On to that card: It was filled with proud stories of the kids in the U.S. Army, and it closed with, “We pray for peace.” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Never mind that the writer almost certainly is fooling herself. If her prayers are answered, that’ll put the battle-ready kids out of their jobs. And, since war comprises the foundation for our entire industrial economy, the empire almost surely would sink to the bottom of the already stinking swamp within weeks of an outbreak of peace. Praying for peace makes as much sense as supporting the troops, and both cases of wishful thinking are clothed in lies.

I can only imagine how many people I’ll offend with this essay. And yet, I can’t seem to stop myself. Any decent social critic points out the lunacy of societal taboos. I’m not suggesting I’m a decent social critic. But I can no longer ignore this most annoying of taboos.

Support the troops. It’s the rallying cry of an entire nation. It’s the slogan pasted on half the bumpers in the country.

Supporting the troops is pledging your support for the empire. Supporting the troops supports the occupation of sovereign nations because might makes right. Supporting the troops supports wanton murder of women and children throughout the world. And men, too. Supporting the troops supports obedience at home and oppression abroad. Supporting the troops throws away every ideal on which this country allegedly is founded. Supporting the troops supports the ongoing destruction of the living planet in the name of economic growth. Supporting the troops therefore hastens our extinction in exchange for a few dollars. Supporting the troops means caving in to Woodrow Wilson’s neo-liberal agenda, albeit cloaked as contemporary neo-conservatism (cf. hope and change). Supporting the troops trumpets power as freedom and fascism as democracy.

Image: en.wikipedia.org

Perhaps most importantly, supporting the troops means giving up on resistance. Resistance is all we have, and all we’ve ever had. We say we’re mad as hell and we claim we’re not going to take it any more. But, sadly, we gave up on resistance of any kind years ago. After all, we might get in trouble. We might be incarcerated for protesting without a permit.

When jets from the nearby military base scream over the university campus, conversation stops, indoors or out. We pause awkwardly, stopped in mid-conversation. After the jets pass, in formation, an excuse often is articulated by the person with whom I’m visiting: “It’s the sound of freedom.”

My response never varies: “Sounds like oppression to me.”

The ensuing silence is more awkward than the scream of the jet engines.

It’s as if America’s cultural revolution never happened. It’s as if we never questioned the dominant paradigm in an empire run amok, as if we never experienced Woodstock and the Summer of Love, bra-burning hippies and war-torn teenagers, Rosa Parks and the Cuyahoga River. We’re right back in the 1950s, swimming in culture’s main stream instead of questioning, resisting, and protesting.

In a Tucson coffee shop last week I saw a woman, apparently in her early twenties, dressed in a short skirt, an apron, and high heels. Had she been behind the counter, she would have been the perfect symbol of the 1950s, a refugee from two generations gone by. We’ve moved from the unquestioning automatons of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell to the firebrands of a radical counter-cultural worldview and back again. A generational sea change swept us from post-war “liberators” drunk on early 1950s propaganda to revolutionaries willing to take risks in defense of late 1960s ideals. The revolution gained steam through the 1970s, but lost its way when the U.S. industrial economy hit the speed bump of domestic peak oil. The Carter Doctrine — the world’s oil belongs to us — coupled with Ronald Reagan’s soothing pack of lies, was the perfect match to our middle-aged comfort, so we abandoned the noble ideals of earlier days for another dose of palliative propaganda. Three decades later, we’ve swallowed so much Soma we wouldn’t couldn’t find a hint of revolution in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

In short, the pillars of social justice and environmental protection rose from the cesspool of ignorance to become shining lights for an entire generation. And then we let them fall back into the swamp. The very notion that others matter — much less that those others are worth fighting for — has been relegated to the dustbin of history.

The problem with being a martyr: You have to die for the cause. And along the way, you’ll probably be jailed and tortured. But there’s a fate far worse than being a martyr, in the minds of America’s youth. There’s the thought you’ll be viewed as an anti-American freak, out of touch with Lady Gaga and Dancing With The Stars. A fate worse than death: Your Facebook page will be removed, thus “disappearing” you.

