Shelter From The Storm

If the headlines are starting to sound like a Hogan's Heroes running gag about the Russian front, you've only just begun tumbling down Lewis Carroll's rabbit hole.  In draing the swamp, folks are finding it to be MUCH deeper than anyone thought.

There is a most unique crisis brewing in American politics right now, and it is one that bears close observation.

Donald Trump has accused Barack Obama of personally ordering wiretaps on the Trump campaign headquarters for what appears to be obvious political motivations.  The wiretaps seem to have been ordered both to provide intel on the Trump campaign, and to create a narrative to derail the Trump administration in the event of his election.  One imagines this would have also benefitted Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Convention, so the tentacles run deep in the Washington establishment.

Some folks might point to Richard Nixon and the Watergate break-in as being precedent for the current situation, but we must remember that Nixon won the election and was a sitting president when the scandal came to light.  This means that Nixon was protected to a certain extent by his position, with the only possible remedy being impeachment.

In addition, Nixon's resignation meant that Gerald Ford, another Republican succeeded to the office and was able to pardon Nixon before any criminal trials could be brought to court.

In the current case, Obama has served his two terms in office and Clinton lost the election.  Had she won, she would have been able to cover up the dirty deeds, or in the worst-case scenario, pardon Obama and head off any criminal proceedings.

We can now fully appreciate the panic going on within the Democrat Party and the sheer terror they must be feeling at this moment.  This precarious legal position certainly goes a long way toward explaining the amazing amount of effort being put forth to discredit and unseat Trump, and get an insider, if even a Republican, into the office.  The gravity of the situation vastly increases the danger to life and limb that Trump is facing, because the stakes, as we will see in a moment, are enormous - and that is not hyperbole.

If the current situation continues to roll out of control, at least from Obama's perspective, he faces felony charges without the benefit of being a sitting president.  Thus, the case would proceed directly to the courts, and not to Congress, which would be far more lenient on corruption, since they are - for the most part - just as dirty if not more so.

One imagines that if charges are brought against Obama, the proverbial blood in the water will likely bring additional scrutiny of the blatantly false birth certificate proffered by Obama some time back.  Forgery of government documents is also a felony, and seeing Obama already behind a barrel would encourage enemies to pile on.

At that point, one could make a fairly safe bet that the Fast and Furious scandal would resurface, where Obama authorized, and then-US attorney general Eric Holder carried out, the "strawman" purchase of thousands of automatic rifles.  The rifles were given to Mexican drug gangs, after which one of them was eventually used to kill a federal drug enforcement agent.

This is all bad enough, but it gets far worse, and in fact becomes a genuine nightmare crisis of amazing proportions.

If Obama were convicted of committing a felony while in office, any felony, he would certainly go to prison.  That would obviously be bad for Obama, but that's not the half of it.  If a sitting or former US president were convicted of committing a felony in office, EVERY SINGLE ACT HE DID AS PRESIDENT WOULD BE NULL AND VOID.

Let that sink in for a moment.

As a convicted felon, every single law, Presidential Directive, Executive Order, budget, and act Obama did while in office would suddenly be vacated.  The entire past eight years of his administration would become the acts of a convicted criminal, and thus considered fraudulent.  Every bomb and bullet, every life lost, every dollar spent would thus be criminal acts and unenforceable - and unprotected.

NOW one can appreciate the magnitude of what is unfolding in Washington at this moment.

Furthermore, this would make Obama and his entire administration personally liable for war crimes, banking and wire fraud (on a mass scale), and even conspiracy to commit any number of crimes (RICO in US legal parlance).

What's worse, Obama is no longer in power and the Democrats lost control of both the House and Senate.  Once the ball gets rolling, there is little or no resistance anywhere in Washing ton to protect the past administration, and Trump being the celebrated outsider that he is, has no skin in the game to protect anyone but himself.

This is HUGE, folks.

