American Revolution II
Posted by BambiB 10 years, 11 months ago to Government
The economy is a mess. Obama stirs the pot, creates disaster, claims success and moves on. A new entitlements program in the form of "Obamacare" has just been dumped on the American People. The Federales are $17 trillion in debt, facing $211 trillion in unfunded mandates over the next 50 years. 25 cents of ever Federal dollar spent is borrowed - and China has just begun making noises that sound a lot like, "We're not loaning you any more money."
American police forces - from the local units to the Federal level are more militarized, aggressive and violent than any time in history. At the same time, Americans (many perceiving a threat from the government) are arming themselves in record numbers.
The split between rich and poor has never been greater. Jobs are hard to come by. The government is pumping out propaganda by the boat load. The adminstration is lying to us, the NSA is spying on us, the TSA is groping us, the IRS is harassing and taxing us, Congress is ignoring us.
Will it all break? If so, when? And how? Will Americans rebel? Will it be peaceful or violent? What will come afterwards? How much of the dreck that is American "law" will remain? Will the Constitution be tossed aside? Will we continue to allow morons to vote? Will there be any voting? How will things change?
Will Americans meekly accept whatever their "leaders" tell them to accept?
And most of all: WHEN do you think changes will occur?
I'd say we have 0 to 10 years before the dollar crashes. Hard. I expect the Chinese to shorten our "line of credit" and push for the establishment of the Yuan as the international currency. When they do that, the dollar will crash - dropping by more than 90% in value in a single year. The prices of everything (as valued in dollars) will soar. The government-created "dependent class" won't have enough money to eat. Crime will explode in the dependent neighborhoods and merchants, unable to withstand the stress, will withdraw, making life even more difficult. There will be riots (think "Rodney King riots in L.A.) in every major city - but food riots. People will begin to organize themselves into self-protection groups. The government will react to it all with martial law.
Then the grease really hits the fire.
Gun confiscation.
Resistance.
Counter-offensive.
Civil war.
Military suppression and insurrection.
Assassinations.
Anarchy.
A new beginning. But what kind?
So there's my prediction. What's yours?
American police forces - from the local units to the Federal level are more militarized, aggressive and violent than any time in history. At the same time, Americans (many perceiving a threat from the government) are arming themselves in record numbers.
The split between rich and poor has never been greater. Jobs are hard to come by. The government is pumping out propaganda by the boat load. The adminstration is lying to us, the NSA is spying on us, the TSA is groping us, the IRS is harassing and taxing us, Congress is ignoring us.
Will it all break? If so, when? And how? Will Americans rebel? Will it be peaceful or violent? What will come afterwards? How much of the dreck that is American "law" will remain? Will the Constitution be tossed aside? Will we continue to allow morons to vote? Will there be any voting? How will things change?
Will Americans meekly accept whatever their "leaders" tell them to accept?
And most of all: WHEN do you think changes will occur?
I'd say we have 0 to 10 years before the dollar crashes. Hard. I expect the Chinese to shorten our "line of credit" and push for the establishment of the Yuan as the international currency. When they do that, the dollar will crash - dropping by more than 90% in value in a single year. The prices of everything (as valued in dollars) will soar. The government-created "dependent class" won't have enough money to eat. Crime will explode in the dependent neighborhoods and merchants, unable to withstand the stress, will withdraw, making life even more difficult. There will be riots (think "Rodney King riots in L.A.) in every major city - but food riots. People will begin to organize themselves into self-protection groups. The government will react to it all with martial law.
Then the grease really hits the fire.
Gun confiscation.
Resistance.
Counter-offensive.
Civil war.
Military suppression and insurrection.
Assassinations.
Anarchy.
A new beginning. But what kind?
So there's my prediction. What's yours?
At what point is self-defense legitimate against a government in general (as opposed to an individual case where specific events might make self-defense justified). Ragnar Danneskgold was doing self defense "in general". The boats he targeted did not necessarily have Rearden metal on them or Stockton cars (if he made cars - could be mistaking my gulchers but you get the point). The gold he returned was not the exact gold taken. It was a general defense, using force, against tyranny.
Additionally, there is no reasonable method of organizing without the government able to observe nearly everything. I personally would support a movement right this moment if I believed there was any hope of success. Sadly I do not and will therefore continue to try to work within the system even though I know it is destined to failure.
They will then gain control of the rebellion, and if victorious, we will have given ourselves a glorious People's state. As happened to the Viet Cong and South Vietnam.
(originally, the communists were a minority among the many diverse political factions in the Viet Cong; the communists played one against another until they were left in charge... per one of the founders of the Viet Cong)
It is hard for me to believe that the founders, if they stepped through a time capsule and saw our current state of government, would not be reaching for their muskets pretty quickly.
