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Page added on November 2, 2016
The Last Gasp of the American Dream
Just at the moment, many of my readers—and of course a great many others as well—are paying close attention to which of the two most detested people in American public life will put a hand on a Bible in January, and preside thereafter over the next four years of this nation’s accelerating decline and fall. That focus is understandable, and not just because both parties have trotted out the shopworn claim that this election, like every other one in living memory, is the most important in our lifetimes. For a change, there are actual issues involved.
Barring any of the incidents that could throw the election into the House of Representatives, we’ll know by this time next week whether the bipartisan consensus that’s been welded firmly in place in American politics since the election of George W. Bush will stay intact for the next four years. That consensus, for those of my readers who haven’t been paying attention, supports massive giveaways to big corporations and the already affluent, punitive austerity for the poor, malign neglect for the nation’s infrastructure, the destruction of the American working class through federal subsidies for automation and offshoring and tacit acceptance of mass illegal immigration as a means of driving down wages, and a monomaniacally confrontational foreign policy obsessed with the domination of the Middle East by raw military force. Those are the policies that George W. Bush and Barack Obama pursued through four presidential terms, and they’re the policies that Hillary Clinton has supported throughout her political career.
Donald Trump, by contrast, has been arguing against several core elements of that consensus since the beginning of his run for office. Specifically, he’s calling for a reversal of federal policies that support offshoring of jobs, the enforcement of US immigration law, and a less rigidly confrontational stance toward Russia over the war in Syria. It’s been popular all through the current campaign for Clinton’s supporters to insist that nobody actually cares about these issues, and that Trump’s supporters must by definition be motivated by hateful values instead, but that rhetorical gimmick has been a standard thoughstopper on the left for many years now, and it simply won’t wash. The reason why Trump was able to sweep aside the other GOP candidates, and has a shot at winning next week’s election despite the unanimous opposition of this nation’s political class, is that he’s the first presidential candidate in a generation to admit that the issues just mentioned actually matter.
That was a ticket to the nomination, in turn, because outside the bicoastal echo chamber of the affluent, the US economy has been in freefall for years. I suspect that a great many financially comfortable people in today’s America have no idea just how bad things have gotten here in the flyover states. The recovery of the last eight years has only benefited the upper 20% or so by income of the population; the rest have been left to get by on declining real wages, while simultaneously having to face skyrocketing rents driven by federal policies that prop up the real estate market, and stunning increases in medical costs driven by Obama’s embarrassingly misnamed “Affordable Care Act.” It’s no accident that death rates from suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol poisoning are soaring just now among working class white people. These are my neighbors, the people I talk with in laundromats and lodge meetings, and they’re being driven to the wall.
Most of the time, affluent liberals who are quick to emote about the sufferings of poor children in conveniently distant corners of the Third World like to brush aside the issues I’ve just raised as irrelevancies. I’ve long since lost track of the number of times I’ve heard people insist that the American working class hasn’t been destroyed, that its destruction doesn’t matter, or that it was the fault of the working classes themselves. (I’ve occasionally heard people attempt to claim all three of these things at once.) On those occasions when the mainstream left deigns to recognize the situation I’ve sketched out, it’s usually in the terms Hillary Clinton used in her infamous “basket of deplorables” speech, in which she admitted that there were people who hadn’t benefited from the recovery and “we need to do something for them.” That the people in question might deserve to have a voice in what’s done for them, or to them, is not part of the vocabulary of the affluent American left.
That’s why, if you pay a visit to the town where I live, you’ll find Trump signs all over the place—and you’ll find the highest concentration of them in the poor neighborhood just south of my home, a bleak rundown zone where there’s a church every few blocks and an abandoned house every few doors, and where the people tipping back beers on a porch of a summer evening rarely all have the same skin color. They know exactly what they need, and what tens of thousands of other economically devastated American communities need: enough full-time jobs at decent wages to give them the chance to lift their families out of poverty. They understand that need, and discuss it in detail among themselves, with a clarity you’ll rarely find in the media. (It’s a source of wry amusement to me that the best coverage of the situation on the ground here in the flyover states appeared, not in any of America’s newspapers of record, nor in any of its allegedly serious magazines, but in a raucous NSFW online humor magazine.)
What’s more, the working class people who point to a lack of jobs as the cause of middle America’s economic collapse are dead right. The reason why those tens of thousands of American communities are economically devastated is that too few people have enough income to support the small businesses and local economies that used to thrive there. The money that used to keep main streets bustling across the United States, the wages that used to be handed out on Friday afternoons to millions of Americans who’d spent the previous week putting in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, have been siphoned off to inflate the profits of a handful of huge corporations to absurd levels and cater to the kleptocratic feeding frenzy that’s made multimillion-dollar bonuses a matter of course at the top of the corporate food chain. It really is as simple as that. The Trump voters in the neighborhood south of my home may not have a handle on all the details, but they know that their survival depends on getting some of that money flowing back into paychecks to be spent in their community.
