oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith

U.S.A. 2012: Is This What We've Become?

2012-05-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

Incentivize victimhood, fraudulent accounting of income/collateral and gaming the system, and guess what you get? A nation of liars and thieves.

Memorial Day is traditionally a day to speak of sacrifices made in combat. Like much of the rest of life in America, it has largely become artificial, a hurried "celebration" of frenzied Memorial Day marketing that is quickly forgotten the next day.

Instead of participating in this rote (and thus insincere) "thank you for your sacrifice" pantomime, perhaps we should ask what else has been sacrificed in America without our acknowledgement. Perhaps we should look at the sacrifices that need to be made but which are cast aside in our mad rush to secure "what we deserve."

The unvarnished reality is that most Americans have no idea what service members experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they don't want to know. When 4,488 white crosses were erected on a hillside to remind us of all those who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq, people didn't like it, labeling it "unpatriotic."

That is not the real reason, of course; what is more patriotic than keeping those who served and sacrificed fresh in our awareness? One reason those 4,000 crosses make us uncomfortable is that they remind us of being conned by our civilian leadership into "wars of choice."

Another is that the reality of war and its long aftermath are not sufficiently "uplifting" for a brittle nation that prefers the distractions of "reality" TV to an acknowledgement of our problems and the sacrifices made and yet to be made.

Longtime readers know that one of my embedded concerns is the disconnect between the civilian populace and the U.S. Armed Forces. This disconnect starts with raw numbers:THANK YOU TO THE 0.45% of the population who served in the Global War on Terror (2001 to present).

Personnel are costly, not just in civilian life but in the Armed Forces, too, and so the Pentagon has "downsized" the Armed Forces to a smaller but more professional force. This reflects not just budgetary realities but the evolution of modern warfare.

But it's not just that fewer serve because fewer are needed; the number of civilians who want to know and want to acknowledge the experience of those who serve is dwindling everywhere, from Congress to the media to the living rooms of the nation.

The Pentagon has reinforced this disconnect by controlling media access and coverage of its wars, and the media has complied to "control costs" and "give the public what it wants." Survey the media "consumers" and you find few want more coverage of the war or its consequences. So the five dominant media corporations offer up more of what people say they want: faked circus-like "entertainment" in which carefully selected competititors vie for the highest "prize" in modern America, a moment in the media spotlight. The appetite for "news" that trumps up trivialities and senseless, sensationalist crimes is equally insatiable.

Propaganda and marketing are the dominant forces in America, along with a willingness to suspend reality to avoid whatever is complex, knotty, difficult or painful.

Is this what we've become, a nation so fearful of the truth that we shun it, avoid it, or paper it over at every turn? It would seem so.

To take but one Memorial-Day example, we now "outsource" war just as we outsource manufacturing, and we ignore the sacrifices of those who replaced enlisted Armed Forces--even when many are ex-service members: Contractor Deaths Exceed Military Ones in Iraq and Afghanistan (2010). At the peak of the Iraq War, 150,000 "contractors" were in-theater so our civilian "leadership" could claim to have reduced the "headcount" of military personnnel serving in Iraq.

As with everything else in America, the artifice was swallowed whole because the truth was too ugly and difficult for us to bear. The sacrifices of our contractors in Iraq have been ignored by everyone: the Pentagon, the politicians and the public. Nobody wants to acknowledge the losses of those we hired to replace "official" soldiers, even though many of those contractors were ex-U.S. Armed Forces service members.

In Welfare State America, exaggerating victimhood and negating family, community and integrity are all heavily rewarded: that's how you get the gamed disability and a host of other entitlements.

Since credentials and grades are trumpeted as the foundation of financial security, then cheating on schoolwork and exaggerating accomplishments have become accepted norms.

Incentivize victimhood, fraudulent accounting of income/collateral and gaming the system, and guess what you get? A nation of liars and thieves.

All of whom claim "I had no other choice."

