Tag: prosperity

Frightened Sheep – How Did the More Financially Secured Get So Scared of Life

A recent article shares very articulately how a group of upper-middle class people got so scared of life in this day and age of advanced technologies and modern day conveniences.

This is something I have thought of from time to time in my own career exposure to this class of people. One thing I had noticed was that the older members of this crowd ten and twenty years ago were not quite as disconnected as the current crop of intellectuals. It seems that while the next generation had almost a 100% university socialization, their predecessors had more time exposed to real life “in the trenches”.

I found myself over the years drawn to the realness that the working class brought to the laboratories I worked in more than the intellectuals who could barely have a conversation with you about anything other than science.

This articles goes a long way to help unpack what happened even though it is short on solutions other than re-discovering the value of being exposed to real work towards gaining empathy to those who do this day-in and day-out for their entire lives while keeping a smile.

Here is some clips, but I encourage you to read the whole article!

They’re all around us, especially those of us who live in relatively prosperous metropolitan neighborhoods in the US or Western Europe. Despite being—at least in material terms—among the most fortunate people who have ever walked the earth, they are very scared. And they want you to be very frightened too.

I guess that is part of my own resentment of these types of scared and scarred people .. is that they want others to act as they do.

Indeed, many of them see your refusal to be as frightened as they are about life’s inevitable risks as a grave problem which entitles them and their often powerful and influential fellow travelers to recur to all manner of authoritarian practices to insure that you adhere to their increasingly neurotic view of reality.

This tendency has been in full bloom lately as the people who have sat safely behind their laptops during the last 20 months have harangued and threatened those who have been out on job sites and meatpacking plants mixing freely with others and the virus, to internalize their own obsessions.

It does seem that the COVID season has enhanced the process that brought these people to this point in life. As pure sheep, most see nothing wrong with their worldview as safety is #1 in their lives.

The author goes on to point out that a lot of this is a new thing historically (and isn’t it wonderful to have history to point to towards unveiling more normal times in days gone by):

For most of recorded time prosperity and education have been the gateway to a life of relative freedom from worry. But now, the people who most enjoy these benefits are, it seems, wracked with anxiety and, in the not infrequent way of many people suffering that plague, and hellbent on sharing their misery with others.

From this point on the author shares some theories as to how this all came about:

One way of explaining the phenomenon is in the context of income inequality and its devastating effects on the shape and size of the upper middle class, and those who still believe they have a realistic chance of joining its ranks. Those who have “made it” into that sub-group are deeply cognizant of the unstable nature of their status in a world of corporate buyouts and rampant layoffs. And they worry that they may not be able to provide their children with the ability to retain what they see, rightly or wrongly, as the only real version of the good life.

Thus, when the people way up on top made the decision following September 11th to make the inducement of fear the cornerstone of political mobilization in an increasingly post-political and post-communal society, they found a ready reserve of support in this anxious if also relatively prosperous cohort of the population.

And after two decades of having their already anxious inner selves massaged daily by an a steady drumbeat of fear (and a diet of Trump as Hitler for dessert) both they and their children fell like ripe fruit into the hands of those that wanted to sell them on the “unprecedented” threat posed by a disease that leaves 99.75% of its victims wonderfully alive.

So as you can see, there are several themes that emerge in the CSI for what went wrong, as in, “how did our society produce so many pure sheep?”

Isolation is yet another ingredient:

Adding another layer to this general phenomenon is the increasing isolation of our educated classes from “physicality” in both their work and communal lives.

Until the 1990s it was virtually impossible for anyone other than the richest of the rich not to have any active or passive acquaintance with the world of physical work. Indeed, for the first three or four decades after World War II many of those who could financially afford to relieve their children of this acquaintance with physical work often did not do so, as they believed that knowing what it meant to sweat, ache, be crushingly bored and, not infrequently, humiliated during the course of the day was essential to gaining a more rounded and empathetic understanding of the human condition.

All that ended when the financialization of the economy and the rise of the internet made what Christopher Lasch presciently termed the “rebellion of the elites a much more palpable possibility.”

For example, very few of my students have ever worked during their summers in anything other than office jobs, often procured through family connections. They thus have little understanding, and hence little empathy, of just how brutal and demeaning daily work can be for so many people.

I think you can see that this “understanding” might be useful in helping these people out of this “funk” and towards living real life, dangerous and free in the months and years to come as some of these sheep having gone crazy in herds can return one by one to a more normal worldview.

You never know how your knowledge of history or of society’s brokenness can make you a blessing in another’s life someday!

Be true, stay the course and be kind .. many are walking wounded in this world.

-SF1

When “I Told You So” Ain’t Fun Any More – The End Game of Un-sustainability

The great thing about what is left of the “free” Internet is knowing that you are not alone in one’s own thoughts about the future. I think it can be a curse to be equipped with the ability to see “red flags” when few others do. When I think of the word prophetic, I don’t mean fore-telling as in declaring future events, but forth-telling as in revealing truths.

There are those that have this gift, like Patrick Henry, when he commented about the release of the document called the US Constitution with “I smell a rat”. This among many other “red-flags” he saw in that document came true in the years and decades to come.

The administrator of The Burning Platform wrote today about his (and others like Ron Paul) ability to see what was coming before 2008 and now sees more clearly what is unraveling once more. He also has learned a bit about human nature in this decade since the economy was turned upside-down and the banks were bailed out using taxpayer money.