It’s an open question whether they’re going to get that if Donald Trump wins the election, and a great many of his supporters know this perfectly well. It’s as certain as anything can be, though, that they’re not going to get it from Hillary Clinton. The economic policy she’s touted in her speeches, to the extent that this isn’t just the sort of campaign rhetoric that will pass its pull date the moment the last vote is counted, focuses on improving opportunities for the middle class—the people, in other words, who have already reaped the lion’s share of those economic benefits that didn’t go straight into the pockets of the rich. To the working classes, she offers nothing but a repetition of the same empty slogans and disposable promises. What’s more, they know this, and another round of empty slogans and disposable promises isn’t going to change that.
Nor, it probably needs to be said, is it going to be changed by another round of media handwaving designed to make Donald Trump look bad in the eyes of affluent liberals. I’ve noted with some amusement the various news stories on the highbrow end of the media noting, in tones variously baffled and horrified, that when you show Trump supporters videos designed to make them less enthusiastic about their candidate, they double down. Any number of canned theories have been floated to explain why that happens, but none that I’ve heard have dealt with the obvious explanations.
To begin with, it’s not as though that habit is only found on Trump’s side of the fence. In recent weeks, as one Wikileaks email dump after another has forced an assortment of stories about Clinton’s arrogant and corrupt behavior into the news, her followers have doubled down just as enthusiastically as Trump’s; those of my readers who are familiar with the psychology of previous investment will likely notice that emotional investment is just as subject to this law as the financial kind. For that matter, supporters of both candidates are quite sensibly aware that this election is meant to choose a public official rather than a plaster saint, and recognize that a genuine scoundrel who will take the right stands on the issues that matter to them is a better choice than a squeaky-clean innocent who won’t, even if such an animal could actually be found in the grubby ecosystem of contemporary American politics.
That said, there’s another factor that probably plays an even larger role, which is that when working class Americans get told by slickly groomed talking heads in suits that something they believe is wrong, their default assumption is that the talking heads are lying.
Working class Americans, after all, have very good reason for making this their default assumption. Over and over again, that’s the way things have turned out. The talking heads insisted that handing over tax dollars to various corporate welfare queens would bring jobs back to American communities; the corporations in question pocketed the tax dollars and walked away. The talking heads insisted that if working class people went to college at their own expense and got retrained in new skills, that would bring jobs back to American communities; the academic industry profited mightily but the jobs never showed up, leaving tens of millions of people buried so deeply under student loan debt that most of them will never recover financially. The talking heads insisted that this or that or the other political candidate would bring jobs back to American communities by pursuing exactly the same policies that got rid of the jobs in the first place—essentially the same claim that the Clinton campaign is making now—and we know how that turned out.
For that matter, trust in talking heads generally is at an all-time low out here in flyover country. Consider the way that herbal medicine—“God’s medicine” is the usual phrase these days—has become the go-to option for a huge and growing number of devout rural Christians. There are plenty of reasons why that should be happening, but surely one of the most crucial is the cascading loss of faith in the slickly groomed talking heads that sell modern medicine to consumers. Herbs may not be as effective as modern pharmaceuticals in treating major illnesses, to be sure, but they generally don’t have the ghastly side effects that so many pharmaceuticals will give you. Furthermore, and just as crucially, nobody ever bankrupted their family and ended up on the street because of the high price of herbs.
It used to be, not all that long ago, that the sort of people we’re discussing trusted implicitly in American society and its institutions. They were just as prone as any urban sophisticate to distrust this or that politician or businessperson or cultural figure, to be sure; back in the days when local caucuses and county conventions of the two main political parties still counted for something, you could be sure of hearing raucous debates about a galaxy of personalities and issues. Next to nobody, though, doubted that the basic structures of American society were not merely sound, but superior to all others.
You won’t find that certainty in flyover country these days. Where you hear such claims made at all, they’re phrased in the kind of angry and defensive terms that lets everyone know that the speaker is trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t entirely believe any more, or in the kind of elegaic tones that hearken back to an earlier time when things still seemed to work—when the phrase “the American Dream” still stood for a reality that many people had experienced and many more could expect to achieve for themselves and their children. Very few people out here think of the federal government as anything more than a vast mechanism operated by rich crooks for their own benefit, at the expense of everyone else. What’s more, the same cynical attitude is spreading to embrace the other institutions of American society, and—lethally—the ideals from which those institutions get whatever legitimacy they still hold in the eyes of the people.
