The Old Man and Tomorrow....

November 23rd, 2039
Portland, Oregon, Pacific Northwest States


I’m an old man.

Perhaps that’s the thing – at age 85, I really never expected to see all this; the better part of me hoped I never would.  Regardless, here it is.  I’ve been writing for free for so long I thought, “What will one more long article hurt?”  Someone might even learn something.

I’ve often said that the worst things aren’t what we plan for – they’re the oddball stuff which happens on a random Tuesday.  In this case, it was a random Thursday – February 14^th, 2013.

That was the day California defaulted. 

I mean, really – anyone could have seen it coming; they were over $40 billion in the red, with no end in sight.   Virtually no one had paid property taxes, due to the collapse of real-estate prices; cities from Eureka to San Diego had to let go most of the city-services folks (fire, police, parks, etc.); not even the National Guard stipends were being paid. 

What triggered the whole event, really was Wall Street – they finally said ‘no’ to more bonds – with California’s rating at ‘junk’ status, it didn’t make sense to even try.  The governor finally threw in the sponge in a nationally-televised news-conference, and begged for Federal help – the speech is on the Holonet for anyone who’s still interested.  But the real problem happened a day later.

See, the state, as well as most municipalities, had been issuing I.O.U.’s to state employees for six months or more as the cash ran out.  Wal-Mart, Safeway, and Costco were the first to start taking I.O.U.’s dollar-for-dollar in an act of ‘solidarity’ with the government – I’m sure the huge tax-incentives signed off by the governor were also a determining factor – most small businesses from restaurants to nail-salons followed suit.  For six months or more, the banks didn’t do much private business at all with state employees – when those folks got ‘paid’, they went to the local watering-hole to ‘cash’ their I.O.U. – a de-facto chit-system developed, where chits were issued on note-paper; within a week, Kinko’s was offering pads of official-looking chits for sale; you could even download them and print them yourself. 

Counterfeiting was rampant, but watermarks soon took care of most of that problem; the system worked well enough, and the corporate offices of the chain-stores from Applebee’s to Costco were taking chits and issuing dollars in exchange.   California was, if not solvent, at least working.

The national government was as worthless as buckles on a dishrag by that point – the Feds were trying to figure out how they were going to deal with the twenty million-people-and-rising who were living on the streets by that point, thanks to various ‘austerity measures’ passed by Congress over the past couple of years;  President Romney wished California well, and admitted that there really weren’t any funds left for something as huge as a bailout of an entire state.  But, as I mentioned, the real problem happened the next day.

On the 15^th of February, every chain store in California cancelled the chit-system. 

“It was the ultimate vote of no-confidence”, California’s governor said later. “It was their way of telling us that we’d had it.”

By the 17^th, there wasn’t a sandwich-shop, gas-station or car-wash in California that accepted an I.O.U. or a chit, no matter how dire the need.

It was then that people in California – people who lived in barrios, and those who lived in mansions – began to wake up to the fact that they were really, truly on their own.

On February 18^th, the entire state of California, as well as most of the nation, had most of a weekend to think about what they were going to do.  The results were, in some cases, rather predictable – but in others, events unraveled at a speed which left everyone – myself included – in awe.

East Los Angeles literally came apart within a day.  Those of you old enough to remember the Rodney King incident in ’92 know that those days looked like normalcy by comparison.  Within hours, most of the east-side of town was on fire; there were over two thousand dead by the end of the first day (although most historians debate that figure, stating that with so many people being members of the ‘underground economy’ by that time and hence unreported, the truth will never be known to a certainty.)

The California National Guard ceased to answer to command by Day Three, and the police hadn’t bothered to show up at all, preferring to block access to the west side of town and let the locals sort each other out east of the freeway.  It didn’t take long before, at a nominal $42,000 a year and with real paychecks a thing of the past, the police simply refused to come to work.  The governor begged; then threatened – but it was as clear as the nose on his face that no one was going to work for free – not when the opposition had already raided most of the National Guard armories in the immediate area, and were better armed than the police.

Now, at the time, the population of the L.A. basin was around 10 million, with 4 million of those living in the city proper.  The usual ‘stay in your homes’ order was given by the governor’s office – but people from San Diego to Burbank began to pack up and hit the road.   Before anyone could really react, economic refugees were streaming into Arizona and Nevada.  The first arrivals in Las Vegas must have seen it as a paradise of sorts; there were thousands of empty houses thanks to the collapse of entertainment and real-estate; before the week was out, most of those houses were occupied with squatters from all walks of life.

By the first part of March, word began reaching us up here in Oregon that a large group of people had begun migrating north, buying gasoline and supplies with what little money they had, but mainly spreading out and taking what they needed from neighboring towns before hitting the freeway again.  I remember reading that the convoy stretched a good fifty miles or more, with no one in charge – they were more like a tribe of Huns, fleeing their failing crops and running headlong toward the Roman border.  They weren't bad - or good.  Just desperate.

Now, Oregon and the greater Northwest has never been what you’d call an ‘economic powerhouse’.  People who live here tend to do so because of the lifestyle – we like our rivers; our mountains; our farmer’s-markets and our funny way of dressing to go out (you’d see Birkenstock sandals and socks at the Oregon Symphony back then).  We didn’t have that far to fall in the first place, and while unemployment during that era was pretty high, we tended to weather such things well enough.

As a result, we were never in a position where the state was gonna default on its obligations – the folks in the state-house tended to squeeze a dollar until Ol’ George’s eyes bugged out – but that’s another story, I suppose.

Back then, half of our National Guard were in Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting the wars which eventually bankrupted the U.S. government.  The other half were mainly construction battalions; the folks we called on when it rained too much and the rivers got too high – they were farmer’s sons who filled sandbags and ran bulldozers; mainly.

Governor Kitzhaber decided it was time to find out what was going on in California; he sent an Oregon Air Guard C-130 to take some photos – and when it returned, he saw the truth – there were nearly a million people in that caravan; by that time they’d spread out on some of the roads running parallel to the Interstate; a big group were moving north on the Pacific Coast Highway, while the bulk were still on Interstate-5 headed toward the Oregon border. 

