08-08-2020, 08:59 PM
Brought over from another thread because it wandered into relevance to this thread. 1/6 of a million is 166,666 and two-thirds, and we likely reach that grim milestone soon.
A Crisis Era compels people to do what they never planned to do. It puts an end to many bad habits that make life easy and inexpensive for some people -- at a great price to those whose misery is necessary for making abundance for others on the cheap. Remember: a 3T is a time of negligent, myopic hedonism that acts as if there is no future for which to account. People get away with bad behavior such as exploitation, under-saving, Ponzi schemes and speculative bubbles, celebrity circuses, quackery in academia, tax cuts for elites, and inadequate investment in the public sector.
No era of the typical saeculum receives quicker and fuller repudiation than the degenerate 3T. It always gives people inadequate preparation for what follows. Trying to live as if 3T rules apply through a 4T is one way to ensure personal disaster if such is one's behavior as an atomized individual and large-scale disaster if one imposes it on a grand scale.
People cannot live on their impulses in a 4T (really in any military unit). If we do not have a shooting war, then we at least have the deaths of a shooting war. We have lost nearly one sixth of a million people in roughly six months. I am not going to extrapolate, as straight-line projections are the least reliable of predictions. But let's put it this way: we are in between losing (in size) Jackson, Mississippi and Springfield, Missouri. So imagine that you are headed to some low-brow entertainment in Branson, Missouri (yes, country music is generally considered low-brow in contrast to classical, jazz, folk, or perhaps rhythm-and-blues) as you head west on Interstate 44 from somewhere in the Great Lakes region. You expect to turn south on US 65. Interstate 44 in Missouri is one of the most scenic of all Interstates, so it is an attractive drive. Nut all of a sudden, where Springfield was is an empty hulk, wiped out in the explosion of a neutron bomb. Nobody is there anymore except people passing through. Maybe they expected to stop at a motel for the night. The motel is still there, but there is no front-desk clerk. Stopping at one of the national chain restaurants? The restaurant is still there, but there is no staff... and there are no local customers. Not-so-local customers tell you that the food is already Do you rotting, so don't trust it even if it is "free".
Do you think that you might get yourself some free gasoline because nobody has thought to shut off the pumps? If you do manage to stop at a gas station that uses the image of a tiger (as in the old ad campaign "Put a Tiger in your tank")... radioactive gasoline could put something even more dangerous than a tiger in your passenger compartment. Make a wrong turn and pass a schoolyard or a park? There won't be any children playing.
We are accustomed to assuming that in the First World or among advantaged people in other parts of the world, people do not die of respiratory infections unless they have pre-existing conditions (such as emphysema) or have messed up badly in life, as in getting hooked on street drugs.
But you are lucky. You aren't going to stay in what used to be Springfield, Missouri very long. You can't. There's nothing there anymore. You got there after the neutron bomb exploded. If you think me over-dramatic: someone that Classic X'er and I agree is one of the greatest monsters in human form, Josef Stalin, said
"One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic".
...If you wonder why I don't mention Jackson, Mississippi -- I have never been there. If you wonder why I take so many swipes at Mississippi for its past, then it ain't for William Faulkner or Eudora Welty or the great number of Blues musicians who turned their pain from being black and poor (usually a redundancy) in Mississippi into a profound expression of humanity. I've never been in Mississippi and probably never will be -- or probably will never even go through it. So I can't say much about it. I have been past or through Springfield, Missouri a few times.
We have experienced a few characteristics of a 4T -- shortages of things that used to have reliable supply, exhortations to not make unnecessary trips, reduction in consumer choice, bare shelves, and attempts at personal and economic regimentation. We may not be closer to the end of the Crisis Era than to its start, but the latter years of a Crisis Era are often the harshest.
...Maybe in the 1T we will not be doing things so much on the cheap as we used to.
