A Social Experiment
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Cy Twombly Fifty Days at Iliam: Like a Fire that Consumes All before It 1978 Might as well call it a social experiment. Any other name,
[See the full post at: A Social Experiment]One has to ask themselves, how do such incompetent people rise to the highest levels of state office, far surpassing even Peter Principle predictions? And once there, either elected or appointed, go on to serve only the monied interests at the expense of principle, vital institutions, peace, and the common good?
Since these offices are obviously not attained by merit, I can only come to one conclusion: that they are ‘put’ there by people with far more power. People who prefer to rule from the shadows, while presenting a gullible polity with the illusion that they have a voice in a democratic government. This allows the men behind the curtain to proceed unhindered with their plans of greater wealth and world dominion.
This is all true in spades. But, the overwhelming fact is that both political parties are complicit in the colossal failure to protect and serve the American people. Donald Trump is a disaster. Joe Biden is a disaster. The incompetence and corruption cannot be unintentional. They are paid to put corporation profits over public health and safety.
Emma and James Galbraith; “This breakdown can be repaired only by dramatic, radical public action, mobilizing the whole population—effectively, for the duration—as a matter of survival, such as seen on only three occasions in US history: in 1861, at the start of the Civil War; in 1933, at the launch of the New Deal; and in 1941, at the start of World War II.” Until the coronavirus is contained, the Pandemic Depression will continue unabated. The US Stock Market is in fantasy land injected with digital dollars by the FED.
The only thing left is rebuilding the national public health system, daily testing and containing the virus. If not, America will splinter apart. Last night bridges were raised to protect the Chicago Loop from armed looters.
A very dark picture Ilargi.
All too true; so glad I left when I did; I couldn’t possibly have predicted this…
…all I can hope for now is to win the death bet…Michelle Obama!
What else have the Dems got?
Early testing every 2 days at home with cheap strips kinda’ like pregnancy tests needs to be followed promptly with something like hydroxychloroquine/zinc (+/- azithromycin) and/or Ivermectin/zinc/doxycycline (but not doxy and azithro together).The trouble with coronavirus vaccine experiments for the last 18 years has been that after the vaccine works, and the rats have antibodies, and you expose rats to coronavirus, more of the ones die who got the vaccine, than the ones that did not.
The trouble with coronavirus vaccine experiments for the last 18 years has been that after the vaccine works, and the rats have antibodies, and you expose rats to coronavirus, more of the ones die who got the vaccine, than the ones that did not.
That supports my worst fears, of this particular anti-covid vaccine rush.
It would seem that at this juncture, the best course is to do one’s very best to stay free of the virus for as long as possible.
The learning curve for this covid-19 virus goes over the visual horizon at present…I no big fan of Trump, but the fact he’s still standing after all they’ve thrown at him.. well I take my hat off to him on that. OTOH, it’s an excommunication offence amongst half my family and quite a few friends to observe even this tepid praise.
Part of me is curious what he would do in a second term.. a “Trump Unchained” as it were. Quite possibly whatever he pleased, without regard to his successor or to his donors, which he’d have little loyalty to.
No doubt there’s a huge number on both sides of the aisle holding their breath that doesn’t happen.
But… what a spectacle if it does!Part of me is curious what he would do in a second term.. a “Trump Unchained” as it were.
Well, let’s see; he’s wrecked the economy (50+ million unemployed, highest in history), tens of thousands of business failures/closures, proved totally incompetent in the handling of the Coronavirus (150,000 dead and counting), delivered the coup de grace to public education (that might be a blessing), destroying the dollar as reserve currency, destroying relations with China, alienating the EU by sanctioning Nordstream-2 pipeline, generally driving the decline of the U.S. as a world power.