A line from Eugene Debs, five-time candidate of the Socialist party for U.S. president, comes to mind: “While there is a lower class I am in it, while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” He was serious. So am I. That I am not taken seriously in these most serious of days pulverizes my ego. That Debs is not taken seriously these days shatters my heart.

When I visit with college-age people these days, they have no idea what I mean, and they believe Debs and I are misguided jokers. Completely immersed in a culture of make believe, mind-fucked from birth by the corporations running the media, the thought of resistance is, quite simply, beyond the pale. Resistance? Against what? And why? Isn’t resistance a form of terrorism?

Every revolution has failed. And if that’s not sufficient reason to launch a revolution, I don’t know what is. The revolution is dead: Viva la revolution!

If any one of those troops we claim to support attempts to bring transparency and reform to this country, we instantly turn on him and support his torture by — you guessed it — the troops. And who’s the commander in chief of these troops? That’s right, the man who promised transparency and reform, but who now seeks to crush the very people trying to bring it to us.

If obliterating transparency means criminalizing journalism, we can live with that. Those journalists are probably terrorists anyway. Or worse, liberals. The First Amendment was shredded by Obama’s predecessor, and how it’s being turned to ash. The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are bobbing along the same waves as social justice and environmental protection, sold down the river by a nation addicted to growth for the sake of growth (the ideology of a cancer cell).

It seems very little matters to the typical American beyond economic growth. And for that, most importantly, we need an uninterrupted supply of crude oil. All wars are resource wars, and even our involvement in the last “Good War” was about oil, notwithstanding revisionist history about our compassion regarding Hitler’s final solution. Crude oil’s near-term annual decline rate of 10% means many troops will be needed to secure the lifeblood of the industrial economy. After all, world demand hasn’t peaked yet, although world supply has. If we’re to continue running ruining the world, we’ll need plenty of troops. And they’ll need your support.

You keep supporting the troops, and trying to convince yourself you’re fighting terrorism in the process. If doubt creeps in, turn on the television. Listen to the news anchors and the politicians, the characters and the commercials. Immerse yourself in the ultimate hallucination. Keep lapping up the self-censored “news,” confident the future will bring even more self-indulgent hedonism than the recent past.

And if somebody tries to tell you the hegemony of the U.S. dollar is threatened, thereby causing the price of oil to skyrocket, you just ignore the uncomfortable news, just as the mainstream media have ignored it. That kind of thing can’t happen here. It’s never happened, so it can’t happen (Francis Bacon’s Idol of the Den). If some misinformed fool attempts to point out the consequences of consumerism, shrug him off as a terrorist. And if somebody tries to confuse your happy holidays by telling you the good news about economic collapse, you tell him you’ll be praying for peace. That’ll make it all okay.

How timely, then, when the hostess walked by, sans pants. And, better yet, she dropped her pen right in front of us. As she bent down to pick up the pen, she literally covered her ass with her left hand while picking up the pen with her right hand.

At least modesty isn’t completely dead. But I have to admit that, even with her relatively small butt, her hand didn’t quite do the trick.

I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the born-again fashion scene, last popular a decade or so ago. In fact, the CYA hostess reminds me to mention, as if I haven’t done so enough already, that it’s time to start covering our own asses.

On the front of economic meltdown, the Pentagon is ratcheting up its plans to deal with civil unrest. In itself, this is not news. What’s new is that the Pentagon is not hiding it. The news broke on CNBC, which is hardly a fringe player in the realm of the blogosphere.

The government is not your friend. They are not here to protect you and yours. In fact, a quick look at the latest climate-change projections, along with the associated inaction, suggests the government is working pretty hard to kill us all.

Decent human communities offer a solution for each of us, albeit partial ones. These communities are necessary, but likely not sufficient, to fend off the ongoing evils of imperialism. It’s time to deepen the bonds within our tribes. It’s time to fend for ourselves, and prepare to fend off the government.

