With regards to all the political threads and apocalyptic stuff....

[AtreyuKun]

I could have posted this response in any number of these threads here because really, I think they're all related.
With regards to PACT, with Obama, schools, guns, religion, the environment, or anything you can think of, I found an article.
This a very long article, but there's some stuff there. I'm a pessimist ladies and gents plain and simple, but I don't like being depressed so I try to avoid this shit. But there it is. I think the world is a ****ing pile of garbage but I try to make the most of it. I have my wife and family which I love, but man....to think about where we are headed....it's just depressing.

[PipenSnus]

Great article, AtreyuKun! I freakin' love Joe Bageant's articles. He really tells it like it is. He's a bona fide working-class progressive libertarian, and there's damn few of us around. I've been meaning to order a copy of his book, Deer Hunting with Jesus.

[timholian]

Wow, awesome article, thanks.

[justintempler]

AtreyuKun,

If it's any consolation...
When a hungry bear attacks the campground, you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the slowest campers.

[AtreyuKun]

That's a great consolation actually.
And probably resulted in the first genuine smile for me today.

[LaZeR]

[PipenSnus]

When a hungry bear attacks the campground, you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the slowest campers.

Unless you have a candy bar in your pocket. Then, so sorry, but you're lunch and dessert, and therefore the slowest campers survive.

[Premium Parrots]

unless your packin a 30.06

[WickedKitchen]

It is depressing to some degree but I'd like to think that I'd be able to prosper in whatever environment. Complete society chaos for an extended period of time might be a problem but I do often think about what would happen if it all was shut off. Just shut off. All at once.

Especially if electricity were shut off completely or almost completely. I mean for years. Life would be so different. Vastly different.

[PipenSnus]

And before Joe Bageant, the late great George Carlin summed the whole damn mess up well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI

[sgreger1]

It is depressing to some degree but I'd like to think that I'd be able to prosper in whatever environment. Complete society chaos for an extended period of time might be a problem but I do often think about what would happen if it all was shut off. Just shut off. All at once.

Especially if electricity were shut off completely or almost completely. I mean for years. Life would be so different. Vastly different.

There was a congressional study on the effects of an EMP in America, the results stated that if the electrical grid was shut down for an extended period of time, 90% of Americans would die within the first year. No food, clean water, anything getting shipped. In Ohio the power was out everywhere for a few days a while back and the whole thing went crazy and costed like 10 billion$ a day in damage, the sewage plants weren't working so the water got tainted etc. Once people run out of stuff to loot and once all the food spoils, it would get real bad real quick.

[sgreger1]

Atreyu, thanks for posting this article, I think this guy is now my favorite political writer. I feel like he is writting the things I couldn't put into words

"Can we slow it down, maybe, but put things in reverse, nope. Not when six billion mouths are munching at one end of the last noodle, and at the other end a fraction of a billion well armed technological people want the entire noodle."

"Not when life is already so damned cheap you can buy a girl slave in Haiti for twelve bucks, or 50 child slaves for your Asian sweatshop for less than the cost of a new car. Or an American working man for half of what it takes to support a family, then throw his ass over the company fence when he's no longer needed. Or bury him in mines as he cries out in Jesus' name, blow him up in Iraq, and Stelazine his kids minds and souls under the hot lights of the hologram, readying them for "the labor market." Schenectady or Soweto, life is dirt-cheap and getting cheaper everywhere on the planet."


"Its appetite ate the world. In fact, so voracious is its appetite that even if our "consumer economy," (legalized feudal theft) sees a recovery, and resumes the level of growth required just to keep capitalism alive, it will die just that much faster. "

"We have more humans suffering -- and not just from poverty either, think of depleted uranium, toxic waste, sweatshop slavery -- than we had humans on earth a couple hundred years ago."




I am officially stealing his designationg of our current system: "Gangster capitalism". That is the best phrase i've heard to describe our system so far.

[chadizzy1]

There was a congressional study on the effects of an EMP in America, the results stated that if the electrical grid was shut down for an extended period of time, 90% of Americans would die within the first year. No food, clean water, anything getting shipped. In Ohio the power was out everywhere for a few days a while back and the whole thing went crazy and costed like 10 billion$ a day in damage, the sewage plants weren't working so the water got tainted etc. Once people run out of stuff to loot and once all the food spoils, it would get real bad real quick.

Watch "Jericho". It's a TV series about this, it's really good.

[Bigblue1]

Just came across this documentary. Check it out

[tom502]

2012.