Dis Connection

Because we are disconnected, we reverberate and distribute nearly innumerable problems throughout our system, in almost exponential fashion. Solve our disconnection, and we clear out legions of problems (although admittedly, we run the risk of creating a few more in the process—clearly, a risk worth taking).

Here’s just one small sample of how our disconnection—and our lack of seeing the effects of those disconnections—multiplies throughout our society while we address, if we address at all, things in a band- aid fashion because we see no connections: There are too many individuals in our highly individualistic society who feel out of place—or feel they have no place. After all, “you’re on your own, pal,” is what the culture says to them, despite any offers of help. Many turn to drugs, violence, escapism, or various forms of anti-social behavior. There’s ONE problem (actually a bunch, but we’re simplifying here).

Meanwhile, down south, we have spiraling (out of control?) violence from individuals and organizations vying to supply the illegal drugs that those disconnected up north want. We rail and rage when it affects our own non-drug involved citizens. We talk about “the border,” and “fighting the war on drugs,” and more useless verbiage while we spend our national treasure in foreign lands treading water at best, and maybe stirring up backlash and blowback. We spend money—ridiculous amounts of money we don’t have—on all sorts of things in isolation. We make little headway on, and we solve, none of them. Because we make no connections.

We ignore the desperate that we create as byproduct of our ways abroad. And then rage in frustration when those desperate lash out or seek to do us harm. The desperate are keenly susceptible to manipulative radicalization by the few—have we learned nothing from our own Western history how this can happen?

We like to spout how we don’t need to spend even a little money on “foreigners” (an increasingly fanciful notion in this highly interconnected and interdependent system and biosphere), while we spend enormous amounts on often heavy handed presences in foreign lands. Our willingness to bleed our increasingly phantom treasury in dubious ventures contrasts even more inanely with our unwillingness to actually invest in desperation-prevention. We spend untold billions in all sorts of immigration issues, let alone the billions more we spend on the “drug problem,” looking for more or better mops to sop up the water rather than shutting the faucets off.

Ask those who TRULY understand and study the immigration issue, and you will see that much of it can be ameliorated by connected and thoughtful policies, not emotional lashing outs.

Ask those who TRULY understand and study the drug issue, and you will see that it is largely a manifestation of other things, and if you don’t address those things, whatever you do about drugs is of marginal effect.

Examine your precepts America.

Denying Our Eyes About the New Normal

Do we have an economy built on lies, wealth transfer, and gross misallocation of resources?

David Stockman is too smart and too financial-savvy for the Wall Street ilk to fool. As he says in his most recently released interview with Peter Gorenstein, most of the job “gains” (so loudly trumpeted by Wall Street analysts) come from temporary or entry level jobs. But without true growth in the "base of the economy...where the high paying jobs exist," the economy will continue to struggle with "very, very slow growth."

"We've got a real income distribution problem in this economy," argues Stockman, "and it's getting worse, not better."

We can’t seem to face the truth—or the pain. 60% of the public say they are in favor of the tax cuts made and of the recent political deal made. They either have little clue or are in selfish denial about financial solvency. Now the engines of economics and history move another notch of the wheel clock forward to force us to face an agony we lacked the courage, the sacrifice, the vision, the focus to avoid. America’s fixation with thinking itself so special will explode in our faces if we keep putting off the hard work. That is nearly inevitable.

People will express outrage on talk tv and radio at the burden put on the future (and/or children and grandchildren), yet in the very next sentence express equal outrage that taxes are not cut across the board (including for billionaires).

You can’t have it both ways people.

If we continue on this path of doom, it will take us down, one disaster after another. We have too many other system-threatening problems to be behaving this foolishly.

Tinder and Brush

I see weakness nearly everywhere. All the tinder and brush waiting for a match.

I see workers who don’t share in their increase in productivity, and so their wages fall behind. And realize (too late for many) that debt to make up the difference is not a workable solution.

Point to a sector of the American economy that is doing well. All you will likely be able to point out are fossil fuels, agribusiness/food/drink, insurance, pharmaceuticals, chronic sick “care,” Wall Street finance, mining, waste “management,” software, computer systems design, accounting and tax preparation, “security,” and companies that have been granted (often generous) government contracts. A few dots in retail and services do well, but they stand out because they are the exceptions. How many of the above are what we can consider bedrock foundations of a sound economy (let alone ecology)? And governments? They are consumers, so they hardly count.

Even as the top corporations sit on mounds of cash, they continue to fire and downsize pay levels. Why do they do the things that are damaging long-term? Because they are owned by speculators and mutual funds and institutional investors from around the world who demand constant high projections of next quarter’s profits so that the stock price will go up. Delusionary, and unsustainable past anything but the short term, as it requires cuts in labor and cuts in the pay to that labor.

There is weakness. America needs to rejuvenate itself, to work on itself. It needs to address the things wrong, it needs to quit enfeebling its voice.

Because we have to really do the hard work. If we don’t, we are at best merely putting off a Depression for a while.

We have to do something about all this tinder and brush. We have made ourselves far too vulnerable to the slightest trigger. Let’s start working on foundations, to take away some of that vulnerability. The very process will start in motion the reversal, which can gain in speed over time as we build on the right things, just as our problems have gained in speed as we built on the wrong things.

Hoisting On Own Petard

It’s a tribute to us I suppose. We created a system that the world, and especially many of the real or potential rival powers, wanted to play in. No other power has really done that. Except maybe Rome.

Now that our greed, arrogance, and selfish stupidity have made us weak, they stand poised to beat us with that system.

My father always told me that the rich in this country largely care only for themselves and getting richer, and that they actually crave a new Depression and deflation. That they will bleed the country dry by their selfish and corrupt dealings, and then when the Depression that they have largely caused comes about, they will buy up everything (including labor) cheap to become the absolute masters of all.

I always thought the old man was paranoid. Now I’m not so sure.