The prescient words of Edward Abbey come to mind: “A patriot must be ready to defend his country against his government.”

Whereas the president used to have considerable power, primarily through his position as commander-in-chief of the most lethal killing force in the history of the world, that power has slipped away. Oppression abroad is a primary tenet of American Empire, but our ability to oppress is diminishing rapidly, and the role of the military in a world heavily influenced by non-state actors is marginal at best. The president’s ability to negotiate with other nations is sliding away as the world’s largest economy is widely recognized as a banana republic. The U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency, for now, but the president does not control the strength of a once-strong currency that is rapidly circling the drain. Finally, the president’s ability to enforce obedience at home, another primary tenant of American Empire, has taken some serious body blows. The president’s approval rating is low and sinking. Now that his own party has lost control of Congress, you can expect the president’s ability to accomplish to plummet even faster than the value of the U.S. dollar.

If the executive branch is wounded, the congressional branch is dead on arrival. Congress hasn’t displayed even a passing interest in the lives of “ordinary” Americans for decades. Now that the latest version of gridlock has arrived on Capitol Hill, few people expect Congress to accomplish anything of significance. Because Congress has been intent upon transferring financial wealth from the masses to the wealthiest Americans, we should be cheering congressional impotence. The less the fools accomplish, the better.

Finally, there is the judicial branch. From the Supreme Court to the local courts, the judiciary has abandoned any appearance of fairness. They’ve become part and parcel of the ruling corporatocracy (i.e,. fascism). And without fairness as a guiding doctrine, the courts are worse than worthless. Although we incarcerate a greater proportion of our citizens than any country in the history of the world, our crime rate is stunningly high. Economic status and race are predictive of incarceration rates, making a mockery of the judicial branch. Although most people in this country fear the courts, few respect the courts or the judges. As with the other two branches of government, the masses have largely lost their confidence in the judicial branch.

When the citizens no longer respect the government, who is in charge? What prevents chaos from carrying the day? All the time, I mean, instead of periodically.

So far, I suspect chaos has been forestalled only by confidence in fiat currency. The Federal Reserve controls the printing presses. By buying U.S. Treasury bonds with Federal Reserve Notes (i.e., dollar bills), the Fed is able to flood the industrial economy with an increasingly worthless currency. As David Stockman, former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, says, “the Fed is injecting high grade monetary heroin into the financial system of the world, and one of these days it is going to kill the patient.” Each dollar entering the money supply represents a dollar of debt owed to the Federal Reserve by the U.S. government (i.e., taxpayers). For example, the recent $600 billion infusion cost everybody in the U.S. about $2,000. But you already owed more than you’ll ever be able to pay, so what’s a few more dollars, especially if they’re worth less and less, and then nothing at all?

Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, is effectively king of the United States. His tenure as chair ends in 2014, and his appointment to the Federal Reserve board expires in 2020. In other words, we’re stuck with King Ben until the ongoing economic collapses reaches completion.

In theory, the Fed is accountable to Congress. But in practice, nobody is Congress is particularly interested in exposing the Fed as a sham, so Congress whistles by the graveyard and looks the other way as the Fed conducts its business on behalf its owners. The Fed has been the de facto operator of the U.S. money system since it was established by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

Who are those owners? The Federal Reserve is privately owned, but ownership is a closely guarded secret. As a result, conspiracy theories are rampant. MSNBC has concluded the Fed owns itself, whereas many pundits raise the specter of ownership by the Bank of England or financial elites such as the Bilderberg group, the Rockefellers, or the Rothchilds. I doubt we’ll ever know for certain, in large part because the owners do not want to be known and Congress is not interested in the truth. So we will continue to cede authority to King Ben — and whom or whatever underlies his power — as long as the empire stays afloat.

