking for it. Germany has a higher top income tax rate than the U.S. and a strong "social obligation of property" written into its Constitution (Grundgesetz Art. 14).
And still, we have very much the same general challenges and problems, just still on a lower level, than the U.S. because no founding assembly ever questioned the general foundation (which lies in the 17th/18th century Prussian authority and obedience culture, and of course patriarchy, strict hierarchy amongst other ideas). The main difference is that our philosophical background is already communal and communitarian, relational. That creates a positive duty for our government. It HAS TO provide all those services. That is constitutional.
We’re only the richest in billionaires. That’s a sad fact.
I have friends in Germany, near you, Jay. Who say the same and are shocked whne I talk about the lack of care here for the supposed richest country in the world. Hogwash!
Prajna, your friends, like most people and politicians, do not remember that the U.S. and every other democracy in this world are not one and the same.Just because they are called democracy, does not make them equal.
All other democracies, like Germany follow a more or less communitarian system that includes the mentioned duty of care from our governments. It is their duty to care and provide social security for there citizens, all citizens, even those who apply for asylum. They have basically the same basic rights as any citizen.
In America there is no such duty, only the obligation NOT TO INTERFERE. That is the crucial difference. Your constitution tells the government not to interfere and SCOTUS decided already in 1886 that property trumps always people. Both is the crux.
I love your clear voice. Thank you, Jay.
This is brilliant, Jay. Exactly what I was pointing to. Thanks for writing it. I love the way you wrote it, too, answering point for point. I hope that we, in the US, can wake up in time. I have big hope. I think things are converging in ways our treasonous fascists won’t be able to control I think it’s already started.
Susan, yes I agree that it started, and yet, I think if would not be helpful put a timeframe on this or raise hope already. More like having faith. If you look into history: the movement that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall started actually in 1982. The wall fell in 1989. The decline of the Weimarian Republic started in 1926, Hitler took over 1933. There are many more examples that change, as much as we wish for the contrary, takes time.
You sniffed my heartbreak. I keep hoping that the allies have our backs, that they have the multi-national evidence of what was going on in the Epstein pedophile ring and they will take our fascists down for the sake of NATO, or some story line like that. Perhaps a forensic accounting of Deutsche bank? I know you are right, but I need my hope.
Susan, there currently is a lot of noise in Europe and I think Norway, Great Britain and France, as well as in Poland investigations are well under way. Germany so far is another matter. The Deutsche Bank is and has since 1933 been a holy cow that has been reprimanded but never slaughtered. The Swiss slaughtered their Credit Suisse, but the Germans still think they cannot be successful in this globalized world without the Deutsche Bank.
A banking corporation that operates more like a "fortress of the elite" than a financial utility:
The 2026 Crisis: As of February 14, 2026, Germany is gripped by a major legal crisis.
The January 28 Raids: Just two days before the DOJ unsealed 3 million "Epstein Files," the German Federal Police (BKA) conducted spectacular raids on Deutsche Bank’s Frankfurt headquarters and Berlin offices. Roughly 30 investigators entered the "Twin Towers," seizing evidence under a money laundering probe targeting the years 2013–2018.
The Abramovich-Epstein Link: While prosecutors initially cited ties to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, the timing is "bitterly ironic." That 2013–2018 window corresponds precisely to the bank's relationship with Epstein. We now know the bank managed over 40 accounts for him during this period, acting as his primary financial engine.
The "April 2019" Revelation: New evidence shows the bank continued serving Epstein well into 2019, long after they claimed to be "offboarding" him. Most shockingly, internal files reveal the bank quickly arranged a request from Epstein for €50,000 in large bills in April 2019—just months before his final arrest.
A "Settlement Echo": While the bank paid $75 million in 2023, new "Jane Doe" lawsuits filed this month (February 2026) allege the bank "fraudulently concealed" the true extent of its involvement.
The Political Shield: Despite these horrors, the political will to act is stifled by the "National Champion" doctrine. Under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the CDU largely views the bank as a systemic utility—like the power grid—that must be preserved at all costs to protect German sovereignty. While younger lawmakers fear the "reputational contagion" of the Epstein link, the current leadership prefers "forced purification" (replacing individuals) over "slaughtering the cow" (breaking up the bank).
