Tuesday, March 17, 2009

"A Pandemic of Fear," Chaos, Confusion, and Civil War

Picasso's Guernica

"He who laughs has not yet been told the terrible news." -- Bertolt Brecht.

"Brecht was an optimist." -- A friend of mine, yesterday.

Below are two opinion pieces that reflect a conversation I had yesterday about Obama, where we are as a country and who Saint Barry truly serves. Was he merely blundering or was this really part of somebody's plan?

I pointed out that The Lightworker's policies and actions could hardly be worse for the country if he had planned it that way. These are not the actions of someone who wants a second term. The passions he is playing with here can easily explode. Remember that revolutions happen not when a population is downtrodden and oppressed, but rather when rising expectations are disapppointed. No one has raised expectations more than Obama. Unfortunately, the folks whose expectations have been irrationally and cruelly raised -- "Barack's going to make my house payment!" -- are precisely the folks whose disappointment can most easily be turned violent.

I have been trying to get my daughters to understand how fragile the rule of law really is. To this end, I have been letting them see youtube images of the LA riots of 1992. For example,

here,

here,

here,

here,

here,

here,

here,

here,

here,

and here,

The strength of the social contract in this country has only deteriorated since 1992. The criminal gangs and the "gangsta" culture have grown like Topsy in the past two decades. The lumpenproletariat of our cities is more violent and far better armed than in 1992. And Katrina demonstrated that in a real emergency, half of the LEO "Only Ones" will head to the hills with Momma and the other half will either be looting themselves or divesting honest citizens of the means of self-defense.

Yet Obama is laying the groundwork for a systemic failure of the rule of law. We Three Percenters are going to discover that, for us anyway, we are ALL Korean grocers.

We are left with the old crime-solving detective's question, "Qui bono?" "Who benefits?"

In the end, I think, historians will be astounded at how fast the United States of America collapsed. We should not be. The collectivist termites have been at the foundations of our Republic for most of a century now. The wonder is not that it will collapse. The wonder is that it has stood this long.

Yet, how to account for Obama? Everything he has done has served to discredit him, even with his own base. Anger builds everywhere over just about everything. Take the AIG bonuses. The Obamanoids knew about them before they even took office. They had to have known how intensely angering they would be. Yet they did nothing to stop them.

Take as well Obama's refusal to produce his birth certificate. I have not weighed in on this before, but even a self-obsessed narcissist could not fail to understand how such a refusal to prove his citizenship must strike at the heart of his legitimacy. Even a clever forgery would be better than a refusal. Yet refusal, and corrosive doubt, is what he has given us.

The removal of the United States from the world equation will only serve the interests of America's traditional enemies. "Who benefits?" Perhaps we should rather ask, "Who does he serve?"

This will not end well.

Get ready.

Mike
III

From Peggy Noonan at the Wall street Journal we have this:

Wall Street Journal
MARCH 13, 2009

There's No Pill for This Kind of Depression

by Peggy Noonan

Six months after the collapse, a "pandemic of fear."

It is six months since Lehman fell and the crash (or the great recession, or the collapse—it's time it got its name) began. An aspect of the story given less attention than it is due, perhaps because it doesn't lend itself to statistics, is the psychic woe beneath the economic blow. There are two parts to this. One is that we have arrived at the first fatigue. The heart-pumping drama of last September is gone, replaced by the drip-drip-drip of pink slips, foreclosures and closed stores. We are tired. It doesn't feel like 1929, but 1930. People are in a kind of suspended alarm, waiting for the future to unspool and not expecting it to unspool happily.

Two, the economy isn't the only reason for our unease. There's more to it. People sense something slipping away, a world receding, not only an economic one but a world of old structures, old ways and assumptions. People don't talk about this much because it's too big, but I suspect more than a few see themselves, deep down, as "the designated mourner," from the title of the Wallace Shawn play.

I asked a friend, a perceptive writer, if he is seeing what I'm seeing. Yes, he said, there is "a pervasive sense of anxiety, as though everyone feels they're on thin ice." He wonders if it's "maybe a sense that we've had it too easy in the years since 9/11 and that the bad guys are about to appear on the horizon." An attorney in a Park Avenue firm said, "Things look like they have changed and may not come back." He contrasted the feeling now on the streets with 2001. "Things are subdued. . . . Nine-eleven was brutal and graphic. Yet because there was real death and loss of life folks could grieve and then move on." But today, "the dread is chronic. . . . Tom Wolfe's Masters of the Universe were supposed to be invincible. The pillars of media were supposed to be there forever. The lawyers were supposed to feed through thick and thin. Not anymore." He quoted Ecclesiastes: "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." We are worried, he said, "about a way of life, about the loss of upward trajectory."

