gunDriller
30th July 2015, 02:39 PM
Collapse vs. Old-fashioned Fvck-ups, How do you Tell the Difference ?
My personal feeling is that, in the US, we are in the part of collapse that is comparable to the last 5 years of the Soviet Union.
I'm not saying the US will be gone in 5 years. I am relying partially on Soviet Emigre & computer programmer living in Boston Dmitry Orlov and his description as he witnessed and wrote about the last days of the USSR.
Basically, the society just ceased ... to ... function.
But before it ceased to function, people just went through the motions.
Somewhere in between, that's where the United States is now.
But how do you measure that ?
How do you distinguish between old-fashioned (non-collapse) fuck-ups, and the grouping of fuck-ups that is emblematic of Collapse (Cluster-fuck Writ Large.)
You can't rely on US government numbers. Those are completely fudged.
Where I live, the cost of basic medical care (where you need 1 appointment per year) has risen from $200 to $5000, over a 4 year period, with the onset of Obama-care.
Now that's great for GNP numbers. But it is also consistent with the term "hyperinflationary depression" - hyperinflationary because the prices are going up so much, depression because they use those numbers to show that GNP is growing about 2 % a year.
Without those fudged numbers,the US government would have to admit that the US is in an economic depression.
You could count fuck-ups to measure collapse, but then you have to distinguish between old-fashioned fuck-ups, and collapse related fuck-ups.
An example of an old-fashioned fuck-up is, I just bought a rifle upper from Hardened Arms in 7.62 x 39. It jams and mis-feeds in 2 or 3 different ways. Their 5.56 and 300 Blackout work great, that's what gave me the faith to buy the 7.62 x 39.
Frustrating, like a collapse related fuck-up. Just an engineering fuck-up, though.
I think one of the best/ worst examples of collapse, in the sense of a Civil War, is the flood of incidents involving out-of-control-psycho-police-killing-US-civilians, like Crazed Haji's.
But they're not suicide bombers, they're American cops acting with impunity.
It could be that such incidents always occurred, and that Youtube is now bringing them to our attention.
But I would have to put that in a "Top 5" for, "How do you Measure Collapse when the US Gov #'s are ALL FUCKED UP."
I don't know how you quantify Massive Ignorance, but I think the in-ability of the mainstream media to connect world events to US events is another measure of Collapse.
One example of that might be the surge in whale deaths, and now fish deaths (of ocean traveling fish), and seal deaths (etc. ?) since March 2011.
In a non-Collapse world, I think the media would be free to connect the deaths of Pacific Ocean animals and Pacific Ocean Massive Radiation Pollution (aka Fukushima.)
So maybe that mass dis-connect between what can be admitted in the mainstream media, and what we see with our own eyes, is another measure of Collapse.
Of course, it is also very similar to what Orlov describes of the last years of the Soviet Union.
I think if you were planning to video tape 'Collapse', your camera should be running Now, even if it's boring.
My personal feeling is that, in the US, we are in the part of collapse that is comparable to the last 5 years of the Soviet Union.
I'm not saying the US will be gone in 5 years. I am relying partially on Soviet Emigre & computer programmer living in Boston Dmitry Orlov and his description as he witnessed and wrote about the last days of the USSR.
Basically, the society just ceased ... to ... function.
But before it ceased to function, people just went through the motions.
Somewhere in between, that's where the United States is now.
But how do you measure that ?
How do you distinguish between old-fashioned (non-collapse) fuck-ups, and the grouping of fuck-ups that is emblematic of Collapse (Cluster-fuck Writ Large.)
You can't rely on US government numbers. Those are completely fudged.
Where I live, the cost of basic medical care (where you need 1 appointment per year) has risen from $200 to $5000, over a 4 year period, with the onset of Obama-care.
Now that's great for GNP numbers. But it is also consistent with the term "hyperinflationary depression" - hyperinflationary because the prices are going up so much, depression because they use those numbers to show that GNP is growing about 2 % a year.
Without those fudged numbers,the US government would have to admit that the US is in an economic depression.
You could count fuck-ups to measure collapse, but then you have to distinguish between old-fashioned fuck-ups, and collapse related fuck-ups.
An example of an old-fashioned fuck-up is, I just bought a rifle upper from Hardened Arms in 7.62 x 39. It jams and mis-feeds in 2 or 3 different ways. Their 5.56 and 300 Blackout work great, that's what gave me the faith to buy the 7.62 x 39.
Frustrating, like a collapse related fuck-up. Just an engineering fuck-up, though.
I think one of the best/ worst examples of collapse, in the sense of a Civil War, is the flood of incidents involving out-of-control-psycho-police-killing-US-civilians, like Crazed Haji's.
But they're not suicide bombers, they're American cops acting with impunity.
It could be that such incidents always occurred, and that Youtube is now bringing them to our attention.
But I would have to put that in a "Top 5" for, "How do you Measure Collapse when the US Gov #'s are ALL FUCKED UP."
I don't know how you quantify Massive Ignorance, but I think the in-ability of the mainstream media to connect world events to US events is another measure of Collapse.
One example of that might be the surge in whale deaths, and now fish deaths (of ocean traveling fish), and seal deaths (etc. ?) since March 2011.
In a non-Collapse world, I think the media would be free to connect the deaths of Pacific Ocean animals and Pacific Ocean Massive Radiation Pollution (aka Fukushima.)
So maybe that mass dis-connect between what can be admitted in the mainstream media, and what we see with our own eyes, is another measure of Collapse.
Of course, it is also very similar to what Orlov describes of the last years of the Soviet Union.
I think if you were planning to video tape 'Collapse', your camera should be running Now, even if it's boring.