If you were in the same position, would you be doing everything in your power to undermine the election, discredit Trump, block and obfuscate every word and deed Trump makes, foment riots, formulate Russian conspiracies, activate the entire media establishment against the sitting president?  Oh hell yes, you would.

The scandal touches every corner of the Washington establishment on both sides of the political spectrum, since Congress would have been complicit at least by omission and dereliction of duty.  You can bet that every person who had any amount of power and authority over the last eight years is currently checking prices and availability of South American flights, especially landing near George W. Shrub's 100,000-acre ranch in Paraguay.

It is difficult to overstate the case.  The huge vulnerability that has opened up threatens the entire US federal government and could literally collapse the empire.  If this situation "gets legs", as they say, it will take decades to unwind and would see US politicians on trial in a dozen countries and in the World Court.  There is a critical singularity approaching.

To compound matters, the Obama gang and the DNC has chosen to fight fire with fire, rather than slink quietly off into a corner.  By throwing everything in the arsenal at Trump in an effort to completely unseat him, they have sealed their fate.  In years past, former presidents slithered off into obscurity, only trotted out for special occasions, but they kept their heads low and let the incoming administration clean up the mess.  It was a kind of unspoken rule that each succeeding president covered for the previous one, in order to be afforded the same courtesy once out of office.

Because Trump is a true outsider who financed his own campaign, there is little or no pressure that can be brought to bear on him.  Also, his personality is such that once attacked, he will go on the offensive and won't stop till the opposition is thoroughly vanquished.  Furthermore, Trump has proven himself to be very short-sighted, and so is likely not considering all the consequences for the long term.  He is in war mode and winning is his only option.  It is his defining characteristic.

Thus, we find in Washington at this moment the legendary rock beating itself silly against the immutable hard spot.  Hundreds of elected and un-elected heads sit squarely in the guillotine just now.

Throw in the already building phalanx against the PizzaGate pedophiles that spans the globe, and we are looking at a potential scandal of epic proportions. If things continue along the current course, our great-great-great grandchildren will be reading about this moment in history class twoo hundred years from now.

Yes, it is THAT serious.

Batten down the hatches, get your hip-waders and slickers on, this is going to be a major blow and seas are going to get just a bit choppy from here on out.

Spectators At The Apocalypse

Did you miss me?  Sorry for the day and a half off.  I do occasionally work at productive, paying jobs, and as a freelancer, I have to do a little selling in between to keep the work flow going.

At any rate, I was having a little conversation with Roy over on our Farcebook page about the stunning media melt-down this past year and a half.

As a career media guy who has worked in local news departments for Fox affiliates, large daily newspapers in the Rockies and the film industry, I know for a fact that everything you see on TeeVee is a complete fraud.  It is why I often rant on about turning off your media streams.

Once upon a time, we were still biased, but we were subtle.  We gave better lighting, more favorable camera angles and a few extra seconds of air time to the "preferred" candidates.  Often, we would lead with the "good guy" or focus a bit more on the "bad guy's" foibles.

Now, however, you can practically see them cashing the Hillary for Prez checks.  The late-night "comedy" shows have practically forgotten there are five candidates.  If you watch them regularly, there is only one and he is completely nuts, according to the near-incessant lambasting Trump gets.  If Hillary gets any attention at all, it is more or less an "oh yeah" mention at the end of a five-minute monologue on the evils of Trump.

The "news" organizations might as well just come out and give us a list of all the things they aren't going to cover.  It's that obvious.  I make a habit of reading news sources from all over the world on a daily basis, including a number of "alt" sites that I consider relatively trustworthy.  Frankly, if I didn't, I would have no idea what was really going on.  The Western media, and especially the US, have just gone off their rockers over this election.  Many of the media pie-holes has already blatantly admitted that they are protecting and promoting Hillary.  Since Americans, for the most part, don't believe anything until someone in authority tells them in simple English, we can safely say that the "conspiracy theories" have been put to rest.