The sale of antidepressants and antianxiety drugs is widespread. In New York their use became common after 9/11. It continued through and, I hypothesize, may have contributed to, the high-flying, wildly imprudent Wall Street of the '00s. We look for reasons for the crash and there are many, but I wonder if Xanax, Zoloft and Klonopin, when taken by investment bankers, lessened what might have been normal, prudent anxiety, or helped confuse prudent anxiety with baseless, free-floating fear. Maybe Wall Street was high as a kite and didn't notice. Maybe that would explain Bear Stearns, and Merrill, and Citi.

Gun sales continue up. The FBI's criminal background check system showed a 23% increase in February over the previous year, a 29% increase in January, a 24% increase in December and a 42% increase in November, when a record 1.5 million background checks were performed. Yes, people fear President Obama will take away the guns he thinks they cling to, but a likely equal contributor to what The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch called a "gun-buying binge" is captured in the slogan on one firearms maker's Web site: "Smith & Wesson stands for protection." People are scared.

They are taking cash out of the bank in preparation for a long-haul bad time. A friend in Florida told me the local bank was out of hundred-dollar bills on Wednesday because a man had come in the day before and withdrawn $90,000. Five weeks ago, when I asked a Wall Street titan what one should do to be safe in the future, he took me aback with the concreteness of his advice, and its bottom-line nature. Everyone should try to own a house, he said, no matter how big or small, but it has to have some land, on which you should learn how to grow things. He also recommended gold coins, such as American Eagles. I went to the U.S. Mint Web site the next day, but there was a six-week wait due to high demand. (I just went on the Web site again: Production of gold Eagle coins "has been temporarily suspended because of unprecedented demand" for bullion.)

In Manhattan, Catholic church attendance appears to be up. Everyone seems to agree that this is so, though the archdiocese says it won't have numbers until next fall. But yes, said Joseph Zwilling, the director of communications, "from what I've heard anecdotally from various priests," the pews have been fuller. The rector at St. Patrick's told him Ash Wednesday was "the busiest yet," with 60,000 people coming for ashes. At my local church at noon mass one day this week, there were 40 people when normally there are roughly a dozen, and the communion line stretched to the back of the church. Something is happening. Yesterday a friend sent the warning of the Evangelical pastor David Wilkerson, of Times Square Church, that a new catastrophe is imminent. This is causing a small sensation in evangelical circles.

To me, one of the signal signs of the times is the number of people surfing the Internet looking for . . . something. One friend looks for small farms in distressed rural areas. Another logs on late at night looking for a house to buy in a small town out West, or down South, or in the Deep South. She is moving all around America in her imagination. I asked if she had a picture in her head of what she was looking for, and she joked that she wanted to go where Atticus Finch made his summation to the jury. I don't think it was really a joke. She's not looking for a new place, she's looking for the old days.

I spoke to a Manhattan-based psychiatrist who said there is an uptick in the number of his patients reporting depression and anxiety. He believes part of the reason is that we're in a new place, that "When people move into a new home they increasingly recognize the importance of their previous environment." Our new home is postprosperity America; the old one was the abundance; we miss it. But he also detected a political dimension to his patients' anguish. He felt that many see our leaders as "selfish and dishonest," that "our institutions have been revealed as incompetent and undependable." People feel "unled, overwhelmed," the situation "seemingly unsalvageable." The net result? He thinks what he is seeing, within and without his practice, is a "psychological pandemic of fear" as to the future of things—of our country, and even of mankind.

So where does that leave us? The writer and philosopher Laurens van der Post, in his memoir of his friendship with Carl Jung, said, "We live not only our own lives but, whether we know it or not, also the life of our time." We are actors in a moment of history, taking part in it, moving it this way or that as we move forward or back. The moment we are living now is a strange one, a disquieting one, a time that seems full of endings.

Too bad there's no pill for that.



From Financial Sense comes this:

Chaos, Confusion, and Civil War

by J. R. Nyquist

Weekly Column Published: 03.13.2009

On 29 December 2008 the Wall Street Journal ran a piece about Igor Panarin, dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s diplomatic academy.

A former KGB officer, Panarin made a splash by predicting that America will probably come under martial law by the end of 2009, and may fracture into several states by 2011. When this happens, says Panarin, Russia and China will become the mainstays of a new global order.