(08-08-2020, 01:17 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm OK with the Democrats shutting down cheap meat packing plants that mainly employ cheap immigrants (legal or illegal) that provide cheap food for cheap people like you to eat. I think it would be a major mistake but whatever the Democrats seem know what's best for Democrats and you seem to be on board with the Democratic way of thinking. Well, have fun starving and dealing with hungry people as you're waiting for couple of disconnected multi-millionaires/ aristocrats named Nancy and Chuck to figure it out and maybe do something about it or possibly ignore it or whatever. Like I said, I'll go in with a Republican minded friend and buy a fucking cow to eat as your waiting for free food.
A Crisis Era compels people to do what they never planned to do. It puts an end to many bad habits that make life easy and inexpensive for some people -- at a great price to those whose misery is necessary for making abundance for others on the cheap. Remember: a 3T is a time of negligent, myopic hedonism that acts as if there is no future for which to account. People get away with bad behavior such as exploitation, under-saving, Ponzi schemes and speculative bubbles, celebrity circuses, quackery in academia, tax cuts for elites, and inadequate investment in the public sector.
No era of the typical saeculum receives quicker and fuller repudiation than the degenerate 3T. It always gives people inadequate preparation for what follows. Trying to live as if 3T rules apply through a 4T is one way to ensure personal disaster if such is one's behavior as an atomized individual and large-scale disaster if one imposes it on a grand scale.
People cannot live on their impulses in a 4T (really in any military unit). If we do not have a shooting war, then we at least have the deaths of a shooting war. We have lost nearly one sixth of a million people in roughly six months. I am not going to extrapolate, as straight-line projections are the least reliable of predictions. But let's put it this way: we are in between losing (in size) Jackson, Mississippi and Springfield, Missouri. So imagine that you are headed to some low-brow entertainment in Branson, Missouri (yes, country music is generally considered low-brow in contrast to classical, jazz, folk, or perhaps rhythm-and-blues) as you head west on Interstate 44 from somewhere in the Great Lakes region. You expect to turn south on US 65. Interstate 44 in Missouri is one of the most scenic of all Interstates, so it is an attractive drive. Nut all of a sudden, where Springfield was is an empty hulk, wiped out in the explosion of a neutron bomb. Nobody is there anymore except people passing through. Maybe they expected to stop at a motel for the night. The motel is still there, but there is no front-desk clerk. Stopping at one of the national chain restaurants? The restaurant is still there, but there is no staff... and there are no local customers. Not-so-local customers tell you that the food is already Do you rotting, so don't trust it even if it is "free".
Do you think that you might get yourself some free gasoline because nobody has thought to shut off the pumps? If you do manage to stop at a gas station that uses the image of a tiger (as in the old ad campaign "Put a Tiger in your tank")... radioactive gasoline could put something even more dangerous than a tiger in your passenger compartment. Make a wrong turn and pass a schoolyard or a park? There won't be any children playing.
We are accustomed to assuming that in the First World or among advantaged people in other parts of the world, people do not die of respiratory infections unless they have pre-existing conditions (such as emphysema) or have messed up badly in life, as in getting hooked on street drugs.
But you are lucky. You aren't going to stay in what used to be Springfield, Missouri very long. You can't. There's nothing there anymore. You got there after the neutron bomb exploded. If you think me over-dramatic: someone that Classic X'er and I agree is one of the greatest monsters in human form, Josef Stalin, said
"One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic".
...If you wonder why I don't mention Jackson, Mississippi -- I have never been there. If you wonder why I take so many swipes at Mississippi for its past, then it ain't for William Faulkner or Eudora Welty or the great number of Blues musicians who turned their pain from being black and poor (usually a redundancy) in Mississippi into a profound expression of humanity. I've never been in Mississippi and probably never will be -- or probably will never even go through it. So I can't say much about it. I have been past or through Springfield, Missouri a few times.
We have experienced a few characteristics of a 4T -- shortages of things that used to have reliable supply, exhortations to not make unnecessary trips, reduction in consumer choice, bare shelves, and attempts at personal and economic regimentation. We may not be closer to the end of the Crisis Era than to its start, but the latter years of a Crisis Era are often the harshest.
...Maybe in the 1T we will not be doing things so much on the cheap as we used to.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.