Flat Growth and Other Dark Portents The Gipper Left Us

So, get used to it.... The New , New thing is here to stay and it's called flat economic growth!!! Maybe even-heresy of treasonous heresies- decline, reset, and re-stabilization and then, horror of horrors, a meditative retrograde backslide for a few decades maybe… And it's a good thing too; and high time for all us mega gluttons (relative to world per capita) in the West. Sure Manifest Destiny was a good thing for about 100 years when the nation was young and full of that rootin tootin cowboy spirit- although it wiped out the true indigens of the Americas-but we won't get into that right now. And flat growth, even if we can achieve it, may still only mean a delay in rapid descent climate change maelstroms.

Ok, who we gonna blame? All of us really, but if we had to look to just one tiny figurehead atop the most massive economic colossus the world ever saw, it would have to be Ronald Reagan. Sorry Gipper.

Reaganomics DID accomplished all its aims of growth at all costs. And perhaps the Gip actually thought and hoped that trickle down would fortify the middle class. Sadly , naively, he was wrong. Grossly, tragically, dangerously wrong. Example: The Kochs are worth 50 billion dollars- most of it gained over the last 3 years! Koch Industries have lost employees over the same last 3 years, and wages and benefits stagnated or ended. Meanwhile millions of dollars per lost employee have gone into their coffers. Are you getting this? Two men's combined wealth is worth more than the complete worth of 25 entire nations and they let some of their employees go? And they cut some of the others benefits? Wait, wait.... you just have to stop here and resist the ADD a sec....
50 billion is 50 thousand million dollars..... and what can this humongous Leviathan of lucre buy? It's surely not buying any widgets. It's not buying any durables. It is going to continue to buy some hyped up hypodermic oil needles, yes, but what is the main object? What is it buying with a whole lot left over after the buyout? It's buying the entire f#^$#@g Democracy and making it over in its own kinder gentler designer image. That's what it's buying, folks! Now, tell me you are not still holding your breath after grasping that. Where have all boats been raised in this dark tide? The Gip, sadly,just did not see that off shore labor and globalization, and of course, the raison d’etre of “ the bottom line at all cost” ethic, would leave all the trickle down theorists w/ egg all over their Armani suits. It all trickled down off shore… and that’s not such a bad thing either, cept that as the teeming throngs all across the 3’rd world come into their own “middle class” hugely increasing budgets of coal and oil will be needed to support their long awaited standard of living boom.

THE BIG LIE IN THE LAST 35 YEARS HAS BEEN THE MASSIVE OBFUSCATION PROPAGANDA SMEAR THAT THE BOEHNERS AND NEWTS,CANTORS AND RYANS, WALKERS, AND ALL THE WELL ENTRENCHED RANDIAN PLANTS FROM THE KLEPTOCRATS AND WHAT THEY HAVE PERPETRATED BRANDING ALL SOCIAL PROGRAMS AND LEFT POLITICS AS UN- PATRIOTIC “SOCIALISM” MOVEMENTS.. and that we are becoming a social welfare state. The diametric opposite is much closer to the truth and no further ideological sentiment needs to be asserted to explain this reality other than hard and fast numbers of the massive accumulations of wealth, especially since 2000, at the very top end of the strata, and the deconstruction of the middle class, the slide into poverty of millions, the loss of jobs and benefits and millions uninsured and dying earlier because of it. Reagan was not really a keen enough student of history or economics-or even end days movies…though his oratory did slip the surly bonds sometimes, sadly as it all turns out, we all lost real big one for the Gipper.... but he did make us all feel good and did make us all believe it was truly "morning in America." It was twilight w/ one last star burst incendiary to go; one last massive pyrotechnic molotov made of oil...
He and the Randians of Milton Friedman and Al Greenspanners et all above, fired up the greatest hyper burn, solid rocket booster, final ascent economic laffer curving flame out the world will ever know....

Yes , these are the last gloaming days of the glazy eyed rush full bore consumerism, and we were all alive for this.... The kids alive today, those who make the Bering crossing the other way, they will be the ones to "remember the old world." They will be the oral keepers of the grail of the “Times Before” the last days when abject personal deficit spending and abject fossil fuel burning, churning fossil funk finally played out in one last mega bubble of funny money blown all away in the great epoch of the MEGA HURRICANES that began just before the end of the Mayan calendar.

History buffs of the blade runner future will call it the housing bust that was heard around the world just before the great droughts, the massive incursions of sea water, the great cyclonic CAT 6 tempests surged inland claiming millions of lives in a day; then pandemic die offs- the great sapienacide where billions perished. It will be called the real paradigm shift, the real New, New Thing… Like the Trinity sight in New Mexico in 1945 and Robert Oppenheimer’s famous quoting from the Bahavagita, “I am death become destroyer of worlds”……… just change the pronoun to “we.”

Ok, alright….. alright, it’s too much… it’s too much .. It’s too much horror to bear in the mind… just don’t think about it then. Things are still relatively comfy and from this level of comfort, we just can’t handle the truth. When though, please beseech us oh minions of the nimbus mists, who will sayeth unto us to stay our own hand the sacrifice of our mother? Tell me, if it’s not the Archangel Gabriel, then it will be all our darkest angels that will not stay our own office in extremis? We sure are headed that way now, real fast.

