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Writers Articles And Opinions |
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20 August 2010 By Keith Johnson
Hicks: Game over, man! Game over!
from Aliens (1986)
The very fact that you are reading this may
indicate that you suffer from a psychosis
characterized by delusions of grandeur, coupled with
feelings of euphoric bliss, at the prospect of being
clued in to terrible events and conspiracies that may
be contributing to the end of civilization as we know
it.
Whew! That was a mouthful.
Back in early February of 2009, Hugo
Lindgren—writing for the New York Times—coined the
phrase “pessimism porn,” referring to a “fantasy
world of the web” where dire economic predictions
are cast by self-righteous doomsayers and apocalyptic
futurists. According to Lindgren, those of us who
give credence to such notions are merely addicted to
bad news, and have a false sense of superiority
over “ all these heedless knaves who have no
clue what’s coming down the pike.”
In Lindgren’s article, the author takes particular
pleasure in poking fun at trends forecaster Gerald
Celente’s predictions concerning a middle-class tax
revolt, food riots, and a Central Park engulfed by
shantytowns. The term “pessimism porn” caught on, and
was later picked up by ABC News correspondent Dan
Harris, who also ran a similar attack piece on Celente,
in April of that same year.
Harris made light of Celente’s predictions for a
new Great Depression, even going so far to suggest
that the idea of people living out of storage units
was a far-fetched concept. He also tried to paint
Celente as some sort of paranoid survivalist who would
rely on his close-combat skills, and a German
shepherd, to protect himself in the event that
“turmoil ensues into full-fledged battle.”
Harris concluded his tongue-in-cheek piece by
assuring his audience that most mainstream economists
did not hold Celente’s views. To prove it, he
provided a link to another ABC News article—from
January, 2009—where Nobel Prize winning economist,
Paul Krugman, was quoted as saying, “We’re not in
a depression. But we are in a situation where the
normal tools don't work and we're back to [a]
1930s-type environment”… “My great fear is not that
we're going to fall into a Great Depression in the
next year,” he said. "My fear is that we're
going to have a lingering, major slump for two, three
years."
This is the same Krugman who insisted that our only
solution to the economic crisis is for the government
to spend more money. "Government spending is the
only surefire way to create employment," said
Krugman.
At the time, he didn’t believe that the $775
billion proposal from then President-elect Barack
Obama was big enough. "At max, the U.S. government
can probably borrow another $5 trillion," Krugman
said. "Hard to believe, but we can probably get
away with that if we have to. I hope we don't have to
spend that much."
It’s now been well over a year and a half since the
aforementioned articles were written. I wonder if
ABC’s Dan Harris has given any consideration to
following up on his piece, and determining which
financial guru’s forecasts have proven to be most
accurate? If he did, he may be astonished to learn
that the man—whom he considers as a barometer for
mainstream consensus on the economy—is now starting to
sound more like Celente each day.
Late last June, Krugman wrote an op-ed piece, for
the New York Times, where he concedes, “We are
now, I fear, in the early stages of a third
depression. It will probably look more like the Long
Depression than the much more severe Great Depression.
But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to
the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs
— will nonetheless be immense.”
Quite a turnaround, don’t you think? Does this
relegate Krugman to the category of a dissenter, who
is now purveying doomsday tripe in the vein of fellow
outcast, Gerald Celente? Or does Krugman’s views now
bring Celente into the fold of mainstream consensus on
the economy?
Well, I think we all know the answer to that. The
mainstream media will never allow Celente to be
accepted into the ranks of legitimate discourse,
regardless of how accurate his predictions are. Never
mind that his forecasts relating to a middle-class tax
revolt have already come true.
I don’t need to remind you that—little more than a
month after Lindgren and Harris mocked Celente’s wacky
conspiracy theories—“Tea (Taxed Enough Already?)
Party” protests began to pop up all across the nation
to revolt against everything from TARP bailouts to
mandatory health insurance.