That is a sickness that cannot be cured with a pill.

The excuses are legion and varied. Everybody else is cheating, too. Look at the crooks at the top. If I told the truth, I wouldn't get the job/mortgage/entitlement/degree etc.

Everyone is to blame except ourselves, of course; we are powerless. Yet we continue to elect politicians who tell us what we want to hear, lies that sooth our insecurities and fears, politicians who have doubled the national debt in a few years and indentured future generations so our precious share of the pie remains untouched.

Living within our means is now either "impossible" or a sin re-branded "austerity."So we borrow staggering sums every year to maintain the artifice that the contraption of lies, leverage and debt is sustainable, because we have become so brittle and diminished that we cannot bear the truth or our responsibility for the fetid trash-heap that is the national psyche.

We don't care if the nation spends the lifetime Medicare taxes of ten workers ($30,000 lifetime taxes paid, $300,000-$500,000 spent on each beneficiary) in the last few months or years of each elderly beneficiary's life, because 1) it's profitable for those at the trough and 2) we're powerless to change it.

But that's just another lie, stacked on the immense mountain of lies we have piled up in the past decade: we just want our ten lifetime-taxes paid because "we paid our share."

So never mind that we're borrowing the equivalent of the entire GDP of Germany every two years-- ($3 trillion)--and that's just Federal borrowing. Of course the true extent of Federal borrowing is cloaked and obfuscated with tricks such as "supplemental appropriations," so the "headline number" is just another untruth passed off as fact--just like the unemployment rate and the GDP itself.

Add in private debt and local-government bond issuance (often for projects that were once paid for out of general fund tax revenues) and we're borrowing more like the GDP of Germany and France every two years, with no other future in sight.

The word "sacrifice" has been sacrificed on the altar of expediency. The politicians we elect (those who dare speak the truth of our impoverishment and complicity don't get elected--we abhor and fear the truth) have ground the word "sacrifice" into meaningless with overuse; it now means nothing but yet another clarion-call to swallow lies and artifice to protect our share of the loot.

The government can't be the problem, because the government issues me a nice check every month.

And so we cling to easy falsehoods. If only the 1% paid their fair share, all our problems would be solved.

The 1% should pay their fair share, but that isn't the problem; the top 1% already pay a significant share of income taxes collected; doubling that amount changes nothing about the long-term insolvency of our entitlements and crony-capitalist Empire.

The problem is our consumerist, Central-State dominated society/economy that depends on ever-rising debt and and leverage is unsustainable, and placating ourselves with expedient simplicities that shift the accountability and responsibility from ourselves to someone or something else solves nothing.

This reliance on excuses, denial and expediency is the hallmark of adolescence; in adulthood, these are the hallmarks of failure and pathology.

Is this what we've become, brittle, simulacra "grown-ups" who are incapable of acknowledging the truth of our situation? If we cannot dare acknowledging reality, then how can we solve our problems? If we cannot bear an awareness of our systemic rot and unsustainability, then how can we move past denial and expediency?

If we have lost the ability to live within our means and to acknowledge difficult facts, then we have lost everything: our national integrity, our ability to problem-solve, our vigor and our future.

Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change (print $25)
(Kindle eBook $9.95)

Read the Introduction (2,600 words) and Chapter One (7,600 words) for free.

We are like passengers on the Titanic ten minutes after its fatal encounter with the iceberg: though our financial system seems unsinkable, its reliance on debt and financialization has already doomed it.We cannot know when the Central State and financial system will destabilize, we only know they will destabilize. We cannot know which of the State’s fast-rising debts and obligations will be renounced; we only know they will be renounced in one fashion or another.
The process of the unsustainable collapsing and a new, more sustainable model emerging is called revolution, and it combines cultural, technological, financial and political elements in a dynamic flux.History is not fixed; it is in our hands. We cannot await a remote future transition to transform our lives. Revolution begins with our internal understanding and reaches fruition in our coherently directed daily actions in the lived-in world.

