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“It’s either you root for a recession, or you lose your democracy.” Bill Maher
Pride always goeth before the fall, and its now likely this asshole – who as you can hear is being cheered on by the unconscionable titheads in his audience — many of whom are no doubt soon to be out of work and increasingly desperate — will get the recession he wanted. And don’t fool yourself, the downstream consequences make it possible to get a recession — or even a depression — AND lose the republic.
We do a notably poor job of choosing our media champions, and Bill Maher is living proof.
In other news, I went down to Sisters Feed yesterday to get more scratch for the chickens, you know, before our friends and neighbors start hoarding sacks of egg layer to make their survival waffles. That’s meant as a joke but in another month or so might not be. So far there isn’t any noticeable desperation in the food supply but that can change overnight, and if hoarding tendencies and shut-in measures stay in place rationing won’t be out of the question. Only three weeks ago we were looking on with astonishment and incredulity as Venezuelans ransacked dumpsters for rotting food.
Hello, Caracas!
It’s worth noting the possibility that a novel coronavirus, the result of some communist party jackass French-kissing a bat at a food court in Wuhan, China, will accomplish what Chairman Xi and Bernie never could have: turning America into a socialist paradise. That’s a story for the ages if there ever was one. And it isn’t even far-fetched — because some shady twits in Congress are already, when they aren’t busy insider trading — and in a chilling demonstration of political exploitation — calling to nationalize key American industries.
Confucious say: pay close attention to any politician, or anyone else for that matter, who is using this virus as another excuse to increase dependency.
Still, with the various closures and orders to stay home – which are a good idea but have some dubious constitutional underpinnings – we’ve all been reminded just how quickly normalcy can be replaced by martial law, triage tents, and MREs — and all without irony.
Wolverines!
If you haven’t been paying close enough attention, please hear this: there is no long, slow, collapse. The fragility of our complex system guarantees a rapid cascade of disaster as each load-bearing beam in the house weakens – almost simultaneously — and gives out. The structure has been built that way. America doesn’t disappear over centuries of decline: the house comes down all at once.
And, without trying to over stress it, here’s the bottom line: if you aren’t already prepared for an intense and sustained cultural and economic shitshow, and I mean right now, today, you are well-behind the survival 8 ball and worse, should conditions continue to deteriorate, will become something not much better than a sheep, herded this way and that by angry 18 year old National Guardsmen acting on orders from the incurably inept, and the ultimately unaccountable.
*
How we imagine the collapse:
How it really happens:
*
The good news is that Fred, who owns the feed store, was still well-stocked with feeds and geedunk for all the various animals humans have enslaved for our amusement. We had a good chat over the counter. No one was feeling particularly plaguey but we agreed these are bizarre times that will crush a significant portion of the small businesses in our town. Their margins are always thin anyway and business owners here rely on the spring wave of tourists for a jumpstart. But those “sticky dollars” won’t be coming over the mountain this year and the Out of Business signs are about to go up like Russian thistle in a pile of Nevada mine tailings– dole checks or no dole checks.
I’m trying to walk that narrow balance beam between optimism and pragmatism, which has the unexpected end result of upping my appreciation for the Olympic feats of Nadia Comenici. She was something, wasn’t she?
Here on the Figure 8 the little bluebirds have returned to their favorite birdhouse in our yard. Every year they come back to this same birdhouse until their eggs hatch and the young ones are old enough to fly. Then they disappear. I don’t know where they go, but about the time they leave the swallows come diving in from wherever they have been — which might be Mexico.
Also, the Snow Crocus are up and blooming in the yard.
There is so much I just don’t know.
I also don’t know where the squirrels have gone. Normally we have dozens of squirrels racing around our property but this year I’ve seen exactly one. There is a message in their absence but I don’t have a key to the codex and so, much like the fallout from Covid-19, I’m not entirely sure what it is I’m looking at. I’ve seen more coyotes this spring which could mean something. The hawks don’t seem to be doing anything unusual and the owl we often hear at night still sounds like just one owl. He has always been a lonely sonofabitch — I imagine him something like an even sadder version of Colter Wall — and it remains one of life’s great pleasures to sit on the porch on summer nights, listening to him sing his brand of blues.
This year I’ll have to do it without bourbon.
I catch myself entertaining the occasional apocalyptic thought: this morning I was strategizing how I would carry water barrels down to the river in my tractor bucket…until the diesel runs out. But then I thought: knock it off Rullman, you are being ridiculous. I was strategizing all this while watering the horses who just looked at me waiting for their turn to get some hair curried off into the breeze.
Maybe we are all being a little ridiculous right now.
I can’t be sure of that either, but I do have a lot of work to do down in the greenhouse. And today the sun is shining, the soil is warming up, the bluebirds are busy furnishing their little duplex apartment, and it’s time to get out of this goddamn house and start some summer vegetables from seed.
Douglas Winniford says
Good read
Thank you sir.
Doug Kresky says
Nicely done as usual my friend.
Thx Doug
Breaker Morant (David Wrolson) says
Good post. The “Watch Netflix in My Pajamas for Two Weeks and Then Everything Gets Back to Normal” jokes and memes and so forth will soon start to wear.
I also noted on another message board that I frequent the “Everybody will just work from home” theme posited by a computer network guy. That doesn’t work too well with the small tourist businesses in Sisters, does it?