He immediately asked for Federal assistance – and was told that it was not against the law to travel the interstate highway system, no matter what the cause.  It was then that the governor’s office issued its now-famous Closed Border Policy. 

The policy was strictly aimed at refugees, and echoed many of the closed-town policies enacted during the Great Depression (I wasn’t alive then, obviously, but I knew people who were, including my parents, who told me of such things.  “Drifters – Keep Moving.  There Are No Jobs Here.  You Will Be Arrested If You Stay”, said the signs, tacked either above or below state-highway signs reading, “Welcome to Everytown – a Friendly City – Pop. 5,240”, or suchlike.

Anyway, after issuing the Closed Border Policy, Governor Kitzhaber ordered the National Guard infantry to the southern border, and issued orders moving Air Guard fighters to southern airports.  He also made his now-famous ‘Article Ten Speech’:

“By the power vested in me by Article Ten of the Oregon Constitution, and by Oregon Revised Statute 399.065, I am hereby declaring a state of martial law in the State of Oregon.  Pursuant to that declaration, I am mobilizing all Oregon National Guard ground and air forces, and calling all members of the Oregon State Defence Force to active duty.  I have instructed the PBS affiliate radio and television stations around the state to continually broadcast the locations of each National Guard armory and recruiting installation.  All citizens between the ages of 18 and 45, preferably with military experience, are requested, but not required, to report to your nearest National Guard installation.

We sympathize with our fellow citizens to the south – but we are not in a position to deal with nearly a million refugees.  To that end, I am ordering our southern border closed to any and all traffic until further notice.

I realize this will place economic hardship on some of you.  Oregon purchases millions of dollars annually in agricultural products from California; many of the warehouses used to ship other goods are located in the Golden State.  While I realize the temporary economic difficulty this may cause, it is of greater importance that we avoid the turmoil which would be caused by the arrival of such a desperate group of people, the relocation in our state of whom would increase our total population by twenty five percent overnight.

Lastly, please remain calm.  I’ve every confidence that our existing forces can and will do the job required of them in this desperate time.

Thank you.  God bless you, and good luck.”

I remember turning the television off, and walking outside.  I looked at my bare garden patch.  I was glad I had tomato, pepper, cucumber, onion, and other ‘starts’ in my kitchen windows.  I looked up at the sky.  It was a light overcast.  I remember thinking, “Regardless of what happens tomorrow, everything has changed, and from now on out.”

It turns out I was right.  Less than 36 hours later, the first of the refugees arrived.

They’d shaken themselves out by that time; the ‘civilians’ were in the rear of the column, while the organized groups took the fore; they were all rather heavily armed, and in everything from Toyota pickups to HummVee’s stolen from the California National Guard. 

Oregon Guard troops and State Defense Force irregulars were still moving south when the first refugees arrived; an advance Oregon Guard construction-battalion had dynamited part of the rock-walls of the Siskiyou Pass down onto Interstate-5; they’d also dug up part of the freeway and built a natural barricade, while in the rear, they’d closed every road from Lakeview to Brookings and set up Defense Force firebases in the hills.  I saw the preparations on the news; everything from “American Idol” to “Martha Stewart” had been preempted for live coverage.  Vietnam might have been our first “TV war”; the invasion of Iraq might have been our first ‘continual coverage conflict’ – but this was gonna be the first live-action civil-war in history; the cameras would never stop rollin’.  All fighting; all the time.

I remember being damn sad during the month of March – the first group of armed refugees – all male – swarmed up the rocks at the Siskiyou Pass on March 4th; you probably saw the still-photo of the guy with the bullhorn, demanding that the freeway be rebuilt so they could continue moving north.

Thing is, we’d already seen the photos of civilians hanging from lampposts and under bridge-trestles in central California; the ones who wouldn’t ‘cooperate’.  We knew what they’d all do if they got into Oregon – more of the same.

I didn’t hate ‘em.  I really didn’t.  I just didn’t want ‘em doing to me and mine what they’d done to their own.

So, when the talk was finished; the answer was still ‘no’ and they started shooting, I really didn’t feel badly at all when a helicopter made a gun-run on the rocks and turned most of ‘em into what looked like cranberry sauce, right there on live-TV.    When the men in the pickups and HummVee’s in the rear started firing on the helicopter, that was all the invitation the Oregon Air Guard needed – within a few seconds, about fifty vehicles were flaming wrecks.

Yeah, President Romney almost had a stroke – he reminded the governor that almost 100% of the pay for the Oregon Guard came from the Federal treasury – Governor Kitzhaber reminded the President that help had been requested, and refused.  Romney tried to Federalize the Oregon Guard – and learned that, in the end, people tended to defend their homes first - that order was ignored.

Romney threatened to send in Federal troops – but realized that he’d have to Federalize other National Guard troops from around the country to do so, as the regular army was spoken-for, and in any event there was that nagging piece of legislation called the Posse Comitatus Act, even if they were not.

That was about the time that a Federal judge in Oregon agreed to hear a case brought by the Oregon Attorney General – and ruled that as what was happening was a de-facto invasion of Oregon by another state, the governor was legally justified in declaring martial law and defending the state’s borders.

Didn’t hurt that both those guys were neighbors.  Their daughters went to the same high-school.

There was a lot of talk and bluster as spring wore on – the bulk of the refugees were turned back; a handful made it over the border; I understand some had relatives up here, and assimilated without incident – others wound up underneath the aforementioned bridge-trestles after trying to form up into armed gangs; few made the attempt again.

The people in the northern part of California decided it was a good idea to side with Oregon – as summer wore on, the border was extended south; the freeway was repaired, and from a line roughly from Mendocino east and on north, that part of California considered itself if not part of, at least under the protection of, the Oregon Military Department and the Oregon National Guard.  Regular checkpoints went up, and by late summer, deliveries and transportation had resumed.  The governor’s office had sent troops to guard farms and production facilities south of that border; the trade-off was that the farmers were no longer looted and knew they’d not have their necks stretched by gangs of armed, roaming thugs.   Transport-convoys flying the Oregon flag headed north every day; while roadside-bombs and IED’s were a problem then as now, most of everything got through.