As for supply lines. Consider this. Most major cities in the US have 3 days or less of food in the city. That includes DC although if I had to guess, I would guess DC would even be lower. All of that food has to travel by truck through areas that would likely be dominated by folks unhappy with the central government.
My point was that A) the communists used infighting to gain control and B) even though they lost, Vietnam still ended up a People's state.
Vietnam was not a win for the insurgents but a win for the invaders.
http://vpostrel.com/future-and-its-enemi...
Ayn Rand's speculative philosophical novel, "Atlas Shrugged" has been seized by religious fundamentalists who dream of immanentizing the eschaton, i.e., bringing about the end of the world. Considering the plot of "Atlas Shrugged" as it integrates with the plot-theme, in objective point of fact Hank Rearden was exploited by his wife and family long before the government came into the picture. He caved in to the State Science Institute and signed over his patent because he accepted a personal guilt for his affair with Dagny Taggart, though Taggart herself later publicly announced their relationship.
"Atlas Shrugged" is "about" the collapse of the government the same way that Harry Potter is "about" the power of magic spells. Something deeper is at play.
Moreover, Ayn Rand's many other works - fiction and non-fiction both - speak directly to the philosophy of PERSONAL HAPPINESS. Social consequences are secondary and dependent upon a significant minority of trend-setters defining the direction of the larger culture, as when Dante and Petrarch scoured monasteries for lost manuscripts, wrote important works in Italian dialect, and thus launched the Renaissance, as at the same time artists in Florence discovered a new sensuality in color. No one sought to "destroy the Middle Ages" or "bring down the Holy Roman Empire." I will grant though that as a constitutional republic Genoa for over a hundred years did indeed strike coins in the name of Conrad, a pretender to the HRE who never actually stepped foot in the city.
The future is going to be wonderful! New biotech will bring longevity and health. Barack Obama may well retire from the presidency as a small, cold, and crunchy person, but that is a footnote.
The future holds promise for those who know and engage their rational self-interest. You may have no control over the wider culture. (Ayn Rand did influence the wider culture by challenging the moral philosophy of the last 2500 years. We are testament to that.) You do control your own life. If you understand and engage the philosophy of Objectivism, your life will be better for you than if you did not.
Should you work for the IRS? You get good pay, great health and retirement benefits!
Should you work for yourself, as a sole proprietor, corporate CEO, independent contractor, or freelance specialist? It is a longer and harder road, but more rewarding on many levels.
Should you surround your living and work space with grotesque art of no special meaning, or with heroic art that reflects your own best image of yourself?
Those questions are far more cogent and consequential to anyone who truly understands and appreciates the work of Ayn Rand.
In We the Living, the heroine not only risks her life but gives up her child-because the situation was so intolerable. She did not suggest that Kira find inner peace or surround herself with "heroic art" and ignore the oppression around her.
In The Fountainhead, the destruction of one man's creation is so important, he chose to destroy a building. Do you suggest the American Revolution was a mistake?
In Atlas Shrugged, Dagny kills someone for not making a decision fast enough. Yes, all fiction- yet powerful enough for Men to consider action-of many kinds. She did say as long as you still have the freedom of speech, you should use it as a primary action- but the noose on that has been tightening as well (see recent AP reporter scandals)
The situation in the US is much worse today than at the time of the Revolution, as far as liberties are concerned.
Whether you agree or not with this post, your assertion that:
"Atlas Shrugged" has been seized by religious fundamentalists who dream of immanentizing the eschaton" ignores American History.
Until and unless, the strata of mental function rises from sensation, to perception, to emotion, to rationality, to super-rational emotion (satisfaction), there is yet a contradiction to reconcile.
Personal happiness is a laudable goal, but as a mental state that is superior to rationality, it is, for the majority, an incomprehensible contradiction.
No?
Does the success of other people cheer you or threaten you?
Ayn Rand often employed the phrase "man qua man" to mean living as a human at the highest potential, similar to the Aristotlean concept of "eudaimonia" or "high mindedness."
Happiness is not the range-of-the-moment pursuit of transitory physical pleasures but the engagement of your reason and rationality in the physical world to attain the goals that further your own best interests.
Seeing an attractive person, watching a winning sporting event, contemplating a positive work of art, all evince positive emotional responses in an integrated person.
You have little control over society you are born into. You might find emigration to a different nation to be an option. Whether you did or not, you would still pursue your own happiness.
"You cannot hold that rationality trumps emotion, and also claim that happiness trumps logic, unless you explicitly define the strata of mental functions."
They are inextricably integrated. You cannot separate one from the other, except conceptually for analysis. In living, "happiness" and "logic" are different aspects or facets of living. If you live logically, you find happiness. If you are unhappy it is because some of your ideas - your assumptions and attitudes, conclusions and inferences - are inherently contradictory, i.e., illogical.