What astounds me the most, though, is the bum's rush to demonize Russia.  Having watched several hours of MOS (man-on-the-street) interviews with "average" Americans, it is no wonder this particular piece of brainwashing is working so well.  In fact, most people have no clue about Russia, why it is being railroaded, or the very real and imminent danger that "poking the bear" brings.  The rhetoric is beyond even the more dire and propagandistic things I remember from the Cold War.

If the anti-Russian rhetoric proves anything, it is that Hillary has absolutely zero problems with starting wars and killing thousands, if not millions of people to hide her corruption.  Can you imagine the depravity of a mind that can conceive of such things, much less act on them on a global scale?  Though I cannot in good conscience bring myself to vote for any of the candidates, it is quite clear that Hillary should not even be considered a serious contender at this point.  Anyone who can proudly say they are voting for her has got to be under the most exigent spells ever witnessed.

In yet another layer of amazement, one has to wonder what these people think they will get in exchange for selling their profession and their souls to the devil.

Is there some well-hidden pot of gold waiting somewhere enticing these balloon-headed hair-spray catchers into destroying any semblance of professionalism?  Of course, at this point Hillary must win, because there is no other exit than to have the gratitude of the queen.  Any other outcome will leave these padded wallets in the cold with no credibility and only the most brain-dead audiences.  They have literally cashed in centuries of media development on this election.

The only real winners that I can see are the alt media.  As the depraved Hillary implodes on stage, it will become increasingly obvious, even to the most fried of couch potatoes, that the alt media were the only ones accurately reporting the news.  On way or the other, we are witnessing the greatest shift in power since the fall of Rome.

I have no love lost for the alt media.  For the most part, they are illiterate slime diggers, but folks like Julian Assange get my greatest respect.  He is literate and he has quite literally put his life on the line to let all the poisons in the mud hatch out.  He is a journalist in the great tradition, and a patriot of rare constitution.

Regardless of how all this shakes out in the near term, we are witnessing one of the most profound moments in history.  The repercussions from Election 2016 will touch nearly every life on the planet, and I do not resort to hyperbole in saying this.  If Hillary wins, the resulting destruction of Western civilization will shake the world for the next 100 years.  If Trump wins, the collapse of the media and whatever follows from his administration will have equally earthshaking consequences.

I admit that I have prepared for, and in many ways hoped for this moment, but now that it is upon us, I can hardly comprehend the way it has come about.  It is one thing to image such historic moments, but another entirely to witness it.  I cannot say that I am sorry, because my disgust with the political and media establishments is acute.  What is regretable, though, is the numbers of people that will suffer because it has gone this far, having built up for well over a century now.  However painful it will get - and it looks as if it will hurt quite a bit - we must all take responsibility for having allowed ourselves to be led so far down the garden path.

The collapse of the media is only the most visible and remarkable of the changes occurring, but certainly not the only one.  We can be sure that at every level of the establishment, the ground is heaving and the sky is falling.  They have painted themselves into a very tight corner from which there is only one escape, and that is to put Hillary in the White House in order to complete the take-over.

The blow-dried nincompoops have bought the promise of great power and wealth if they jump onto the establishment lap like a good dog.  What they apparently fail to realize is that either way, they have already lost everything, it's only a matter of gallows or guns as to how they are dispatched.  At some level, I feel sorry for them, because they bought the same siren song that we all did, they just had better seats and the feeling that they were part of the inner circle.

As for the rest of us, the best thing we can do to save our sanity at this point, is to become dispassionate and remove ourselves as far as we can from the emotional destruction that is heading our way like a light-speed freight train.  Panic is self-defeating and fear prevents clarity.  This has been inevitable since it began.  Nothing lasts forever, even the best laid plans of mice and men.  We can choose to be victims, or take control of the situation and, as the Chinese say, find the opportunity in the chaos.