The Fed, working collaboratively with the executive branch, has created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world. King Ben keeps pumping air into the bubble because he believes his mandate is to destroy downside risk in the stock markets, regardless of the damage to the dollar or the resulting cost of commodities (note the rising prices of oil, gold, and silver as Benny Bucks look for a place to land). There is little doubt $200 oil will kill a crippled industrial economy regardless how we get there, so Bernanke and the Fed are simply rushing us to the point of collapse with every bankster bailout. The latest dash of $600 billion cash is widely recognized as yet another bank bailout, but collateral damage includes increased prices of everything based on the U.S. dollar. There is no question this bubble will pop: the only questions are when and how loud. But this example of fraud is one many examples of a worldwide racket that is large and growing by the day.

It’s time to kick back with some popcorn and enjoy the show. Even the New York Times has figured out, finally, we’re headed for an economic apocalypse. The exciting parts are on the way. First up, if all goes well: the banksters’ last meal.

We are witnessing the economic down side of globalization. When the tide goes out on one part of the empire, it drags the rest of the empire down, too. In fact, when a lifeguard swims out to save a drowning man, the drowning man’s first reaction is to grab the lifeguard by the head and push down. This allows the drowning man to rise up and gobble a few breaths of water-free air, but it threatens to drown him and his savior.

At this juncture in the industrial age, we have two tired, one-armed lifeguards and a handful of victims. All eyes are on Greece — fittingly, the birthplace of western civilization — but Greece, which naturally turned to Goldman Sachs to try to hide its debt, is one tiny canary in a coal mine the size of Earth. Even as hope builds for some combination of Germany and France to save Greece, the entire Euro zone is going up in flames. Here in the homeland, seven states are drowning in financial waters deeper and choppier than the Mediterranean Sea. And the squeaks from those seven states cannot be heard over the din from every other state in the country, much less every country in the industrialized world. Seems a Greek crisis is coming to America. In the words of Chris Hedges, we’ve reached the zero point of systemic collapse. Along with Mickey Z, Hedges offers a few ways to resist the omnicidal dominant culture and save what’s left of our humanity.

Meanwhile, it has become generally known that it is mathematically impossible to pay off the U.S. debt, as I reported several months ago (more figures are available here, and the U.S. Debt Clock is always worth a look). And, lest you think there is help on the way, the sovereign debt crisis is just getting started, along with the collapse in commercial real estate.

The U.S. reflects mortgage holders, hopelessly underwater. The mortgage holders should be walking away, according to at least one professor of law. Unlike the mortgage holders, the U.S. cannot walk away, even though an economic recovery is hopeless at this point. And the U.S. is merely one of many countries hopelessly underwater. The global debt time bomb goes off soon, as even Europe and the U.S. will default. Even MarketWatch has begun, finally, to call this event the economic apocalypse. It’s too late for economic salvation, even as Business Insider understates the economic news, writing we’re somewhere between dire and disastrous.

Even as the greatest economic implosion in world history accelerates, the underlying cause — peak oil — remains chronically under-reported. Nonetheless, Sir Richard Branson finally is warning that the peak-oil crunch will be worse than the credit crunch (thereby failing to recognize the importance of the former in creating the latter), the Wall Street Journal is warning us to prepare for peak oil, and British oil companies and CEOs are sounding the alarm. These numbskulls have failed to notice we’re passed peak, and that it’s too late for societal-level preparations. The U.K. Telegraph is making fun of people who make personal preparations for peak oil and its economic consequences, but their laughter seems a little nervous to me. Even with the vaunted war machine, the ability of the U.S. to import oil is dwindling: Saudi Arabia has slipped from our number two supplier to number four while the new number two provider, Mexico, is in oil-supply free-fall.

Apparently failing to notice where empires go to die, the U.S. military has powered up the surge in Afghanistan even as the Pentagon admits U.S. taxpayers are forking over $400 for each gallon of gasoline used there. And most Americans think five bucks a gallon is an outrage when they pay it directly.

__________________

This entry is permalinked at Energy Bulletin, Counter Currents, and Island Breath.