And let’s not forget some of Celente’s other
predictions that have been made the brunt of so many
jokes from the likes of Lindgren, Harris, and a
variety of other hacks. Take the subject of “food
riots” for instance. Though they have yet to become
commonplace in American cities, many factors leading
up to that realization have already begun to unfold.
Paul Joseph Watson recently wrote that, “Globalist
mouthpiece the Financial Times concedes that “another
food crisis does not look out of the question,” as a
result of Russia’s wheat export ban, noting that food
riots occurred in developing countries two years ago
amidst similar conditions."
"Allied with proposed consumption taxes on
carbon dioxide, spikes in sales taxes, income tax
bracket hikes, gas price increases, crippling
austerity measures, and the sinking U.S. dollar,
skyrocketing food prices will serve to further
financially castrate Americans, achieving the elite’s
goal of eviscerating the middle class by forcing them
to adopt lower standards of living and becoming more
dependent on big government for their sustenance and
survival.”
Though Americans—for the most part—can still find a
meal or two to get them through the day, we are
beginning to witness tensions rising, all across the
nation, as people struggle to secure things as basic
as shelter. According to this recent article from the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
“Thirty thousand people turned out in East
Point on Wednesday seeking applications for
government-subsidized housing, and their confusion and
frustration, combined with the summer heat, led to a
chaotic mob scene that left 62 people injured.”
“At the Tri-Cities Plaza Shopping Center,
emergency vehicles passed each other, transporting 20
people to hospitals. Medical and police command posts
were set up on scene. East Point police wore riot
gear. Officers from four other agencies supported
them. Yet no arrests were made.”
“All of this resulted from people attempting to
obtain Section 8 housing applications and, against
long odds, later securing vouchers for affordable
residences. Some waited in line for two days for the
applications.”
Yeah—people are desperate, and when they are unable
to secure adequate housing in major metropolitan
areas, you may actually begin to see places like
“Central Park engulfed by shantytowns.” Not that
that’s anything new. During the last Great
Depression, Central Park was host to a dozen or more
shacks in what the Parks Department describes as
“Hoover Valley.” During the winter of 1932-1933, more
than 1.2 million American’s were homeless; 2000 of
those were New Yorkers. Today, 25,000 New Yorkers
find themselves in similar predicaments. That’s 12X
the homeless population of the Great Depression. By
this calculation, it is realistic to envision hundreds
of makeshift settlements springing up there in the
not-so-distant future.
What were once known as “Hoovervilles” during the
Great Depression have now become known as “Obamavilles”:
tent cities that have been found across the nation,
populated by scores of homeless. Some are found in
the most unlikely of places, like the Island of
Oahu—President Obama’s own backyard—where 50 acres of
Navy and Public land are home to more than 60
different encampments, and populated by desperate
people who have been driven off the island’s beaches
and city parks by police and city officials.
In March of 2009, Obama was asked to comment on his
concerns over the tent cities. He responded by saying
that it was “not acceptable for children and
families to be without a roof over their heads in a
country as wealthy as ours.”
It’s pretty hard to take him seriously at his word,
especially in light of the fact that he is currently
embarking on his fifth vacation since the beginning of
July. This week, the Obama family is expected to
take a 10-day trip to Martha's Vineyard where they
will be staying at the 28-acre oceanfront Blue Heron
Farm that rents for up to $50,000 a week. This comes
a little more than a week after wifey, Michelle,
returned from a glitzy Spanish vacation where she, and
40 of her closest friends, occupied up to one third of
a 160 room resort where rooms go for about $7,000 per
night. Transportation aboard Air Force 2, and housing
for 70 Secret Service personnel, has made this one
damn expensive—taxpayer funded— shopping spree.
This kind of lavish spending is what you might
expect from rich elites, who have amassed fortunes,
and have no obligation to share their wealth with the
less fortunate. But for a taxpayer funded public
servant to splurge, in the middle of the worst
financial crisis in modern history, is nothing short
of a crime against humanity. Think how many beds and
meals could have been furnished to the countless
veterans, children and single mothers living on the
street—whose lives have spiraled out of control during
these tough times and made even worse as a result of
the actions taken by our own government.