Thank you, David P. ($50), for your superbly generous contribution to this site--I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Part 4: A Feverish Whirl of Evil Intentions

2012-05-26T08:34:00.001-07:00

Here is Part 4 of my serialized novel, Four Bidding For Love.

Ross's mind was a feverish whirl of evil intentions, for GreenDollGal had summarily rejected his polite emailed offer to buy the T-20Z toaster at a handsome premium to her winning bid. With hope broken and rationality pummeled into bitter surrender, Ross had tumbled to the sulfurous depths only those in despair know.

As crazed as it may have sounded to a less obsessed individual, breaking and entering GreenDollGal's house, wherever that might be, to purloin the T-20Z toaster seemed to sprout the dark wings of logic and indeed, of inevitability. In his spinning-top intensity, Ross calculated the risks and the contingencies; if he couldn't find the T-20Z, then he'd grab an armful of her treasured 19th century dolls as hostage. With her precious dolls in his grasp, GreenDollGal would be brought swiftly to her knees; he might even demand her entire appliance collection.
And don't think distance will protect your collection, Ross thought with grim determination; Duluth, Charleston, Mobile, heck, even Fairbanks—I need that toaster. Rising from his deep-in-thought slouch, Ross leaped from his cat-shredded office chair with an energy few living souls had ever witnessed and trotted across the hall to knock insistently on Kylie's door.
For a plan had burst into fullness in his overheated mind: recruit Kylie to negotiate for the T-20Z with GreenDollGal, and through the negotiation, discover the location of GreenDollGal's abode. If the negotiation succeeded, so much the better; and if it did not, then burglary would deliver the T-20Z or the doll hostages.
His comely neighbor managed to cool his fevered plans by heating his animal spirits, for she came to the door post-bath, wrapped in a white towel which set off her brown skin most alluringly. Her damp curling hair dangled around her perfectly oval face, and her lips were parted most wonderfully in surprise at his unusual insistence.
Tearing his gaze from her bare shoulders, he asked, "What size shoe do you wear?"
Pulling the towel self-consciously higher over her bustline, Kylie met his flustered gaze with a curious guardedness. "I'm not sure we know each other well enough for that."
"Oh, sweet Hallelujah, I didn't ask for your bra size, I just want to know if you wear a size 7 shoe."
Kylie sucked her lips in a thoughtful pause, and Ross had to remind himself that she played in a league far above his own: beautiful, smart and self-effacing women like Kylie flicked hopeful guys off like dead gnats.
"Why do you want to know?" she asked.
Frustrated that a simple question had turned into a mini-Inquisition, Ross mustered a stripped-down response. "You know that toaster I lost on eBay? The woman who won has lots of shoes for sale. I need you to buy a pair from her."
"But why?"
Wary of revealing his sordidly repellent burglary scheme, Ross fumbled for an appealing explanation. "I need to open a line of communication with her," he replied.
Kylie's expression darkened with annoyance. "Why involve me? Just offer her more money for the dumb toaster."
"I did, but she turned me down. But maybe she'd strike a bargain with another woman."
Kylie twirled a damp strand of dark hair around her index finger and despite his lower-league status, Ross's body jerked in instinctive reaction to her flirtatious gesture.
"I'd pay for the shoes, of course," he said, and added in a pleading tone, "Please, Kylie, as a favor. I really need your help on this."
Abject begging seemed to reach his absurdly gorgeous neighbor, and she nodded. "I could always use another pair of shoes."
"Your intimate secret—size 7—is safe with me," he replied in a conspiratorial voice. "If we're lucky, she lives nearby and you can pick up the T-20Z tomorrow."
"I know you're crazy about toasters, but what's the rush?"
"The show," Ross blurted heatedly. "Las Vegas. My future. I have to submit photos of my collection in two days or I'm doomed."
Kylie's expression fell into a pout which was even more adorable than her smile. "But why me?"
"You're a woman," Ross replied quickly, "and the whole idea is for you to negotiate for me. Two, I trust you, and three, you have lots of free time."
"So do you," she rejoined, and he said, "Which brings me to point four. I already hate this woman with every fiber of my being, and she's clairvoyant. She's already sensed my hatred and refused to deal with me."
"Clairvoyant," Kylie snorted. "Right. Then just go buy another T-30X."
"T-20Z," he corrected her. "They're stupendously rare and I'm out of time. I checked with dealers, there's none available at any price."
Kylie shook her head in a show of frustrated pity. "So you lost an auction. Don't blow it up into a tragedy."
