The American Death Wish: no one will do what is necessary, catastrophe will happen.

[Karmadillo]

http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-american-death-wish/

The American Death Wish
2010 April 4
by Ian Welsh
(Kicking this back to the top, it’s eternal, particularly in light of the continued efforts to spin health care reform.)

I’ve been struggling with how to write this post for quite some time. It’s the conversation you have to have with a friend where you have to say “it’s nice that you’re trying as hard as you can George. I even believe you are, but it doesn’t matter. Because George, your best just isn’t good enough.”

Or, as Captain Jack Sparrow would put it, all that matters is what a man can do and what a man can’t do.

Sometimes the world doesn’t grade us on a curve. You need to jump a fence, and you can’t. You need to climb a rock face, and you aren’t good enough. You’re running away from a bear, and you don’t run fast enough. And now you’re dead. You wanted to get into a good grad school, but you don’t have the grades or test scores. You’re in a fight, and the other guy wins, and you wind up on the ground and he puts the boots to you and you’re crippled for life. You tried “your best”, but you lost and you’re going to pay the price for losing for the rest of your life. Maybe you lost because he fought dirty, and you’d rather take a chance of being crippled for life than kick someone in the balls. Maybe you lost because he trained harder than you, and you’d rather go have a drink with your friends.

<edit>

And whenever I write about what needs to be done to fix this—simple things like universal healthcare, which we know for a fact reduces health care costs by 1/3, because it has worked for every single other country that’s ever done it, people come out of the woodwork and they tell me “that’s not politically feasible.” Or perhaps I suggest a 55 mile an hour speed limit “that’s not feasible”. Or spending significantly less on the military since half the world’s military spending is a bit overboard. “That’s not politically feasible.” Or raising taxes, “that’s not feasible”. Or… but why go on, the list is endless.

<edit>

Fair enough. But if those things are necessary, and if you don’t do them, then the consequence is going to be catastrophe. I don’t mean disaster. New Orleans was a disaster, and it wasn’t enough to wake America up. The current financial crisis was a disaster, and so far it’s looking like it wasn’t enough to convince people that real fundamental changes are needed.

So because no one will do what is necessary, catastrophe will happen. What I mean by this is a severe decline in the US standard of living, probably between 20% to 40%, starting in 4 to 6 years and taking place for a decade. Might happen sooner if folks keep refusing to do what needs to be done to fix the financial crisis and stop it from turning into a worldwide Great Depression. Even before it happens, you’re going to see real wages declining for Americans while their assets collapse in price.

To see what a precipitous decline in standard of living is like, read up on Russia’s history in the 90’s. A lot of people will die of starvation, of cold, of heat, of lack of medical help and from violence.

more...

[ensho]

1. climate change will trump everything

its already too late

I wouldn't get pregnant now

[anarch]

2. between that and the dependence on petroleum

which, no matter how you look at it, is not going to just last forever...


but on the bright side, the negative impact on the environment will be reduced, once the use of oil and all its relatives starts to decline.

[jwirr]

5. Add to the bright side that we will be forced to change and even the

baggers will beg to do it.

[Echo In Light]

3. Be interesting to get an eyeful of the various COG contingency plans

[leveymg]

20. Here's a hint: FBI and FEMA COG centers moved to Winchester, VA - Eric Cantor's District

That should give you a taste of the politics that drives these contingency plans, and the people who have written them.

Cheney/Bush's C.O.G. Plan Based on Assumption Washington DC Is "Ground Zero"

"Work Outside D.C.'s Fallout Zone"


The exodus of federal agencies from Washington is occurring with next to no public discussion. No one has yet argued the case for whether it's really necessary to send agencies that far. "Where's the public debate, the elected officials' oversight? This level of dispersal didn't happen even at the height of the Cold War. We need open dialogue about what the real threats might be and why this dispersal is necessary."

By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post, December 26, 2006; Page A01


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/25/ AR2006122500637.html

Winchester and its neighbors along Interstate 81 in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley have much to recommend themselves to potential employers, including a low cost of living, access to a major highway and views of the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains. More recently, though, the area has been successfully trumpeting another attribute: It is just outside the "blast zone."

In a little-noticed migration with implications for both greater Washington and the valley, several federal agencies, including the FBI, are relocating operations to the I-81 corridor. Helping drive the shift is the government's emphasis on security in a post-Sept. 11 world, which turns Winchester's location 75 miles from Washington into a geographic ideal. It is far enough from the capital to escape the fallout of a nuclear explosion -- a distance often estimated at 50 miles -- but still close enough so that employees can get to the District relatively easily when they need to.

