The West: Decadence and Decline, Join the Essay

OfficePants

OfficePants

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We're fucked.

Not only are we living within the false bottom of consumerism, we're about to ride the biggest global roller coaster in history with the changes coming in the climate.

And America is the Pied Piper, welcome to our world where decadence and consumerism rule.

Civilizations all decline. And they don't fall gracefully. American exceptionalism would have you believe that it won't happen to the 50 states, but that's just kidding ourselves. The decline has already started. Let's discuss these Canaries in the coal mine. I'll begin.

Canaries in the coal mine:

America's gov't has gotten out of control huge. Do you know that 7 of the 10 richest counties in America border Washington DC in Virginia and Maryland? That's welfare on a continental scale.

The college educated younger generation (20 - 30) can't find decent jobs. Everything is being contracted and outsourced now.

We have printed more money in the last few years than has ever been printed. When this money starts to enter the markets from the bank reserves, look out boys, interest rates and inflation will pop... then the markets will "correct". Without confidence in the markets, the dollar will fall, the real estate market will freeze and free-fall may ensue. No? Well, it could all be stymied but America's Visa card has gotten so huge that nobody will continue to fund the debt. Not to mention the world wants the US to fail.

America needs big population growth to sustain consumerism. If profits fall flat, money moves elsewhere. Crush the markets, people lose their life savings, no money to spend, vicious cycle. America can't grow its population unless it opens the flood gates Ellis Island style again, and it ain't gonna do that. This country has already peaked.

Just remember what Bush said after 9/11: go out and shop. As big an idiot as he was, even he knew the secret codes.
 
Chapter 2.

Hill and Knowlton, the jokers of misinformation.

We all know that there was a massive misinformation campaign around cigarette smoking when science started to demonstrate a link between it and lung cancer, but in comes Hill and Knowlton to manufacture a debate and to create a press campaign around smoking including this gem:

smoking_01.jpg



You might think this stodgy old company founded in 1927 is long gone, oh no. Business is booming. Everyone seems to need a misinformation campaign. Like the oil and gas industry and hydraulic fracturing.

You've probably heard the "debate" around the polluted groundwater. They say that methane and natural gas occur naturally in well water, and it has for centuries. Yes, this is true in very, very small quantities and in very few locations. So the public doesn't know what to think.

Hill and Knowlton manufactured this debate on behalf of the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas industry has been trying to solve the problem of the well casing for decades, but still cannot. This is why they sought a special exception from the EPA on drinking water. The safe drinking water act (SDWA) has this language "SDWA specifically excludes hydraulic fracturing from UIC regulation under SDWA § 1421 (d)(1)".

This is known as the "Haliburton Loophole". And this is why it was lobbied for. They knew all along the casings couldn't handle the pressure, leak, and over time degrade. The older the well, the greater the chances of failure. So, the aquifers everywhere this is happening are being compromised. Our buddy Obama knows this.

gas-migration-paths.jpg


Next, Hill and Knowlton's debate moves to air and land concerns. There are none, they will tell you. The wells are small and have a very small footprint. Yes, like here:

fracking-in-Wyoming.jpg


Lastly, the air pollution. Don't take my word for it, here are these two peer reviewed journals reporting it:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7364/abs/477271a.html
http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/THOC/Fracking.pdf

If you work for Hill and Knowlton, you're an asshole.
 
Britain was the global superpower once, now look at us...

I read somewhere that the average empire lasts 150 years (roughly how long ours lasted in any substantial form). So come on you guys, pull your fingers out - you gotta at least beat the average!
 
Harveybirdman said:
Meh, I'm not too worried. Every generation thinks the world is ending. We're the smartest animals on the planet, we'll figure something out if there's a real problem.
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My parents and grandparents didn't feel that way. But my parents think this country is fucked now. They wouldn't have said that a decade ago.
 
When asked to pick a "golden era", a time when they think life was just peachy, many people pick the period about 20-30 years before they themselves were born. It's because we grow up listening to our parents' rose-tinted stories about their own childhoods, and this ingrains in us a sentimentality for this perfect time that never really existed. It's certainly true for me - I have an idealised vision of life in Britain in the 40s and 50s, but thinking soberly about it, it must have a pretty austere time and place, with total war followed by the threat of soviet invasion or nuclear annihilation, food rationing, childhood diseases, etc etc. One way or another, life generally continues to get better, not worse, for the majority of the people on the planet, but we nevertheless think the opposite.
 
I don't share such fantasies, ETF. I would have hated to be an adult in the 50's. Even moreso in the 20's and moreso in the late 1800's.

I believe its all relative, should you be a poor person, I suppose its better to be poor now but if you're wealthy it really doesn't matter since its all cushy no matter when you lived.

Even up until the last few years I imagined transformative technologies would come and we'd be elevated past all of this but I just don't believe that anymore. I actually think the future is going to be a lot more Mad Max than Star Trek TNG.

I certainly hope I'm wrong.
 
