an some fear based adrenaline.

hello Ibon,

what your old man said reminds me of some passage in Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451", where a grandfather tells his son, that a nuclear explosion, seen from space, ist nothing more than a little pin in the vast wilderness and if we do not watch out, the wilderness will haunt us an come to us in the cities ...

(written just from memory, sorry): "When we forget how close the wilderness is in the night, my grandpa said, someday it will come in and get us, for we will have forgotten how terrible and real it can be."

My parents ; dad 80 and mon 76. They are retired teachers with the last of the 100% health insurance (they use constantly) and pay.

They go to the DR. for a social event. They like the attention. My parents feel the US owes them since they went thru WW2

They have no clu or do not care about the future of the US. They want theirs.

Not trying to bash my parents, but this is very common.

Pardon me? They went through WW II? Your Mom made it to a combat field at 12? wow.

at the grocery store today, my co-worker and I were talking about the financial straights we are in. My 86 year old neighbor piped up and said "I don't care. I'll be dead by then...."

An acquaintance of mine had a father who was a veteran of WWII. I don't know wether he actually saw any Germans or was guarding a secretute of some entrenched 100 miles off the front officer, but he got his papers. So one of his perks was either free or 50% off Natural Gas, and there is no meter. So this dude had a summer kitchen ( a separate building ) where this gas burned at full 24/7 365 days a year. Once his son, in the midst of 100F summer heat , said : Father, what a F U C K are you doing?
and he says, "Son, I am entitled to that"

Pretorian,

I should have been clear. My parents grew up during WWII. I was talking about them having to
do without because of rationing and poverty.

Dad actually was in Korea. I was describing their attitude of entitlement.

yes, i know. Give anybody an entitlement once and there will be never a shortage of attitude.

I see a pattern here! A Menonite farmer joins popular culture and 2 people go wilderness camping for 2 weeks but 2 weeks was probably enough of that!

I like the wilderness camping too,but after a couple of weeks it's really nice to get civilized again. We are creatures of comfort and as long as minimal comfort is available we will use it, as opposed to living in the wilderness.

TV, prescription drugs, home heating, supermarkets, heh...we are so trapped into civilization it will be remarkable what people will put up with.

Much of America's history of independence existed only because the people had weapons to equal anything a potential oppressor had but those days are long gone.

Americans still have their shotguns and perhaps an assault rifle or two but take a gander at what the government is prepared to unleash on a rebellious population and yes, we are screwed. And to think anyone living in the current generation would have a good chance of survival living off the land is not very realistic - no offense!

Considering your armed forces inability to deal with a bunch of under-gunned, under supplied tribesmen in a desert, forgive me for doubting their ability to deal with a well equipped, well supplied American populace in giant urban sprawls.

We should remember the Mayan civilization... good metaphor for ours. They had astronomy, mathematics, architecture & now the jungle stands where their cities once did...

The comment about Americans and their comforts etc... reminds me of the movie "City Slickers" where one of the guys says "We're trained ponies. He's a stallion. It will do us some good to spend some time in his world."

Yet another doomer who has reduced the whole peak oil debate down to "the evil federal government".

NickyBoy, the first thing you need to understand about the occupation of Afghanistan is that it is going exactly as planned. Secondly, what makes you think they would use American troops to quell American rioters. Chaos can be used to an advantage when trying to form a "global" government. I mean really, how much pity do you think the rest of the world will have for rioting Americans in the future? Not much is my guess. The image has been created even though it is a lie.

Heh, the whole peak oil "debate" has been reduced and repackaged into a global warming hysteria and a tax on the carbon element thanks to the "evil federal government", which is really just a tool of the elite and the corporatocracy.

Anyway, I wouldn't consider myself a "doomer" but just another turd who can see the increasingly overbearing government and corporate control encroaching on all of our lives and wonders when we can all just admit this is the biggest hindrance to fixing any and all of our problems. If there really was a Jean Luc Picard cruising past our planet and looking out the starship window it surely would be the biggest face palm imaginable

The first step is realizing we are enslaved and then finding out to whom and how, only then can we even begin to do something about it. Not likely though if history is any indication. Governments are getting bigger, not smaller which can only mean we are under more control than at any other time in history.

who are we enslaved to and how are we enslaved? any ideas? bankers and corporations by debt and the media?

Our own minds.