From the Stoa this day I sit in my beach chair and watch things slowly settle around me. No, I'm not watching the fog settle, I'm not watching angry crowds settle; I'm watching Western Civilization settle. Again, no, I'm not watching them "settle" for the god-awful deal just signed in Washington D.C. either.
No, I'm watching a once powerful entity, shot through the heart, bleed out onto the proverbial ground. We are unaware of our mortal wound and struggle to remain upright, surprise and confusion clouding our countenance. Soon, we will fall over and the world as we know it will grow dim. The light of the Western World, the United States of America, is dying.
What will be left? Well, Obama and the Arab world would like to see a multi-polar world where there are no hegemonies, simply countries of like-minded spheres of cooperation who get along with each other (fat chance). The reality is that Europe is going to fragment again, if it ever really was united. China will dominate for a while, but without the US or European markets to buy its stuff they will collapse under internal revolutions. India stands a chance, but will likely be too distracted with Pakistan and the rest of the Muslim world assaulting it on all sides. Africa will slide back into its eternal poverty and slumber. The Muslim world, without the West or a global economic machine to purchase its oil, will collapse into terrible violence as all the promises made to their people over the last 60 years prove to be hollow promises.
Not a nice place to live. The experiment of a Representative Republic will have failed once again due to the ignorance of those who participated.
What is making me sound so morose today? Article after article talking about how great Boehner is, how screwed Obama is, and that our national debt, 24 hours after the bill was signed, hit 100% of GDP.
Obama GOT his debt hike. Boehner got promises. Big difference. G.H. Bush was promised spending restraint by Democrats as well and we see where that got him. The can has been kicked and our national nightmare continues.
The collapse of the dollar and the burning of our food for fuel is what is driving many of the Arab nations into rebellion. An Obama administration sympathetic to the enemies of our country helps too.
Much of the world's commodities prices are benched to the value of the dollar. Oil is not getting more expensive, the dollar is losing its value. Gold is not more expensive, it is the dollar falling away from gold. There is a boost to our import/export business on a weaker dollar, but all that seems to have done, now, is to make other countries race for the deck to keep their "competitive advantage" in place, as Adam Smith would have said. China has been strong armed into allowing its currency to rise, narrowing the gap that the dollar, the Euro, the Yen, and the Swiss Franc have to fall, but race to the bottom we all are.
This is not sustainable. This feels like a poker game that has gone bad and just will not end. The rules are incomprehensible and we have taken to bartering our natural resources as collateral since our paper money is growing less usable. Paper money in general is becoming discredited.
The Tea Party and its like-minded ilk see the dangers and are trying to yank the wheel away from the two lunatic parties that have set us on this path to poverty and insolvency. In the process they are being called, in public and private, "Terrorists" by the Democrats, pains in the asses by the establishment Republicans.
Will we survive? I don't know. I'd like to see the history files from the future and read about what happens over the next 10 years. Does the Tea Party force control away from the Progressives, both Democrat AND Republican or are they sent back to the country side and told to be happy with their recent "victory"?
We are staggering about, hemorrhaging blood at an alarming rate, still unaware of our mortal wound, except for that instinctive part of us (the Founder's Legacy, the Tea Party) that knows we are in trouble.
Live well.
--Zavost
No comments:
Post a Comment