A lot of manufactured goods came from California – but we quickly found substitutes in the Far East.  By the end of 2014, while we were still importing food from California, that was a dwindling market.  Some enterprising folks had capitalized on the fact that the eastern part of Oregon gets a lot of sunshine – and huge factory greenhouses began springing up in the wheatfields of eastern Oregon.   There are a few things we don’t get like we used to – but no one seems to really notice.

The rest of the nation didn’t take kindly to our actions – but our neighbors to the north in the state of Washington did, and so did the folks in Idaho and Montana – even though our politics were quite different, our motivations were the same – we wanted to live in peace and not be tied to the broke-dick-dog that the Federal government had become.

By early 2015, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and that part of northern California which we’d more or less ‘liberated’ from the roving bands of armed hooligans out of the Southland decided to up and form a new country.  President Romney invoked Lincoln and tried to put together enough of a coalition in Congress to 'reclaim' the new country – but by that time, the American people were well and truly sick of war, and didn’t have a reason to try to keep the Pacific Northwest in the Federal union if we didn’t want to stay. 

When that Federal resolution failed, the new government of the Northwest hadn’t even designed a flag, picked a name, or considered any of the other niceties of nationhood – but the four governors involved, plus the newly-elected representative from Northern California all signed the Pacific Northwest Declaration – there were a lot of fancy words, but it came down to this – leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone – and please to remember that while half the personnel at the Bremerton Naval Yard were repatriated to their home-states, half of ‘em stayed on to become part of the new Navy – and please to also remember that we have a nuclear aircraft carrier battle-group, two Trident boats and a half-dozen fast-attack submarines in the yard, as well as the Air Force bases at Mountain Home and Fairchild, complete with their bomber and tactical-fighter wings.

It was hard for a while; I won’t say it wasn’t.  Work and die was the watchword for most people; there was no Social Security, but the next generation will have something similar, thanks to the government in Spokane.   In the end, we settled on the name “Pacific Northwest States” as the name of our country; we traded in Federal dollars for over a year until we could print a new currency; the flag is an agglomeration of things; I’ll give it this – it’s a lot brighter than most; it looks more like a Canadian provincial-flag than anything else.

Speaking of Canada, they were the first nation to recognize us; Japan followed suit within days, and the People’s Republic of China were only too happy to jump on board a day later.  Over 85% of our trade is done with these three countries; the Chinese have purchased options on Oregon and Washington wheat, and our burgeoning natural-gas industry began creating energy for export by 2025.  Today, we’re more or less self-sufficient, with a positive balance-sheet; the interior of the country represents exports as diverse as industrial gems and craft beer.

The rest of the U.S.?  Hell, it broke up years ago.  The deep South is back to Jim Crow and all that nonsense; they’ve been fighting each other for a good twenty-five years now – hate is a bad basis for a nation.  The Northeast is what’s left of the old U.S.; they still fly the old flag.  They even have elections based on “Republicans” and “Democrats”, if you can believe it.

The sponsorship-program worked pretty well here in the PNS; each citizen was allowed to sponsor someone they knew well enough to let live with them; if they got a job and behaved themselves, they could apply for citizenship.  This served to pull anyone who was worth anything out of California as well as some of the other states, and bring both they and their talent north; it also served to leave the troublemakers put – they’ve destroyed most of southern California by now, or so I’ve read.  The central part of the state has asked for admission to the PNS; I suppose Spokane will act on it, especially since we have military bases there to protect what's left of our agricultural interests.

The central part of the country formed up more or less in a line from the Dakotas to Texas; their capital is in Dallas – they’ve got oil for export; at least until it runs out – but the real value there is in wheat, corn, soybeans and cattle – Europe can’t seem to get enough; Houston’s a good deepwater-port, and I understand the balance-sheet is positive for those folks.

Arizona and New Mexico followed California into decline – they got together to form a ‘country’ based on shooting Mexicans and outlawing everything they didn’t agree with.  Last I’d read, they’d petitioned Dallas to join the Midwestern States, but it’s up in the air whether or not they’ll be allowed to join.

Utah belongs to the Mormons.  With few resources, they’ve done a good job of turning the clock back to the 19th century – no oil means no cars; it’s funny to see the wagons on North Temple and State Streets, but that’s how they’ve put things back together, and it works for them.

Nevada’s a wasteland.  Whole place was full of grifters anyway; I suppose when you run out of people to con and resources to do it with, there’s nothing left but to leave.  I don’t know where the initial refugees went; I suppose they went somewhere.  All I know is that there’s sagebrush growing in the middle of The Strip in downtown Vegas, and the lights went out on that place a long time ago.

As I said, I’m an old man.  I don’t have many more years left on the clock, but I’ve seen evil and greatness, as the poet said, and I know I’m the better for it.

I still grow my own food, and I also now keep chickens along with my neighbors.  I walk a lot more; drive a lot less; a lower birthrate means the population’s around 2/3rds of what it was around 2010 – but that’s all right, too.   People tend to mean more when there’s fewer of ‘em – at least, that’s my thought.

Tomorrow? 

Oh, hell.  Did I say I’m old?   Yep – I don’t much think about tomorrow.  Something an old philosopher once said – or maybe it was me:  Yesterday’s in the past; tomorrow will take care of itself.  Or something.


(Submitted for your approval; a view of one man's future; the Tomorrowland of a country no more or less 'exceptional' than its peers; a Cautionary Tale writ in the certain knowledge that It Can Happen Here....)

Asylum For The Dictators

While The Middle East Unravels At Unholy Speed, It's Business-As-Usual In Washington

The unrest which started in Tunisia and which has spread to Egypt and Yemen, with nascent movements in other countries, is a clear as it could get – all of these countries are currently ruled by Western-leaning secular dictatorships.  While these governments have provided the West (chiefly the U.S.) with a modicum of cooperation, they’ve done so at a horrific price to the locals.