All politicians lie, but Trump? Hands down the most blatant and prolific…
Oh, and what about the riots in numerous cities across the U.S. going on for months, basically becuase of his racist policies and injustices…should I continue? 😉It’s been an “interesting” year so far – in the same sense of usage as the ancient Chinese curse. I know, intellectually, that we homo sapiens are emotional, irrational & illogical creatures but I wasn’t prepared for not only the staggering degree of ineptitude by virtually all Western governments to the current pandemic but also the bizarre and self destructive reaction to the threat by virtually all of it’s citizens. Including many of whom i’ve long respected as intelligent and usually sensible people. So it’s taken me longer than it should have to see this but I think Kubler-Ross would recognize this collective psychoses as classic denial to the circumstances that are too threatening to deal with when they arrive. It took me too long to get to this point because I saw that the virus *could* have been neutered with relatively little social & economic disruption – as most of Asia has just proved – without destroying our entire Way of Life as all of the Advanced™ countries have just done. But we did the opposite! And this doesn’t make any sense until you put it into context. The crucial context is that our Western Civilization is 40 years into it’s decline and as the last 6 mos have shown we, collectively, seem to have a collective death wish. We’re tired of waiting I guess.
I’ve been watching our decline for many years now, grudgingly admiring the resiliency of our “Road Runner”culture that’s well into rigor mortis but manages to stagger on by shear momentum. Yes, I understand that collapse is a process and not an event but the process is not linear. It can and will annoy irritate us collapsitarians with it’s stubborn persistence but when conditions are right we’ll get a trigger event that will dramatically and abruptly steepen the downslope. That’s where we are now. There will be no Recovery – “V” shaped or otherwise. What’s ahead of us in the next few years will make us wish it were just a “Depression” that one might suffer through. is And none of us are ready – if by “ready” we mean being able and willing to acknowledge the reality and full significance of this point in our lives.
For many years I read the “doomers” and studied the causes of civilizational collapse but that was the easy part because it was all somewhat abstract and intellectual. But I notice that none of the prophets seem to be able to rise to the occasion now that it’s turned real. J M Greer has apparently retreated to mysticism. Dmitry and J Kuntsler have become entertainers – pushing our buttons for cash. And Ilargi? Well after decades (?) of sage advice he seems to be stuck in 1st gear – unable to shift up to cope with the terrain we’re on now. What he warned us about is about to kick our door in but all we’re getting on AE now is the minutiae of the degeneration of our social collapse rather than calling it as it truly is and talking about what’s in store for us in the short to mid-term future. If we wanted to follow the antics of Pelosi, Schiff, Clinton, Mueller, Trump or watch videos of cute puppies to distract ourselves from the ugly future then we know where the boob tube is.
What kicked off this rant was reading today’s editorial. There’s an underlying assumption here that on some level Ilargi knows simply isn’t true. To point out that the (corrupt) opposition is threatening the integrity and sanctity of our (corrupt) system of government and our (AWOL) constitution is to pretend that such things still exist in reality. We have no agreed upon system of government. The constitution joined the Dead Sea Scrolls years ago. We are probably just months or weeks from when the shooting starts for real and most of us are still pretending that we have Rights protected by our Democratic Government. Time to grow a pair and begin to accept that the future we hoped not to see in our lifetimes has just pulled into our driveway.
@V.Arnold
A chunk of that is indeed true. But..
– the race riots are as much the fault of the predominantly Democratic-run states (something like 17 of the worst 20 from memory).
– the Nordstream-2 sanctions are off the back of relentless pressure by the dems to antagonise Russia at all costs, or validate their relentless Russophobic accusations
– the decline of the US as a world power has been baked in for a couple of decades now via hubris and corruption
– Trumps lies are indeed coarse and obvious. Obama would have smoothly and glibly avoiding saying anything of substance. If one of those is better than the other, I really can’t see itAnd on the positive, despite continuing Obama’s military foray in Syria, Trump has conspicuously not invaded any new countries in the way Bush and Obama/Hillary before him seemed to have no compunctions.
So yeah, coarse and vulgar, and often a dick. And if I were from the US, I’d be embarrassed that he was my elected leader. But in terms of douchery, just one in a party-interchangeable conga line stretching quite a while back… 🙂
@laffin_boy
There’s a few of us here have expressed the same sort of frustrated rage at the way things have played out this year, and the potential bleakness for the future, so I have sympathy for your view.