The rather amazing run of relative stability we've enjoyed since WW2 is at an end, and the scale of the collapse ensures that at least the next three generations will find the world little resembles what they were told to expect.  Ultimately, this is a good thing, but like a good roller coaster, there will be many hair-raising moments getting to the other side.

Turn off the TeeVee, tune in reality and prepare yourself to witness something that will be the stuff of legends long after we are gone.

What if...?

Our thought experiment for the day:

Suppose you woke up tomorrow and the USA had gone the way of the USSR?

It's become fashionable these days to be a 'prepper.'  Folks are stocking up on things they think they would need to get through a couple of weeks or months of disaster.  Storeable food, water filters, generators, even guns and ammo have been on a lot of people's shopping lists lately.  I see this as a good trend.  It promotes self-sufficiency and is just reasonable in the face of Mother Nature's vagaries.

The part of prepping that no one talks about is the mental gaming of various scenarios.  Major militaries have 'war colleges', where the best and brightest gather regularly to ponder the 'what-ifs.'   It's part of being ready for anything.  The reason people panic, or worse, or stunned into inaction, is that something happens that they hadn't considered possible.  Their minds shut down as they try to process the flood of unexpected information.

For those who are serious about prepping, we must prepare our minds as well as our supplies.  To do that, we should take a bit of time once in a while to set up possible chains of events, and then noodle through what we would do it they happened.

It's one thing to plan for natural disadters.  Most of us have been through one or two, so we can imagine certain events and mentally plot out a pllan of action.  But suppose you woke up and your country had collapsed.

The reason I chose the USA is that, 1) it's a very real possiblity, 2) it would affect the entire world, and 3) almost no one is ready for it.

As we discussed last time, most folks have a normalcy bias.  In the face of a disaster, they assume that things will return to normal within a short period of time.  Because of that, they lose valuable time in responding to a crisis.  When there's a blackout, we generally assume that it will be back in a couple of hours or less.  We don't immediately react as if it is gone and may not return for months, or even years.

When the USSR collapsed, no one expected it, at least at the general population level.  We saw the news footage of vast crowds gathered at the Kremlin and Yeltsin standing on the tank leading the charge.  However, it was months before the average Joe began to process the fact that the USSR was gone and not coming back.

At this moment in time, the very real possibility exists that the USA may follow suit sooner or later.  It has run up astronomical debt in trying to maintain its empire (just like the USSR), its currency is in very real danger of collapse (just like the USSR), and there's a growing sentiment among the population at large that things are not right and need fixing fast (just like the USSR).  It stands to reason that some event may trigger a domino effect that could collapse the USA overnight, just like the USSR.

Here's our scenario.  Israel unilaterally attacks Iran, assuming that the USA will jump in, as it always has, to pull its bacon out of the fire (pun intended).  But, when the order comes down from the CIC, the top military brass balks and refuses to engage.  This causes an immediate crisis with certain elements within the ranks surrounding the White House seeking the arrest of the CIC.

Within hours of the news hitting the wire, the general population is galvanized.  Thousands, if not millions of folks converge on city halls, state capitols and DC.  At least one group takes over national media facilities and begins an unstoppable uplink live to satellite and internet getting the word out around the usual 'gatekeepers' filtering the message.

The world at large gets wind of this.  It causes an immediate crisis of confidence in the dollar and dollar-denominated financial intstruments.  In less than 72 hours, the dollar collapses to unheard of lows and Americans around the world can not exchange their dollars or use them to pay airfare, hotels and other needs.  Credit cards are frozen or refused.

In the USA, by the end of the first week, a significant number of people are calling in sick.  Either they are on strike in solidarity, or they are afraid to make the commute through mobs of protesters to get to work.

The CIC barracades himself in the White House, making near round-the-clock appeals on the media outlets that are still listening.  He orders military and national guard to suppress the uprising, but this is only effective in certain limited areas, like LA and New York City.  As locals feed out images on the crack down on the internet, this further enrages the general populace and even fence-sitters are forced to join sides.