Americans are naturally skeptical of Panarin’s analysis. But his conclusions are quite pedestrian. If North America sank beneath the ocean like the fabled continent of Atlantis, the world would belong to Russia and China. No significant obstacle would stand in their way. The proof of this is found in the history of all empires, in the character of the leaders in Beijing and Moscow, and in the appalling weakness of Europe and Japan. Unthinking people are sometimes heard to say that Russia and China aren’t expansionist powers. It is laughable to think this, because you don’t become the largest country or the most populous unless you’ve conquered a considerable territory inhabited by many millions of people.

Without the United States in the picture, Russia and China would be the dominant powers. They would dictate terms to the world. No country or group of countries could possibly stand against them. This is because Russia and China possess thousands of nuclear weapons. The small nuclear arsenals of France, Britain, Israel and India do not pose a serious threat to large countries with large arsenals like Russia and China. Psychologically speaking, these small powers are helpless against great powers.

If Panarin is right about the breakup of the United States, then he is also right about the coming of a new global order under Moscow and Beijing. But is he right about the breakup of the United States? It was an anonymous Russian diplomat quoted in Pravda last July, who first intimated that the United States was about to suffer a profound crisis – a crisis of existence. How did the Russian diplomat know that the United States was headed for a financial crash? He knew because Russia has the best information service in the world, formerly known as the KGB. Russian spies have penetrated everywhere, and provide high quality information to people like Panarin – who is a “former” KGB analyst.

The Russian intelligence services have long tracked economic, financial and demographic changes in the United States. Russian analysts know that certain trends lead to political crisis. Such trends include ethnic balkanization, an ideological split in the ruling class, rising indebtedness, economic collapse, and declining moral standards. A country like the United States is ripe for civil war. If this should happen, foreign powers would intervene and the country would be split along geographical lines: California and the West would fall under Chinese control, Texas and the south would go to Mexico, and Russia would lay claim to Alaska. “It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska,” says Panarin. “It was part of the Russian empire for a long time.”

Panarin is saying, basically, that the present economic crisis signals a political crisis. The divisions within American society, and the narcissistic pathologies of consumer society, will cause an implosion. The people of America will turn against one another. The protective nuclear umbrella provided by the United States will cease to function. Europe and Asia will fall to Russia and China. From that point forward, the outcome of every political conflict on the planet will be determined in Moscow or Beijing. This would include, of course, the conflict within America itself.

Could America turn against itself in a matter of months? There are already inklings of a fissure. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va) wrote a letter to President Barack Obama warning the administration to desist from bypassing the Senate’s authority over Executive Branch appointments. According to Senator Byrd, the new administration is creating new agencies out of the White House that “can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances.” In effect, Byrd explained, the White House is taking “direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.”

The new administration sees the economic crisis as an opportunity to create a new bureaucracy, less accountable and more powerful than ever. This new bureaucracy is preparing to take charge in the areas of health care reform, urban affairs, energy policy and the fight against climate change. Each new government office signifies a massive claim against the well-being of every American. The fight against global climate change will put the country in an environmental stranglehold. Health care reform signifies the nationalization of 14 percent of the U.S. economy. And what is meant by “urban affairs”? It is a wealth transference program bound to demoralize the suburbs. Administration energy policy promises expensive, unworkable energy alternatives while ignoring enormous oil deposits recently discovered under Montana and the Dakotas.

The Obama administration is headed for failure on every front. The economic healing process is being interfered with by a government that doesn’t know what it’s doing. The country is bound to suffer grievously, and lose patience. We already catch a glimpse of the future from Alan Keyes, who recently said that the country was headed for “chaos, confusion and civil war.” According to Keyes, “Obama is a radical communist, and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois and now everybody realizes it’s true. He is going to destroy this country, and we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist.”

The sentiments expressed by Mr. Keyes are those attending civil war. But matters have already taken a turn for the worse. There is a rumor in Washington that is making the rounds. It is alleged that the president has fended off dozens of law suits regarding his citizenship status, without producing a birth certificate to prove that he is a natural born citizen. In fact, Keyes will not acknowledge that Obama is actually the president. According to Keyes, “[Obama] has refused to provide proof that he is in fact a natural born citizen, and his Kenyan relations say he was born in Nairobi at a time when his mother was too young to transmit U.S. citizenship.”

The lines are being drawn, and we are headed for national tragedy. Panarin’s analysis isn’t farfetched at all. The country needs to wake up. Danger approaches, and it is coming on fast.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny you're using the LA riots to educate your daughters.

It was that event in my early 20's that moved me into gun ownership and eventually shaped my political worldview today.

Prior to then I had been mostly neutral on guns. I believed ownership was a basic right in the "hunting and personal protection" sense but wasn't interested in exercising that right myself.

