About a year ago I started blogging. It was a post titled “When something can’t go on forever… it won’t“. It wasn’t Shakespeare but it it was something I wanted to say. I gave a humorous reason (out of many possible stories) of how I knew shit was about to go down:
When the guy who brings your pizza is driving a brand new Escalade…something is terribly wrong. That was all you needed to know about the economy in early 2005.
I wrote it not because I care about the pizza delivery guy. I wrote it because America was awash with unreality. It wasn’t new. It wasn’t a secret. Everybody and their dog knew it. Yet everyone seemed to be “playing along”. Why?
Obvious signals were everywhere. Yet few acted rationally in acceptance of that knowledge. I did. It was lonely.
So I began a blog. Among other things I wanted to say “I see things differently. I have peacefully chosen to plan accordingly. If, for whatever reason, you also reach conclusions which differ from the crowd, you’re not alone.”
I’d staked my flag on earth amid a society where an unearthly sense of denial was (and had been for some time) ubiquitous. Trying to avoid political gamesmanship (with only partial success) I focused on economics. Anyone with a understanding of economics could see the writing on the wall. Unsustainable is not a patented trademark phrase of the green movement. It can and does apply to economic systems as well. My favorite complaints were McMansions perched on subprime loans, stratospheric stock prices without underlying value, and a deliberate refusal to deal with the Ponzi nature of entitlements.
I’m not trying to air a list of grievances. Those were just a few examples to set the mood. You’ll have a list of your own concerns. They might be entirely different from mine. Yet we might both agree that it took more and more effort to pretend things were progressing wisely. The more a sense of unreality abounded, the more self-defeating it became to entertain it.
Reality always wins. Wishful thinking is bullshit. I refused to indulge in delusion. Sometimes that stubbornness was perceived as if it were heresy. I needed an outlet; hence my little blog.