By the end of the second week, the power grid is only sporadic, dependent on dedicated skeleton crews to keep it running at all.  Stores have been emptied and are not being restocked, because the truckers and train engineers are either on strike or not willing to risk their lives to deliver supplies.  Around the country, a number of city halls have been torched and several state capitols have been taken over by protesters.

Washington DC is under seige.  Millions of people have literally encircled the city and are backed up by military who are still loyal to their oaths.  There are reports of numerous projectiles of various kinds hitting the White House, and the CIC is trapped in the underground bunker, deperately appealing for order, though by now, most of the media are either taken over or more focused on national and global events to worry about him.

By the end of the third week, local leaders have emerged and taken over the libraries of major universities.  They have set up common law councils to try to re-establish order.  Across the nation, thousands of suburban neighborhoods have sealed themselves off and have pooled supplies and resources with citizen patrols repelling interlopers.  Thousands more people have started squatting in national parks and have set up make-shift cities using the facilities there.

In DC, the CIC has announced that he will resign and surrender to US Marshals, but the Marshals are nowhere to be found.  Crowds have knocked down the fence around the White House and are now literally surrounding the building, though they have no yet breached its walls.  There's also the question of who will take over the CIC position, since most Congress-critters have vanished, and the Veep was captured and is being held in Maryland somewhere.

In Houston, a group of sympathetic refinery workers have taken over several of the refineries and started producing limited amounts of gasoline, but there is no orderly way to distribute it, and it is not nearly enough to supply the overwhelming demand.

Local TeeVee stations have been taken over in nearly every market and are broadcasting patriotic messages and information on groups who are organizing to supply various services, such as medical care, etc.

In NYC, the Federal Reserve building has been completely overrun and gutted.  Dozens of bankster types have been arrested and are being held for trials, though lynch mobs have taken their toll.

Globally, markets have crashed.  The EU is in tatters and international trade is running at a fraction of capacity.  US embassies and military bases worldwide have been looted and destroyed, and hundreds of military personnel, stranded by the sudden collapse, have been taken prisoner in a great many countries.  Media have carried news footage of people burning piles of dollar bills, since the currency has completely collapsed and the paper is worthless.

By week four, the CIC is captured trying to escape wearing an elaborate Hollywood-style prosthetic disguise.  However, at the first sign of trouble, the security around him bolts and he is taken prisoner by the military.j

The entire world is in chaos, since so many markets and international trade operated on dollars.  Practically overnight, millionaires and billionaires lose their entire fortunes.  Commerce grinds to a trickle, causing riots and revolutions to flare up in dozens of countries.  The entire command-and-control structure has nearly vanished in a month leaving the vast majority of folks completely clueless, while handfuls of people are desperately trying to establish some kind of order in various places, but the fever of the immediate situation is too powerful for them to be effective.

On the newly liberated media, scenes of people walking aimlessly through the streets clutching old photo albums or other mementos of their past lives are common.  The stunned look in their eyes says it all.  Even a month into the crisis, they are still unable to cope with the collapse of everything they once assumed to be permanent.

Now, what would you do?  Are you prepared for events on this kind of scale?  Besides mentally steeling yourself to deal with such things, what could you effectively do to safeguard you and your family in this kind of scenario?

To think this couldn't happen is naive.  It has happened, not just in the USSR, but in countless societies throughout history.  When the mighty fall, it is usually swift and decisive.  Certianly, the USA is not stable.  This is one possible scenario of dozens with more or less the same outcome.  It behooves us to ponder such things in the worst case, if for no other reason than to prevent ourselves from panicking and thereby being useful to our loved ones.

How real is this possibility?  One would have to assume that it is inevitable, though when and how are huge variables.  Given the current state of world affairs, though, one would wisely assume sooner than later.

Providence always favors the prepared mind.