OfficePants said:
I believe its all relative, should you be a poor person, I suppose its better to be poor now but if you're wealthy it really doesn't matter since its all cushy no matter when you lived.
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The poor now are in many ways better off than old royalty. Castles were drafty and heat meant maintaining a fire. Sanitation and medicine severely misunderstood, Horses smell, carriages were small, bumpy and also lacking climate control. Entertainment consisted of jugglers.
American poor generally have homes of consistent temperature, trash pickup, a modicum of medical services. Cars or public transportation beats a carriage and I won't get started on the huge televisions, cable, cellphones, video games etc. that our poor somehow afford.

Anyway, the American Empire is dawning, and it would be tolerable if the natural self-correction were allowed to quickly smack things back to equilibrium. Unfortunately, those invested in myth will save the myth at all costs, and that means prolonging and exacerbating every ill.
 
So, is China the next empire to (re)rise?

And how are we counting America's 150 year cycle? I don't think it was even a world power until WWI, but that's my impression.

Also +1 to seeing 30 years before your own as rosey. Looking back I idealize the US 1950s-early 60's, and then the Reagan Era.

And then, I generally agree w/ OfficePants OfficePants general premise that the USA is going to crash hard and fast. If you want to get really into it: economic collapse, followed by natural disasters on a massive scale; something like the Mississippi flooding beyond recognition b/c of seismic shifts, quakes throughout the west, etc. US goes down for the count, accepts foreign aid - which foreign militaries use as a guise to begin chemical warfare and land troops in North America. You read it here.
 
El Argentino said:
So, is China the next empire to (re)rise?

And how are we counting America's 150 year cycle? I don't think it was even a world power until WWI, but that's my impression.

Also +1 to seeing 30 years before your own as rosey. Looking back I idealize the US 1950s-early 60's, and then the Reagan Era.

And then, I generally agree w/ OfficePants OfficePants general premise that the USA is going to crash hard and fast. If you want to get really into it: economic collapse, followed by natural disasters on a massive scale; something like the Mississippi flooding beyond recognition b/c of seismic shifts, quakes throughout the west, etc. US goes down for the count, accepts foreign aid - which foreign militaries use as a guise to begin chemical warfare and land troops in North America. You read it here.
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You don't need chemical warfare. Fracking is taking care of that. We'll all be walking around on a Benzine high before the red takes over.

America's cycle began during its industrialization which is sort of interesting because England's peak and decline started right after its industrial revolution. So America's began around 1860-75 or so which so happens to be about 150 years back from today. Just enough time for gluttony and sloth to take hold. I walked by a cop the other day who was so fat that I just knew couldn't even run.

China does seem like the next to take the mantle, and the sad part is that it doesn't share much of what this nation was supposed to value.

Foreign aid? Ha ha Arg, what do you think buying all our debt is? The minute that tap shuts off, this country will collapse. All this government credit card spending is a false bottom, without it there would be huge unemployment. Building all these bombs is just welfare.
 
I was going to say that China had India nipping at its heels, but Jim Rogers ("If you were smart in 1807 you moved to London, if you were smart in 1907 you moved to New York City, and if you are smart in 2007 you move to Asia.") seems to be less enthused about India.
Robert Anton Wilson had some theory about innovation needing free thinkers escaping old practices and constaints, and claimed that a generational (and generally westward) migration of new thriving business was inevitable. As Silicon Valley has been the hot spot since the early 80s...

Beyond our infrastucture (to include power and communications) crumbling, the food and water supply is likely to be a problem. The preppers know that a few days without electricity and modern man is scared and hungry. Anecdotally, it seems that a bulk of the fuel shortages in NJ after Sandy were due to hysterical hoarding. It's gonna be like a Twlight Zone episode.
 
^ I have a family friend that is hugely racist towards Indians. He firmly believes they are the worst people on the planet. I'm not kidding either. He doesn't really have opinions on anyone else.

In other news, this is my new favorite thing:

The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure

http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/defense_ethics/dod_oge/eef_complete_2012.doc

The unintended consequences quotient of this publication is thru the roof.
 
Millennial hoodlums triggering flash riots.

Vid 1 shows how it started. Vid 2 and 3 show fights and looting. I find it curious how the news reporters can't seem to understand how it started. It started with some miscreant knocking over portable toilets, in essence this started for no reason. A frenzy then ensued.







 
FLMountainMan said:
Whatever happened to the aspirational theme of Hope and Change? That lasted about as long as the campaign season and then disappeared.
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Hope and change, you mean the marketing strategy? Every good advertising campaign has an arc, did you think they'd still be using the posters? Obama is like the green Geico lizard, just there to sell you shit, eventually replaced by something different but the same.
 
DYSong Photography said:
The American society is mostly made of spineless helpless imbeciles that can't figure out that beef comes from cows. Turn off the power and water for a month and the survivors would be what I call a highly adaptable, capable and great society.
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I'm not sure this would be the case. The survivors would probably be the people that hoarded guns. You wouldn't have much of a society, but at least you'd have one hell of an NRA.

Your comment applies to much of the developed world. Undo society and force people to grow crops, most would starve after ransacking cleaned out all the Doritos.
 
Doomsdayers, naysayers and Chicken Little's are as old as people actually thinking they can predict the future. They can't, some may make lucky guesses but, they can't. I suggest you get comfortable with that fact, make the best of it and always use a Sharpie when you're signing your name on a chicks tits. Because that's fucking, like... key, right there, my friend. It lasts.
 
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