Let’s ignore the fact that the media tack “-gate” onto every single event, large or small, as if every event since Watergate is a REALLY BIG DEAL. How many thousand “gates” have we experienced since Nixon waved goodbye, with no appreciable change in the national scenery? Politicians are slippery enough to squirm away from this crisis. And by politicians, I mean banksters and corporations. They’re all cut from the same coarse cloth, after all.

If we set the guilty free this time, the pundits say, we have abandoned the rule of law. Chaos will erupt. Anarchy will rule the day.

Never mind the difference between chaos and anarchy, which most people cannot distinguish. Let’s cut straight to the argument about the rule of law.

As if that’s mattered in this country, or the entire industrialized world, for the last several generations. When was the last time you saw a person of color, accused of raping a while college girl, receive the same treatment as, say, an east-coast, Ivy-league, blue-blood with blue eyes that reflect familial bling? To suggest we are a nation of laws that apply equally to all citizens is to express a level of national naivete we haven’t seen since the cultural revolution of the 1960s. I’d like to think we are equal under the law, and that resistance will overcome inequalities. But I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday.

We’re a nation of grifters, addicted to Ponzi schemes. We specialize in scams that transfer financial wealth from the poor to the rich. There is no honor among the conniving thieves herding this country into the abattoir. The last American on the stinking, sinking ship of empire will be laughing maniacally because he is holding onto a chest of fiat currency as he sucks his last gulp of air. “I won, I won,” he’ll cry to the crashing waves, failing to notice the seagull gliding through the azure sky.

Imperial myth number one: We are a nation of laws that apply equally to all citizens. But I have seven more:

We can bail out countries by loaning them money.

Printing money creates wealth (in the case of the U.S., it’s contributing to poverty).

Consumerism creates happiness (in the case of the contemporary American, consumerism has created resentment, frustration, and anger).

The Fed is primarily concerned about the citizens of this country. No comment necessary.

The two-party system actually presents a choice. Ditto.

Your home is a good financial investment. Ah, those were the days.

The recession has ended. Okay, that one’s not a myth. The recession is over, and the Greatest Depression is fully under way (aka the empire is in decline).

I’m sure I missed some. But any number can play (hint, hint).

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This essay is permalinked at Before It’s News, Island Breath, and Running ‘Cause I Can’t Fly.

If Ben Bernanke and the fools at the Fed actually thought the industrial economy was recovering, they’d jack up interest rates. When the prime rate is up around 5%, you’ll know the industrial economy is back on track. Alternatively, you can monitor the extinction rate of non-human species.
The Keynesian approach favored by the Obummer administration is working about as well as pissing in an inferno. Those 640,329 new jobs created by the stimulus package came at a cost of $323,739.83 per job. We’ll never pay that tab, of course, because most of us aren’t working any more. Hell, half the kids in the country are on food stamps. Furthermore, the latest insult is a drop in the bucket compared to the 2009 deficit, which exceeds $450,000 per U.S. citizen.
We’ve long used our homes as ATMs, but those days are behind us. Housing prices are expected to continue their decline, dropping a staggering 90%. Suddenly that $6,900 house in Detroit isn’t looking so sweet, or so unusual. And commercial real estate is on the leading edge of a huge crash, as you’ve known for a while if you’ve been reading this blog. Or, for that matter, any other source of economic news beyond the mainstream media.
The housing mess isn’t the only offal stinking up the industrial economy, either. The markets look like the big bubble you blew with an entire pack of Hubba Bubba. And here’s a surprise: The recent rise in GDP is a mirage, just like Dow 10,000. As if the stock markets have any relation to reality, now or at any point in the past.
And just when you thought things couldn’t get any more entertaining, the feds would like to make the big bank bailouts a permanent scar on your grandchild’s checkbook. There’s nothing new about this turn of events: It’s a classic example of socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor (record-setting bonuses at the end of 2009 will add to the ever-growing list of examples). And if you think Obama is your friend, and will assuage your wounds, you’re still drinking the “progressive” Kool-Aid of wishful thinking and ignoring his drive for unlimited power, here and abroad. When questioned, he undoubtedly will perform the infamous act of amnesia we’ve come to expect from our “leaders” in Washington. Alas, Edward Abbey was correct: “Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role.” At this juncture, the U.S. cannot even maintain hegemony in Afghanistan because the Taliban will not agree to a backroom power-sharing deal.
The current administration is hardly the first to lie, cheat, and steal from the citizens they claim to serve. Over time, the extent of the immorality has become unbearable. Consider this minor, personal example: I asked for a testimonial regarding my skill as a public speaker from a dear friend and former graduate student who currently works the National Parks Service (which is part of the executive branch, for those of you who missed school that day). After speaking with her supervisor in Washington, she declined. I’m reminded of a line from E.M. Forster: “If I were forced to choose between my country and my friend, I hope I would be brave enough to choose my friend.” Here’s another relevant line from Edward Abbey: “I would never betray a friend to serve a cause. Never reject a friend to help an institution. Great nations may fall in ruin before I would sell a friend to save them.” Sadly, damned few among us are as principled as Forster and Abbey.
The “solutions” to our energy predicament are clogging the airwaves. As if algae will save our dreams of happy motoring. As if building nuclear power plants will provide free electricity. As if algae, plutonium, and uranium come problem-free. As if Transition Towns will allow an orderly, peaceful transition to a trouble-free future. As if maintaining industrial culture in smaller form will magically stop destroying the living planet.
Industrial civilization is hardly the first civilization to outstrip resources critical to human life, thereby committing cultural suicide. But it’s the first to make a serious run at murdering the entire living planet, and American Empire is coming to a close far sooner than most people thought possible. Soon, the lights go out, which brings down every aspect of western civilization.
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This post is permalinked at Counter Currents.