Most of the people in these countries are poor.  They live on the equivalent of two dollars a day, and the slim hope that someday they can better their lot either through winning the metaphorical-lottery of the patronage and sponsorship of someone higher-up the food (read: ‘political’) chain, or by emigrating to a country which isn’t as economically and politically repressive.  They have one real hope to which they cling:  That Allah will bless them, someday, and make their afterlife, if not the present life, a good one.

I’ve said it before, and history backs me up – people won’t die for hot water and electric razors; not willingly – but they’ll do so, and in great numbers, for a cause and a belief.  The people in Egypt, Yemen, and Tunisia have both – the desire for a say in their lives, and a belief in a better life when they die.

The people of Egypt are slowly surrounding the Mubarak regime with the only thing that really matters:  Real power.   Power which has the ability to force him from office, and replace him with either a military coalition which will act until elections can be held, or a religious coalition headed by (most likely) the Muslim Brotherhood.

You might be asking, “Why do I give a damn who runs Egypt?   By the way, where the hell is Yemen?  What does Tunisia have that we could possibly want?”  

Let’s back up a bit.

Since the late 1940’s, the Israeli government has been performing a slow-roll ethnic-cleansing on the Palestinian population.  The U.S. has failed, utterly, to prevent the Israelis from doing this, and the Arab world has been hamstrung from taking any real, unified action against them because of countries like Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, and Lebanon.

While the people in power in those countries are perfectly happy with Rolls-Royce transportation and Savile Row suits, the people see this as an egregious form of hypocrisy and pandering, as well as the collective sell-out of millions of fellow Muslims – and they’re fed up with it.

(At this point we could discuss the differences between theocracy, theonomy, religious democracy and their economic counterpoints – but I’ll leave that for another post.   Right now, it’s not important to understand anything past this:  The Arab world views self-determination as something entirely different than the West.   They believe in their religion first, and a government second; they view themselves as Muslim before any other identity.  By way of example, if this weren’t the case, there’d’ve been a second revolution in Iran a long time ago.)

For good or ill, the Muslim world sees us very differently than the ‘Marines-kicking-soccer-balls-with-kids’ nonsense we see on CNN.   They understand that we’ve killed millions of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan for no real purpose.  They understand that we’ve destroyed a nation’s infrastructure in Iraq with nothing to replace it, and left the Iraqi’s vulnerable to an enemy on their eastern border (Iran).    

While they might not understand the meaning of the term ‘surrogate warfare’, they also understand that the F-16’s and M-1 Abrams and M-16 rifles and Bradley Fighting Vehicles used by the Israelis, as well as their own governments, have “Made in U.S.A.” stamped all over them. 

They also understand, in large measure, where the money comes from to keep those regimes in power.

As we’ve seen over past few days, the military in Egypt isn’t terribly interested in shooting fellow citizens.  The army in Tunisia isn’t willing to defend its regime, either.  The reasons are simple – not only have these regimes acted against the interests and basic human rights of their citizens, they’ve become virtual client-states of the west.   They’ve failed to produce a better life for their people, and they’ve failed to stand up to the atrocities committed by the Israelis. 

Our name is stamped all over these failures.  We’ve spent sixty years cultivating the wrong friends in Arab countries, and the bill is due.  Not next year – today.

We’ve spent those same sixty years operating under the notion that a secular dictatorship trumps a religious democracy in the Middle East – and we’ve turned a blind eye to the CIA-funded police-prisons; the grinding poverty; the oppression of other Muslims by well-funded and well-fed Israelis.  We’ve ignored the reality, and accepted the fantasy. 

So, how is this going to turn out?

Again, the dots aren’t hard to connect. 

First, if you're expecting something like free-elections in those places, you're going to be roundly disappointed.  What's going on right now in the streets of Cairo is the election; it's just a lot more efficient than spending millions of dollars to hold conventions, primaries, and the whole voting-process.   You won't see Hillary Clinton out there carrying a banner and egging-on the protesters - her milquetoast calls for a 'gradual change to democracy' are so much candyfloss-for-the-brain; business-as-usual is what Washington wants, needs, and has to have, in order to maintain the damnable status-quo.   Keeping millions of Arabs in poverty is also what keeps America's favorite punk-state, Israel, in power - and it also keeps that oil flowing, too.

(I have to wonder, however, with the heads-of-state in Saudi Arabia also in their eighties, if Obama, Clinton, and the rest on both sides of the aisle aren't peeing their collective pants over the potential for change in that country.)

That's not to say that the old cocksucker, Mubarak, hasn't kept the peace since I had a full head of hair - he has; albeit with an ocean of American money and the assistance of the CIA.  As to his likely successor, ElBaradei, the very notion of putting his hat in the ring would have landed him in a CIA-run prison a year ago - mute proof that the real power in the country is in the streets.

Yep, I think it’s safe to say that Mubarak is history.  So are the secular dictatorships in Yemen, Tunisia,  Jordan, and the pseudodemocracy in Lebanon.  It’s more than likely that any potential peace between Israel and the Arab states is done, replaced by a more-unified - and hostile - coalition of Arab nations.  We’re likely going to see the wholesale-rejection of ‘cooperation’ between Arab nations and the Western powers, mainly the U.S. 

Rather than shutting down those tunnels into Gaza which supply most of the Palestinian homeland’s food, pharmaceuticals and other necessities, we can look to open cooperation between the Palestinians and the new Egyptian government.  Israel doesn’t like glorified model rockets coming from Gaza?  No worries.  Guided missile technology is on its way.

Israeli submarines and warships through Suez?  You can forget about that – along with anything else which doesn’t fit the worldview of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Another ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in Gaza?   Don’t count on it – because Egyptian F-16’s would be screaming over Jerusalem in a heartbeat, and this time there wouldn’t be a damn thing the Israeli Air Force could do about it.

More American bases in Arab countries?  I wouldn’t count on that, either.  In fact, I’d count on many of ‘em closing up shop, after being shown the door by some brand-new governments.

Remember that oil-embargo in 1973?  I sure as hell do.  Like it or not, we’re going to have to start behaving ourselves, and dealing on their terms – rather than subverting whole nations and dictating terms accordingly.

