Thursday, October 23, 2008

[what to do] stay silent, do nothing

All right, I'm not going to wait till tomorrow morning. Let's do this now.

My angle on all of this [and please read it if you have just a few minutes] is very much where the chutzpah came from. I mean - from where did the people doing this get the idea that they were safe to do it?

Look at the bailouts - they were quite secure that they could cry poor and be bailed out. How could they be sure that there would be no reaction beyond blog words in the U.S. and UK? Look at the way they put small business at risk and then held out their own lifebuoy.

I want to concentrate on people - you and me. The reason many won't accept what is happening is:

1. Any posts run here and on other blogs, daring to suggest some giant plan which is now coming to fruition have been labelled "conspiracy theory", one of the most moronic epithets I've ever seen. One only has to utter those two magic words and the person exposing the thing is immediately marginalized and a sort of false common sense takes its place - that could never be so, could it? Knowing nods all round.

2. No one wants to believe bad news, especially from less than respectable sources. Everyone wants their news to be "trustworthy", meaning from the MSM or talking heads on "reliable channels". It takes a hell of a lot of evidence to show the average punter that this reliance is so much bunkum.

When the silent majority do wake up, it's usually too late and even when they do wish to react, they cannot because:

1. There is no mechanism for reaction. Can you storm parliament [and let it be recorded that I am in no way advocating this]? Can you find Brown, Bush and cronies and physically remove them? You have no recourse, no mechanism. So you sit back helplessly and watch it all happen before your eyes, getting angrier and angrier and determined to "throw the bstds out" at the next election, little realizing that that makes not the slightest difference.

2. There is a defensive mechanism now kicking in, which is three pronged:

a. You're too weary and demoralized anyway through the vicissitudes of your current life to lift a finger, to pull the communication cord and anyway, with whom does the cord communicate?

b. You're too scared to do anything because of family, current job, benefits and so on - you have mouths to feed. Better to keep the head down, as was the case in Soviet Russia, say nothing and do nothing.

c. You're far too busy - working longer and longer for less and less in real terms [look at supermarket prices] or else you have been compromised by the offer of a secure job or monetary reward. You can't be blamed for that in one way - it's finely calculated.

I'm certain there will be an artificially induced recovery first to show people that the "doom and gloom" kooks were off the planet in their forecasts and for them to be forever marginalized for having ever dragged the economy down. There will be talk of "the only thing to fear is fear itself", that "happy days are here again" and that doomsayers are the real enemy of recovery. It will be turned back onto blogs such as this.

This is the major crisis facing the western world now - what the hell to do about the inevitable three card trick. Is there any solution then? Well, to trade our way out of trouble against the odds is a possibility but you can't even set up a company any more in order to do this. It's all tied up. There are other non-revolutionary solutions but that is in a post in the next few days.

In an effort to keep comments in one place, I'll not open them on this post but ask you to comment, if you would, on the previous one, which is part of the same topic.