The United States has already collapsed
It's not a bold statement to say America is in decline, or that most Americans live in denial.
But it took reading this article for me to gain proper perspective.
I lived through the end of a civil war — I moved back to Sri Lanka in my twenties, just as the ceasefire fell apart. Do you know what it was like for me? Quite normal. I went to work, I went out, I dated. This is what Americans don’t understand. They’re waiting to get personally punched in the face while ash falls from the sky. That’s not how it happens.This is how it happens. Precisely what you’re feeling now. The numbing litany of bad news. The ever rising outrages. People suffering, dying, and protesting all around you, while you think about dinner. If you’re trying to carry on while people around you die, your society is not collapsing. It’s already fallen down.
We already know that the government doesn't represent or care about us. We've known that since at least Hurricane Katrina and the 2008 bailouts.
This morning I was reading about a new law that would allow students to take guns to school. This is supposed to be the solution to school shootings.
The real question is, who are you? I mean, you’re reading this. You have the leisure to ponder American collapse like it’s even a question. The people really experiencing it already know.
As someone who’s already experienced societal breakdown, here’s the truth: America has already collapsed. What you’re feeling is exactly how it feels. It’s Saturday and you’re thinking about food while the world is on fire. This is normal. This is life during collapse.
Every major city in America has a homeless problem. Many rural areas were devastated decades ago. For these people the world has already collapsed.
I read yesterday that the leading cause of death for seniors is not being able to afford their prescription drugs.
And who fucks up their own Post Office to sabotage a vote? What is this really? It’s more like a strategy game than a democracy. Y’all getting played.
How are you people, living in the warped carcass of a property-owners’ paradise, in control of anything?
...
If you’re waiting for a moment where you’re like “this is it,” I’m telling you, it never comes. Nobody comes on TV and says “things are officially bad.” There’s no launch party for decay. It’s just a pileup of outrages and atrocities in between friendships and weddings and perhaps an unusual amount of alcohol.Collapse is just a series of ordinary days in between extraordinary bullshit, most of it happening to someone else. That’s all it is.
We start wars without caring about winning. That's unheard of in a healthy society.
We question the need to feed hungry children, while giving subsidies to billionaires.
Then there is our COVID response.
In the last three months America has lost more people than Sri Lanka lost in 30 years of civil war. If this isn’t collapse, then the word has no meaning. You probably still think of Sri Lanka as a shithole, though the war ended over a decade ago and we’re (relatively) fine. Then what does that make you?America has fallen. You need to look up, at the people you’re used to looking down on. We’re trying to tell you something. I have lived through collapse and you’re already there. Until you understand this, you only have further to fall.
Comments
Sounds True to me
Tragedy and collapse is what happens to other people while we are thinking about ourselves.
Musee Des Beaux Art---poem about the painting of Icarus falling into the sea while the peasants in the field continue picking their crop.
Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden
"About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."
Societal collapse is no different. We continue as best we can.
And as long as poetry is on my mind, the famous line about "What rough beast even now, is making its way to Bethlehem to be born" more or less, apologies to WB Yeats---On Friday that's what was on my mind as far as the Truckers Convoy.
Many of us here feel the duty to pay attention. To care. And if and when possible to help. At least, that is my hope.
NYCVG
Thanks for the poetry.
It eased my mind and spirit. I agree it's collapsing. It's death throes are however terrifying. After 2 and a half years of covid madness and Russia or China did it and all this other scary crap it's almost absurd when they come up with the latest greatest threats.
People seem to bite however. After scaring the pants off everyone they now have a compliant shut in society. The ones who object are vilified as deniers or in my case anti science idiots. Divide and conquer worked well. Thanks again. Always loved the WB Yeats poem.Hope we all make it through to the other side of a falling empire that deserves to go.
reminds me of what my mother told me
what she felt when Hitler's Wehrmacht invaded Russia ...
She sat at a foundain's edge, hung her feet into the water somewhere in Berlin and enjoyed the sunshine, when she heard the news. It didn't sink in, I guess.
The enjoyment didn't last long, when she realized that my father went missing during the next six years. She was 22 years back then.