Those of my readers who were around in the late 1980s and early 1990s have seen this movie before, though it came with Cyrillic subtitles that time around. By 1985 or so, it had become painfully obvious to most citizens of the Soviet Union that the grand promises of Marxism would not be kept and the glorious future for which their grandparents and great-grandparents had fought and labored was never going to arrive. Glowing articles in Pravda and Izvestia insisted that everything was just fine in the Worker’s Paradise; annual five-year plans presupposed that economic conditions would get steadily better while, for most people, economic conditions got steadily worse; vast May Day parades showed off the Soviet Union’s military might, Soyuz spacecraft circled the globe to show off its technological prowess, and tame intellectuals comfortably situated in the more affluent districts of Moscow and Leningrad, looking forward to their next vacation at their favorite Black Sea resort, chattered in print about the good life under socialism, while millions of ordinary Soviet citizens trudged through a bleak round of long lines, product shortages, and system-wide dysfunction. Then crisis hit, and the great-great-grandchildren of the people who surged to the barricades during the Russian Revolution shrugged, and let the Soviet Union unravel in a matter of days.
I suspect we’re much closer to a similar cascade of events here in the United States than most people realize. My fellow peak oil blogger Dmitry Orlov pointed out a decade or so back, in a series of much-reprinted blog posts and his book Reinventing Collapse, that the differences between the Soviet Union and the United States were far less important than their similarities, and that a Soviet-style collapse was a real possibility here—a possibility for which most Americans are far less well prepared than their Russian equivalents in the early 1990s. His arguments have become even more compelling as the years have passed, and the United States has become mired ever more deeply in a mire of institutional dysfunction and politico-economic kleptocracy all but indistinguishable from the one that eventually swallowed its erstwhile rival.
Point by point, the parallels stand out. We’ve got the news articles insisting, in tones by turns glowing and shrill, that things have never been better in the United States and anyone who says otherwise is just plain wrong; we’ve got the economic pronouncements predicated on continuing growth at a time when the only things growing in the US economy are its total debt load and the number of people who are permanently unemployed; we’ve got the overblown displays of military might and technological prowess, reminiscent of nothing so much as the macho posturing of balding middle-aged former athletes who are trying to pretend that they haven’t lost it; we’ve got the tame intellectuals comfortably situated in the more affluent suburban districts around Boston, New York, Washington, and San Francisco, looking forward to their next vacation in whatever the currently fashionable spot might happen to be, babbling on the internet about the good life under predatory cybercapitalism.
Meanwhile millions of Americans trudge through a bleak round of layoffs, wage cuts, part-time jobs at minimal pay, and system-wide dysfunction. The crisis hasn’t hit yet, but those members of the political class who think that the people who used to be rock-solid American patriots will turn out en masse to keep today’s apparatchiks secure in their comfortable lifestyles have, as the saying goes, another think coming. Nor is it irrelevant that most of the enlisted personnel in the armed forces, who are the US government’s ultimate bulwark against popular unrest, come from the very classes that have lost faith most drastically in the American system. The one significant difference between the Soviet case and the American one at this stage of the game is that Soviet citizens had no choice but to accept the leaders the Communist Party of the USSR foisted off on them, from Brezhnev to Andropov to Chernenko to Gorbachev, until the system collapsed of its own weight.
American citizens, on the other hand, do at least potentially have a choice. Elections in the United States have been riddled with fraud for most of two centuries, but since both parties are generally up to their eyeballs in voter fraud to a roughly equal degree, fraud mostly swings close elections. It’s still possible for a sufficiently popular candidate to overwhelm the graveyard vote, the crooked voting machines, and the other crass realities of American elections by sheer force of numbers. That way, an outsider unburdened with the echo-chamber thinking of a dysfunctional elite might just be able to elbow his way into the White House. Will that happen this time? No one knows.
If George W. Bush was our Leonid Brezhnev, as I’d suggest, and Barack Obama is our Yuri Andropov, Hillary Clinton is running for the position of Konstantin Chernenko; her running mate Tim Kaine, in turn, is waiting in the wings as a suitably idealistic and clueless Mikhail Gorbachev, under whom the whole shebang can promptly go to bits. While I don’t seriously expect the trajectory of the United States to parallel that of the Soviet Union anything like as precisely as this satiric metaphor would suggest, the basic pattern of cascading dysfunction ending in political collapse is quite a common thing in history, and a galaxy of parallels suggests that the same thing could very easily happen here within the next decade or so. The serene conviction among the political class and their affluent hangers-on that nothing of the sort could possibly take place is just another factor making it more likely.
It’s by no means certain that a Trump presidency will stop that from happening, and jolt the United States far enough out of its current death spiral to make it possible to salvage something from the American experiment. Even among Trump’s most diehard supporters, it’s common to find people who cheerfully admit that Trump might not change things enough to matter; it’s just that when times are desperate enough—and out here in the flyover states, they are—a leap in the dark is preferable to the guaranteed continuation of the unendurable.