(That, by the way, is why we care who runs those countries - and why the odds are slim that we can do much by way of mending fences now, having supported the oppression in those places for decades.)

It’s been something of a national-policy to ‘save Israel’s ass no matter what’ – and for good or ill, that door is closing, to be replaced by a narrow window through which we can convince the current regime in Jerusalem that further genocide against the Palestinians equals their national destruction; that 'god' is not their damn real-estate-agent, and that democracy - real democracy - isn't the lip-service bullshit which is the Knesset, while tanks roll over tin-and-tarpaper shacks in apartheid-like 'homelands'.

I wouldn’t count on the U.S. changing its policies any time soon, though.  Remember Cuba?  We backed Batista, after Castro came to us for help.  Remember Vietnam?  We backed the French, after Ho Chi Minh made an eloquent pitch invoking Lincoln and our tradition of democracy.  We have a history of Getting Shit Wrong, and that’s not likely to change.

Chances are, it’ll be asylum for the dictators; brandy for the troops, and water for the horses – or business as usual in Washington.

The Arrogance of Belief

Exclusivity, Ignorance and Religious Smugness In The Land Of The (Not So) Free

Today, I pointed out in a post on another site that while Obama’s State of the Union message was little more than a Kum-Ba-Ya fest, unemployment was still the Elephant in the Room affecting the most Americans.  

A sometime-reader offered a one-word comment:   *smile*.

That’s it.  Nothing else.  Just *smile*.  

Now, it hasn’t escaped me that this guy is a Fundie, with the arrogant smugness of most of his kind. (I suppose, on reflection, that if you’ve suspended reality long enough to believe that there’s a Sky-Guy who’s really in Charge of It All, it’s not a huge leap to develop not only the smug approach that “We-Know-Something-You-Don’t”, but also the arrogance of exclusivity which goes along with it.)

In my own case, I live in the Real World – and that world is a pretty nasty place right now.  Further, there’s absolutely no proof that we’re anything except on our own here – so an arrogant, smug “*smile*” is either straight-up proof of insanity, or at least a willful detachment from reality.

Seems everywhere you turn nowadays, Fundies are either ignoring problems or causing them.  The American Family Association?   Read their website, and you’ll get the impression that repealing Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell is going to destroy America, if not the entire world as we know it.  (Hint:  If these assholes were really interested in America’s families, they’d be asking why so damn many of them are living on the street or in homeless shelters while the rich openly discuss which yacht they’re going to buy this year).

Wallbuilders?   David Barton has spent thousands of dollars – no doubt funded by profits from self-written ‘history’ books like “The Myth of Separation” – to help rewrite the textbooks used by most of America’s high-schoolers. (Hint:  If he were really interested in making a difference in America, he’d encourage high-schoolers to search for the truth; rather than editing their input to favor his own twisted worldview).

I could go on – but what’s the use?  It’s like sweeping back a tide.  Half of Americans believe in ‘young-earth creationism’ – the kind which compresses some 200 million years of planetary development into 6,000;   the kind which puts dinosaurs and people in the same epoch – the kind which not only believes there was a physical Noah’s Ark, but puts dinosaurs and unicorns on the damn thing!

This is a hard thing for an educated man to get his mind around:  The fact that I live in a nation where half of its residents have not only suspended reality, but have bought into a worldview which is insane.

These things are probably difficult for an outsider to read.   I know they’re hard to write.  When I point out that it took until the 1960’s for anyone other than a ‘Christian’ to serve on a jury or hold a public office in most states – and that in the city of Asheville, North Carolina, refused to seat an atheist who was elected to the town council – I get looks of disbelief and comments of incredulity from foreigners.

It’s almost enough to make a person like me think he’s living in the Middle Ages.

Sadly, it’s just another day in paradise here in America.

In some states, the Fundie-inspired laws have become so restrictive regarding the simple medical procedure of abortion that women are now dying of something which every other enlightened democracy now considers a thing of the past – septic, back-alley abortions.

(Fundies have a strange relationship with the whole reproductive process.  It’s ‘immoral’ or ‘dirty’ unless you’re married – a woman is supposed to ‘submit to her husband’, even when he’s beating her within an inch of her life – and if she gets pregnant, she’s supposed to carry that kid to term, no matter what. 

When it’s born, however, it’s ‘root, hog or die’ for the kid – no state-funded medical care; no sex-education; a raft of thou-shalt-nots and eternal hellfire if they ‘disobey’ – plus, the support of the entire Church establishment for the death penalty if that unwanted child runs afoul of the law big-time.  

In their view, it’s better to be unborn than born; it’s better to be right than compassionate – and it’s better to have a kid who’ll grow up to provide fodder for the prison-system executioner than to abort it in the first place.)

The same guy who commented on my post probably believes that these unemployed Americans are in that strait because they ‘didn’t tithe’; ‘didn’t have ‘god’ in their lives’; ‘didn’t pray right’, or that they just didn’t love ‘god’ enough (Hint:  I know this is true.  I volunteer at one of two homeless shelters over the holidays, and we usually wind up chasing a street-preacher or two away from the shell-shocked victims of the New Economy, for offering such words of kindness as “Did you pay your tithes?”).

These are the same people who believe than ‘there’s no morality without religion’, and ‘without ‘god’, a person can’t possibly be good.’

With their kind of ‘goodness’ in the world, we’ve had everything from Galileo’s excommunication to Joan of Arc’s immolation.  We’ve had countless wars and oceans of blood.  We’ve had legions of brainwashed, terrified, abused children who’ve turned into mean-spirited, malevolent adults.

It all begins with the arrogance of belief.

Hope Is Not A Strategy - Obama As CEO....

Ruminations On A Moonbeam-Speech

“We trained hard ... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

– Charlton Ogburn

This Tuesday, President Obama made his second State of the Union Address. While no one shouted ‘you lie!’, or did anything else just as egregiously-wrong, I would have almost preferred such a comment – anything but the mind-numbing and seemingly-endless set of feelgood-stories which were the recurring theme behind Obama’s opus, and the endless applause from the paired-off prom-style seating arrangements.