If oil traders knew the truth about declining energy availability, the per-barrel price of oil would be $300 within a week. If stock traders knew the truth, we’d see capitulation of the markets shortly thereafter. If Americans knew the truth, they just might come to grips with reality, rally together, put their collective shoulders to the wheel, and start building a better world than the ominicidal culture of make believe to which we’ve all become accustomed.
But we’ll never know, because the cabal of morally bankrupt bankers and politicians running this country — and also the industrialized world — will keep playing the shell game as long as they are allowed by the impotent media. Or, more likely, until the reality of oil priced in excess of $200 per barrel interferes with their imperial ambitions.
The consequences of the shell game extend well beyond economic disaster and the likely extinction of our species. In the short term, they include hijacking the world’s marketplace, complete with child labor, hunger, and pollution (especially abroad), continued decline of intellectual “capital” in our universities, ratcheting up the war machine by attacking yet more countries (perhaps bringing a rapid demise to American Empire), further extending imperial overreach, continued shrinking of our credit-based economy, continued enrichment of the financially wealthy (including $100 billion for eight of Warren Buffett’s companies), continued profiteering by the insurance industry, and continued land grabs in poor countries by wealthy countries. All with a U.S. military on the verge of complete collapse and despite widespread acknowledgment that American-style capitalism is not working.
To reiterate the choices facing us: (1) The economically dire truth and potential for chaos, now, or (2) Certain chaos and probable extinction, later. The moral certainty of the former choice is absolute. Perhaps that alone explains why we’re choosing door number two.
Will reality intervene in time to save the living planet, including our own species? Is 2012 soon enough? Stay tuned.
In the meantime, think about what you’d do. Let’s play King For A Day. Would you trust industrial humans with the truth? Or would you commit us to chaos and probable extinction in the name of politics? In your response, please wear two hats: first your own, then, to make the game realistic, the hat of your favorite billionaire.
______________________
This post is permalinked at Energy Bulletin and Counter Currents.