Thus the grassroots movement that propelled Trump to the Republican nomination in the teeth of the GOP establishment, and has brought him to within a couple of aces of the White House in the teeth of the entire US political class, might best be understood as the last gasp of the American dream. Whether he wins or loses next week, this country is moving into the darkness of an uncharted night—and it’s not out of place to wonder, much as Hamlet did, what dreams may come in that darkness.
The Archdruid Report by John Michael Greer
99 Comments on "The Last Gasp of the American Dream"
makati1 on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 11:06 pm
Boat, I noticed, but it is irrelevant. Nothing has really changed. About like Obama making himself emperor. Xi will only do what his masters tell him, just like Obama. Titles are only important to the peasants, like you.
Boat on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 1:05 pm
That was Republicans like you that likes those names. Uppity was another. Funny I’ve heard Trump claim to be the most and best of about everything, he never mentioned uppity.
Boat on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 2:30 pm
Dump Trump,
“In the last week, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to zero out all federal spending on clean energy research and development. And the plan he released would also zero out all other spending on anything to do with climate change, including the government’s entire climate science effort.”
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-zero-out-federal-clean-energy-56cca794790#.hle6liyxu
No climate change fear for trump. I feel relieved. I had been thinking climate change was a problem. All those who hated the US for destroying the climate are apparently wrong and are now free to go for a head clearing drive.
Davy on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 2:59 pm
Boat, you have to be careful of anything you read currently on the candidates with this highly polarized election. The shit is flying. I have yet to see a candidate ever that really made an impact on energy policy except maybe Jimmy. When it comes to US energy policy they do what industry wants them to do for the most part. IOW POTUS are irrelevant in the bigger energy scheme of things. Money talks and if renewables show some dough they will get an ear.
Boat on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 3:16 pm
If it were not for subsidies for wind and solar their growth rate would have been significantly slowed. Same with high mpg cars and plugins.
There is regulation fighting pollution tied up in the Supreme Court as we speak.
Small care cafe standards are on the books and made a big difference. Light truck set to kick in soon.
These types of regulations are not Republican lead.
Apneaman on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 4:44 pm
boat, I was thinking about your Dump Trump comment and wondering if he can do all those things or do them without a challenge. Then I thought what if he could wave a magic wand/pen and do it what would be the consequences? For AGW at this point it barely matters, but it would obviously contribute more. The biggest effect would be more air pollution and that affects folks on the local level – some more dead old folks and kids with bad asthma. It’ll workout good (regulation, subsidies) for coal puppet Mitch McConnell and the others like him and the non existent “war on coal”. Fracked natgas has killed coal, but they must stick to their story.
Mitch McConnell wants Donald Trump to be “the most powerful Republican in America”
The Senate leader issues the strongest support yet of a Republican leader
http://www.salon.com/2016/11/03/mitch-mcconnell-wants-donald-trump-to-be-the-most-powerful-republican-in-america/
Apneaman on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 4:51 pm
Them there evil environmentalists is killing our freedom coal They hate us for our freedom.
Shale gas, not EPA rules, has pushed decline in coal-generated electricity, study confirms
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161007105548.htm
See how easy it is to brainwash the conservative sheeple. Throw in the word “War” and it’s a clincher.
Davy on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 5:08 pm
Ape man did you see Scrib’s endorsement of Hillary? I am a big fan of Scrib but that was excessive.
onlooker on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 5:09 pm
Or God or Country or Taxes or Guns. You get the the picture. Dumb Zombies
Apneaman on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 5:52 pm
Davy it was god damned pathetic, but expected. Another case of a highly intelligent person falling prey to his tribal loyalty and beliefs. I only recommend Scribbler for climate science. I was temporarily banned a few times from commenting and then permanently and all because I challenged his and the loyal regulars faith in alt energy. I said it’s all good but limited and still part of the industrial system and from mining to installation is more habitat destroying “development” which to date has been a bigger drive of the mass extinction than AGW. Apparently that makes me a fossil fuel shill and permanently banned. Scribby waxes very doomy sometimes – right on the edge in fact, but always pulls back and gives his do gooder leave it to beaver encouragement to the troops. Lots of that going around in liberal circles. Too bad NO amount of super positive cheerleading and hoping can stop the cancer. IMO, like most, they cannot admit what humans are; admit our folly and limits. They need to blame it ALL on big oil and professional deniers and amature true believers (conservatives) and while I agree that many of those people are scum fucks and their actions denied the world a choice to slow down they all fit within the scope of normal human behaviour. Also, if all the climate polling in western countries for at least the last decade shows that about half of all citizens believe AGW is a threat, does that mean that all those convinced of AGW stopped driving to work, jetting away on vacations and mass consuming? It’s only conservative deniers who have been doing all of that? Go to your average left leaning suburban home in N America on Christmas morning and I bet they got a 4-5 foot pile of dopamine squirting consume goodies under-around the tree like everyone else. So for the science and climate ongoings, I would still highly recommend scribby, but skip the politics and read the alt energy articles with a grain of salt.