A story of my own is appropriate.  Some years ago, I started work for a company in east Portland; they’d sold me on their desire to ‘become great again’, after falling on some hard times.  They were a medical laboratory, owned by the international conglomerate, ICN.  I sat in a meeting eerily similar to Tuesday’s congressional love-fest, in which the division president put up slide after slide, each with irregular lines starting at the upper-left and descending to the lower-right – sales; margins; profits – and, while pointing to the very small plateau at the lower part of each slide, made the positively-glowing statement that we were losing money at a decreasing rate.

We all looked at each other as if to say, "Did we hear that right?"  Later, we all discussed the relative insanity of feeding bullshit to us as if it were caviar -and the further insanity of expecting us all to say "Yum!  More; please!"

If we’re to analyze Obama’s speech in a few words, this is what he said:  “I’m gonna double-down on my existing agenda.  It’s more of the same.  I want us to work together on all this, because we’re not gonna get there by fighting each other.  Let’s all hold hands, sing ‘Kum-Ba-Ya’ and ignore the nagging tilt of the forward decks – hope and love are all we need.”

He didn’t address the real problems – the utter destruction of the middle class; the fact that the Citizens United ruling had handed the Dems their crushing defeat in November; the continued deficits by way of a complete lack of revenues, thanks to some hostage-taking by the new Republican Congress and their Wall Street puppet-masters; the continued failure of the job and housing markets – all of these were conveniently ignored.  Nope – we’re supposed to hold hands and march into a bright, shiny new future.

CEO’s who engage in this sort of insane fuckery eventually get to sign off on bankruptcy court paperwork.   Before that, though, they issue glowing reports on how well their companies are really doing, while their stocks tank and their employees (the good ones, anyway) leave in droves for other organizations with positive cashflows.   They restate their problems in such a way as to suggest that the problem itself is a solution (see Obama’s commentary on Social Security, if you question that tactic – that’s just what he did.)

Another favorite tactic is reorganization – as employees leave, whole divisions are reorganized to mask the effect of the departures; sometimes managers are shuffled, and oftentimes they’re fired outright as a means of shifting blame.  All of these departures are accounted on the plus-side of the ledger; labor is expensive, and it’s always easier to create prosperity from misery when you can force one person to do the work of two for the same pay.

All of this is a big fat warning-flag; a sign that the CEO is in over his head, and has a set of problems he can’t fix – not with the equivalent of a band-aid on cancer. 

Those who remain, whether employees or stockholders, are also complicit – they go along to get along, or to draw a paycheck for however-long the company survives.  Of course, this behavior – complicity-by-silence – only serves to add gasoline to the fire.

Here are the problems, in case anyone’s still listening:

1. We have been, for thirty years or more (starting roughly with the Reagan Administration) spending more than we take in.  This is only going to be solved by reversing the process (taking in more than we spend, and using the balance to pay down the debt and do the other things we really need to do.)

2. The housing market continues to sink (housing prices in every market have declined yet again last quarter with no end in sight.  This will place nearly one in three mortgages effectively ‘underwater’ by the middle of the year.)

3. The job market continues to sink.  With 400,000+ jobs lost every month, we’re on track to lose another five million jobs this year – added to the thirty-plus million lost already.  Any way you look at it, those are depression-level numbers.

4. 10% of the population owns 98% of the nation’s wealth.  This inequity was created by successive repeal of regulations and rewriting the tax-code, effectively creating a casino out of Wall Street and giving the keys of the asylum to the inmates.

5. We are fighting two wars which are not doing us a damn bit of good, to the tune of $170B yearly, with an aggregate cost of over a trillion dollars.  Add to this the $1T we spend every year maintaining hundreds of bases and thousands of military personnel on nearly every continent, and we have the real Elephant in the Room - the first place we should look to cut our deficits.

(You’ll note that I didn’t mention abortion, gay marriage, DADT, putting the Ten Commandments on the courthouse-lawn, or any of the far Right’s other strawman-arguments.  These are not issues.  The fact that we have millions living in the streets; millions more hanging by a thread; the greatest wealth-inequality since the Gilded Age, and a gang of bloodthirsty Crusaders creating more enemies than we can possibly ever kill – those are issues.  Real ones.   They constitute the bulk of the real State of the Union – and they weren’t addressed at all this Tuesday).

It borders on insanity to say that ‘low test scores’ handicapped our economy – while the brightest students in America all dutifully followed the money to Wall Street, where they created the mess we’re in;  to state that the economic crisis was ‘avoidable’, when it was the collective result of over thirty years of economic mismanagement; that ‘the worst is over’ – when there are tens of millions who are past all hope of participating in the nation’s ‘recovery’.

Pointing to the relative recent successes on Wall Street as signs that the economy is ‘recovering’ is akin to the fellow who pointed to his slides in that meeting in 1979, telling an incredulous cafeteria full of soon-to-be-unemployed people that our company was ‘losing money at a decreasing rate’ and that ‘recovery was right around the corner.’

As long as we're willing to accept 'business as usual', we're also willing to accept more of the same.  For most of us, that situation is untenable.  Egregious fuckery is  the order of the day; our government was co-opted by the Supreme Court, by a ruling which gave corporations the same rights as individuals, and by which the Wall Street gangsters were allowed to purchase the lower House outright in the last election.  With our government all but bought-and-paid-for and our President engaged in moonbeam-leadership, there isn't much left to those of us who Stayed Awake in Class and have already connected the dots.  


As Chris Hedges said recently, civil disobedience is all we have left.  Absent a miracle, this is the last refuge of the patriot.  It remains to be seen whether we are all scoundrels by the doing.  

(In the spring of 1980, the end had come for the laboratory to which I referred earlier - the one for which I worked. Sales had slowed to a trickle; the company was out of money, and I'd had enough.  I found a job with another company and left.  A week later, the laboratory folded.  What was true then, as now, is that glowing speeches, the suspension of reality, and the application of 'spin' aren't enough to turn a business - or a country - around.)

