My Doom-O-Meter is jittering towards max

Iaato · **Posted:** Tue Mar 11, 2008 8:50 pm

There will come a day fairly soon where the entire US populace will wake up and look at what we have wrought, and it will be like the blinders coming off.

Quote:

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
In this decayed hole among the mountain
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

The Wasteland

Heineken · **Posted:** Tue Mar 11, 2008 8:50 pm

Angry_Chimp wrote:

smallpoxgirl wrote:

Heineken wrote:

$4 and $5 gas coming, this year or the next, for sure. I don't see how the country goes on operating at that point. I just don't.

Yeah, I agree with you about the prognostic value of the gas price sign, but $4 aint doom. Europe long ago saw $8 and they haven't been bestruck by doom. Yeah, I know, their situation is different from ours, but ultimately we're just as hearty and just as resourceful, and we too will cope with $8 gas.

It is of course theoretically possible to cope with $8 dollar gas but that is how people are wired especially in the US. You may be underestimating how much different their situation is from ours. There is no “real” culture here in the US; Gore Vidal said it best, America is a country of pickpockets. Us Americans are greedy, egotistical, public school trained barbarians and only behave if the “governor” is working correctly on the great democratic Leviathan. This little experiment in Enlightenment polity is one SMALL step away from the “bellum omnium contra omnes”. As we speak all the social safety nets, to capture those who can no longer act “economically”, that were [reluctantly] put into place are “financially” failing or have failed. It won’t take long for the mounting gasoline, energy, and food cost to reach a trigger point where those that can no longer keep running on the treadmill begin to fall off in quickly increasing quantities. As those number build, as they are every day, those forced to the bottom will find away to turn their existential anxiety into creative anxiety and release upon the “system” that has thrown them to the wolves. The very technocratic aristocracy that they have been suckling upon their entire lives will become their enemy, and they will find creative ways to strike back at it. As institutions and supply lines begin to break down from mob violence the situation will keep accelerating until the war against all arrives right at your front door. Where things go from there is the biggest question…
Ordo Ab Chao==AC

Pretty darn good summary of the shitcan we're in, Chimp. Good job.
A pithy Gore Vidal quote never hurts the case.

smallpoxgirl · **Joined:** Mon Nov 08, 2004 1:00 am **Posts:** 7742

TheDude wrote:

"This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper" is the last line of the poem "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Elliot ...

Good one.
How bout some Yeats?

Quote:

The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

wisconsin_cur · **Joined:** Thu May 10, 2007 12:00 am **Posts:** 4616

angrychimp wrote:

It is of course theoretically possible to cope with $8 dollar gas but that is how people are wired especially in the US. You may be underestimating how much different their situation is from ours. There is no “real” culture here in the US; Gore Vidal said it best, America is a country of pickpockets. Us Americans are greedy, egotistical, public school trained barbarians and only behave if the “governor” is working correctly on the great democratic Leviathan.

I love the fact that someone could make the same comment about Afghans or Mexicans or Iraqis or black Africans and they would be jumped upon as a racist ass. Say it about Americans and all of the sudden one is cultured.
As an American, the son and grandson of men and women who have served their communities, nation and world without asking anything in return, as the descendent of a woman who started the local county extension, of malnourished families who still took in orphans even though their own children were in need, who were displaced by economic trends and never complained, who fought and died in wars good and bad, who built barns which still stand like cathedrals and still in good repair and use 100 years later I say "go jump off a cliff."
If you are an American you are a self-hating one. If you are not you are a snob. Tell me where you are from and perhaps we will discuss your "cultured" history.

wisconsin_cur · **Joined:** Thu May 10, 2007 12:00 am **Posts:** 4616

To the issue: My "doom-o-meter" is going up but I compare it to a barameter. I canot see the storm clouds yet but even though it has been warm and sunny for a week, the little tube of fluid is going up, low pressure is coming... and it really looks like a severe weather front

Fiddlerdave · **Joined:** Sun Mar 18, 2007 12:00 am **Posts:** 325

Quote:

As an American, the son and grandson of men and women who have served their communities, nation and world without asking anything in return, as the descendent of a woman who started the local county extension, of malnourished families who still took in orphans even though their own children were in need, who were displaced by economic trends and never complained, who fought and died in wars good and bad, who built barns which still stand like cathedrals and still in good repair and use 100 years later I say "go jump off a cliff."

Ya have to wonder what the next generation will say about this one? "Thanks for the multi-trillion dollar debt-financed advanced missile and fighter systems we can't afford to fuel at $250/bbl that we can't use against China because then they wouldn't buy more Treasury notes?"

Building barns that stand like cathedrals for 100 years would have been a better ideal for us.

wisconsin_cur · **Joined:** Thu May 10, 2007 12:00 am **Posts:** 4616

Fiddlerdave wrote:

Quote:

As an American, the son and grandson of men and women who have served their communities, nation and world without asking anything in return, as the descendent of a woman who started the local county extension, of malnourished families who still took in orphans even though their own children were in need, who were displaced by economic trends and never complained, who fought and died in wars good and bad, who built barns which still stand like cathedrals and still in good repair and use 100 years later I say "go jump off a cliff."