Davy on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 5:57 pm
Yeap, we are on the same page.
indigo on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 6:34 pm
A Brit, calling out,.. to all Americans…?
We did the Brexit thing,.. and told the European Union establishment to go f**k themselves on 23rd June 2016. Now it’s your turn America. Please,… don’t let us down. We need to bring these establishment bastards to heel. You know in your hearts, that that has to be accomplished for the benefit of the many.
It’s been said that America has a special relationship with the UK. I don’t know how true that is,… but at a personal level,.. I do know for sure, that if I was in a difficult part of the world, in a tough situation,.. I as a Brit, would want a solid and reliable American friend by my side.
Clinton is the establishment problem, not the answer, and be under no illusion, .. we Brexit Brits, are with you every step of the way. Good luck America.
makati1 on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 7:43 pm
Indigo, your “Brexit” is not a done deal … yet. And may never be. If the world is still here in 2020 and the EU still exists, you may still be waiting for that “Brexit”. We shall see.
As for liking Americans: soon, to even admit that you know one may be dangerous to your health in most countries. The UK and the US are Siamese twins joined at the wallet. THAT is the ONLY connection. You don’t even speak the same language but you do share a lot of the same propaganda.
Americans are being prepared for a world war. You can hardly read an article from the U$, watch a recent Hollywood movie, TV program, “news flash” or newspaper without some reference to war or security or Russia/China. If you know history, similar brainwashing was done in Germany before both world wars and in the U$ prior to both world wars, Korea, and Vietnam. Not to mention Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Syria. Wars do NOT happen without the peasants being ready to “die for their country”. What if they gave a war and no one came? LOL
Apneaman on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 7:44 pm
S&P 500 Falls for Ninth Session in Longest Losing Streak Since 1980
http://www.wsj.com/articles/european-asian-stocks-follow-s-p-500-lower-1478248853
makati1 on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 7:53 pm
Ap, I have been watching the blood run on Wall $treet all week and am cheering it on. They weren’t even able to “fix” it so that the weekend would be in the black, as is the usual plan. Deliberate, or …?
Could this be the beginning of the end? It took over two years for the Stock Market to hit its bottom in the Great depression. October 29, 1929 until July 8, 1932.
Boat on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 10:58 pm
mak,
Lol, their paranoid because the polls are tightening and they think trump is unstable. You know, like you. A pint short a gal.
Boat on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 11:01 pm
indigo on Fri, 4th Nov 2016 6:34 pm
I am with you on immigration. Sorry but that includes Brits. The US needs no immigration.
makati1 on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 12:14 am
Boat, instability is your middle name. LMAO
ohanian on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 2:05 am
It’s a pity they could not BOTH LOSE.
Davy on Sat, 5th Nov 2016 7:22 am
I have been very interested in this election lately. I see this as a possible defining event that could initiate a break in the status quo. If you study collapse as I do then you realize a break if large enough will initiate a “dominos of breaks” leading to an altered reality. Early in this election I was down on both candidates and still am. I am down on the “two party is one party” in the pillaging of the country. I resigned myself to considering the election a nonevent of more of the same with a likely Clinton victory. I knew Clinton was dirty but after all the dirt I have seen lately I am amazed at the depth of the sleaze. I suspected it but it is until it is in your face that you add the emotional element. I have dialed up my concern now because I now see the real dangers. Trump is a wack-job and will not make America great again. America is finished in that regards. Yet, Trump does represent an outsider/insider who has at least exposing the criminality. If nothing else Trump has made a place in history as a disrupter of the status quo of increasing corruption. America is not going away but if it does the rest of you are toast too so this is your fight too no matter how much you hate us. The real danger is the Clinton criminal establishment. This establishment appears to be global BTW as we know from our many conversations on this board.
This Clinton crime family has been built up over 30 years and has the support of many of the pillars of the deep state which we discuss regularly here. This has likely become cultish with initiations like the Nazi’s or a typical crime family. What I mean is acts that implicate the initiate in the criminal network have been practiced. This has likely happened within all segments of the halls of power. It is dirt that keep the dirty, dirty. Watch any Mafia flick and you know what I am talking about when they “make your bones”. One should watch House of cards from beginning to end this weekend in a marathon to see a Hollywood version. It is all there to see and the end is chilling. Tuesday is around the corner.
