It is time once more to talk about how things go down the tubes. How the proverbial excrement hits the proverbial rotating object. How the center cannot hold.
There are two proximate reasons for it. The first is that my husband, the apolitical one, as we’re considering a new-to-us car was tying himself in knots about a car that could be adapted to run on fuels of convenience, like fry-oil, say. When I realized this was his source of confusion, I got confused. “Do you have some reason to expect a meteor to hit the Earth? Or–“
“No, no. But if they fraud their way in the way they’re going–“
I had to laugh. You see, I’ve lived through a collapse. It never hit bottom, and it turned around very vast after 78/79, but it hit low enough particularly where most people I knew lived. And it wasn’t remotely like that.
Granted it was a peculiar collapse as we started at the national-socialist “very poor” but the gears used to grind us are the same being applied now: raging inflation and encouragement of crime and criminals and disorder in general. Two more we’re also suffering from, in our case deliberately, were not deliberate then, I think (Though they might have been. And they might not be exactly deliberate now, just a manifestation of their rats in head): the oil crisis of the seventies, which I presume was the same thing as all over the world. I’d say that couldn’t be deliberate for international communists, but when you consider the only thing that Russia makes money on internationally… well. The other being inflicted on us I’m almost sure was accidental in Portugal: the dumping into the country of a very large, un-digestable or un-digestible quickly population. I think it was accidental in Portugal because the left being massive racists worldwide and bizarre dreamers besides, probably anticipated that white people would abandon the African colonies they handed over to Russia and its Cuban mercenaries, BUT they couldn’t imagine that black people, and barely acculturated to the 20th century tribal people from Africa would also leave and come to Portugal by all means possible and some that still seem impossible in retrospect, in a massive sauve qui peut.
You see, the left tends to assume that people who tan are natural communists and will embrace their regime with joy, forgetting that even among the non-literate ones, there is a lot of rumor and talk, and the millions of people who tan the left has killed around the world whose relatives and friends talked.
Anyway, I’ve lived with the same gears grinding a society and the same kind of lunatics in power. Now it was a smaller country, which is good and bad. It will have some effect but what effect it has is difficult to quantify. I’d say the greater ease — qualified by the fact the country didn’t have even A highway system of any kind — of transporting goods is nullified by the fact that the population in general is more credulous and trusting in authority, and more likely to allow the nose of officialdom in. Besides the fact that officialdom is just much closer, kind of like in our big cities.
So I watched the coming apart. And yes, it was more sudden at the onset due to an open revolution which removed existing institutions, or changed the way they worked so no one was sure of the instructions. (Instructions unclear. Insert porcupine where?)
It wasn’t as though a meteor hit. It wasn’t the end of the world as we know it. Not fast, not slow, not in the mid term.
And then we come to the second catalyst for this post: the closest I’ve heard the effect explained, ever: The Ghetto-ization Of American Life.
Honestly, I’d argue this has been going on since 2009 and over the various Summers of Recovery. There was a momentary respite with Trump, until the Covidiocy took hold, but before that, in real terms, we’d become a little poorer each year. Note not in monetary terms. We made the same, or a little higher money every year. Except every year things cost more or were harder to find. Our reserves got stripped more and more every year, and things that should have been easy to find/source/hire someone to do became either difficult to find, expensive, or impossible. And where I was living at the time, daily life became more and more difficult and fraught. Our little grocery store was robbed. We had trouble finding stuff that had been easy before. Etc.
The list in the article is this one:
1. The residents can’t afford to live elsewhere.
2. Everything is a rip-off because options are limited and retailers / service providers know residents have no other choice or must go to extraordinary effort to get better quality or a lower price.
3. Nothing works correctly or efficiently. Things break down and aren’t fixed properly. Maintenance is poor to non-existent. Any service requires standing in line or being on hold.
4. Local governance is corrupt and/or incompetent. Residents are viewed as a reliable “vote farm” for the incumbents, even though whatever little they accomplish for the residents doesn’t reduce the sources of immiseration.
