What the End Will Look Like

Today we see dictators fleeing with their respective countries' gold and dollars. But soon, it will be corporate CEO's, their puppet politicians, and perhaps their helpful lobbyists who will be fleeing the enraged, destitute masses. Maybe the Fall of Amerika will mirror the Fall of Saigon. Every last person, even closely related to those with private aircraft, yachts, or underground secret bunkers, will be clamoring to get in. Few will find sanctuary. Then, like the secret police trying to blend in with protestors once they realized it was too late, the patsies will join the rest of us. But we'll ferret thme out. And it could get ugly.

The End of Neoconservatism

Penny for the thoughts of the Neoconservatives who took power with George W. Bush and launched the Iraq war based on what are now largely undisputed falsifications.  That country fell in a top-down, brutal military invasion that destroyed its infrastructure and decimated its populace.  It was essentially removed as a nation.  The costs of the war will be dwarfed now by the costs of rebuilding. 

And the twin Neoconservative lies that (1) Democracy could be created by force without grassroots organization or institutions, and that (2) Democracies don't launch wars are now exposed, also even outside of any reasonable dispute.  But what we did learn from the Neoconservative Junta is that dictators launch wars.  Thus their fetish for the Unitary Executive, a President that can launch wars without a declaration of war from Congress, create extrajudicial "commissions," hold individuals indefinitely in violation of Due Process.  They installed a dictator and did exactly what they purported to oppose.

Rewind to the speech Barack Obama gave in Cairo.  An opening and a reaching out to the Arab and Muslim world.  Victor Hugo's maxim, that stronger than the mightiest armed force is the power of an idea whose time has come, writ large, has been realized right before our very eyes.  And with it comes the messier forms of a Democracy.  What is the West to do when those they violently disagree with are elected to power though the very Democractic process they so vocierfously purport to hold as their mission, the raison d'etre?

This will get interesting indeed.

Fading, Slowly.

Learn to fade. Slowly and gracefully. And pace yourself. If you dont, you'll implode in no time. But string it out and the neighbors wont realize that over 10 years you went from a Hummer to a Maxima. Or from Aspen vacations to KOA campouts. Or from Salzbury steak to cheese sandwiches. Or from cocaine to meth. They'll never know you're 'consulting' consists of making phone calls that are never returned, watching Springer, and re-living the glory days with former peers. They never know your kid dropped out of college and joined the Marines. Or that your 401k that once was the dominant topic of conversation with friends, is now gone. They'll never know you really moved not to be closer to family, but because all you could afford was a one room efficiency. And they'll think you dont go to the Cuntry Club anymore because management offended your wife. So Relax. Fade. Slowly. The old saying "Time is money" also works in reverse. Particularly in a depression.

Welcome to the Age of Austerity

"Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation
Aquarius! Aquarius!

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
The Age of Aquarius
Aquarius! Aquarius!"

-The Age of Aquarius (The Fifth Dimension)

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."

-Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

"We must assume every event has significance and contains a message that pertains to our questions."

-James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy

"A sane person to an insane society must appear insane."

 -Kurt Vonnegut (Welcome to the Monkey House)

And so it begins. The age of plenty and the age of accord have given way to the wreckage of systems that allocate, whether it be allocating wealth, labor, materiel, all of them seem to be veering off course. And the only response that seems to be wafting from those who pretend to understand is that you must cut back, conserve, preserve, save and deny.

It has pervaded everything, from sales and marketing to the service professions.  Governments everywhere have been forced to guarantee the banks after the banks went on a spending spree for a decade or so.  Unregulated financial frauds in which the financial markets now swim were traded up and up and up, and then, at the last minute, dumped for the government to save.  Privatized profits and socialized losses.  Where there is enough for one to have all, there is somehow never enough for all to have enough.

So the question for you is whether there really is not enough?  Or whether a system that misallocates or misdistributes is actually desigend to create the falsehood that there is not enough.  Is there not enough for all, or just not enough for you?  A system can withhold something in order to increase its value, and use that false scarcity to achieve political ends.  This is an economic axiom.

When there is a contrived situation of not enough, there is a false competition created amongst those who need it.  There is a fight amongst them that diverts them and distracts them from the realization that there really is enough.  And in the fight and in the competition, there is disunity, lack of community, lack of organization and the ability to make change through mass movement.  This is the socioeconomic and sociopolitical result of a system designed to make sure that for some, if not most, there will never be enough.

Welcome to the Age of Austerity, Hope you Survive the Experience.