"There's a certain distance they need to be out from the strike zone -- and Winchester is outside of that," said Jim Deskins, economic redevelopment chief for the 26,000-person city.

The moves represent a level of dispersal even beyond other recently announced federal moves, including the military's planned relocation of 22,000 jobs from the District and inner suburbs to Fort Belvoir in southern Fairfax County and the FBI's relocation of its Northern Virginia field office from Tysons Corner to Manassas. Local officials and planners have criticized those moves, saying they will worsen sprawl and traffic congestion by moving jobs away from downtown and mass transit.

SNIP

Leading the shift is the FBI, which chose Winchester over other towns of similar distance from the District as the site for a big centralized archive that by 2009 will employ at least 1,200 people, many of them now working in Washington and Baltimore. Some employees already are working in a temporary facility outside Winchester, a nondescript building that used to hold a printing firm and is now studded with security cameras and bollards.

FEMA has chosen a farm just outside town for an operations center that will employ 700 people. Local officials say this would include positions moved from Mount Weather, the government's hilltop emergency center on the border of Loudoun and Clarke counties, so that that facility could be devoted to national security instead of natural disasters.

[tango-tee]

27. What scares me is this

"...so that that facility could be devoted to national security instead of natural disasters."

Moving right along, aren't we?

[Echo In Light]

29. COG plans are always super creepy since one can often detect some 'wishful thinking' within

[Gman2]

12. While that may be true, we should fuck everyt teabugger hard.

We need real angry dangerous, threatening strife. And soon. We need to wipe out many, in their effort to commit treason. Only then, will we have the political will to do the right thing. Refucks say that any solutions are unconstitutional. So, there will be fortress right america, and the slums. Well, those who think they will be safe, in in for a shock. WE, the left, poor, ill, minorities, ARE THAT BEAR.

[Warpy]

4. Meaningful reforms don't happen

unless there is an angry mob at the gate.

[jwirr]

6. Especially when those reforms will so drastically change the way

we live. I think most people IF they have any idea of what is coming are just plain afraid.

[Warpy]

7. I'm terrified

because I've experienced real poverty before. I just hoped I wouldn't experience it again.

However, I know what the Depression was like, how my granny and mother lived on oatmeal 3 times a day through the worst of it, the cheapest thing they could get that kept their stomachs from hurting all the time. I know about a third of my granny's stocks survived the collapse. Even though she was quite a comfortable woman by the time she died 20 years later, there were many lean years even after they could afford to supplement that oatmeal with things like fried egg sandwiches a couple of times a week.

Most people aren't terrified because they have no idea what's coming and the worst they can comprehend is inconvenience. If they had a clue at all, the GOP would not be able to control the teabaggers.

[Odin2005]

31. The people that remember the Depression are dying.

There are very few of them in places of political power anymore. This is exactly why institutional "OH FUCK" moments happen at 80 year intervals; The American and French Revolutions, the American Civil War and the Unification of Germany and Italy, The Great Depression and WW2, and now This.

[ixion]

8. There is a fatal flaw in our hard-wiring that I call the "idiot light" flaw

that is, much as a car has an "idiot light" that doesn't activate until a problem is critical, so the human species, historically speaking, never reacts to impending adversity until it's too late to do anything but take it head on.

Global Climate Change will be no exception. The Economy will be no exception. The onset of the Corporate Police State will be no exception.

We're really stupid in that regard, collectively speaking. There are always people who see it coming, but they are roundly ignored and soundly dismissed by the collective group.

[cliffordu]

10. Yep. Exactly.

[Gman2]

13. Even worse, when threatened by circumstances, we go into hypervigilance

We horde, we go sociopath. WE care only about getting ours, and fuck the next gen, or human. We watch them die of petty cause, and even hasten it. WE start to think about lashing out, to steal the resources of others. Find pretext to invade, rape, pillage. All in the name of God.

[lumberjack_jeff]

16. The rumor of a tiger in the tall grass some distance away doesn't get the adrenaline pumping.

We aren't wired to react to abstract threats.

[ixion]

19. indeed...

and while that may have been helpful when we lived on the plains in small groups, it's really not helpful on a larger, more abstract scale.