5. The locale is unsafe. Cars are routinely broken into, there are security bars over windows and gates to entrances, everything not chained down is stolen–and even what is chained down is stolen.
6. There are few viable businesses and numerous empty storefronts.
7. The built environment is ugly: strip malls, used car lots, etc. There are few safe public spaces or parks that are well maintained and inviting.
8. Most of the commerce is corporate-owned outlets; the money doesn’t stay in the community.
9. Public transport is minimal and constantly being degraded.
10. They get you coming and going: whatever is available is double in cost, effort and time. Very little is convenient or easy. Services are far away.
11. Residents pay high rates of interest on debt.
12. There are few sources of healthy real food. The residents are unhealthy and self-medicate with a panoply of addictions to alcohol, meds, painkillers, gambling, social media, gaming, celebrity worship, etc.
13. Nobody in authority really cares what the residents experience, as they know the residents are atomized and ground down, incapable of cooperating in an organized fashion, and therefore powerless.
Number 13… maybe. But the rest? it’s absolutely what happens in these circumstances. Little by little by little. Each year is just slightly worse than the last.
I’m here to tell you two things: there a point that people have had enough. It’s just impossible to predict when. In Portugal it was a crazed attempt to consolidate power by arresting everyone to the right of outright communist. The arrest of the socialists panicked people, even though “great reasons” for it were advanced, etc.
Here I’d guess it would be something like trying to lock us down for bird flu (you can see them wanting to) or “climate emergency.”
Already you can tell their attempts at getting a summer of love going aren’t working, because people find the bizarre obsession with Palestine… bizarre. And people remember terrorism and which side of the isle does it. And 10/7 was far too raw and obvious even with their attempts to deflect.
But I don’t have a crystal ball, and I can’t tell you what will be the last drop. I’ll point out of all the causes declared in the Declaration of the Independence, the one that got people moving and doing something was… a fee on official documents.
Of the multiple abuses and grinding that Canada has endured, so far the only thing that got the truckers to rebel was the jab mandate. And once that was withdrawn, they went back to sullen acceptance of insanity.
What will do it here? Only G-d himself knows. More importantly, what of a hundred little rebellions will make a difference in the end? Only G-d himself knows.
Unbeknownst to most of us fed “the revolutionary war as a story” there were a bunch of false starts, before it took hold. And when it took hold was probably the most improbable of the issues.
Unless a revolution is a show imposed from abroad, they tend to be erratic and frankly a little stranger. And unpredictable after they start. When the dice is in the air, only G-d knows which way it will land, even if the inherent culture and population influence it.
Which is why most of us who are still sane hope this can be resolved in the election. That we, MIRACULOUSLY come out in enough numbers they can’t fraud. It is worth voting and trying it, even if it will TAKE A MIRACLE (I’m not naive) because the alternative could go unimaginably bad.
Or it could not. Portugal never recovered all the way past socialism (and are right now in the paws of a Communist/Green cohalition, last I checked, though a slightly defanged, euro one, more like our Democrats than anything else) but it did recover from the very bad times. And it bounced back with a series of demonstrations all over the country that scared the “elites” enough to stop stomping on the face of the economy.
Law enforcement still sucked, and the inflate the currency to escape debt plan of the PIIGS continued through the EU assimilation. And now to a greater extent, they’re living from the savings and land of previous generations. They’re selling their patrimony to foreigners and most can no longer afford to live in their own country.
However, for a moment late seventies to early eighties, it recovered. And it recovered unimaginably fast. Once the throttling rope was removed, the economy started to breathe again. (And everyone got a little or a lot richer than they’d been under national socialism, too.)
I’m not under the impression that our “elites” will be smart enough to get scared if there’s a series of vast demonstrations. But who knows? They almost did with the Tea Party. Almost. And that was pre masks falling down and most people distrusting officialdom.
Or it could be something else. So far they’ve managed to throttle two would be trucker strikes, mostly by deploying the three letters. But that only works so long, you know?