One thing to point out to all those searching for the elusive "something" to fill some void in their life. Perhaps said void is where God should have been all along.

drjim said...

Great post.
I've been wondering since the beginning who's pulling Dear Leader's strings.
Can he really be THAT incompetent or poorly educated to ruin the economy so quickly?
Can he really be THAT stupid to think those of us in "The Great Unwashed" will take this laying down?
Can he really be THAT MUCH of an ideolog to believe his own blather?
I don't think so. Look how he freaks out when his teleprompter goes down, or he gets pulled off-script. If he truly was an educated, intelligent lawyer, he'd be used to public speaking. If he truly was a great "community organizer", he'd come across in a more natural way, knowing that "his" people elected him.
And what about a real birth certificate? He so casually brushes it aside.
I think he's a pawn/puppet/Manchurian Candidate, but who's behind him? Who pushes the buttons?
The Borg?

Anonymous said...

QUOTE The Borg? QUOTE

Nah, we haven't went THAT far out into space yet to contact them. I think the UN globalists, is behind this whole conspiracy. Didn't one UN "lawmaker" state that they will confiscate all privately owned guns and melt them down to make soup cans and park benches?

The US is perhaps one of the last bastions of freedom against the global socialist wave. England has been conquered already. China is rapidly being infiltrated by the globalists too. Right now the Chinese government has to deal with so many "bad apples", people who put lead and poisons into their products for the sake of profit, that the depression and job-loss in China is being unaddressed. North Korea, on the other hand, have their own agenda. The administration they have, although may sound bizarre and "totalitarian" to the Western world, is actually what the majority wants over there. Last year when the S Korean pop bands toured Pyongyang, the DPRK majority wanted them out, because they were too decadent. Well, it seems like they are keeping the globalists out currently.

Now what about us Americans? Despite how bizarre this may sound, the fact that the DPRK is able to keep out the rest of the world's influence for so long proves a point that we patriots can also learn from. We have our own model, the constitutional republic, individual liberty, and free trade. What we need is a determined majority of people to KEEP and UPHOLD these traditions. That way, we can keep out the socialists and globalists who wish to take away our liberties and assimiliate us. We defeated the British, the biggest globalist empire-maker of that era, kicked them out, and created our own republic founded on freedom. We should keep it that way.

drjim said...

Hmmmm....hadn't considered the 'black helicopter' UN types.
I think you're right about China. They're up to their elbows with internal problems such as you mentioned. John Robb over at GG has a good article about China surviving the current economic melt-down, and he thinks it doesn't look too good for them.

j said...

Excellent post. And about the obamarrhoid's birth certificate:
NOT that I want to be considered a conspiracy theorist... but in my own tiny circle, we discussed an interesting event late in Obongohitler's campaign. The only living person who was present at Obama's birth and who could have been open to telling the true details, was his grandma. And when the turmoil about his Kenyan borth began to reach fever pitch, he had to make a quick trip to visit the poor old lady in Hawaii, where she was suddenly suffering from poor health. She was not allowed access to press or anyone else, for that matter, and after his visit, Obongo stated that he doubted she would be around to see his election. But no one could get to see her.
That was the point when we began to speculate whether he'd left word with some of his goons, that as soon as he was back on the mainland, Granny gets a pillow over the face. Most of us knew that her days or hours were numbered. Strangely enough - she managed to die right on time, incommunicado to the end. And the announcment of her passing provided a perfectly timed photo op for Obongo to hold back a tear as he posed for the cameras.
It IS a nasty crew we are dealing with.

Anonymous said...

Re: DrJim: Very interesting reads at GG. They also have regular articles about China on Lew Rockwell as well. Right now, it is not going too well over there either. I read Singtao Daily (Chinese community newspaper) and Xinhua too, and last week, there were over 20 percent unemployment in Guangzhou. Just Guangzhou ALONE! The lines at the job centers were so long that the center admin themselves had to work behind the counters as staff. Shanghai is also being hit hard. Consumer spending down by over half at the largest shopping centers, and massive layoffs too.

Re: j3maccabee. You know what is weird? I actually suspected the death of his grandma to be foul play. The circumstances behind her tragic last days were clearly evident that there were no coincidences. For the Oborg's security, she had to be taken out. It is just like Operation Hummingbird that Adolf Hitler carried out, aka Night of the Long Knives. Over a period of just one night, many voices of dissent within and outside Party circles were snuffed.

Nasty crew? Absolutely right. We must be on the vigilant, always. The Oborg might just pull a Reichstag when the time is right, and that will be done to get the uninformed masses ready for the "purging" that will follow.