"Not getting in the show would be a tragedy," Ross said insistently. "Look, she outbid me by eleven cents the first time and by two cents the second time. Either she read my mind—telepathy—or she foresaw my final bid—clairvoyance. And now she detects my need for the T-20Z and is refusing me because I hate her."
"How can you hate someone you've never met?"
"If she's wantonly obliterating your most treasured dream, then you don't need to meet her," Ross said, and the grim tone of his voice startled Kylie.
"Maybe she's planning to go to Vegas, too."
"You know, I believe in women's intuition," Ross said. "You're probably right."
Kylie raised her arms to swirl her hair atop her head and Ross struggled not to swoon too visibly, for her slender brown arms, long bare legs and luxurious damp hair were mesmerizing; the small white towel was stretched to the extreme to cover both her derriere and bust, and Ross's eyes were drawn irresistibly from her damp dark hair to her cleavage and thence to her shapely calves.
With a supreme effort, Ross focused on her large brown eyes, and felt his inner man melt like sun-drenched Jell-O. My God, this is torture, he mused; please say yes, but not too soon.
"I don't know," Kylie said dubiously. "It's an awful lot of trouble for a dumb toaster."
"Are you kidding? It's ten minutes work. And you'll get a free pair of shoes—hey, make it two pair. That's worth at least $60."
"Only ten minutes?"
Ross put on his most imploring expression and nodded. "Just look at her shoe collection, email her an offer and then buy a pair."
"You said two pair."
"Yes," Ross agreed with a sigh. "Two. You have an eBay account, don't you?"
While she held her hair aloft, the white towel suddenly came undone and dropped noiselessly to the floor. Despite the speed of Kylie's recovery, some of her charms had been briefly laid bare for Ross's stunned viewing and a warm flush rose over her face as she snatched the towel to her chest.
Swallowing hard, Ross stammered, "So you have an eBay account, right?"
Kylie nodded assent, and as she struggled to re-wrap the towel around her midriff Ross worked up a faux-calm voice. "I'll send you the link. Just log in, look at her shoes and email her about the shoes."
Still flushed with embarrassment, Kylie nodded and began to close her door. When the door was a few inches from closure, she paused and murmured, "32-C."
Edging up to the crack, Ross asked, "What?"
Kylie's oval face filled the opening, and she looked down. "My bra size," she said shyly. "32-C. Since you know my shoe size, you might as well have that, too."
Taken aback, Ross whispered, "I'm honored," and Kylie closed the door.
Ross exhaled with rough vigor and focused his bedazzled attention on the devious, nay, even devilish, Plan B which had unfurled its dark wings in his mind as he'd awaited Kylie's grudging acquiescence. Now that Plan A—the apparently innocent inquiry by Kylie—was launched, Ross returned to his desk to launch Plan B—the acquisition of whatever GreenDollGal was currently bidding on.
For his initial thievery fever had, on reflection, been chilled by the harsh realities of transforming a pudgy, utterly lacking in criminal experience white-collar drone—i.e. himself—into a stealthily fearless burglar. His wild scheme to grab her dolls as hostages led to a realization that holding something she valued hostage should be his plan from the start. But rather than break in and purloin GreenDollGal's existing treasures—a crime, he reminded himself, no matter how justified by circumstance— far better to snatch away a desired treasure via eBay sniping.
This required considerable sleuthing and analysis of GreenGalDoll's past and current bids. The first rule of collecting, Ross knew, was the most expensive items pointed unerringly to the collector's most prized possessions. From this corollary Ross quickly concluded GreenDollGal's obsession with shoes was mere frippery, while her collection of dolls and old movie posters were centered deep in her heart. But she hadn't bid on dolls in months; all her recent activity had been in vintage appliances and film posters.
And while he could not yet discern a pattern in her poster bids, it was clear that film posters were being sought for an important collection. That was knowledge enough to launch Plan B, and Ross set to work researching the value of her current goal, a poster for the 1940s film The Thief of Bagdad.
A number of bidders had already entered the auction—given their own auction histories, several were quite experienced—and Ross anticipated the bidding would be spirited. As a non-expert, he knew he would be overpaying unless he set a bid which automatically raised the last bid by a dime up to a pre-set limit; but at what limit? It had to be high enough to win; and with that thought grimly in mind, Ross opened a new web window and transferred the last of his savings to his PayPal account.
This was for the money, Honey, he told himself with renewed resolve; he would get The Thief of Bagdad poster and with that leverage, pry GreenDollGal's undeserving fingers from the T-20Z in time to win glory in Las Vegas.