Maybe this is conspiracy theory on my part but in a way does it matter. It is like Jeramiah Johnson said to the preacher that chided him on his reluctance to enter the Black Feet burial grounds. The asshole preacher said something like “You don’t believe all this do you?” and Jeramiah retorted “It doesn’t matter they do”. My point here is people are readying for a revolution of sorts. I am not sure the extent of it and the time frame for it to play out. I am not sure of what is going on within the halls of power exactly because conspiracies are conspiracies for a reason but there is definitely discord. It is apparent that many are not going to sit idly by as this hijacking of power goes on. The people are going to rise up if there is an indication of a stolen election. Both sides are going to see the election stolen in the halls of power and on the street. Where will all these charges behind Clinton and here crime family end up? It can’t end well for a system that is already burdened with a collapse process.
If you study collapse as I do then you know peak oil, climate change, and the economy are variables ahead. It is the socio-political that is the biggest unknown. This includes the ever present threat of WWIII. This election may be that black swan variable that initiates that “break the camel’s back”moment. I am pretty sure of this, a significant disruption to the status quo at this point in time with so many dangerous problems unresolved may trigger an acceleration of the collapse process.
I am seeing many sign of a building conflict both within the halls of power and throughout the land. Granted the multitude of sheeples who are harmless are there too and likely to remain submissive that is until food and fuel go into shortage or the lights start going out regularly. This is the type of stuff that snowballs into a new reality. This is not the 20th century anymore this is a hyper complex globally connected disaster in the making just waiting for an implosion somewhere globally. It is possible the spark will be extinguished quickly but betting on that might just be more status quo hopium. Many of us are happy enough with life and would rather not have an existential threat happen just now. I used to think a global collapse would originate somewhere like China but it may be right here in the “good ole” US of A the first domino will fall. I am going to start today putting more wood up it may be a cold winter.
indigo on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 11:22 am
Just to clarify a few of things :
1. I have no desire to emigrate to the US. I am very happy to be here in the UK, and I have plans right here for when things get difficult.
2. I’m not saying Trump is your answer. Trump is just a means to an end. We all know the score on where collapse is going,.. we just don’t know the timescale. Trump at the very least is on the side of true Americans, in the same way that Brexit~eers are on the side of UK citizens. Right now, guarantees are not available. The best we can try to democratically ‘engineer’, are people who are most likely, in our corner,.. and for sure Clinton does not fit that criterion for everyday Americans.
3. I’m not overly confident that democracy [rigged or clean], will change things to any measurable degree,.. but at least *voting against the establishment machine*,.. is the very first,.. *non-violent* way of making change possible. Surely,.. it is incumbent upon us to at least try the non-violent methods first,.. before we work out other ways to throw grit in the machine.?
4. Makati1 : My understanding is that as an expat American, you have staked your future in the Philippines.? Good Luck.
5. Whatever plans you all have,.. I truly wish you all well.
Boat on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 1:27 pm
indigo,
The US is much more diverse than about any country. Any candidate having trust issues because of nationality of any citizen or wannabe citizen is unacceptable.
I don’t want Trump, you or any other person telling me what a true American is. Sorry, I have trust issues.
makati1 on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 4:41 pm
Boat, you DO have issues but trust is not one of them. LOL
makati1 on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 4:42 pm
ANYONE BUT HILLARY! ^_^
onlooker on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 4:54 pm
If Hillary which is looking pretty certain its time to leave Dodge
onlooker on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 4:55 pm
oops If Hillary wins
Boat on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 5:12 pm
onlooker,
Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Boat on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 5:14 pm
So many immigrants from the P’s, we need more space.
onlooker on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 5:16 pm
Actually thats funny Boat but you Nature and Providence has the last laugh
makati1 on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 5:39 pm
Boat, Sorry but ALL Filipinos in America come by legal means and stay by legal means. A Filipino cannot even visit the US as a tourist without a visa from the US Embassy here, which they have to pay for even if their interview is negative. They cannot just walk over the border like your Mexican friends.
Take away all of the Filipinos in the U$ and many of your hospitals and nursing homes would be without staff. Many doctors and dentists would be missing. They are not dog walkers or day laborers. They are professionals with degrees or they don’t get a job or even into the country.
Want to try another jibe? LOL
makati1 on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 5:41 pm
Description of an American:
““We demand that everyone who talks to us, or writes for us, or takes pictures for us, or makes merchandise for us, should live in our world of extravagant expectations. We expect this even of the peoples of foreign countries. We have become so accustomed to our illusions that we mistake them for reality. We demand them. And we demand that there be always more of them, bigger and better and more vivid.””
http://www.globalresearch.ca/american-irrationalism-something-is-terribly-wrong/5555307
Sound familiar Boat?
