Did anyone find Tuesday’s newspaper headlines reading “Markets Soar,” and “Dow posts biggest gains since 2009” as amusing as I did when I first saw them trickle to out to newsstands at 2am that morning? The markets, coming off a huge decline of 634.76 points Monday, managed to eke out a 429.62 point recovery Tuesday. Still being down doesn’t say “soar” to me, but to a populace that the government and their paradigm-defending media treat like short-attention-spanned children, a headline implying great improvement and including positive keywords was just the trick to kick the can and cross a finger another day.
And kicking the can has really been what the last ten years have been all about. Though not showing itself in an obvious way until autumn 2008 and its recent return to undeniable decline this week, the greater depression that took hold in early 2001 has now advanced to the point where it is no longer possible to artificially inflate the economy by the inventive financial means so masterfully created by the banking sector with the help of loosened regulation.
As I discovered through recent, totally random conversations, Portlanders are really starting to notice this whole “collapse” thing.
When I decided that something “just isn’t right,” a few years ago, I went off the “media grid” of smart phones, Hollywood entertainment and spoon-fed news and learned through hundreds of hours of research that in a nutshell the entire globalization experiment launched in earnest after World War 2 is now in the throes of collapse, beyond repair and is disappearing without anything in the wings to replace it. Our federal government, which was co-opted by the corporate globalization movement, has proven ineffectual and at the highest levels has shown time and again to be overtly corrupt. There is no fix for this system – and we’re all just sitting by idly waiting for what’s next.
Although no one but perhaps the much ballyhooed “top two percent” of earners laments the loss of the trickle-up society they helped create over the last 50 years, the scary thing for the people I’ve talked to seems to be not knowing what’s coming next. It’s what scares me too.
I was down at the recycling lot down in Bayside last Saturday talking with one of the guys I know who works for the city, shooting the fecal matter, if you will, about the recycling rumor mill and the new city manager, when the conversation turned toward the economy. We both agreed that things were bad, going to get worse and he mentioned how he was worried about his family’s security as they continued to worsen. He offered an anecdote about last winter’s ice storm and how during it there were four (what he considered to be) unsavory people he didn’t recognize hanging out around his house on Broadway in SoPo. The roads, being totally un-passable, would certainly be difficult to navigate with an emergency vehicle if the suspicious looking dudes decided they wanted to pay a visit and he needed help. He said that he had no way to defend himself, wife or kids – and told me he was thinking, with the hard times ahead in mind that are sure to include a lot of hungry and angry people, of getting a gun for just such an occasion. Without any prompting from me, he mentioned there could even be a revolution in this country if things continued to get much worse. We both ended the conversation agreeing that as long as we were both still running into each other while on the job, things were okay for at least the two of us.
Then, Monday night after the big Dow decline, I was sitting in my driveway with my son on the tailgate of my truck when my neighbor walked by and stopped to chat. He was with his two boys and we started talking about some of the great fishing his older son had done this year and some of the all time great fishing spots in the state. I asked him how his business was doing, and he said he was having an excellent summer. I told him that was great, because things were tough out there. He agreed, saying that a lot of guys were losing their shirts in the markets and at the register. Then, he turned to be and said “Things are so bad out there, there could even be a revolution” and “A lot of guys I know are saying it.”
These two “R-word” conversations in particular and others I’ve had around the city recently in general made me feel better because I no longer felt alone. They also scared me because by showing me more and more people were starting to see that this surreal socioeconomic choo-choo we’ve been riding in during this “lost decade” is about to hit the big wall of whatever is next at three hundred miles per hour, the chats made our situation seem more “real.”
Of course, we didn’t need the Dow drop to tell us that. Sure, it murders our 401k plans, but for the big money, it’s a number that really only effects the so-called two per centers in the wallet. Our wallets already empty, the rest of us feel the impact of collapse like a brick dropped on our collective heads from the top of the Observatory.
Looking ahead, will some great, currently unknown leader step forward to tell us what’s next, or are we going to have to collectively design whatever it may be on our own? Things will unveil themselves and the natural course of the universe will answer that soon enough. One thing our society’s next evolutionary step is not; is a return to the ways of the late twentieth century we all thought we loved, but turned out to be a mirage that provided the population with a Matrix-like image of an idealized society. It turns out that behind the scenes, while we were taking the Taurus wagon to Disneyland with Bon Jovi blaring, clever elitists were working to squander everything that made America
Whatever is coming next, it is time to get past the denial stage, come together and get ready for it.
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