The day Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union
At least the propaganda today is as good as that of the Nazi regime. So there shouldn't be a problem to achieve the same conditions today. for the current powers to be. /shit
Have a good one, survive all the weather (and war) conditions. And yeah, don't lose hope.
America has collapsed
and the elite are having a fire sale. It’s why they are grabbing as much money as they can and it has just accelerated from what they did in 2008 when they crashed the global economy and then got their puppets to bail them out. After Obama started pumping money into their accounts he asked them to start buying up the foreclosed homes that they set people up to buy. Next congress passed the CARES act at the start of the epidemic so they’d be flush with cash to buy up more homes and businesses. It’s also why congress didn’t help we the people.
It’s pretty much the way banks are running the country. We rarely make anything anymore so they get their money from loading us up with debt and interest.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
'If you harm an American, we will respond"
~ Joe Biden
It really does seem that way
Everything American is now burning itself alive, in many cases for no logical reason - of course, they give illogical reasons, but why succumb to those NOW when they never did before?
What the VultCaps did to Toys'R'Us, they're now doing to an entire country (I always said that corporations and countries are basically the same, so why even be surprised...?).
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Here’s an excellent article on how hedge funds
have become vampires sucking the life blood from Americans. It’s sad that younger people can’t afford to buy homes anymore and are being stuck with renting an apartment in one of the many apartment blobs being built anywhere there’s an empty piece of land all over the country. A lifetime of paying rent to some ugly corporations. How long until they start looking run down like the housing project ones do now!
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/547457-housing-market-dispossession-private-equ...
Damn the blood sucking vultures in congress that have allowed them to do it.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
'If you harm an American, we will respond"
~ Joe Biden
I remember reading that article when it came out.
Very moving.
Yesterday I had to make a 3.5 hour drive to drop off some puppies to a buyer. I made two stops on the route. First one I desperately needed a bathroom. Pulled up to a franchise fast food place just off the freeway. The drive thru line was busy, but the doors were locked. There was a sign in the door. "Lobby closed due to lack of help. Our apologies but we have only 5 employees to run this store. 5 total. Not 5 here today."
Later I stopped for fuel. Went into one of those gas station combined with a fast food outlet. On the fast food side (I NEEDED a chocolate shake) they had signs up saying that they could only take cash. Credit card reader was down. The signs looked several days old. And they had two huge space heaters running in the dining area. No credit cards and a broken furnace?
It felt a bit apocalyptic.
When I got home I shared that I had seen yet more evidence that America was in a state of serious decline.
I actually shared that quite some time ago, now...
...long enough ago that I'm having trouble finding it now (I posted it as a comment, not an OP).
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Welp its about time this
mammoth lumbering evil empire collapsed. Still not going to be fun adapting to another actually real crisis. They pull theses fake crises out of their butt to cover for the real thing this Empire is toast. Disgusting that Biden was selected to be our only alternative to Trump or Killery or any other lame pol worthy of selection. Say why is Trump running around free and not in jail? Oh yeah if they charged him with his crimes they would all be vulnerable and have to answer for their crimes. Dag let the wild rumpus collapse begin. You so called progressives ought to stop beating about the bush and tell it like it is. Oh yeah a pol is a pol regardless of their so called label.
Well...
On September 8th of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, about half of my local community burned down. I was given exactly zero warning about this -- I figured out something was going on about an hour before I left when I tried to cross the freeway in my car to visit Home Depot and could not do so because the roads were blocked. At around 5pm I was standing in my front lawn when a car from the local police department rolled in and the cop in the car asked me if I was evacuating.
Ten days later I moved back into my home, which was fortunately spared from the fires. (The press still likes to pretend it was one fire: uh, no, and, uh, gee another instance in which America still can't have an honest conversation.) I spent a year looking across the street at devastation while my neighborhood oh-so-slowly rebuilt. Some of it is still rebuilding now.
"If genocide is not a deal-breaker for you, there is something wrong with you." - Nick Cruse
Refinancing a House
Looked into refinancing my house, right before the Pandemic started. I wanted to take out $30,000, mostly to do repairs. Went to the local credit union. They said that before I received any money, they would have to pay off balance owed, ($5500), pay off car loan which they had financed, ($5500), plus the refinancing fees, (just under $5000).