First, about the sheep:

I will also no longer overestimate the ability of the American populace to see through this charade and come to their senses regarding their unsustainable use of debt to try and maintain an unrealistic lifestyle. Their willful ignorance, created through government education propaganda and social engineering, will not be extinguished until the inevitable financial collapse wipes them out again.

Second, about the wolves:

I suppose I continue to underestimate the level of maliciousness, gluttony, and pure arrogance of those pulling the strings behind the curtain, as they rape and pillage the dwindling financial resources of our empire in its death throes. These psychopaths in suits care not for this country or its people. These globalist pricks want nothing more than pliable slaves, distracted by their iGadgets, sports, and Hollywood drivel.

Lastly, about President Donald Trump:

Vintage 2016:

“They’re keeping the rates down so that everything else doesn’t go down. We have a very false economy. At some point the rates are going to have to change. The only thing that is strong is the artificial stock market. The U.S. economy is in a big, fat, ugly bubble. I will get rid of the nation’s more than $19 trillion national debt over a period of eight years. I’m renegotiating all of our deals, the big trade deals that we’re doing so badly on.” – Donald Trump, September 2016.

Vintage 2019:

“The U.S. economy would grow more quickly if monetary policy were eased. If we had a Fed that would lower interest rates, we would be like a rocket ship. We don’t have a Fed that knows what they’re doing. Our most difficult problem is not our competitors, it is the Federal Reserve. The Fed raised rates too soon, too often, and doesn’t have a clue!” – Donald Trump, July 2019

Obama did that too! The candidate sounded credible .. but once in office, one would think that someone has their kojones in a vise.

I certainly overestimated the campaign rhetoric truthfulness of Donald Trump as he railed against the Federal Reserve for keeping interest rates too low, creating a stock market bubble, and contributing to the parabolic rise in debt. His promise to eliminate the national debt in eight years was impossible, but I thought he might rein in spending and reduce annual deficits.

It seems men who may have the best intentions to do what is right on behalf of the American people when they seek higher office or are appointed to positions of power, such as the Federal Reserve, are summoned into a dark boardroom and informed who are the real bosses and what truly makes the world go round.

Sick but true. As FDR said:

The only reason they are selected is because they WILL do the bidding of those that bought, I mean brought, the puppet, I mean candidate to office.

So where does that have us in the 4Q of 2019?:

So here we are, entering Trump’s fourth year in office as the Deep State and their cronies in Congress, the CIA, and fake news media use impeachment as their last straw in their ongoing attempted coup, and the national debt is up by $3 trillion since Trump took office. At the end of his first term the national debt will exceed $24 trillion and interest on that debt will approach $600 billion.

Is this a good direction? Is this Trumps 4D chess? Using Kevin’s voice from the movie “Home Alone” I say: “I don’t think so”

The tax cuts for corporate America and the richest individuals reduced tax revenues and resulted in corporations buying back billions of their own stock to drive the stock market to the highest valuations since the 2000 dot.com bubble. Meanwhile, Trump fed the military industrial complex with billions more, while funding war throughout the world. Rhetoric about ending wars is just bullshit for the masses. The entitlement outlays remain on an unsustainable path, as Trump and all the feckless politicians in D.C. pretend all is well. Nothing bad has happened – Yet.

I am sure during the Democrat/CIA attempted coup that Trump did not want to pull back DOD spending, especially since a large number of his backers are pro-military, no matter what other country’s women and children will be droned.

The Fed balance sheet peaked at $4.5 trillion as they increased interest rates by a mere 200 basis points over a few years, still 200 basis points below what used to be considered normal. We’ve heard the boasts about the “best economy ever”, “lowest unemployment in history”, “stock market highest ever”, and “record corporate profits”, but with interest rates still at emergency levels and the Fed balance sheet a mere $750 billion lower than its peak, somehow the Fed feels compelled to cut rates and restart QE – but not calling it QE. Powell is bowing down to his Wall Street masters and Trump by taking actions which would only be taken during a recession or financial crisis.

Nothing to see here. Either they will fake it until 2020 elections or the wheels will come off the months prior.

GDP has averaged 2.5% in 2019, with consumer confidence high, consumer spending solid, unemployment at all-time lows, the stock market within spitting distance of all-time highs, and corporate profits at all-time peaks. Why would the Fed cut rates by 50 basis points, with more coming, and increase their balance sheet by $180 billion in one month, with a commitment to increase it by $60 billion a month for the foreseeable future? Will these actions benefit the average person or the above average bank and corporate executives? Savers are again being sacrificed on the altar of corporate America.

Yes, this is the reward people who have tried to save all their lives so they will not be a burden to their kids or to society get when the central bank allows a government to mortgage the future taxpayers lives as perpetual slaves.

Until then, other than Climate Change causing the end of the world in 2032, we have a few things to beware of:

  • His [Trump’s] impeachment and/or election of a gun grabbing socialist will surely lead to civil violence.
  • The continued provocations between superpowers with nuclear weapons and a Middle East always on the verge of apocalypse only needs an arrogant misstep by an egomaniacal leader to trigger a global conflagration.

Stay tuned. Glad I am not the only one that sees these “red-flags”. Now there are at least two, or three or more if you count Captain1776 and Malibu, two of my sons, .. or maybe more if you count my other two sons and my daughter.

You may not know it today, but in the days to come, you might have to lean on your faith (if that is what you have/want/need), that there is a hope for a better future at some point. The founders talked a bit about Providence in their trying times.

Here is to a new generation that can take to heart that after the storm, there will be peace and prosperity.

-SF1