Next: Robin vs. the Axe Murderer

To read all the segments, visit the "Four Bidding For Love" home page.

If you want to read the entire book now, it's available as a Kindle ebook for a low-fat triple-mocha super-grande coffee, i.e. $4.95.

The Argument Industry: Hyping Controversy and Avoiding Solutions

2012-05-25T07:15:00.002-07:00

The mainstream media has always loved controversy and wars, military and cultural alike. Now we have an "Argument Industry" that thrives on keeping problems insoluble.

That much of the "news" is artifice and propaganda is a given. How can a society make good decisions about its future when the "facts" such as the unemployment rate are massaged and manipulated, and so many of the "reforms" are simulacra designed by the very wolves supposedly being tamed? Answer: it can't.

The same question can be asked of a society in which the "editorial" side of the mainstream media is dominated by an "Argument Industry" that pours gasoline on every conflict and avoids solutions like a vampire avoids the Cross and garlic.

Finding solutions would decimate the "Argument Industry" and slash profits.

That leaves us with the same question: How can a society make good decisions about its future when every challenge is conflated into extremes that cannot abide compromise or even recognize "outside the box" solutions? Answer: it can't.

Correspondent Kevin F. coined the term "Argument Industry" in this incisive commentary:

While pondering the gay marriage vote in North Carolina, I thought of how that is one among many issues we could solve once and for all in this country, but somehow we've decided not to. I wonder how much of the resistance to solutions* is caused (intentionally or subliminally) by the need for an "Argument Industry". For any hot-button issue, there is an ecosystem of lawyers, pundits, bloggers, journalists, lobbyists, community organizers, protesters and many others who feed off the issue. Each argument provides steady work for hundreds, if not thousands, of people, mainly in fields (political science, TV news, etc.) that would founder or collapse if the arguments didn't exist. Without gay marriage and abortion, half of all talking heads would be out of work.

It seems to me that the Argument Industry is one of the many consequences of the global shortage of legitimate work, a large pocket of the "make work" you described earlier this month. Conveniently, it also stirs people's passions, and drives them to rally around the politicians that argue the same way they do, encouraging loyalty in the system and the Status Quo.

* For "gay marriage", why not abolish the concept of marriage within government? Replace it with a "civil partnership" for everyone: you may select anyone as your partner, provided they are over 18 and also select you as their partner. Partners get all the rights previously afforded to holders of "marriage licenses", and all marriage licenses are converted to partnerships. Your religion (if any) may limit who you can marry (and pressure you to not make certain choices of partners), or limit when you can call yourself "married" (only after completing a special ceremony), but it's not the government's problem. Marriage wouldn't exist in the eyes of the government, only the concept that many people choose a partner and want them to have special rights and privileges.