[Odin2005]

30. LOL, I call them "Dummy Lights" and I love the analogy.

[whattheidonot]

9. way behind

the politicians are way behind. what we have is going to take getting lots of them out of Washington . enough people on the left and right are going to get fed up because the system is too slow and the economy is going to stay bad until there are serious changes. these piddly little changes are wasting time . this has been building for 30 years and and Obama has been slow to break the corporate and financial strangle hold that has lopsided the country. So lopsided that we now have little economy. it will be interesting to see if Obama gets reelected. He is going to have to break from what he is now doing to have a shot. He has to break the corporate power and he may be to beholden to it.

[nightrain]

11. yes, Obama is not ahead of the curve, is not leading the way, sadly... more like

perpetuating the swamp.

[FarCenter]

17. To paraphrase what Plank said of science "politics advances one funeral at a time"

Progress in science is not made by changing the minds of scientists of mature age. Neither is progress in politics.

Unfortuantely, although we have a suitably young president, the Congressional leadership is clogged with senior citizens. We are just working our way through the last of the "greatest generation" and starting on the Korean War generation. We haven't even got to the baby boomers yet.

[D23MIURG23]

24. Or one failed reelection bid. n/t

[xocet]

36. Interesting thought...

Thank you. I had never heard that quotation before - it is an interesting thought. Here is a translation of the original in context:

"This experience gave me also an opportunity to learn a new fact - a remarkable one, in my opinion: A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
pgs. 33-34, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers by Max Planck

Please note that the name Planck has a 'c' in it - if you care about any degree of exactitude. Otherwise, people who read your future comments might have a difficult time finding your future equivalent reference to something like Jon Lenin's famous song Give Peas a Chant.

[defendandprotect]

14. The problem the world over is patriarchal violence . . .

patriarchy and violence are mirror images of one another --

Patriarchy and its underpinning -- organized patriarchal religion -- is a lie

and all it teaches and presents are lies.

Capitalism is its sytem -- a very violent economic system -- and

ALL OF THESE SYSTEMS ARE SUICIDAL --

We have Global Warming -- it is a very serious threat to humanity and all species --

and it is created by exploitation of nature, upon which capitalism is based.

[FarCenter]

15. The US has gone from brothers building the family business to heirs fighting over the family silver

[amborin]

18. K&R

[laughingliberal]

21. K & R nt

[Karmadillo]

22. Kick

nt

[D23MIURG23]

23. "thats not feasible" isn't usually "we can't do that", i think its more often

"I'm afraid I'll lose an election and my senate perks will go away".

The Democrats could be doing more. They could be loud, partisan and combative, and they could make the republicans miss a night of sleep to read from the phone book every time they want to filibuster something.

The bottom line is that the few people in politics who aren't shortsighted and actually want to deal with our problems proactively are caught behind the other 80%, who aren't sure there is any problem important enough to risk getting voted out of club congress. And of course all of the generally well meaning cowards are caught behind the ones who live in an alternate universe in which the earth is 6000 years old, and global warming doesn't matter because jesus will just poof it out of existence in 20 or 30 years anyway.

Eventually a very different set of things are going to become "feasible" and "unfeasible" but things will probably have to get substantially worse to catalyze that shift.

[handmade34]

25. we are addicts

just begging for an intervention

[tavalon]

26. That intervention is coming whether we beg or not

[Odin2005]

28. K&R, great article! Really sums our problems up.

ANYTHING can be done of there is a WILL to do it!

Don't tell me "It can't be done".

[Karmadillo]

32. You know, I think you have it absolutely right. We tell ourselves

it can't be done either out of fear or contentment with our lot in life (at least I think that's my problem). I think if we started at a grassroots level with the attitude these changes are possible regardless of the power arrayed against us, we would get done what needs to get done. The cost of our doing nothing is so huge, we simply have no right to sit around and hope we can avoid the worst of the catastrophes awaiting us.

"There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part; and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop, And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all." (1964)

Mario Savio

[L0oniX]

33. Oh come on now ...700+ billion a year in military spending isn't all that much...

and it's supplying jobs. Look what is happening to Russia because they only spend 50 billion.

:sarcasm: :wtf:

[ensho]

34. kick

nt

[SOS]

35. 30 years of Friedman economics must be reversed

The deregulation, lack of oversight, accounting fraud, government on the Wall Street payroll....it has to end.
We are now living with a fully Enron-ized financial sector.
Either we go back to a regulated Keynesian model or the country will robbed until it collapses.

Will the graft-riddled US Senate pass essential, meaningful reform?
I doubt it.

And when the next three financial disasters hit - corporate bonds, Alt A CDOs and commercial real estate - look out!