Then they said that they would keep the money left over to next pay off my credit cards. I had two from several years ago which I had stopped paying on (approximately $4000) plus two which I was currently paying on with no interest added plus another two which I usually paid off every month.
By the time everything was paid off, I would only net around $8800.00. Considering I needed around $15,000 for repairs and the fact that the government had me convinced that half the country would be dying of Covid, I declined to go further on this loan. I figured that if I die, my adult children who cannot afford to buy a house would have an easier time and a cheap place to live.
What I want to know is when did other financial institutions become enforcers to collect money owed to other banks and credit card companies? I did not expect this from the credit union.
I applied for a refi
They wanted me to pay off a promotonal ZERO INTEREST loan!
Wound up liquidating much of my IRA and paying off the existing loan.
Now only one car payment and bank balance is going up up up because I no longer have the mortgage payment.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
It's no problem, really.
Next week everyone in the country will turn into a birdwatcher, and focus entirely on the Superb Owl. And the week after that, there will be another distraction, and another, and another; maybe Kim and Kanye will get divorced again or something. Business as usual, during alterations, all covered up with the daily veneer of HappyNews®™.
Once again, I am very glad that I am old and childfree. I do agree that the coming collapse is irreversible. We're in it to win it, bay-bee.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Not by a long shot. Americans lives are still being propped up
by government subsidies of all kinds, despite our having agreed in spirit to end them. In particular wages are kept high by rules we claim are trade barriers when other countries use them. Prices of foodstuffs and heat, especially, are kept artificially low by government subsidies, primary education is also paid for by the government. Saving families thousands of dollars each year. Although almost all school age children in Sri Lanka attend school, in sharp contrast to neighboring India where many children are "needed to work" and unable to attend school, even "public" schools are free. India prioritizes a space program but still cant fund schools for its children. It prides itself on its low wages, but that translates into poverty so grinding that that they say demands that their children work. The wealthy in Sri Lanka do seem to buy into the culture Ive often seen of parents focusing on sending their own children to private schools and leaving the public schools as the last resort of the poor. Sri Lankan schools fail in mathematics, I just read, its a complex situation largely due to US pushed neoliberalism, the new cult religion of the wealthy. . Probably schools struggle in no smart because of the setting of of services as tradable commpdities in world trade.Because good teachers are scarce, with many Sri Lankans no doubt having fled to ply their trades teaching elite students elsewhere.
Its likely the same with nurses and doctors. The result is students, often bright and eagar to learn, who must teach themselves as best as they can. Maybe they manage to but then without the funds to buy diplomas (there is a huge market in them!) their talents languish, unrecognized. Around half of all its students struggle in math because of underfunded schools, many "public" schools dont even have electricity, let alone computers. In Sri Lanka parents of college bound children take care to keep their children in private schools. It can cost them a lot. But few, statistically speaking can afford it.If the US was smart we would prioritize public schools, not abandon them to the greed crisis. We all need schools a great deal.
Its a shame that America is abandoning its young people's future by underfunding public schhols and especially colleges. The US is the country that the five or so very richest people in the world live in. Every time they take a shit they must be making millions of dollars . Just as every other moment of the day and night. In contrast a huge number of Americans live on the fringes, economically, and as such they are not wanted, the powers that be obviously dont care about us and quite possibly would prefer we left and went somewhere else. To be replaced by rich foreigners, with similar values to their own. Meaning, other people with lots of money, often its dirty money, the product of corruption. . The US is headed towards an Asian style M economy with lots at the top and bottom and a shrinking middle class. That is where the rich are really rich and the poor are really poor. Its where they make the most. Politicians are required to be corrupt, or the system doesn't want them. Everything is headed in that direction. Since we joined the WTO and started our rush toiwards rivatizing everything its been getting wirse quickly. We live in A new Gilded Age. Displays of huge wealth are becoming more and more ostentatious. The differences in the lives of people are becoming more stark. Lifespans of the rich (males) now exceed that of the poor by 15 years or more and that figure is rising. If we continue at the rate we're going it wont be very far into the future when the rich own virtually everything in the world, and merely rent the rest out to the rest of us who will have to pay them for every breath of clean air, every drink of potable water. Thats the future we are working towards, one where everything is privatized. Every job outsourced, every speck of property owned and locked down by ever restrictive laws. Every school militarized and privatized and apparently, every valuable credential, monetized.