Just A Little Bit Closer

Reader Note: Our usual column on acupuncture for treating blindness in MS will return next Saturday due to a heavy work and travel schedule in the past two weeks.  Thanks for reading and for the information folks have been sending in.  Sampai jumpa!
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Close.

Interesting word.  Depending on how you pronounce it, you can be zeroing in on your target, or missing it altogether.

Denmark closed its borders.  Minnesota closed its doors.  Stauss-Kahn is closer to freedom.  And the Greatest Depression is getting closer every day.

You can be a closer and get brownie points at work.  Or you can be a closer and be the last man out when the factory shuts down.  Kind of the opposite of a Wally Mart greeter.

Close only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades, but we all love to get close to our significant squeezes.

A lot depends on what preposition you put with it, too.  Close up, close down, close in, close out, close to, close with.  Close the door, close to the door.

Back to Strauss-Khan for a minute.  Looks like the New York prosecutors read this column, since they have decided, as we did some time ago, that the whole 'raping chamber maids' story didn't smell right.  Last we saw, he had slipped his house arrest, and the maid was headed for deeper water.  What's interesting to note is that as soon as a new head of the IMF was beknighted and ensconsed, Strauss-Khan found himself quite a bit freer.  We're smelling a different rat now.  This story got more exposure than Lady Gaga's not-so-interesting breasts, and now they're all standing at the boarding gate waving him good-bye?  C'mon.  Do you really think we're that stup...don't answer that.

Speaking of reading this here column, looks like Wisconsin schools are suddenly flush with money after they put the reins on unions.  Did we call it, or didn't we?  We have nothing against unions, per se.  At the time they were in vogue, they served a vital purpose.  However, they have become nothing more than fronts for mafia and gangsters, fat and bloated from their own success.

On top of that, the public service is no place for unions.  If you want better pay and bennies, get a real job in the productive sector, so your servants to rob you too.  Sorry, bub, but when you are living off of my dime, you should be grateful to have food on your plate in the first place.

We here at LFS are all for screwing the corporate giants.  Lord knows they've bent us over for far too long.  But government employees work for us and take our money (at gun point) to do it.  Collective bargaining on their part should be limited to begging to keep their jobs every fiscal year.

In other news, Texas closes the legislative special session by allowing TSA to get too close to your goodies.  That the Perry/Dewhurst team are a traitorous bunch of NeoCon scum is obvious, but what do they have on the rest of the servants in Austin that makes them lapdogs?

How anyone could submit to TSA's illegal and immoral groping is beyond us, much less willingly allow their wives and daughters to be personally violated in such a gross and public manner is indicative of mass psychosis.

Obviously, the American male has closed down his higher reasoning and is close to being extinct.

Washington state has closed its tourist bureau and is close to a Minnesota Mambo itself.  Florida has enclosed pink slips with many of its public servants' payslips.  Many states are closing schools and libraries, and California is close to splitting in two.  At the same time, the US is no closer to a solution to its fiscal stupidity.

Many countries are closing parts of the internet to their citizens because it represents a direct threat to the hegemonic sovereignty of government over every aspect of people's lives.  They are using the threat of cyberwar as justification, yet those same governments are the perpetrators of the cyberwar.  Makes close to no sense, or does it?  Perhaps they need more bandwidth to launch their idiocy into cyberspace?  Gives a whole new meaning to the term, "Grow a backbone."

Every day we move closer and closer to the inexorable demise of the prevailing paradigm.  We are in a bus careening down a perilous mountain road, completely out of control, and we are wringing our hands over whether the engine oil was recently changed.  This is very close to being textbook insanity.

It is akin to organizing a shuffle-board game as the Titanic goes down by the bow.  We are hoisting sails in the hopes of gaining speed while the ship's pumps are overwhelmed by the onslaught of water in the ballast.  We are tossing out the baby while fretting over the safety of the bathwater.