When American Empire completes its fall, it will take all the banks with it. So we won’t be worrying about cleaning up “toxic assets.” Instead, we’ll concern ourselves with storing the harvest and saving seeds.
When American Empire completes its fall, political parties will be unable to carry out desperate, ugly, and dangerous attacks on American voters. Instead, we’ll focus on helping our neighbors and building our communities.
As American Empire is completing its fall, the American government might find itself at war with its own people. As long as we have American Idol and high fructose corn syrup, I doubt the people are willing to rebel. But if they are, perhaps this time the people will win.
When American Empire completes its fall, we will leave behind arcane philosophers and their irrelevant, unworldly philosophy. Instead, we will return to a philosophy as rooted in the Earth as we are.
When American Empire completes its fall, we will not have agents of the federal government planning to invade and divide countries and sacrificing the lives of “we the people” for a few bucks (in this case, neocon leaders Feith, Wolfowitz, and Perle were discussing with the Turkish ambassador how to divide Iraq in the summer of 2001, four months before 9/11). Instead, we’ll honor the lives of humans and other animals in the region we occupy.
When American Empire completes its fall, humans will be unable to cause erosion comparable to the world’s largest rivers and glaciers. They — we — will be unable to cause destruction so severe it threatens our very existence. Instead, we’ll revere the ecosystems that provide us with water, food, clothing, protection from the elements, and all the philosophy we’ll ever need.
When American Empire completes its fall, the federal government will be unable to control what you eat, much less encourage you to eat materials that are toxic, or that make us fat, stupid, and lazy. We will not rely on two percent of our population, bound to cheap fossil fuels and corporate indenture, to feed the rest of us. Instead, we will harvest what we sow and eat what we harvest, paying careful attention to what we feed our children.
When American Empire completes its fall, the federal government will not trot out lies about medical care (while in truly Orwellian fashion, calling it “health care”). Instead, we will learn to care for the planet that sustains us all, and we will accept death as we celebrate life.
When American Empire completes its fall, governments around the world will not encourage their citizens to produce more consumers (i.e., babies) in the name of economic growth. Instead, we will cherish our (human) communities while relying on them for care, just as we will care for others. Instead of being slaves to the economy and its government, we will be partners with our neighbors and the landbase.
I used to think it took a child to raze a village, but now I know any effective politician can do it. When American Empire completes its fall, the federal government will be unable to bail out companies while ignoring the individuals who work for those companies. The governmental arsonists who started and stoked the fire will be unable to show up in fire trucks claiming they can extinguish the blaze. And then they’ll be unable to lie about it. When the empire completes its fall, neighbors will bail out each other, and expect the same in return.
When American Empire completes its fall, the myriad crises we have created will no longer outpace our ability to deal with them. The situation has become so dire, even mainstream scientists have noticed. And although these scientists admit nations and corporations cannot effectively deal with the messes we’ve generated, the solutions they propose all involve institutional reforms (i.e., government). When the empire completes its fall, communication between neighbors will account for all the reforms we need.
When American Empire completes its fall, globalization falls with it (perhaps it already has). Globalization has tricked us into ignoring matters important to our health, and to the health of other species, in the name of enriching a few wealthy (mostly) white men who serve corporations. We have abandoned work on extinction, child labor, working conditions, taxation, child labor, health, and pollution, while allowing a billion people to starve. We’ve done all this damage while allowing — and even encouraging — the few to loot the coffers of the many, even while the many are starving in numbers unimaginably large. When the empire completes its fall, localization comes back in style. We’ll know all the non-human neighbors by name, and we will nurture them as they take care of us.
When American Empire completes its fall, we will not focus on the politically lost cause of global climate change at the expense of the thousands of other insults we are visiting on the planet. We won’t need to focus on politically hopeless causes such as saving the planet and our non-human brethren. Instead, we will conduct the difficult and meaningful work associated with stewardship of the lands, waters, and communities that support us.
When American Empire completes its fall, the majority will not capitulate to the noisy minority in the echo chamber who claim that helping others is socialism, and therefore un-American. The notion that “all politics is local” will ring loudly as we all work toward governance that serves the people.
When American Empire completes its fall, we will not be forced to listen to the “patriotic” tune of the mainstream media as they continue to deny the roles of the governments of Israel and the United States in the events of September 11, 2001. And we won’t be praying for more oil from Iraq. Or Mexico. Or Canada. Or, for that matter, thinking natural gas will save western civilization. When the empire completes its fall, we’ll be concerned about legitimate wealth: food and water supplied by healthy landbases and the company of friends supplied by healthy communities.
When American Empire completes its fall, Congress will not spend your money propping up the world’s most powerful military force (although by simultaneously losing two wars, the U.S. military is rapidly exposing its declining influence). We will not continue to torture people without charging them. We will not use the world’s most lethal organization and weapons to continue killing citizens of Afghanistan in the name of our freedom. As a side effect, we’ll need not hide the pictures and bury the stories when our own children die in the process of killing Afghans. When the empire completes its fall, we will know the faces of those who threaten us and we will face reality regardless how tragic it is.
When American Empire completes its fall, we can thank our investment in military supremacy, at least in part.
When American Empire completes its fall, we’ll finally give up on the renewable-energy “savior” and, more importantly, we’ll witness the end of the seemingly endless wars for energy. We’ll live as part of the Earth, rather than apart from it.
When American Empire completes its fall, a few people will recall the warnings — dating as far back as Marcus Aurelius, and probably further — launched by a very few thoughtful voices and ignored by those in power. With respect to energy decline, they’ll recall M. King Hubbert and a few of the people listed here.
When American Empire completes its fall, people will once again wrest control of their individual and collective destinies and live in the world, thus causing superstition to fade.
If American Empire completes its fall soon enough, perhaps James Lovelock will be proven wrong: maybe, just maybe, we haven’t reached a global-climate-change tipping point. One thing is clear: There are no politically viable solutions to global climate change. But when the empire completes its fall, we will ignore the gods of economic growth who demand we destroy the planet in their name.
Why are we trying to sustain this empire?