Perhaps some inborn Pentecost we are nigh upon…. Who knows? Is it written in the books? Are we looking too deeply into the past for all the ancient signs, symbols and runes for our demise? Were the Mayans on top of CO2 emissions? Perhaps the recent history in the numbers is all we should focus on now. If we just let the numbers speak their wordless wisdoms then we might begin to see that there are limits to what the earth can provide; we might begin to see that our divined dominion over all that we survey, over the animals in the forests, the fishes of the sea, and all that other schlock that tumbled like golden calves out of Reagan’s mouth, were all words about the falling dusk and not the bright morning… If not us, if not now, where will deliverance come?

HURRICANE GULLIVER

Climate change is no longer a threat. Threats imply a future consequence; they suggest events coming. Forget that. Climate change is a NOW reality. It's upon us 100 years ahead of schedule by some measures. The so called "debate” as to cause lingers in propaganda mills because it has been rigged and protracted by those who stand to gain the most by pretending there is no such thing as human caused global warming. These are press mills of journalistic pulp only. These people operate only in frames of next quarter’s profits. They are blinded by a finite ignorance born of abject greed. They can be forgiven their sins for “they know not what they do”, but they must be relegated to the radical self-interest fringe now for the sake of the planet.



The debate is now over. OVER! The only debate, now must be about the most efficient actions to take to mitigate damages to the planet -and to ourselves. It is no longer "our grandchildren's futures" we need to protect. It is our own. The planet we now inhabit is not the same one we boomers grew up in. That planet is irretrievably lost. What the F!@# happened to “EARTH DAY” in 1970? Massive adaptive changes are already occurring in the natural world. For species who can not adapt that fast, extinctions are occurring at rates only seen during past natural world epochs like asteroid strikes. FUTURE SHOCK IS NOW,FOLKS! For the first time in “civilized history” there is no ice blocking the northwest passage from North America to Asia- and ships now travel those shipping lanes for the first time in human history. Does anyone get this?


CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were last at these levels (390 parts per million) 20 million years ago when mega volcanoes all over the world spewed cubic miles of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. We may be past the point of no return where feedback loops have already been tripped. Methane (natural gas) fields long covered by ice may now begin to release into the atmosphere on their own. Billions, maybe trillions of tons of carbon locked into the permafrost and bogs of the boreal forest rimming the northern hemisphere of the earth may now thaw and evaporate still more greenhouse gasses. This is not the future, this is NOW! The incremental changes only scientist notice now will soon take the form of catastrophic weather events noticed and felt by ALL! Woops, error, I keep thinking in terms of the future too. It's already happening now with increased frequency. In Vermont, post Irene, it's already "Apres Le Deluge." Remember Katrina, and Andrew and Ike? Future ones will cause biblical floods and famines, mass migrations and pandemic plagues, killing not thousands but billions of people. Will it take a “Breaking News Event” on CNN titled “Noah’s Revenge” for us to see? THIS FUTURE SHOCK NOW!

There is a long, long history of science denying. Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin just to name a few. Denying the science in these cases influenced sociological, religious and educational matters. But denying this present science and continuing full steam ahead with the status quo based on economic interests only, affects questions of profound consequence- It affects the fundamental questions of human survival- at least as we have known it since the dawn of Civilization.


Anyone remember Irene? Such a sweet,n’ petite lil southern belle she was... all gingham n' laced and bonneted- comin out to her debutante ball- prancin’ and dancin’ a genteel minuet before all dem high class gentry come out to see her from their beach houses on the board walks of the East Coast. Well, goodnight Irene you sweet lil thing, yooo. Y’all come back reel sooon. Barely a category 1 hurricane with winds topped out at 100mph along the coast. Very soon it’s going to be HURRICANE GULLIVER. Can anyone imagine a category 5 with winds exceeding 200mph w/huge berms of storm surge water driven out ahead in tsunamic proportions with the eye tracking only 75 miles further west than did lovely, sweet, dulcet toned Irene? Imagine it. It’s coming real soon to the east coast to a temperate climate near you. Try to imagine 60 million people along the east coast hit w/ a CAT 5 hurricane , where- forget the wind and waves and storm surge- where 5 feet of rains fall from the monster when it releases its biblical deluge? Don’t think back to Noah. Don’t think about “our grandkids.” Think Now. Think next summer or, better yet, turn on the weather channel right NOW!


This is FUTURE SHOCK IS NOW! Something must be done in earnest if our leaders will not follow through with International accords they vow to stand by in stirring oratory at these "summit talks." A more apt name might be " Plummet Talks." We are all to blame. Each of us should have a consumption meter on our own foreheads . All of us alive today in the Western World were born and baptized into a fossil fuel world. This is our “ original sin.” Virtually all of our prosperity and wealth, population explosion and food production, massive economic progress and military prowess- all- is totally underwritten by fossil fuels. As fish are born in water and do not know it, we were born in oil and so, like fish, do not notice the oil we swim in. It is not the bad guys "over there" we must flush out either It is not even the politicians. They were all born and baptized by oil too! Like the fish, they just don’t get it. We are all in this oil slick together. For the sake of our survival, we have to start “thinking,” we have to start "seeing" and we have to start acting in order to save our own lives. If we don’t start now then, sadly, there may not be any grandchildren for us to even worry about.