We love a good metaphor around here.

It's the closing days of Western Empire.  Our sun has set and our flag is lowered.  We have squandered our moment in history out of sheer greed and avarice.  Many say, "The elite would not endanger themselves, so we must stay close to them!"  Au contraire.  As personal witness, we have seen first-hand the ability of someone who has lost all contact with reality destroy themselves and everyone around them, by being trapped in a model of reality that is flawed at its very core.  Closeness to the perpetrators will only hasten the inevitable demise, not protect against it.

Megalomania causes one to envision a personal cloak of invincibility, so that one is blind to the many holes in the armor.  Throughout history, we see repeated examples of people drunk with their own success and imagining themselves incapable of error.  Just because the ladder of domination has withstood so far, does not mean that the next rung will sustain the weight, or that there is even a next rung at all.

The PIIGS are close to complete implosion.  Denmark is withdrawing into its peninsular nest.  Gross Britain is anxiously watching the subjects get restless.  The US is on the verge of a collapse that will be the grist of history texts for hundreds of years to come.

Even if we stop dead in our tracks, the precipice will continue to move ever closer.  Nothing can stop the Laws of Economic Gravity.

As a civilization, we have built a mountain by digging the dirt out from under our feet.  No matter how careful we are, we must inevitably fall into the pit, while admiring the product of our cleverness.

When we attend the funeral of a friend, whose profligate lifestyle led to their untimely death, we don't marvel at the tragedy of their passing, we nod our heads in knowing that their choices made the current situation unavoidable.  Perhaps we admire their achievements, possibly envy some of their experiences, but we still feel justified that our own reserve leaves us living while they are dead.

The weakness of any paradigm are the assumptions on which it is founded.  We have assumed that debt was properity, while closing our eyes to the repeated examples, both personal and historic, that this is not true.  Every mouthful of food we take is a mouthful denied to someone else.  Every dollar of debt we use is a piece of future properity that we will not have.

Remember the Canadian guy who started the jogging craze?  His name was Jim Fixx.  He died of a heart attack at 55 while jogging.  Brings you close to tears, doesn't it?

As we close this chapter in human history, there will be many who will bemoan its passing, yet the aware person will see that we have carved our own headstone.  It is difficult for the individual to conceive of things so much larger than the Self.  The scale of our hubris has outstripped our ability to deal with it, even on a conceptual basis.

The hardest thing for humans is to come to grips with their own failure, but if our progeny is to survive, we must do so and quickly.  Look at the way the Army Corps of Engineers has fought the flooding Mississippi.  Accepting the inevitable flood, they have calculated when and where to release the onslaught.

In dealing with our creation, we must take the biblical advice and pluck out the offending part, in order to save the rest.  When a physician is dealing with a gangrenous extremity, his choice is to amputate or risk losing the patient entirely.  The climber whose arm was pinned beneath a boulder had only one choice, cut off the arm himself or die.

We are closing in quickly on this singular choice.  Will we sacrifice everything to keep the paradigm whole?  Or will we chose to amputate the offending parts to spare the more vital systems?

Close.  Closer, Closing.  Closest.

Far Side Waxing

Dengue Fever in Florida
Lazy-ass Do-Nothing CONgress
Fiddling While Rome Burns
More Fiddling About While Pompeii Burns Too
A Trillion Here, A Trillion There...
What's A Little Extinction Among Friends?
Creating the Self-Fulfilling Prophesy
Americans Quittin' n Buggin' Out
The Great and Powerful Oz



The first thing you should notice about the above links is that they are not wild-eyed bloggers (like me), conspiracy nutjobs or 'fringe elements.' These are 'mainstream' media outlets talking about America's long dark tea-time of the soul (sorry Douglas Adams).

In fact, America has been in decline for a long time. I was aware of it somewhere around the Reagan Administration. At that time, I pointed out to my father the old wisdom that the hunter must become the hunted. By extension, America must become like Soviet Russia and vice versa. It would seem that my observation was somewhat precient.