I’m all out of crystal balls. I don’t know when the tip over comes. I know it might be past the end of my life, particularly if it turns out I only have ten years or so. (This would be weird, since my family tends to live at a minimum to their eighties, but two members of my generation went in their late fifties and early sixties, so it’s not out of possibility.) Or it might come tomorrow. Though I doubt it. I think everyone is holding his breath till the election. Which means any tampering with that could get ugly fast. (This is why I’m not planning any trips in November. Not a single one. And I’d advise the same to you. And do your Christmas shopping early.)
One of the pressures the left isn’t seeing because they drink their own ink is something I’ve been observing in my own circle. Why Are There So Many Americans That Can’t Find A Job Even Though They Are Desperate To Be Hired?
They’re believing the official figures, and honestly puzzled as to why people don’t believe the economy is great, but I’ve been watching the unemployment creep up in my circles.
It was bad under Obama, but it’s now catastrophic. I’ve never, in my adult life, see so many of my friends get laid off and being unable to find work for months and months. Sometimes something shows up, eventually, but it’s not a given, and people are running through all possible resources plus some while looking. Older people, a year or so older than I are often just giving up and taking social security, putting more pressure on the already strained system.
Again, I don’t know when it cracks or if it will be peaceful or insane, but it literally can’t go on, and sooner or later, something becomes “intolerable.” Maybe something political, like jailing the opposition. Or something financial, like raising interest rates again. Or something crazy, like forbidding meat/killing most meat animals. Or something dictatorial like another attempted lockdown.
Could be anything really, and our “elites” are crazy-stupid enough to do all of that and even dumber things.
My guess is if we can just get the boot off our necks, the recovery will be unimaginably fast.
But until that happens there isn’t going to be a sudden reversal to the middle ages.
We just, each of us, become a little poorer. Have a little less choice. Every day.
This is already happening. I realized recently that there really aren’t 24/7 diners (or grocery stores) left anywhere. Are those essential for my well being? Well, no. but they are things I enjoyed greatly. For most of our married life, I calmed my fears of growing overseas by telling myself that we’d go by Pete’s Kitchen on the way back from the airport, as a special treat. This was possible at any hour of the day and night.
Heck, between midnight and two in the morning, in Denver, Pete’s Kitchen was like a gathering of every writer in the area. Like going into a convention, I’d walk to my table to a smattering of “oh, hi Sarah.” And plotting sessions with Dan or son would be interrupted for industry discussions with colleagues.
But even our little respites — weekend drive somewhere. Cheap restaurant meal (I LIKE diners, okay?). The occasional fair, or small purchase — are becoming rarer as we simply can’t afford them as often as we used to. Christmas gifts will likely be at least half homemade as a combination of “expensive and can’t find what I want for x.” And we might have to cut Son of Silvercon this year. (We’re really trying not to, but it’s a combination of time and money.)
In my case it’s also tied in to not writing as much, I admit. or writing on an epic I can’t publish yet. I must work on both/and. But that was after 2009 too. Until the year of the six books in a year broke me utterly, and then I couldn’t do it at all.
Anyway, things become hard to find/too expensive. You accept reductions in your lifestyle. At first little ones, then slowly bigger and bigger ones.
It’s never a “and now everything breaks at once.” Look, even blasted places as Cuba or Somalia still exist at a level of modernity. It’s just you get used to living in ruins, and subsisting on very little.
Now there’s reasons that worked in the places it did. I don’t think it works in America.
For one we’re used to a certain standard and their attempts to sell misery as chic are failing. (Outside crazy people and college campuses. BIRM.) For another because they’re pushing much too far too fast. And they don’t realize they’re doing it in the open. For years they destroyed every institution and hollowed out every guarantee of equality under the law, but they did it undetected and no one who didn’t run into it head first knew.
Now… it’s in the open.
If I have to guess — do I? — the turn around comes first very slowly (we’re already there. The sullen resistance to their insanity, in this land, has gotten to the point of having physical weight) and then suddenly.
The best thing would be an election miracle. But it would take a miracle.
Until then, we each get a little poorer, a little more limited every day. The nation gets a little rustier, a little more worn out. On and on and on.
Until it flips.