The world waited breathless as the second hand moved closer to midnight on December 31st. For months we braced ourselves for the downfall of the modern world when the embedded chips in every electronic device would fail and bring the world to its knees. Airplanes would fall from the skies, offshore oil rigs would close their valves and everybody’s digital “money” would disappear from the bank's computers. Our own wonderful technology would be our downfall. Y2K was the harbinger of the New Dark Ages. The survivalist gear and gun industries cheered it on.
Midnight came and went and the world was much the same on the morning of January 1, 2000. The End Times Bookies made a mark in their forms and the batting average remained 0 for 1,000,000 on Armageddon claims. The End Times landscape had changed. We had changed. As a people we decided to do The End on an installment plan with convenient monthly payments instead of a leap off the cliff. Instead of plunging into the Dark Ages, we decided to meander in taking smaller steps.
Regardless of what side of the tracks you live on, 2000-2009 will go down as one of the most transformative decades in U.S. history. In the span of just ten years we have managed to completely unravel the thread of our entire democratic existence. Long cherished and hard fought Constitutional rights have been tread on, discarded and forgotten. A new Gilded Age of obscene exploitation of the middle class and poor is our new birthright. Its amazing what only ten years can do.
I have long lamented the fact that my country has gone from the home of the brave to a nation frightened enough to send 100,000 soldiers and $1,000,000,000,000 to Afghanistan to root out 100 militant goat herders. If you do the math, it is anything but brave and, after almost 10 years of trying, still a goal unlikely to be obtained.
Am I the only American left who doesn’t fear being killed by a terrorist? I have more fear of
being killed by a motorist. The likelihood of my demise being caused by some guy in a cave in Pakistan is statistically very small as opposed to a car wreck. The only money I deem necessary for national defense is the 39 cents I will have to shell out for the bullet I put in any terrorist’s head who comes messin’ with me or mine. One molecular biologist or nuclear physicist working out of a Saudi-funded lab in Pakistan scares me more than a goatherd with a box cutter or shoe bomb. But why worry? Pakistan is our friend and ally. Just like the Saudis. Just ask the government.
And what about the land of the free? It is now the land of the fee. As in banking. Our globalist
corporate masters no longer even make an effort to hide their evil plans for our society. It has been made clear that no matter what your demographic is - male, female, young, old, black, white, left, right or whatever, if your demographic isn’t exceedingly moneyed and well-heeled, you don’t count anymore. We reward failure with multi-trillion dollar bailouts and now, much to my amusement when Time magazine made Bernanke, “Person of the Year,” we honor these thieves. Thievery and dishonesty are now heroic and honorable aspects of our political and public life; something for all of us to aspire to.
Our republic’s downfall has been incremental but is rapidly gaining speed. Each step in the
downward journey has its own effect and consequences, rippling out into our lives and society at large. Clinton signing the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is the reason you have a higher cable/satellite bill for less and greatly inferior programming than you had ten years ago. The repeal of Glass/Steagle and the almost complete deregulation of the banking industry has brought us our current economic mess. Asking a den of thieves to self-regulate themselves would be a hugely laughable concept if it wasn’t destroying so many American families.
Since the 1980s I have lived with the fact that there is no real personal privacy in our nation. If
the powers that be want to know what you’re doing, they will find out with click of a mouse. The difference here in the 21st century is that they no longer do these things covertly. It is sad when people think they have some modicum of privacy - such as when they rant and rave against any disclosure of their medical records. Clue: Everyone knows your medical condition. Your family, doctor, pharmacist, your insurer’s armies of adjusters and claims clerks - the list goes on and on.
As a people we have been conditioned/brainwashed into believing just about anything. We buy into UFO’s, Mayan Calendars and “spreading democracy to the Middle East.” Our gullibility seems to have no boundaries. The real enemies of our nation aren’t hiding in caves in the Middle East, they are sipping Dom Perignon and Kristal (on your tab) with their buddies on Wall Street. After having our entire economy raped and plundered by these evil bastards, we go about our business as if nothing happened - Pollyannas skipping through the meadows of consumer delusion, hands over our ears singing, “La la la di da.”
There are formulas for despotism and you are an unwitting ingredient in the New World Recipe. It has gone way beyond personalities for me. To rant and rave about Obama or Bush is exactly what our rulers want. They have divided and conquered us. Our rage has been stoked and our fury targeted at the wrong villains. We scream about the Conservatives or Liberals as though a political viewpoint is the problem. To me, it is the actions that are the problem, not an ethereal philosophical viewpoint. Many Americans think torture is an unavoidable new tool of 21st Century diplomacy - its not the theory that bothers me but the practice.
Hope springs eternal that many Americans might shy away from being the one with the cattle prod or truncheon, but the conditioning that makes such heinous acts possible, perhaps inevitable continues.On the brighter side of things you can look at it this way: you will have a front row, mid-court seat to the fall of modern civilization. Better than a skybox. Enjoy it. You bought and paid for it.