The above articles document Americans changing nationalities (defecting), living conditions devolving to 'third world' standards and a growing revolutionary fever. Does this sound like the richest, most powerful nation on Earth? Or a tin-pot poseur with a microphone and amplifier?

Outbreaks of dengue fever and epidemics of bedbugs sure sound like the kind of conditions we used to point at 'lesser' countries and snigger at how backward they were. We were so proud of our progressive welfare state that turned an entire nation into a bunch of teat-suckers. We had all the latest toys and geegaws, while those 'lesser' nations were still mucking around in the jungle. Hell, just watch any version of King Kong, which all begin with the capture of the beast on Borneo (Indonesia). Notice how the natives are depicted. Now take a clear and serious look at American cutlture and lifestyles. From over here on the Far Side, I don't see much difference. Even has the sacrificial female re: Congresscritter Waters.

When the Financial Times headlines that Americans are bailing out, then you can smell a trend. We're not just talking ex-pat status, but throwing out the citizenship baby with the burdensome-taxes bathwater. Remember all the stories and movies about Russian defectors? Remember how we would point to that as proof that we were better than 'them?' Remember when being anti-government was simply unthinkable? We couldn't imagine someone not liking America or wanting to be an American. The whole world wanted to be American! They all wanted dollars and McDonald's. Well, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who wants dollars now, and gosh, McDonald's is about as healthy as eating raw plastic, except the plastic doesn't come with artery-damming fat. In fact, America's veil of bullsh*t has grown so thin that even the Mexicans are running the other way across the river. The image of rats from a sinking ship comes to mind.

When all you have left is jingoism, then the game is up. Insecure and inwardly weak, the bully boasts loudly and protects his piece of turf against all enemies, both foreign and imagined. The dying power resorts to slogans and invading ill-prepared countries in order to display the tail feathers of past glory. Sadly, America has completely lost sight of what made it great. It wasn't the ability to reduce other nations to rubble. it wasn't the nanny-state welfare system that encouraged sloth. It wasn't even its industrial might. It was one very simple act. So simple, in fact, that it has become almost invisible, yet the implications of this one act are so profound as to be Earth-shaking. The original idea that made America great was that government stepped aside and let people build themselves up. But once regulations and laws and fees and taxes and agencies and authorities (when did they go from servants to authorities?), all was lost. It was only a matter of time before the bloated, rotting carcass would collapse on itself and belch forth streams of maggots.

I am reminded of a famous quote. Who was it? De Tocqueville or Tyler? "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."

It would seem that dictatorship has decended upon America.

Things don't look good for America from here on the Far Side. We have about the best perspective one can have, whether physically, culturally and psychologically, that can be achieved on the surface of Earth. What we see here doesn't look good for America's future. Oh, sure...you can argue semantics or say that it ain't so bad "'cause ah live here an' things is jes fine." Hard to see the forest through those darned trees.

My father had a sign on his desk when he was in the Texas Legislature. It read, "When you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember that your first thought was to drain the swamp." When Clinton was in office, people looked fondly back at Bush the First. When Bush the Second was installed, people actually thought Billy wasn't so bad. Now we have Bammy and folks wish that we could have Bush the Second back in there. The line of outrage always moves forward, and the trailing line of nostalgia is in lock-step behind it. Remember Nixon? People beat their breasts and lamented the end of the Republic. Now the Watergate break-in seems insignificant to the level of crap flowing from the Beltway.

Two and a half years ago, I announced to my circle of friends and family that I was moving to The Far Side. The most common response: "Indonesia...is that in Bali?" Most others thought I was just plain crazy moving to the Third World from good ol' Merica. Now, many of those same people want to know how they can move here too. Such is life. A visionary is always considered crazy until he is proven right.

A little perspective goes a long way.

And such is Life on the Far Side.