The Prodigal Nation

The Pornography of Firearms; the Irresponsibility of Language, And The Apologetics of Cowardice in Late-Stage American Democracy

By now, anyone who reads this little corner of the ‘sphere knows that a gunman (possibly with an accomplice) shot and killed nine people (wounding several others, including a U.S. Congressperson) at a political gathering in Tucson, Arizona yesterday.

In spending the last few hours reading the missives on both sides of the political spectrum, plus their voluminous comments, I’m left to ponder what’s not being said – not just the lack of reason, but the huge holes in all this verbiage which ignore the elephants in the room.

This rank ignorance actually bespeaks our reaction to the 9/11 terrorism.  We wasted a lot of breath, accusing one group or another, demonizing their ideologies and demanding ‘justice-at-the-end-of-a-rope’ – without doing what was really necessary:  Evaluating our own culpability.

The Pornography of Firearms

America is a nation which, from the very beginning, was and is defined by firearms.  We used them to hunt; to kill the original occupants of this land; to kill each other.  We killed British soldiers by the wagonload, and when they gave up and went home, we killed each other again, first in small numbers (the Whiskey Rebellion comes to mind); then in massive numbers during our Civil War thanks to our uniquely American inability to compromise and our improvement of the technology of small-arms.  

We took that culture out West, where we resumed killing natives; shooting game for their horns and skins (leaving the rest to rot in the sun) – and when all else failed and boredom (plus a liberal dose of alcohol) set in, we resumed killing each other.

Occasionally, in order to keep a lid on things, we’d stand one of the more-egregious perpetrators (or several at a time) on a wooden contraption with a rope around their necks – and kill them, too, for the high entertainment of the people in a region.  Bets were normally taken on who’d die last, as evidenced by the final twitching of extremities.

Never quite satisfied, we did something our German relatives across the pond would do some ninety-odd years later, and improve the technology of legal killing.  As with so many things American, ours was bush-league and amateur in scope; our electric-chair was an ungainly, expensive, and crude device; our gas-chambers only held one or two people at a time.  

All the while, the killing went on – in the ‘20’s and ‘30’s, while we experimented with another of our inane attempts to legislate morality (by way of forbidding the manufacture and sale of alcohol), the nation descended into an orgy of automatic weapons-inspired murder by rival gangs protecting both turf and the means of illegal alcohol production.

(Eventually, the government did one of the few sane things it did in the 20^th century, telling the Second Amendment fools to put a sock in it while they passed two regulations on same – the general-public were no longer allowed to purchase automatic weapons without severe licensing requirements, and we no longer allowed firearm sales to children.)

We lost our common-sense in the decades which followed, along with our very sense of self - the ultimate Prodigal Nation – to the extent that it’s now easier to buy ammunition in most American cities than it is to buy booze.   Everyone who wants a gun can buy one.  (Hell; I’ve got several.   There’s a difference, though.  I’m not crazy – but again; I digress).

Our fixation with firearms – bordering not only on worship, but also on a form of outright lust – is easily combined with our popular culture.  From childhood, we’re inured to the effects of the bullet:  Movies, the new technology of videogaming; magazines; advertising – is all steeped in an orgyistic/orgasmic culture of violence.  In this alternate-universe we’ve created for ourselves, both big, muscular men and tall; big-breasted/round-hipped women aren’t objects of respect for any reason – they’re objects of sexually-tinted violence; using fantastic weapons to blow opponents, male and female alike, into pieces.

Want to run your own gang?  Go to the video store.  Buy one of any number of games.  Form a gang.  Go steal cars; deal drugs; gain points and other positive ‘rewards’ (like more big-breasted women).  You ‘win’ this game not for being or doing good.   You’ll never find a videogame called “Homeless Shelter Volunteer IV”.

Go to any newsstand (I know; print-media newsstands are becoming thin-on-the-ground in every American city; we gave up reading a long time ago) and find a copy of Shotgun News.   Open it to any random page.  Look at the ads.  You’ll be seeing an Amazonian model with some fantastically-equipped firearm.  Sex sell, and it sells nowhere better than to the American gun-owner, who has been pseudoreligiously indoctrinated in the twin beliefs that his penis will be imbued with some magic and his ‘god given rights’ affirmed – if he only drops another $1,500 on that new automatic rifle.

So, it’s small wonder, with a pornographic environment surrounding the gun-trade, that Jared Loughner became seduced.  His YouTube site, full of death-metal music, disjointed ramblings and flag-burning, was ample proof.  Those who encountered him likely dismissed his behavior – in a nation full-up with crazy, one more card-carrying member of the club is easily lost in the crowd.

The Irresponsibility of Language

Turn on any radio.  At all hours of the day or night, you’re going to hear crazy-talk.  It’s literally impossible to ignore.

Don’t like radio?  Turn on the television.  Glenn Beck.  Bill O’Reilly.  Rush Limbaugh.  Ken Ham.  Idiocy abounds.   Beck calls for the poisoning of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.  Limbaugh, calling for ‘second amendment remedies’ to the current administration.

Sarah Palin – putting crosshairs on people she doesn’t want reelected, and making comments like, “don’t retreat; reload.”  Sharron Angle, stating flatly that “…people are really looking to those Second Amendment remedies.”  Michele Bachmann, saying that she “…wants people armed and dangerous” to the government.  Only in America - and third-world shitholes like Liberia - do firearms have a respected place at the negotiating table of politics.

Charles Pierce, in his book, “Idiot America” said that there was a difference between a lovable crank and a genuinely dangerous person – because when a crank took to the airwaves, he or she doesn’t care if their ideas are accepted; the current dangerous crop of pseudojournalists have assembled cult-followings – primarily from the worshippers of war-and-firearms-pornography.  “They spew bilious nonsense from 600 stations at 50,000 watts each”, said Pierce.

That’s the difference.  With influence far beyond their numbers and a message which is both irresponsible and dangerous, their language has planted the seed in hundreds, if not thousands of heads across America.

The lot of them have blood on their hands. 

The Apologetics of Cowardice

Martin Luther King once said, “one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.