Thing is, what’re ya gonna do? The majority of people are in deep denial and are absolutely immune to any “real” conversation. For preppers, there’s only so much prepping you can do. After that, it’s a matter of waiting for things to kick off to have anything to respond to, or to wake up a few sleepers such that they’ll be in any way receptive.
CJ Hopkins has a good column up today: https://off-guardian.org/2020/08/10/invasion-of-the-new-normals/
I’m open to any good ideas on what we could be doing, but it feels just like a zombie movie out there, and I don’t see what can be be usefully done right now.– Trumps lies are indeed coarse and obvious. Obama would have smoothly and glibly avoiding saying anything of substance. If one of those is better than the other, I really can’t see it
Frankly, I despise Obama more than Trump for exactly that reason…Trump is the more honest character…
…but then, thats like asking which you’d rather be bitten by; a cobra or a bushmaster…What Huskynut said… 😉
laffin_boy
Good! If I evoke that kind of reaction from people I think I’m not doing too shabby.
Different people react differently to changes, and adapt to them in different ways as well. That they don’t all comply with what your particular way is, shouldn’t be all that surprising. It also doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Don’t confuse these matters too easily.
“Will they just increase the protests and the violence in the streets?”
61% of republicans own guns, vs 16% of democrats. (Statista) This may have consequences if the riots start up and move to residential areas during the Long Interim between Election Day and whenever a “winner” is declared. (by WHOM????)2008 Republicans, each year is now its own vintage, (I’m 1968 when at 21, first voted for Richard Nixon, but as well an Eisenhower Republican from Wisconsin), vowed to make Obama fail. The Southern Strategy conversion of Democrats to Republicans, observed here in Virginia, is a branding switch that took time and money. Advocating for the strong e executive, they complained about Obama, but are happy with Trump’s strong man tactics. Independents are the third party. When I came to Virginia it was primarily Democrat, but moving toward Republican. The got over the bloody flag. Only sane thing was to vote for the better person. Lovers of disruption like to cheer from the sidelines. Few actually acknowledge the necessity and value of civic and civil government. The fighting underlies the fact that resources are depleted, so real growth isn’t possible. The Automatic Earth has begun to renew itself, rebalancing is producing great waves of change. There is no Left in the US. There is Center and Extreme Right. The arrow of time won’t go back to the glory days, but the disappointed don’t want physics, so cry on.
“the riots in numerous cities across the U.S. going on for months, basically because of [Trump’s] racist policies and injustices”
I think that’s a misreading of what’s happening on the ground, though it’s definitely the spin the Dems want to put on things. After all, time reset after January 20, 2017 and nothing that happened before matters.
The rebellions against police murder have been overwhelmingly in cities long controlled by the Democrat Party. The leadership of both factions (I consider both Dems and Reps to be factions of the Money Party – the ‘two-party system’ being but a prop in the spectacle) have worked hand-in-hand to militarize the police, to immiserate the working class, and make the day to day struggle for existence so difficult as to leave no time or energy for organizing against their owners and masters.
There is no hope for the working class no matter who is elected. #BITFD
Huskynut wrote “I’m open to any good ideas on what we could be doing, but it feels just like a zombie movie out there, and I don’t see what can be be usefully done right now.”
I’m old and won’t survive the process of collapse (political, economic, environmental) that is working itself out before our eyes. I don’t think there’s a damned thing that can avert said collapse, whether that process completes itself in 10 or 30 years. What I do think is worthwhile and reasonable is to preserve knowledge and skill sets that will be important to the life that will come after collapse. Our future will be profoundly deindustrialized and functioning on vastly reduced energy inputs. We would be best served by preserving knowledge and skills useful in such a setting.
Any effort spent trying to reform (or even influence) official politics is futile for us in the lower 90%. Better to foster and support local initiatives that grow self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and cooperation – skills and attitudes that will serve us well no matter what our owners and masters would prefer we do.
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