Susan, this bank is the “bailiff” of the modern era—the collector for the distant lords in Germany. It has become a structural pillar of what you call the patriarchal death-culture, so deeply woven into the "Staatsraison" (state reason) that the elite believe the integrity of the German legal system is a price worth paying to keep their "National Champion" on the global stage. And if has survived since 1933 15 to 20 "existential" or major global scandals including most shockingly:
The Holocaust & Aryanization: The bank facilitated the "Aryanization" of 363 Jewish-owned businesses and financed the construction of the Auschwitz death camp.
Survival: After 1945, the Allies initially broke the bank into ten regional entities to destroy its power. However, by 1957, the "National Champion" doctrine won out, and the bank was allowed to re-merge into the single entity we know today.
So you can see the dimension this might take in Germany. This is not just a Bank. This is a state within the state.
Thanks for this. I knew the connections were deep, but I've never understood it so clearly. It's my not-so-secret hope that these institutions will not be able to withstand what is happening now, because it feels to me sometimes as if we're already in WW3, and the U.S is captured. It's just being fought in such covert ways. When you lay it out like this, I see why my country has never had the courage to hold anyone accountable except Maxwell. Also, Epstein was at Trump's Florida club as late as 2019, so they continued doing business at least that long. There are so many horrible things still to come out.
Susan, I am glad to have brought at least some clarity and light. Trumnp himself is known to be a very good Deutsche Bank customer himself, actually so good, that only a handful of people ever got insight into his many accounts. Also was he exempt from any compliance and ethics reviews. They made more money with them than they risked to pay as penalties, so they gave them absolutely free reign with their accounts against all European, Global or American regulations.
Wow, Susan, I second all the BS and all that is DONE. Yes to the grandmothers. Imagine if we repurposed empty spaces, extra homes...
I love simple, smart, solution-oriented writing. This could never be imagined by the Zillionaires. I don't want to say never.
Have you read Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation? I have had to listen over and over again—this book is a masterpiece, showing social darwinism as BS, as you say. Capitalism is about owning women's bodies without our bodies; what would they have power over?
I am entrenched in her work as well as Barbara Ehrenreich. I think Barbara is still alive. I am fascinated by her lived experience. I'm reading her memoir right now.
Wonderful accomplishment in this stream of consciousness.
I, too, love this feeling of being done, the relaxation, the lack of interest in prior hooks. Nothing hooks me. All of my life I've just wanted to curl inot books about real women, now I am.
You just wrote a wonderful chapter. Yes — you named it the 'gentleman's agreement', avoiding neglecting treason, enforcing slavery... so sick.
More to say.... much love
Thank you, sister Grandma Crone
I’m gonna check that book out. Lovely comment. ❤️
Have you heard of The Witches of Scotland Podcast?
I will check this out. Thank you, Lila. Susan is always a good read. Honest, no denial.
Do. Caliban and the Witch is off the chain. I've never heard of that podcst but I'll check it out. They Presbyterians in Scotland were particularly harsh to women they accused of witchcraft, so I already love the title.
Caliban and the Witch opened my eyes in ways nothing else could. Then The Immortality Key filled in the rest about witch trials, capitalism and the church. For me, it’s about every monotheistic patriarchal religion. It’s all about trying to own life, the means of production, which is what women are. Since I was a kid, I rebelled against the recieved history of social Darwinism and the Agricultural Revolution as being some kind of magical shift to something better. Sheesh. The other book that speaks to that is The Dawn of Everything, by Graber and Wengrow. Our ancestors were smart adults with complex societies. Their brains were just like ours. Their cultures were different, but not their capabilities. In many cases, what they made with it was better. We could learn a thing or two from them. I’m so happy you are my sister crone.
Brilliant Susan! Yes, "it’s about every monotheistic patriarchal religion. It’s all about trying to own life, the means of production, which is what women are." I am going to look up The Dawn of Everything.
Powerful stuff. We need to know where we have been to chart a different course and protect life. xoxo
They just show you in detail how everything you were taught in school was wrong. We need to know that.
I look forward to reading this, Susan!