Boat on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 5:59 pm
mak,
As usual you make up lies and stories. I never made any claim any P was an illegal. I never made any claim any P was more or less important than any other immigrant. I believe we are equal under the law.
makati1 on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 6:24 pm
Boat, As I said elsewhere, reality is not your thing. OR you are some teenage drop-out in his mommy’s basement smoking pot and typing bullshit on the internet for fun. Or both?
peakyeast on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 6:26 pm
@boat: mak isnt actually saying you said that – he just points out all Ps are using US rules to the book. That is his interpretation of what was a reasonable answer. And it is.
While I know I cannot succeed with you boat I will try again anyway: It is not a useful nor a nice trait to be guided by the reptilian part of your brain when conversing with others. My recommandation is that you start treating others like they are real people and not some indiscriminate bug to be voraciously eaten by your lizard-part.
Boat on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 7:19 pm
peakyeast,
When I first started commenting on this site I was very polite. After being blasted by the doomer community I developed a very thick skin and blasted back.
If eminent collapse would have been true we wouldn’t be talking now. Everyday I was proved right. Ya’ll have a problem with me being right. Ya’ll get quite mouthy even when proved wrong.
Next, depletion. I contended back then there is plenty of oil looking out ten years. 3 years later I still say there is plenty of oil for 10 years. Every day I am proved right. Hell the world can’t even whip up a recession. Not to mention were past due for one.
I don’t mind competing ideas, in fact I have put in hundreds hrs looking up information spawned by discussion. Treat me nice or call me names, I don’t care. I think it was ape that said if your going to comment on the internet, put on your big boy pants.
Last, if your gonna trash the US, talk raciest trash, demean women, bla, bla, bla expect me to get in your face. Freedom of speech goes both ways. Take it like a man.
makati1 on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 7:49 pm
Boat, sometimes freedom means getting smashed in the face by someone you slur. It cannot happen on the internet, so you are safe. For now.
Have you considered WHY you are constantly put down? Could it be your immature attitude? Or maybe you are blind to the real world we point out? Or your American arrogance? Or some other mental fault?
America is a huge pile of smelly bullshit these days and it is a world wide FACT accepted by most of the other seven billion of us. Only the stupid sheeple in the U$ that think otherwise.
Anyway you slice it, take it like a man…lol.
Apneaman on Sun, 6th Nov 2016 10:04 pm
Boat, it’s imminent not eminent and who said it was imminent? Show us all the quote where someone on here has said the whole thing will collapse within a very short time, because that’s what imminent means. Can’t fucking spell and don’t know what the word means either. Guess why you get a hard time? Go on guess.
Hey boat, I bet gas and meat are cheap in Dallas too eh?
What will Dallas City Hall deal with first: Its crumbling streets or its broken police-fire pension fund?
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/dallas-city-council/2016/11/02/will-dallas-city-hall-deal-first-crumbling-streets-broken-police-fire-pension-fund
Dallas mayor: Failing pension fund could bankrupt the city
http://www.fox4news.com/news/215275456-story
Cheap gas and cheap meat are the only metrics that count according to boat. Rotting infrastructure and a hollowed out tax base due to neo liberal policies that cannot maintain pensions anymore do not count – just meat N gas.
Guess what boat? It’s the same in hundreds of cities and thousands of towns. Even your beloved Cancer city Houston can’t keep the pot holes filled. How about Detroit and Flint? Poisoned water in thousands of towns. Pensions? They coming for all of them. Boat you have been told hundreds of times that collapse is a process – not an event and been shown many of the thousands of cuts that are bleeding it dry. OK how fucking thick is your skull that that still hasn’t gotten through even after being told hundreds of times? PROCESS NOT EVENT. PROCESS NOT EVENT. PROCESS NOT EVENT. PROCESS NOT EVENT. PROCESS NOT EVENT.
Just meat N gas. You know what Dallas will do? Put a few bandaids on it same as everyone else. Bandaids is about all you’ll see. Boat this collapse, when finished, will be the final collapse. Similar to the others in that it wasn’t one thing that brought it down, but rather the cumulative effect of many blows – most self inflicted.
peakyeast on Mon, 7th Nov 2016 5:22 am
@boat: I am glad to hear you have developed a thick hide. I would have thought that would enable you to keep being polite instead of adopting lesser qualities.
You are entitled to your opinion on who is right or wrong and your opinion on the state of the world, but I dont agree with your positions here.
I dont see the doomer group as a homogenous hostile group. Ape for example stands out like a sore thumb. He does provide value and entertainment – even if he is tough on everybody and everything. But IMHO he is not someone (no offense meant, apey) to adopt high quality etiquette from – Not even internet etiquette.
It is a little like having a child in school.. Trying to keep the Fuck, shit words out of their active vocabulary is next to impossible, but I think we all can agree its better to try than not.
Boat on Mon, 7th Nov 2016 6:54 am
ape,
“Even your beloved Cancer city Houston can’t keep the pot holes filled.”