You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You're afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you're afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.  You died when you refused to stand up for right.  You died when you refused to stand up for truth.  You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”

The Left, for all of the rhetoric regarding ‘hope’ and ‘change’ has abandoned the field without so much as a peep.  Anyone with the ability to connect “A” to “B” can see that the Right, with its hands clean and a shiteating grin on its collective face, can point to Loughner and the thousands like him to follow and say, “See!  He’s just a lone crazy!  Our hands are clean!  Clean; I tell you!  Now go away!”

Incredibly, the Left will meekly say, “Oh!  All right!” and walk away from the best clear chance to do something about the nation’s hardon for weapons and its inability to solve a problem without violence.

Some time ago, I said that if the Right perceives that it’s going to lose an argument, it pulls a metaphoric .357 Magnum from its back-belt and pumps six rounds in the chest of Reason.   I’ll go one better here – they’ve not only done that, but they’ve done so in the relative safety of arm’s-length surrogate warfare.

Why dirty one’s hands when it’s possible to get the blind, halt, lame, and crazy to do it for you?

I’ll say this again – it’s time to pick a side.  We can no longer be, as Professor Walter Herbert said, ‘a nation of weeping executioners’ – people who blubber their concern for the demise of the nation, but who do nothing at all about it.

We of the Left have engaged up to this point in the apologetics of cowardice – we’ve every clear excuse; but no reason – for abdicating morality to the thugs with the .357’s.
 

Don’t be surprised if, one random afternoon, you’re caught in the crossfire.

Math Is A Bitch - Part II

In my last missive, I stated that ‘math is a bitch’ (mainly because it’s never wrong) – and went on to say that the resilience of Americans isn’t a matter of philosophy, but of math.

Titanic could stay afloat with four compartments flooded – but not five. What follows is a little Compartmentalized Economics – in the hope that you’ll see where we really are, in spite of the Pollyanna braying by the jackasses in charge….

Compartment #1 – Banking

This was the beginning of the mess – the banks had used deregulation to declare a ‘hell’s-out-for-noon/wild-west’ set of jungle-rules back in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, which finally caught up with them when they’d made such egregiously bad loans that the system ground to a halt. You know the rest – the government bailed them out, and with bailouts and bonuses under their belts, they’re poised to open up the casino again. The results of the next Federal stress-test will be kept secret – and persistent commentary from people very well-placed in the banking industry has the biggest of these, Citigroup and Bank of America, on the verge of collapse. The wildcard may well be Wikileaks, which claims to have a ton of documentation proving just this. Conclusion? Regardless of what we’re told – the banking system is still a mess.

Compartment #2 – Energy

The American public has a wonderful forgive-and-forget attitude in the face of adversity. This has translated into the unerring ability to forget what happened fifteen minutes ago, and to get right back to behaviors which are self-destructive. Most seem to have forgotten the fact that we had gasoline at over $4.00/gallon in the summer of ’08. Hang on to your hats, folks – we’re headed there once more. Again; the math is simple – economic recovery equals more demand, and demand equals higher prices. This time, it’s going to be permanent – energy prices were the one thing which ticked downward during this depression, and they’re likely to bounce right back right along with this ‘recovery’.

Compartment #3 – Employment

We now live in two Americas – one with plenty of money, and one without. If you’re one of the fortunate few who’ve retained a job, or who (better yet) own a business or are sitting on a pile of stocks, you’re probably in pretty good shape. On the other hand, if you’re like between 17-22% of your fellows who’ve been disenfranchised of a job since this thing started, you’re sitting on the sidelines, waiting for those jobs to come back. Wake up call: They won’t. The jobs lost to this recession have been sent overseas – in fact, corporations as diverse as GM and Wal-Mart have reported record profits – all from overseas growth. The greatest wealth-transference in history has happened right under our noses – Wall Street and their accomplices in the U.S. government pulled it off and called it ‘recession’. What this means? It means that along with those jobs went vital revenues in the form of taxes, which do everything from keep the street-lights on and the water running. Count on this being a problem which doesn’t get better.

Compartment #4 – Real Estate and Foreclosures

Unless you’ve lived under a rock someplace for the past four years, real estate has taken a pounding. In spite of all of the good words, kind thoughts, and rose-colored glasses, it continues to sink – 3% per quarter for the past year, and no bottom in sight. This is because one home in four is ‘underwater’ (more is owed on the mortgage than the home is worth); when the beans are finally counted for 2010, the foreclosure rate will probably top ten million, with another ten million in 2011 – this will mean that over half of America will be functionally homeless (although most will find ‘alternate arrangements’ to keep them off the streets – some will be able to rent apartments; others will bunk-up with relatives or friends). The only way this tidal-wave of foreclosures can possibly be avoided is (1) if congress takes action along with the administration, and (2) the attorney’s-general in the 50 states take practical action against what appears to be rampant foreclosure-fraud. Regardless – the ‘compartment’ of real-estate continues to flood, and there’s no end in sight there, either.

Compartment #5 – Local Governments

There are over 100 cities and states on various government and private-sector ‘watch lists’ for defaults – we could easily see bond defaults in the billions due to a lack of tax-revenues brought on by the collapse of real-estate (when people lose homes, those taxes disappear – and there’s little chance they’ll be paid by the banks, which employ armies of attorneys to put off such things until properties are ‘properly revalued’). The real-estate problem, combined with the mass-export of millions of American jobs (no income taxes), means that local governments could collapse like dominoes in 2011.

It’s often said that catastrophe – the real thing – never happens exactly the way you think it will; it hits you out of the blue on a random Tuesday, completely out of left-field. All eyes are on Congress and the Federal government – which is why I don’t believe those entities will be the source either of our failure or our success.

When things unravel, they’re likely to happen at unholy speed from one of the areas I’ve listed above. We could talk about the scenarios forever – a mass default of government obligations due to a lack of revenue; the collapse of one of the two banks I discussed above; gasoline punching through the $4.00 barrier and on toward $6.00/8.00/10.00 per gallon. 

Any of these could spell the beginnings of serious civil unrest along with severe economic disruption.

Is it too late? Personally, I thought it was too late a year ago. 

Good luck in 2011 and beyond, America. You’re going to need it.