It’s easy for Obama to promise that he will bring
an end to homelessness within 10 years. Bush did the
same thing back in 2003. But such promises always
come in the form of “studies” and “proposals” that
never see the light of day. Funding for the homeless
is campaign rhetoric that always takes a back seat to
other pressing budget priorities like war and Wall
Street bailouts. Meanwhile, on any given night, more
than 640,000 men, women and children find themselves
without shelter in America, and according to the
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the
number of homeless families has increased by 30
percent over the past two years, to 170,000.
And, just as Celente predicted, some of these
homeless families are now using storage units for
shelter—a concept that ABC’s Dan Harris appeared to
think of as odd back in April of 2009. By September
of that same year, The Tampa Tribune ran a piece that
reported “Along with dusty family heirlooms,
mattresses and furniture, self-storage units are
serving as homes for a growing number of homeless
people.”
“It's not a widespread practice, but there are
more people renting space and sneaking in at some
storage units around Hillsborough County. There's no
plumbing, and it's strictly against a myriad of rules,
but people without homes are finding the rent cheap
and accommodations safer than on the streets.”
But—of course—to dwell on such trivia is the trait
of a pessimist. Both Hugo Lindgren and Dan Harris
would agree that those of us who seek out this kind of
information are doing so to satisfy a morbid curiosity
akin to a gawker at the scene of a car crash.
Maybe they’re right to some degree. Maybe we can
be found at the scene of the crash. But it’s
certainly not to satisfy a morbid curiosity. We’re
there because it was our car that was
involved in the crash, and those are our
family members who were injured. We’re there to find
out what happened, and who is responsible. We’re
taking pictures, getting witness statements, and
making sure no one tampers with the evidence.
If that makes us pessimists, then I must assume
that an optimist is one who drives by the crash sight
and pulls into the nearest bar so he can drink himself
into believing that he did not see what he just
thought he saw.
The optimist believes that what he doesn’t know
won’t hurt him; while the pessimist believes that what
he doesn’t know may very well sneak up behind him
someday and bite him near the pocket he carries his
wallet in.
Being a pessimist isn’t for everybody, and if you
want to avoid becoming one, then I suggest you confine
your reading to the pages of the mainstream press.
There you’ll find plenty of good news to feed into
your optimism, like: Obama signs manufacturing bill or
President Obama signs $26 billion jobs bill. But if
you want to stay in a good mood, I would strongly
advise against reading beyond the headlines. If you
do, you may enter through a gateway that leads to a
life of hardcore addiction.
You may be compelled to dig deeper once you learn
that Obama’s manufacturing bill does nothing to bring
manufacturing back to the United States, but rather
sets up a bi-partisan commission to “study” the causes
of the trade gap with China, Japan and Mexico.
Or you may be enticed to investigate further once
you discover that Obama’s job bill does nothing to
create new jobs or save those jobs that actually help
stimulate the economy (like farming, manufacturing or
new technologies), but rather rewards 26.1 million
taxpayer dollars to irresponsible state and local
governments that are predominantly controlled by
powerful police and teachers unions, and whose support
is critical for the upcoming elections.
See what I mean? Once you get started, you just
can’t stop.
I would agree that all of this stuff is pretty
nasty and hardcore, but it certainly doesn’t qualify
as porn. Porn is sensational and exaggerated, while
the issues concerning our economy are very real and
disheartening. It affects us all in very intimate
ways. We cannot become detached from it or view it
from the peripheral. We are active participants,
struggling to discern the facts from the fictions that
are often laid before us as obstacles.
The daily struggle to find the truth is not a
masturbatory exercise in futility. It is an ugly,
dirty and animated war for information. To be
involved, you must be a warrior, not a spectator.
The definition of a pessimist is:
The doctrine or belief that the evil in the
world outweighs the good.
While I may believe that evil men overwhelmingly
occupy seats of power, I am confident that good people
outnumber them several thousand times over. But until
I see these people wake from their slumber, and rise
to join the fight, I will remain…a pessimist.
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