Now you can keep track of Houston pot holes.
http://www.houstontx.gov/potholes/
makati1 on Mon, 7th Nov 2016 6:58 am
peaky, some just ask to be hit. They like it. Some kind of fetish, I think. Differences make the world go round and the world of PO is spinning faster all the time. lol
Boat on Mon, 7th Nov 2016 7:03 am
ape,
Eminent | Definition of Eminent by Merriam-Webster
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eminent
Full Definition of eminent. 1 : standing out so as to be readily perceived or noted : conspicuous.
I thought you out of anyone would like the play on words. Guess it went over your head.
Apneaman on Mon, 7th Nov 2016 11:59 am
Boat really? So you’re trying to claim that you meant collapse was eminent and not imminent? Get fucking real retard. You should have swallowed it while you had the chance instead of making yourself look all the stupider.
“If eminent collapse would have been true we wouldn’t be talking now. Everyday I was proved right.” – boat
em·i·nent
ˈemənənt/Submit
adjective
(of a person) famous and respected within a particular sphere or profession.
“one of the world’s most eminent statisticians”
synonyms: illustrious, distinguished, renowned, esteemed, preeminent, notable, noteworthy, great, prestigious, important, influential, affluential, outstanding, noted, of note; More
used to emphasize the presence of a positive quality.
“the guitar’s eminent suitability for recording studio work”
im·mi·nent
ˈimənənt/Submit
adjective
1.
about to happen.
“they were in imminent danger of being swept away”
synonyms: impending, close (at hand), near, (fast) approaching, coming, forthcoming, on the way, in the offing, in the pipeline, on the horizon, in the air, just around the corner, coming down the pike, expected, anticipated, brewing, looming, threatening, menacing; informalin the cards
“a ceasefire was imminent”
collapse is imminent (about to happen) VS collapse is eminent(held in high regard).
Like I said before, you bring the shit down on yourself because you think you know things you don’t just because you have Google. Try reading some books instead. You simply cannot become highly knowledgeable from the internet alone. Nowhere near enough detail and almost no contemplation on the subject matter when electronically distracted. Sell your computer, get a library card and come back in two years time – dismissed.
boat on Mon, 7th Nov 2016 1:20 pm
ape,
I have used the word imminent as have other posters. Eminent is just my latest version that works as well. Just like posters have described collapse as soon. Google that word.
Maybe you like and need contemplation, I just want to see the numbers and think for myself.
When your herd/cult spreads disinformation I don’t need books. How many times have I read, “wheres your link”, Then attacked for using the internet. lol
I get a kick out of you guys.
Anonymous on Mon, 7th Nov 2016 3:02 pm
ROFL, ya hear that everyone? Eminent, and imminent can be used interchangeably, at least to boatard here.
Yer a good amerikan boat. Don’t need no stoooopid books or some pointy egg-head telling you what to think, or even to think at all.
Just keep doubling down stupid, boatard.
peakyeast on Mon, 7th Nov 2016 3:54 pm
@boat et al:
“eminent collapse”
I have never seen eminent used for describing a situation like collapse. – It is always coupled with some people, a group, an organisation.
But: “Until that point, eminent success lay just around the corner.”
Is a valid sentence with the correct usage of eminent.
While I am not a native english write/speaker I would say that it seems possible to replace success with collapse and still make a valid sentence in the example above.
But it is a remarkably different usage of the word than what I have seen elsewhere – and damn – I have read a LOT.
So: Until that point, eminent collapse lay just around the corner.
Seems valid to me, but very unconventional since its also always used for something highly positive, but I suppose if one is deranged enough then collapse is highly positive……AHHH !!??!?!
– Yeah I think I can agree with boat 😀 LOL
peakyeast on Mon, 7th Nov 2016 4:01 pm
@boat: Thanks man – you gave me more fun today than I have had in a long.. Yeah – I know I am probably a sad case.
peakyeast on Mon, 7th Nov 2016 4:02 pm
time… grrr.. edit is thx, web”master”.
Anonymous on Mon, 7th Nov 2016 4:53 pm
You haven’t seen the term “eminent collapse” for a good reason. The two words together make no sense used that way. It is not a proper phrase, period.
No amount of mental, or linguistic gymnastics will make those two words jive with one another. That is to say, its nonsense, gobbledygook, if you want to techincal.
Face it, boat is at best, mildly retarded, or if your prefer, developmentally challenged. He could have ghetto edited it easily. Instead, being himself, he would much rather double down on stupid, like he does pretty much every single time.
peakyeast on Mon, 7th Nov 2016 5:41 pm
@anon: I havent seen “ghetto edited” before. Something to do with rap music? 😀
I didnt even find an explanation during a brief cursory search. Could you indulge me and explain it?