Shift Happens

freeacre

Mike Ruppert posted a great piece on Act II From the Wilderness last week (2/04) that elicited an inspired comment from someone called wagelaborer.
Wagelaborer likened what is going on with the economy to a 911 response to a medical emergency. I’m paraphrasing, but it goes like this:
Grandpa has a heart attack. Grandma, freaks and calls 911. The response team arrives and figures that Grandpa is not going to make it, but feels compelled to do their best to revive him and show Grandma that at least they tried. So, they give him some heart stimulant medication (their training advises the more expensive kind, even though it doesn’t work any better than the cheap one) and zap him with the paddles, etc. So, then he’s put into an ambulance and rushed to the hospital, where they start all over, making a play for the family that heroic measures are taken, absolving each other of any guilt that would be assigned if everyone hadn’t given it their best shot. Happily, for the hospital, this also increases the bill at every step as well. Finally, after the patient is hooked up to the ventilator and the family has had a chance to gather around and say good-by, the chaplain takes them into a room to hold their hand while the decision is made to pull the plug because it has finally been decided that grandpa has been brain dead for while - probably since he keeled ever in the livingroom. This may be more real to me because it is essentially what happened in my family last Friday when my nephew died after suffering cardiac arrest at home.

Anyway, that appears to me what is going on with the financial collapse. Capitalism as we know it has just blown up and suffered the consequences of a lifetime of unregulated excess and corruption that has predictably resulted in its demise. And, now we are going to be handed the bill. Oh, yes, there will be gnashing of teeth, but the lamestream media will be reporting that everything that could have been done was tried, and despite everyone’s best efforts, the economy just tanked. Just maybe some miracle might happen and the patient might sit up and look around and be able to get into rehab, but probably not. And the money that could have sustained the family until the kids got a little older has been diverted to the medical establishment (banks), the family is on its own, and up to their eyeballs in debt. What drama. What pathos. What a pimp job.

Pretty soon, the pretense will finally be up. Those who have heretofore been bought off and rendered mute because of their privileged positions and status within the hierarchy, will be handed their pink slips. Awful truths will be revealed. The worms will turn. Revolution will be in the air. States are already threatening to secede from the union. Governments are falling. People all over the world are demonstrating in the streets (while we hear and endless loop of feel-good stories on the lamestream). Troops may be called out. All kinds of hoopla and jaw-dropping weirdness will be diverting and amazing us from all sides. The dinosaurs can’t be maintained in the new landscape. There will be a hideous die off of the old paradigm.

There is another great piece in today’s Tomgram (Smirking Chimp.com) regarding the fall of the government in Iceland and the emerging new reality in that country. It is well worth a read. I’m including a quote from the end of it:

’ "There is an enormous sense of relief. After a claustrophobic decade, anger and resentment are possible again. It's official: capitalism is monstrous. Try talking about the benefits of free markets and you will be treated like someone promoting the benefits of rape. Honest resentment opens a space for the hope that one day language might regain some of its critical capacity, that it could even begin to describe social realities again."
The big question may be whether the rest of us, in our own potential Argentinas and Icelands, picking up the check for decades of recklessness by the captains of industry, will be resentful enough and hopeful enough to say that unfettered capitalism has been monstrous, not just when it failed, but when it succeeded. Let's hope that we're imaginative enough to concoct real alternatives. Iceland has no choice but to lead the way.
Rebecca Solnit is a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine and a Tomdispatch.com regular. Her book on disaster and civil society, A Paradise Built in Hell, will be out later this year.
Copyright 2009 Rebecca Soln


And, what’s this? Who are all these little creatures scurrying around, making nests in the grass and tunnels in the earth? Who are these people holding hands and dancing around the campfires? Who is squatting in the abandoned homes, organizing clinics in deserted malls, growing food in vacant lots, sharing their homes with displaced children and covering the backs of wandering neighbors?

All the people who have been ignored for so long, that’s who.

The people who don’t come from New York or Washington D.C. are poised to take the reins. God, I am so sick of New York and D.C. If I never hear about them again, it will be too soon. In fact, when the new “Sex in the City” movie is released, I hope the theaters that show it spontaneously combust. The shallow, pampered, conspicuously consuming, yuppie scum are so over. The numbnuts in suits are dead men walking. Even the slave workforce-exploiting-complicit-Wally World-Nascar-watching dumbasserie are doomed. Debt has peaked. Those who rely on it are zombies.

What is alive is just beginning to emerge. I saw it this weekend at our Grange Farmers Market. Real people producing real products from home-based enterprises are going to re-make and re-take the world. You could sense it in the air. People were talking to each other, networking, planning on bartering and sharing resources, coming up with new ideas of what could work to get us through this disaster. A guy was singing folksongs and John Prine tunes in the background. Chili was being sold for a dollar a bowl. Home grown eggs and meat are being traded for firewood and computer expertise. Kids are helping out and feeling good about it.

Check out this populist song, circulating now on the web: http://www.bornagainamerican.org


I am going to be away for a few days. I have to attend to my step-son who is in hospice care now. But, I just wanted to leave you with this post to encourage you while I am gone. Good things are happening. The paradigm is shifting and, like a polar shift, in the long run, there’s not a thing that the gov/corp can do to stop it. You can stick a fork into the Wall Street cabal – they’re done.

UPDATE: A series of snowstorms has hit the Sierras, so it looks like I'm going to stick around for awhile.