Not if you use Medicaid. Then they sell your house after drivin
g you into the grave. to pay them back for your debts.
Your adult children will get whatevers left over, to help pay the rent on their cardboard box. Or who knows. I bet they make debts hereditary. You know they never abolished slavery, dont you!
As long as somebody is convicted of a crime. Like getting sick while poor! Its coming. Thats teh whole goal behind a cashless society, clawing back the huge debts from people. Creating new ones with endless penalties for "bounced check fees" Income will just vanish the second you deposit money it will first go to your debts and then whatever you make that once your debts are paid goes to you. Student Loans? Ca Ching. Hospital bills from the child you had in 1974 Ca Ching. Fine for not paying your fine? Ca Ching. (cash register sound) . Or you cant drive, cant walk down the toll street. Cant flush your toilet or drink a cup of water. Your negative balance will keep you at home. Shivering in the cold. You unwelcome poor persons. ( / sarcasm end)
Suckers all for falling for the bullshit. This is the United States. Not France or ?? The government would never let you get free healthcare, that would send entirely the wrong message. Its against the American religion. This is America, the example of greed for the world. Drug prices, healthcare prices housing costs must go up and up and up. They must never collapse.
I am so glad that I grew up spending almost nothing. I learned how to have fun with toys I made myself. Like Trevor Noah. He tells a story about how he used bricks as toys. That was me too.
@enchantress Be aware that the powers that be are gearing uyp for another giant grab of homes all across the country. They intend to pop the bubble and that will mean an eidemic of mortgage fraud. I see them gearing up for this. This will happen as tens or perhaps hundreds of millions lose their jobs to outsourcing meaning that home values in those areas will plummet. Everything people depend on will tank just as millions will be unable to repay their loans. Maximizing disruptions and of course, profits.
Read the book Clinton Cash.
The system will be absolutely merciless to our poor people, you can bet on it. It has to be or it loses credibility. This isn't Europe, its not France, there is no charity, no compassion no "free lunch" no humanity all fakeness , my fellow peasants. So get out of debt. Save every penny. Ride a bicycle. Grow your own gardens. Learn how to fish, hunt, forage wild plants for food. Don't take out loans of any kind. Home values everywhere will tank without Americans having jobs. Wages will plummet to Third World levels, thats their intent in doing all this..
They are the oligarchs. The advantaged. The Empire Strikes Back.
Like North Korea. Large parts oif the country never get
electricity or heat. The water is undrinkable too.
Everything is broken or close to it. All the money is being spent on the elites and their military. But it seems not enough for the poor people to EAT. The country is starving, again. Womens periods stop because they feed them so little. Everybody is short. And small, and look stunted. Except fat Kim, and his evil sister who should both be stuffed on a bed of greens an apple put in their mouths, then they should be cooked (roasted) and EATEN by hungry North Koreans. Really.
But the profitable healthcare and drug industries survived,
And their prices and therefore profits did not collapse, because most people could not pay them. Those are the priorities. The people who died were almost all the poor.
I would say that given the world today they see this as success. More likely than not the "coronavirus crisis" came along at a remarkably good time for them, since their radical neoliberalism is failing, globally to make people richer as they claim it does and instead is causing poverty. They couldnt let that happen without something to take the blame off of it. And hide the lack of evidence that sacrificing so much as we are leads to something good, as there currently is none. They claim to base their radical lasseiz faire ideology on Adam Smiths' invisible hand but a reading of his work shows that he would be framed as a radical leftist by the neoliberal orthodoxy of today for his support of public goods, something that the WTO rules, for example, dont allow except in areas that are already completely noncommercial and not for profit. In an entire country. There is no flexibility there
Their coup must go on, no matter what. Nomatter what, democracy must be ended as planned, and their fake plutocracy put in its place. Thats the message we're being given, its goal is killing hope, the title of William Blum's unique book was appropriate for its subject matter.