I fully expect Obama to cave into the richest one percent of Americans, yet again, on the issue of health care. The wealthiest one percent in this country has never had it so good — their share of this country’s total income is the highest it’s been since 1929 — and many of them will profit from the $23 trillion in bailout largess the Treasury Department now says could be headed to financial firms. Now they’re launching an attack on health care, because the current system is perfect for them. It allows rich folks ready access to the best doctors while the rest of us have to wait incessantly for overpriced treatment of limited value. FDR warned us about this the last time we were in the midst of a Great Depression, but the corporate goons won that battle (like most of the others, before and after).
While he’s propping up the rich by destroying the middle class, Obama’s solution to the financial crisis is to run the printing presses as rapidly as possible, thereby generating a massive deficit. Even the projections of his own government hacks don’t have us getting a handle on this deficit before Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security go belly-up.
At the same time he’s destroying our future, Obama is making the classic, oft-repeated error of pursuing war in Afghanistan. Although the likely consequences include U.S. bankruptcy, even I have a hard time fully supporting Obama’s bloodlust for killing citizens who already find themselves firmly in the stone age. In response to Obama’s imperial overreach in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Chalmers Johnson is wisely recommending we dismantle the empire. I don’t see a lot of support for Johnson’s excellent idea, because our society is firmly committed to twittering while Obama burns our future. Most Americans have not learned anything from history, and therefore will support Obama as he commits us to a trifecta of consequences seen throughout the history of the world: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency. Johnson indicates this is “leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former Soviet Union.” He makes it sound like a bad thing.
As the empire crumbles, a few voices in cyberspace have us going back to 1910. They recognize that our culture — which they know possesses us, not the other way around — is fatally destructive to the biosphere, and that we might have to go back to tying our shoes, cleaning our floors with mops, and churning butter. But they can’t imagine much further back than a Model T in every garage and train service connecting the nation. I can. But perhaps I’m just a hopelessly romantic uber-optimist.
As it turns out, revised data indicate that this particular “recession” is worse than prior estimates. The first 12 months saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing. And, by the way, the housing recovery really isn’t one. If you want to derive any equity from your house, it’s time to sell. On the heels of the collapse of the residential housing market comes an even bigger blow to the economy: the commercial sector is toast, too.
Even Ben Bernanke is waking up to reality, finally admitting the current economy may be worse than Great Depression. He goes on to say growth will resume at 1% in the second half of this year, thus echoing mainstream economists court jesters who have been calling the current quarter the “bottom” of the recession for several quarters in a row. Green shoots, anybody? Mustard seeds? If you find ‘em, you’d better eat ‘em. It could be a while between meals.
In contrast to Benny and the jesters, Marketwatch is giving investment advice about the end of civilization. And just when you thought the news couldn’t get any better, Business Week says we’re likely headed for another oil shock, albeit worse than any previous one.
At some point, perhaps mainstream economists will recognize the link between energy prices and the economy. But since virtually none of them have noticed a spike in energy prices preceded 10 of the last 11 recessions, including the latest 3 big ones, I’m not terribly hopeful they’ll ever recognize it’s time for them to start thinking the unthinkable: the myth of perennial economic growth is dead..
And lest you think I’m calling for personal responsibility to solve our myriad problems, I know better. Personal responsibility is just another excuse for passing the buck to individuals, as if you and I had a damned thing to do with either of the twin evils of the fossil-fuel coin. We don’t run this civilization, folks, so we’re not to blame for runaway greenhouse or the economic consequences of declining energy supplies. Indeed, we need go back only 52 years to find powerful military voices recognizing the importance of oil and other fossil fuels to the maintenance of American power and western civilization.
Despite the unbridled optimism of left-leaning “scientists,” it’s almost certainly too late to save civilization and our species without bringing down the industrial economy. Another oil shock or two and we’re headed right back to the stone age, and just in time to save the living planet and therefore our species’ only chance of persisting beyond the current century
More good news: Increasing evidence, along with this anecdote, indicate you can stop sending your children to the K-12 concentration camps we call schools (actually, we’d have been a lot better off had we done so years ago). It’s too late for these institutions to rebuild the thinking class. They’re too busy promoting capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich.
___________________________
This entry was inspired by numerous comments from Stan Moore.