Ya have to wonder what the next generation will say about this one? "Thanks for the multi-trillion dollar debt-financed advanced missile and fighter systems we can't afford to fuel at $250/bbl that we can't use against China because then they wouldn't buy more Treasury notes?"
Building barns that stand like cathedrals for 100 years would have been a better ideal for us.

The next generation will say thanks for getting us through. I hope my kids and grandkids will say, "Well, we never went to bed hungry." Of course many may not have anything to say because they will be dead or never be born.
More seriously, hopefully they will look back at what has been the large-scale abandonment of traditional Ameican (at least in the MidWest) values like thrift, hard work and honesty and see what the results that came in looking for the fast buck, easy finance and the glorification of self-indulgence. It will come as a hard learned lesson.
What do Russians think of their Soviet generation parents? or the Iraqi's of the average Baathist parent? I would guess that they think that they got caught up in a bad thing and did there best to navigate it. I know and love my parents and grandparents, and I hope my children will give them (and me for that matter) that much benefit of the doubt.

killJOY · **Posted:** Wed Mar 12, 2008 5:12 am

Quote:

I love the fact that someone could make the same comment about Afghans or Mexicans or Iraqis or black Africans and they would be jumped upon as a racist ass. Say it about Americans and all of the sudden one is cultured.

You ""love"" it that ""someone"" could be jumped on for making racist comments? Who is this ""someone""?
If a Mexican is criticizing Mexico, or an Afghani is critical of Aghanistan, HOW THAT HELL IS THAT RACIST?
How is an American critical of contemporary American society like a racist>
You are the worst of the knee-jerk armchairs dubs to post here.
Please remind us how self-criticism is like racist criticism of another culture?
Self-criticism is a virtue. Without it, you cannot have improvement.
As "Americans, the sons and grandsons of men and women who have served their communities," the current generation barely deserves to bend down and tie their ancestors' bootstraps.

wisconsin_cur · **Joined:** Thu May 10, 2007 12:00 am **Posts:** 4616

killJOY wrote:

How is an American critical of contemporary American society like a racist>
You are the worst of the knee-jerk armchairs dubs to post here.
Please remind us how self-criticism is like racist criticism of another culture?
Self-criticism is a virtue. Without it, you cannot have improvement.

I have no problem with self-criticism, I do it all of the time. The original comment

Quote:

There is no “real” culture here in the US; Gore Vidal said it best, America is a country of pickpockets. Us Americans are greedy, egotistical, public school trained barbarians and only behave if the “governor” is working correctly

was, in my reading, a across the board denouncation. It is one thing to lay out a criticism of a culture and quite another to say, "They have no "real" culture." Criticism is fine, it makes us stronger. Denounciation accomplishes nothing. It serves only to reduce the subject to a sub-human state (compared to those who have a "real" culture).
I am an American. I am a Hillbilly and I am human with a real culture. I don't ask you to like it. Not saying it is above criticism. I am saying recognize me as human and with a culture.
If it is "knee jerk" to insist on that level of respect, than so be it.

ColossalContrarian · **Joined:** Tue Jun 20, 2006 12:00 am **Posts:** 892

I’m scared to see how the gun toting culture of America reacts when there become long lines to fill up for gas.
I’m concerned that these people - >

Quote:

“Gore Vidal said it best, America is a country of pickpockets. Us Americans are greedy, egotistical, public school trained barbarians and only behave if the “governor” is working correctly”

will decide they don’t want to wait in line and feel that they are entitled to take a life in order to feed their beast of a machine which came from the American culture of big cars and wastefulness

Heineken · **Posted:** Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:50 am

America did have a "real culture" (shall we say, a distinctive culture we have traditionally identified with America, such as may be viewed, perhaps, in the movie "Shane") but it is mostly gone. Just like the native paw paw tree is mostly gone. Perhaps that's what Vidal was commenting on, and what I myself mourn.
What can you say. Now most of America looks the same, wherever you turn. Same cheesy restaurants, crappy development, highways, and self-centered apathetic people, fanning out in all directions. We yack about freedom and liberty even as we systematically destroy all traces of it, sitting in our cars in traffic jams while being filmed by spy satellites overhead.
Too many people, cars, houses, rules, and regs, relentlessly chewing up everything in sight.

Yes yes yes there are still many exceptions, and I'm glad you're one of them, Cur. But a culture is defined by the masses, and we know what they're like. Homer Simpson.
Gore had a pretty patriotic, all-American upbringing, BTW. He's well qualified to comment on the big decline.
We need to bitch and moan and rebel or there is no hope for bringing America back.

jlw61 · **Posted:** Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:54 am

Fiddlerdave wrote:

Quote:

As an American, the son and grandson of men and women who have served their communities, nation and world without asking anything in return, as the descendent of a woman who started the local county extension, of malnourished families who still took in orphans even though their own children were in need, who were displaced by economic trends and never complained, who fought and died in wars good and bad, who built barns which still stand like cathedrals and still in good repair and use 100 years later I say "go jump off a cliff."