We are slamming this economy into a wall at 250 MPH. This is unprecedented-even compared to the Great Depression and the Spanish Flu. The powers that be often brag (or whatever) about how we have transitioned to a Service economy-well, I guess we will see how a service economy handles this Shitstorm from Hell.
Matthew says
The powers that be often brag (or whatever) about how we have transitioned to a Service economy-well, I guess we will see how a service economy handles this Shitstorm from Hell.—
That’s a good point. I don’t know how apocalyptic this is going to turn out, but we are going to need to change. We need to make stuff again.
I hope this causes people to toughen up and develop resilience. I’m not holding my breath, though.
The thing about hard times is that one either bucks up and meet the challenge, or gets a black tag in the triage tent. If this does get apocalyptic — and I don’t think it will — the less resilient will eventually run out of their Costco toilet paper and be herded into refugee camps like we see on the Syria/Jordan border, or other zones of eternal strife — or they will just end up making their own tent camps everywhere you look. Sort of like the garment district or Skid Row in LA. With notable irony, in the refugee camps they will get MRE’s which come with an impossible and ridiculous little square of shit paper. 🙂
Mark Solomon says
Don’t eat the gum and you won’t have to worry about the tiny piece of paper.
Or the Charms. Never eat the Charms. And whatever you do, don’t light three cigarettes with one match.
In the big battle between Pajama Boy and Coronavirus, the virus always wins…Pajama boy will have all kinds of new things to complain about and new people to blame when there are no jobs and he finally realizes he and his hair products are not, in fact, the center of the known universe.
Traven Torsvan says
“The powers that be often brag (or whatever) about how we have transitioned to a Service economy-well, I guess we will see how a service economy handles this Shitstorm from Hell.”
That or a gig economy and something something capital D Disruption
Federal officials publically said they were baffled why the private sector hasnt stepped up, looks like they’ve swallowed their own kool aid.
At this point once things kind of get back to normal, get ready for the usual economic shock therapy that the officials will institute, that I’m worried about.
Good post, Craig. Hang in there.
Thanks Keith. We are powering on, happy for a nice turn in the weather.
Breaker Morant (David Wrolson) says
Shades of Edward Abbey, but there will be lots of upcoming lessons to be learned on the sustainability of industrial tourism as an economic model.
As my main conservation interest is African lands and wildlife and hunting as a sustainable model and so forth. I think the hunters will go back to the remote areas sooner than the mass tourists will to the premier areas.
While it is not looking good at present, I have not yet given up on a planned hunting trip to Namibia in June. As some may remember, I bought the trip very reasonably last year at a local Safari Club event-so at this time-we are only out air fare.
I got an email from the outfitter the other day, basically pleading with their hunters not to give up yet as they are out money for government quota at this time. They are probably sucking air right now.
However, I bet the industrial tourists with trips planned to the Serengeti and the Okavango and so forth are canceling trips en masse.
There is little doubt they are cancelling en masse. Not hearing much out of Africa these days. One can only imagine, on a continent plagued the way Africa always is with locusts and pestilence of every description, what might be happening in the interior. Good luck, I’d hate to see such a potentially great hunt called off.
Traven Torsvan says
Does Bill Maher have any coherent ideology besides “orange man bad” and how anyone isnt him or claps at his “jokes” is stupid?
What do you think Joe Biden is up to now that he’s MIA during all this?
If he does have a coherent ideology he keeps it to himself…and Uncle Joe? Probably trolling the Moonlight Bunny Ranch on his handheld device. So to speak.
Jim says
I’m glad I’m not the only one pondering the potentials. Should I buy more chicks, how many potatoes can I get in one row. Thanks for shining the light.
I sit here getting pissed at the near constant combination of doomsaying and demand for salvation from the government. It seems the potential is worse than the Great Depression. Back then you had people who accepted trouble in life and a willingness to do what was necessary. Today it’s like ‘snowflake meets apocalypse’. With that paralyzing fear of difficult times in life comes a government that will gladly destroy our ability to maintain an economy in order to satiate every fearful impulse in the short term. I’m not even assuming my pension will be there.
None of our “leaders” want the media to label them insensitive so they treat every death as life altering for the nation. Thus requiring wholesale economic destruction and abandonment of rights as proof of their sincerity. This will be hard and tragic if the virus does it’s worst and it’s not ‘so sad/too bad’ for the old folks. But I don’t need them to destroy it all even if that death is mine. I need an economy for my kids when this is done.
This is gonna suck, no doubt and people dying is tragic. But the death of the economy and curtailing of rights will produce greater pain, suffering and death far greater for much longer.
This: “With that paralyzing fear of difficult times in life comes a government that will gladly destroy our ability to maintain an economy in order to satiate every fearful impulse in the short term.” Yup. We’ve become habituated to “fear based” decision making…pumped largely by the fear-based media who have gone full batshit. They have only one reaction to anything at all, which is overreaction, because they have been trained to overreact by management because it sells. We’ve both seen that seem impulse in careers on the street and it has somehow become the predominate guiding behavior nationwide — even amongst people who should know better. It isn’t just street loons who flip out, it’s Senators and our supposed representative leadership. It’s also bizarre and doesn’t bode well. This is no longer the country that won WW2. Not even close.
Jim says
Sadly true. I am trying see this as a positive through the backward lens of history. Perhaps there will be far fewer snowflakes and woe is me I’m a _________ (black, Indian, female, trans, student loanee .…) then there are currently. They may be too busy working to complain. In the mean time is suggest Monty Python for perspective.
I’m presently recommending Tiger King on Netflix. It is mind blowing.