The financially wealthy have improved their lot by stealing from the middle class, then calling in the troops to protect the thieves. The property of rich folks has always been more important than the lives of the poor, a fact that will continue to create misery for the “other” 99% of us until the entire industrial economy fails. Personally, I can hardly wait.
What’s next is anybody’s guess, but it’s obvious the economic dominoes are clack, clack, clacking away. Losses from commercial real-estate lending pose a huge threat to U.S. banks. Citigroup is among the large banks in dire shape. JP Morgan has traded in the formerly profitable enterprise of commercial banking for the risk-free venture of taxpayer-funded investment bank. The United States is already bankrupt, although few have recognized how badly we’ve overshot the economy (I suspect even fewer recognize the far more dire case of ecologic overshoot). In short, the soul of capitalism has been sucked into the black hole created by the wizards on Wall Street, never to be revived again. The too-little, too-late response from oil companies and civilized governments: a fight to the death for the last drops of black gold.
We’ll give up war as soon as the typical member of the National Rifle Association turns over his automatic assault rifle to the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
Virtually no neoclassical economists saw this coming, and with good reason: The dismal science is not a science. A stone-age shaman with a handful of chicken bones is a better forecaster than your typical economist. Even the Grey Lady has exposed neoclassical economists as latter-day hucksters, finally recognizing there are limits to growth: “all biophysical economists see only very bleak prospects for the future of modern civilization.” I disagree only with the tone, which suggests civilization is redeemable.
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This post is permalinked at Energy Bulletin.

“TV regulates holiday marketing opportunities and the national neurological seasons. It tells us, ‘It’s Christmas! Time to shop!. Or .it’s election season, time to vote.’ Or ‘it’s football season, let us rally passions and buy beer and cheer.’ Or that America’s major deity, ‘The Economy,’ is suffering badly. ‘Sacred temples on Wall Street make great sickness upon the land!’ Or most ominous of all, ‘It’s time to make war! Again.’
It is fair to say that television and the American culture are the same thing. More than any other factor, it is the glue of society and the mediator of our experience. American culture is stone cold dead without it. If all the TVs in America went black, so would most of America’s collective consciousness and knowledge. Because corporate media have replaced nearly all other previous forms of accumulated knowledge.
The media have colonized our inner lives like a virus. The virus is not going away. This commoditization of our human consciousness is probably the most astounding, most chilling accomplishment of American capitalist culture.”
It’s a relatively long piece of excellent, humorous, and insightful writing based on a series of talks Bageant delivered on a recent trip back to this country from his home in Belize. It’s well worth the time, in part because the mind-fuck of Americans continues. Consider, for example, the latest “news” from the big banks: “JPMorgan and Wells Fargo play up an obscure measure of their profitability to show how strong they are.” But, of course, they’re not. Surging credit losses suggest another wave of real estate defaults is rapidly gathering strength, this time in the commercial sector. We’re not even close to the bottom of the collapse in residential real estate (as even the New York Times admits), and already nature is taking back subdivisions in Florida.
We’re at the leading edge of the mother of all economic crises, and the business and political elite are still flying blind. Fortunately, it’s becoming increasingly clear the economic collapse will be complete this year, with the worst (for industrial humans), and the best (for everybody else on this planet), coming shortly thereafter.
The International Monetary Fund, late as always to the party, finally is warning about parallels between the current economic situation and the Great Depression. But there’s no political solution, and the U.S. Treasury and financial regulators cannot even decide how much bad news to release, or how to release it. Meanwhile, Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke are trying to inflate the U.S. economy with hot air. It’ll probably work for a while, if only because the ongoing sucker rally on Wall Street has pacified the sheeple at the television trough.
How long with the smoke and mirrors work? I’d guess the economic wheels will start coming off shortly after the Memorial Day weekend, coincident with the summer “driving” season and in anticipation of another round of disastrous “profit” reports.