Ya have to wonder what the next generation will say about this one? "Thanks for the multi-trillion dollar debt-financed advanced missile and fighter systems we can't afford to fuel at $250/bbl that we can't use against China because then they wouldn't buy more Treasury notes?"

Building barns that stand like cathedrals for 100 years would have been a better ideal for us.

Actually they will be saying "Thanks for the cradle to grave wellfare system and social security system that bankrupted the country and allowed us to be overrun because we could not afford to use the cool jets and missles that could have saved us."
Remember, defence against all enemies, foreign and domestic is actually required. I would rather see the government squander some resources doing what it was designed to do than squandering it on programs for which it was never designed.
Of course, not squandering any resources would be best.

threadbear · **Joined:** Sat Jan 22, 2005 1:00 am **Posts:** 7917

wisconsin_cur wrote:

angrychimp wrote:

It is of course theoretically possible to cope with $8 dollar gas but that is how people are wired especially in the US. You may be underestimating how much different their situation is from ours. There is no “real” culture here in the US; Gore Vidal said it best, America is a country of pickpockets. Us Americans are greedy, egotistical, public school trained barbarians and only behave if the “governor” is working correctly on the great democratic Leviathan.

I love the fact that someone could make the same comment about Afghans or Mexicans or Iraqis or black Africans and they would be jumped upon as a racist ass. Say it about Americans and all of the sudden one is cultured.
As an American, the son and grandson of men and women who have served their communities, nation and world without asking anything in return, as the descendent of a woman who started the local county extension, of malnourished families who still took in orphans even though their own children were in need, who were displaced by economic trends and never complained, who fought and died in wars good and bad, who built barns which still stand like cathedrals and still in good repair and use 100 years later I say "go jump off a cliff."
If you are an American you are a self-hating one. If you are not you are a snob. Tell me where you are from and perhaps we will discuss your "cultured" history.

That's "cultivated" not cultured. Yogurt is cultured. (couldn't resist a snobbish comment) :lol:

Those who loathe your govt. don't necessarily loathe Americans. And those who loathe "Americans", can't stomach a certain type, but are just fine with anyone remotely resembling you or your grandmother. Using the term Americans is just shorthand. Everyone who hates "Americans" understands this.

Pops · **Posted:** Wed Mar 12, 2008 1:52 pm

I kinda think all this BS about Americans are this or that could be summed up simply as
They are such because they can.
Sure, given any tough situation the bad apples float and so are most apparent but in the vast majority of situations to which the Doom-O-Meter points I'll bet on the cur's assessment.

Angry_Chimp · **Joined:** Tue Sep 25, 2007 12:00 am **Posts:** 368

threadbear wrote:

That's "cultivated" not cultured. Yogurt is cultured. (couldn't resist a snobbish comment) :lol:

Those who loathe your govt. don't necessarily loathe Americans. And those who loathe "Americans", can't stomach a certain type, but are just fine with anyone remotely resembling you or your grandmother. Using the term Americans is just shorthand. Everyone who hates "Americans" understands this.

Exactly threadbear.
“What we call progress is a mysterious marriage of creativity and plunder. Civilization has flowered when human beings have devised ingenious new ways to organize production and social life, but such organization has usually been accomplished with stolen goods…. Under girding [its] extraordinary achievements in art philosophy, literature, and statecraft [are] military power and conquest.”
~Richard J Barnet

My comment was not meant to be taken personally like I was leveling a direct insult at someone’s relative who did dignified work to help those in their community. It’s more of a condemnation of the entire system that has flourished, Americans just being the most gluttonous of the current system of barbarism. Maybe the word culture wasn’t what I should have used, more like morals. The Enlightenment polity that was brought to this country freed the individual from the group. Political systems of the past always based on a group principle and Thomas Hobbes freed the individual from the group promoting a theory of individual responsibility for group actions. This is what our modern political system is built upon. The idea being by allowing the individual to follow his own greedy interest; in the end the group would prosper. This basically was a state like in nature, a war against all. To keep this war in check a great Leviathan was needed to make sure that men behaved and did not do harm to others while he followed his own greedy self interest. By doing this the full greed, envy, and selfishness of man was released upon the world. The logical conclusion of these thoughts and ideas is what America is today. It could keep going only if we could keep expanding. The flaw in the entire theory of Enlightenment polity is that they could not imagine resource constraints. The world seemed limitless which we are finding out is not so. Once the limit is reached the Leviathan breaks and things will descend into the true state of nature. I personal don’t give a rats ass what “good” somebodies grandma did.
It’s no surprise. A thinking person could see right through it:
I HAD remarked during my stay in the United States that a democratic state of society, similar to that of the Americans, might offer singular facilities for the establishment of despotism; and I perceived, upon my return to Europe, how much use had already been made, by most of our rulers, of the notions, the sentiments, and the wants created by this same social condition, for the purpose of extending the circle of their power. This led me to think that the nations of Christendom would perhaps eventually undergo some oppression like that which hung over several of the nations of the ancient world: Link
Modern civilization in the end is a system of organized plunder. Everyone is guilty but the group that has taken it to a fine art is the dumbed down bloated ignorant Americans. We deserve everything that is coming to us.
==AC

My Doom-O-Meter is jittering towards max

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