Frankly, if deserved, in accordance with my own judgement, success cheers me. If undeserved, I may take undo solace in the knowledge that a popular idiot while wealthy, is still an idiot, even if he dies wealthy and "happy" by his own criteria.
I (personally) cannot equate idiotic success or popularity with happiness. These are not satisfying. While I have experienced both idiotic success and popularity, neither has represented more than a passing satisfaction. Lasting satisfaction cannot be gained through individual actions that fade into history. It is a seemingly never-ending pursuit.
I would wager, that even a life free of contradiction, while logical, is not explicitly satisfying. Even the closest approximation to an omniscient rational entity may never state, "that is enough".
"Happiness" is certainly never permanently earned. It must be purchased each day, without end.
Still, I don't think we've addressed the distinction of happiness from other "emotions". Certainly, we have not proved that happiness is apart from other emotions. THAT would be an awesome accomplishment. Too many connotations?
Will it all break?
If so, when?
And how?
If you find that you fear to speak up (or publish) except in allegorical form, then censorship is upon you. I think it's a barometer--we see the Republicans currently acting as if they dare not oppose Obama too sharply, for fear of being blamed for the next crisis. Still, there is, at this point, no crime in writing an anti-government blog, or in going to see a screening of We the Living, The Fountainhead, or Atlas Shrugged.
A "kill switch" for the Internet would shut down the avenue of free speech we are using right here, but it would also shut down a tremendous amount of commerce.
Governments and businesses rely on the Internet. Anonymity is still possible. And I still have a couple of 9600-baud modems that can use dial-up or hard-wired connections.
Will the economy [of US Dollars] break? I'd say it's highly likely if we do not get government out of it very soon.
Will civility break? I'd imagine a rapid crash would initially spark greater civility in the short term.
Will the crash of the dollar be apocalyptic? I doubt it. Too many educated people.
I think that's probably the least-convincing justification you could possibly have given.
Obama won. Twice.
Then there are the morons who thought Romney was the answer. So that eliminates most people who voted.
Then there's the ~50% who didn't even vote - we can write most of them off as dumber than those who did!
Bottom line: The average person is oblivious and disengaged. They want to sit on the couch, eat, watch TV and not do much else.
The average idiot would think that putting out a bucket would catch enough rainwater to survive - but it takes .5 to 1 gallon a day for the average person to survive. Assuming a bucket has a diameter of 12", that it rains every single day, and the amount of rain is 1" per day, a bucket would collect a little less than half a gallon.
As for eating flora and fauna - do you know what plants are good to eat? Which will kill you? Most people don't. They have absolutely no idea. Wolfbane salad anyone? Top it off with Oleander blossoms?
My bet is that if you pulled 1000 people out of today's society, turned them loose in the countryside without access to any man-made or man-produced resources (no farm houses, no pre-packaged foods, no vegetable gardens that just happen to be lying around, no livestock in a barn waiting for slaughter, no guidebooks for what plants are good to eat), that on average, you might have 200 left alive at the end of a month and maybe 10-20 left at the end of three months. Maybe more if they eat each other.
People today have no idea how to make a snare, dress a rabbit, or for that matter, in most cases, even make a fire. They don't know what they can eat, or what will kill them.
As for the "resource-poor" cities… once MacDonalds and Burger King close, it's all over.
I'll concede that there is some optimism in my assessment. Perhaps reality would lie somewhere in between. We'll find out if/when the dollar crashes.
In the meantime, preparations like exchanging dollars for foreign currencies, getting your hands on a bit of gold/silver, investing in foreign markets servicing China, etc. do seem like worthwhile endeavors. I mentioned Peter Schiff's "The Real Crash". It's a pretty good read with some ideas for how to "crash-proof" yourself. This might make for an interesting post in its own right.
And so you confirm Mike's premise that happiness is integrated with reason. The fact that earned success gives you pleasure, but unearned does not means that you have used your rational judgement and have a reaction based upon important...no, essential...differentia. All emotional responses are simply instantaneous responses made by your subconscious, that massively parallel processing part of your brain that can sum up and compare inputs against your own code of ethics (which is the operating code, so to speak for that parallel processor). You feel anger, or joy, or sadness, or disdain quickly and powerfully. Your reactions are sometimes at odds with your conscious logic because the serial processor can only consider one bit at a time. The subconscious detects errors and contradictions not visible, or purposefully obfuscated by a logical argument.