Thank you, Kevin, for an insightful explication of the Argument Industry. It could be argued (heh) that I am part of the Industry that profits from maintaining ideological and cultural deadlocks and dead-ends, but my view is that adaptation requires transparent experimentation and dissent, in which the "better" ideas (i.e. the ideas that work better in the real world than the alternatives) out-compete the failed ideas of the past.

I see this blog and my books as efforts to honestly contextualize our situation and sketch out a practical framework for moving ahead.

For example, the various special interests and protected fiefdoms in financially troubled Vallejo, California, claimed without any shred of compromise or reason that bankruptcy would destroy the city, etc. They were flat-out wrong.

After a transition we might describe as "we only change when we absolutely have to",Vallejo, Calif., once bankrupt, is now a model for cities in an age of austerity (Washington Post).

The number of neighborhood watch groups jumped from 15 to 350. Citizen volunteers came together monthly to paint over graffiti and do other cleanup work. And the city council struck an unusual deal with residents — if they agreed to a one-penny sales tax increase, projected to generate an additional $9.5 million in revenue, they could vote on how the money would be used. The experiment in participatory budgeting, which began in April, is the first in a North American city.

Solutions exist, but neither the vested interests profiting from the failed Status Quo nor the Argument Industry can abide practical solutions, because such solutions destroy both "profit centers."

Now that Vallejo is leading the way, it's dropped out of the news for the most part; this MSM article is a rare bit of solid reporting. Once the conflict and trauma could no longer be fanned by the Argument Industry, coverage evaporated.

One of the key take-aways is that solutions are local, not national. The Argument Industry loves to keep gay marriage front and center in a "national debate," where I see the solution is to let the issue be decided on a county level. People will move to counties that align with their own views, rather than have a "solution" shoved down their throats.

The same can be said of "drug wars," healthcare, etc.: solutions sought at the national level are already doomed by the bureaucratic costs and political corruption in Washington. Devolve the problems to the local level and let a thousand flowers of experimentation bloom. Those that work will quickly stand out and be copied by others seeking real solutions rather than clinging to a failed Status Quo.

Kevin offers an interesting solution to the heavily hyped "gay marriage" controversy. It's worth recalling that in rural Colonial America the government also had no role in controlling or officiating marriage. In rural America, churches and preachers were scarce, with many communities served by itinerant clergy.

To get married, a couple declared their marriage "in the eyes of God" and moved in together. When the preacher came round, they might, if they and their families chose to, conduct a church ceremony. If not, the marriage stood as declared and consummated. The local government (such as it was) might record the marriage as a census factoid much like ownership of a specific parcel of land, but it did not regulate what lay outside the boundaries of State control.

In Peak Government, the Central State seeks to control everything; there is nothing that is not within its purview and grasp. Perhaps that in itself is the "problem" that needs fixing.

Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change (print $25)
(Kindle eBook $9.95)

Read the Introduction (2,600 words) and Chapter One (7,600 words) for free.

We are like passengers on the Titanic ten minutes after its fatal encounter with the iceberg: though our financial system seems unsinkable, its reliance on debt and financialization has already doomed it.We cannot know when the Central State and financial system will destabilize, we only know they will destabilize. We cannot know which of the State’s fast-rising debts and obligations will be renounced; we only know they will be renounced in one fashion or another.
The process of the unsustainable collapsing and a new, more sustainable model emerging is called revolution, and it combines cultural, technological, financial and political elements in a dynamic flux.History is not fixed; it is in our hands. We cannot await a remote future transition to transform our lives. Revolution begins with our internal understanding and reaches fruition in our coherently directed daily actions in the lived-in world.

Thank you, Edward P. ($25), for yet another splendidly generous contribution to this site--I am greatly honored by your continuing support and readership.