Positive reinforcement for my thoughts about our lack of civility as civilization unwinds comes from recent comments on this blog and, more scientifically, from Lyall Watson’s 1995 book, Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil. The title of the current entry, along with most of the content, comes from chapter 4, “The Evil That Men Do: The Anthropology of Evil.”
Tellingly, the book was a going-away present from an honors student fleeing the empire. He came to us with perfect SAT scores. And he had only a year before graduation, but he wasn’t getting anything he wanted from this university and he knows the industrial economy is taking its last gasps, so he is leaving the country. But, I digress.
If you’re keeping score at home, I quote from the 1997 HarperPerennial paperback issue of Dark Nature. In this entry, I restrict my quotes to chapter 4, with the exception of a familiar quote from Shakespeare’s MacBeth that opens the book: “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” As this line illustrates, Watson is hardly the first to recognize the human potential for bad deeds.
I’m reminded of a seminar I attended recently in which the presenter claimed he could take any group of humans and turn them against any “outside” group within 15 minutes. A regular consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense [sic], he said he could take any group of 15 or so people, with any mix of ethnicity, race, creed, age, and gender, and within 15 minutes could make them turn upon any group that entered the room. There wasn’t much doubt in my mind about a competent person’s ability to turn humans against other humans, but reading Dark Nature made a firm believer out of me (pp.141-142): “This tendency to classify, to divide the world into ‘us’ and them,’ into members versus nonmembers, friend or foe, is one of the few true human universals.Something common to all people everywhere.”
Watson takes on the issue at a larger scale, too: “The recorded history of eleven European countries during the last 1,025 years shows that they were engaged on average in some kind of military action forty-seven percent of the time, or about one year in every two. The lowest scorer has been Germany with twenty-eight percent, and the highest Spain with a massive sixty-seven percent, waging war in two our of every three years throughout the last millennium.” A quick turn with Gore Vidal’s Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace indicates the U.S. has been the aggressor at a breathtaking rate of nearly four military misadventures each year between 1945 and 2000. The actions of the most civilized countries make the claims in Dark Nature seem, well, pale.
Watson takes us back in time, too, to illustrate the human capacity — perhaps penchant is a better word — for violence long before Shakespeare (pp. 165-166): “A man shot to death by arrows lies buried at the main entrance of Stonehenge. And just a few miles away, in the center of the Bronze Age circle known as Woodhenge, archaeologists found the body of a three-year-old girl with a split skull. The Greek historian Pausanias tells of the dismemberment and communal eating of a child sacrificed in the sanctuary of Zeus on top of Mount Lykaion …. the Judeo-Christian tradition began with the sacrifice of Abel by his brother Cain, the aborted sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham, and the death of the son of God himself at Golgotha.”
The Judeo-Christian tradition approximately coincides with the birth of civilization: We got serious about agriculture some 6,000 years ago. I am not suggesting evil arose with the Judeo-Christian tradition. Only the most evil of structures, agriculture. On the other hand, according to Genesis, Eden was a garden, not a farm. So maybe I’m misinterpreting the whole tradition.
For a more recent assessment of the human capacity for cruelty, check out today’s essay by Chris Hedges, “Man is a Cruel Animal.” And for a reminder where we’re headed, view George Monbiot’s interview with Fatih Birol, the International Energy Authority’s chief economist.
And if you still think technology can save us, be sure to view this video. Just for fun, turn the volume up. Way up.