Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Monday, August 04, 2008
The all-pervasive Gulag in the cartoon economy, part Z
"Suddenly all the professors and engineers turned out to be saboteurs — and they believed it? ... Or all of Lenin's old guard were vile renegades — and they believed it? Suddenly all their friends and acquaintances were enemies of the people — and they believed it?" - SolzhenitsynIdiots run the asylum, understanding nothing but power itself. Threaten that power and the response is harsh and immediate... And the true idiots run amuck, not knowing why their quality of life is declining, barely aware that yesterday was a better day than today, holding to power at the expense of reason...
Still the PR men spin... Win FREE MONEY! and no amount of counter spin can stop them. It becomes easier to believe outlandish conspiracy theories while the Jellyfish move in closer to the shore, their dumb stinging tentacles clinging to anyone that dares to swim.
The government builds warships as monuments to living men, contrary to 200 years of tradition, and prints money only to have inflation outrace spending. The only bright spot there was that rental income was up an astounding 14% for the month - shantytowns will be next.
Vampire books, and zombie stories dominate the reading lists, for those left that still read, and vaguely feel the malaise: the relentless mind-sucking tide of the moronic majority, turning on the one eyed men in the kingdom of the blind.
Others trap the competent men in a pecking party of clueless distrust and probable deceit.
There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no place left to think freely - more good men have quit fighting the copyright battle, too. (I despaired of fixing copyright when Costa Rica somehow voted for CAFTA, despite the fix being in.) In today's world, Harry Tuttle wouldn't have made it to the second act in Brazil.
And while some loonies contemplate destroying unused housing stock to prop up the prices of existing housing, when prices are still so high that millions can only rent, and others live in tents, Congress temporarily bails out Fanny Mae, as if half the housing stock wasn't already effectively nationalized. I can see the ad campaigns coming - Soon you can combine your mortgage and taxes into one brutal payment! Call now!
The young, already shackled by the debts handed down from the previous generations - and the costs of financing their own education, are gleefully proposed once again for national service by a supposedly independent media -
Oh, we reap the rewards of globalization, too:
- "the recent surge in shipping costs is on average the equivalent of a 9 percent tariff on trade. “The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today,” and “has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.""
I wish that I was writing about Stalin's USSR, or China's Cultural Revolution, but I'm not. The gulag is waiting, now, for everybody.
Labels: bitching, economy, gulag, msm, terry childs
¶ 6:47 AM 5 comments