Don't focus on politics. Focus on your own life, your own prosperity, your own fitness. If you are properly fit, you will be able to survive and likely thrive in any crisis scenario. Sure, being prepared is a key to fitness. Get some guns, gold, and a good network of good reliable friends, but focus on your success now. That success will translate into your success in the event of a crash, if one happens. Look, the train is headed toward the cliff. We can all see it. There is only one pedal in the locomotive that politicians will acknowledge, the accelerator pedal. When will it happen? Timing is tough. It took the Soviet Union 60 years to finally crash, and it was broke from the start.
really? don't focus on philosophy, don't focus on realities in this world. The people who "thrived" in the soviet union were the people who were the most brutal, the most immoral. because that is what that system rewarded. Pushing death. there is no guarantee when the US crashes that on the other side will be freedom. Ignoring politics, therefore ignoring US reality will ensure what will come out of this will be even more oppressive, more brutal, lots of wars. Should Rand have focused on her physical fitness, her prosperity, and remained in the Soviet Union? Should Locke have focused on accumulating gold and fitness and ignored ideas and politics? What of our founding fathers?
Ignoring politics in your nation is ignoring reality in the world. Speaking out now is key to winning the battle of ideas, which politics is very certainly a part of. By all means stay fit and pursue your financial goals and prepare for the worst-but do NOT ignore what is happening in front of your eyes.
"The basic and crucial political issue of our age is: capitalism versus socialism, or freedom versus statism. For decades, this issue has been silenced, suppressed, evaded, and hidden under the foggy, undefined rubber-terms of “conservatism” and “liberalism” which had lost their original meaning and could be stretched to mean all things to all men." Capitalism the Unknown Ideal
She said the 4th foundation of philosophy was politics.
She wrote the book, "The New Left" -all about politics.
She read Goldwater's book, "The Conscience of a Conservative" and included extensive notes in it. If you upgrade to producer, you can read her notes in the margins of the actual pages.
http://www.TheSocietyProject.org
This, in my opinion, is the best line in the entirety of the Declaration of Independence. It highlights our current predicament. Life, as it stands, is easy. It's easy to accept all of life's wrongs when you know little else.
The founding fathers had courage to know this, and to fight for what they knew was right, even if the odds were severely against them.
I'm trying to picture an economy where you can neither owe anything nor own anything.
>> which is why I garden, learning to can
And marksmanship, and reloading...
Ayn Rand predicted this in Atlas Shrugged. You'd think that would have been a wake up call. But who's paying attention?
There's been plenty of warning. The problem is, the average person is a moron. As long as they have three meals, a comfortable bed, "reality" TV, streaming video and a phone that's a lot smarter than they are, they're happy. It's not that they don't CARE that they're being fattened for a reason and butchery day is tomorrow - they're so think, they DON'T SEE IT COMING.
Right now, the wall of checks and balances designed to keep government power within just limits has been rejected by the judicial branch, ignored by the legislative branch and breached by the executive branch. The legal structural tools are still in place to force a restoration of the wall by manning the legislative and executive branches with liberty defenders and enforcers by way of the election process but this will take waking up a majority of the zombie sheep in America. We must convince them that equal liberty and justice for all is a win win proposition in their best interest. God has put the future in our hands and given each of us as individuals the right to choose for ourselves and by mutual consent, the future of our society.
1. Nationalize Federal reserve, restore power to congress. The creation of money needs to be an open source formula which reflects the value created by and for society as a whole, with adequate amounts to represent current savings, investments, production, inventories, natural resources... Governments would be able to pay for public works projects that create value, the created money representing the the cost of and value created for society; the community without creating inflation.
2. Strict laws and controls over any public servant with any authority over any budget matters. All financial interests surrendered during any term in office, interested will be pooled as an investment tied to the DOW and Nasdaq then returned 5 years after leaving office. Military code of conduct circa 1950 for all government employees or office holders.
3. Plan for National sales tax within 3 years and elimination of all debt over 15 years.
4. Decriminalize all actions consenting adults engage in in the privacy of their own homes, We promote only the highest aspirations of society.
5. Re-dedicate our public schools to their original intent (go find out what it really was) and localize control to the township/borough level.
6. Modify prisons into work centers, haul all garbage there and let them recycle it for us to earn wages to pay costs and fines. We will achieve a much greater level of recycling than we currently do and our scrap base is actually a tremendous resource.
7. Outlaw the promotion and advancement of socialism, communism, satanism, and islam. This one will be tough because it violates the constitution. But those beliefs are like yelling fire in a crowded theater, nothing but atrocities in every country they are practiced. Hence is why we are where we are.
Well, you get the idea.
You?
Pendulum of Justice -Dk hallling
Passion of Ayn Rand Barbara Branden
Snuff -Terry Pratchett
Ghost Story- Jim Butcher
The Nothing That Is; A Natural History of Zero-Robert Kaplan
Nope. No doomsday predicting material.
Science Fiction (multiple books - but mostly Hugo winners and the like).
Feynman's Lectures on Physics
Pauling's "General Chemistry"
Lots of stuff on line from probably 100+ sources.
Some software references
Too much stuff in the Gulch.