“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
(Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 1926)
“Economies and societies fall apart slowly, then a bit more, then all at once. We seem to be in the middle period of this trajectory.” Samizdata, Quote of the Day.
I’ve been writing mostly about motorcycle expeditions and bird hunting. Why? Because writing about what’s obvious to everyone isn’t my gig. You already know what’s happening. The gradual part is over. The sudden part is upon us.
I want to talk about the shift from gradual to cascading. It fills me with a feeling of… change. I’m not sure how to describe it. I’m not awash with optimism but I’m not without it either. I’m happy the long wait is over. Maybe I’m relieved? Do you feel the same?
Black pills and bitter hearts come from clinging to what’s already dead. It sucks that the world I knew is dead but I didn’t kill it and neither did you. So let it go. The before times will always be “before”. We will forever live in “after”. Most of society is catching up with this. They’re done with the overacted death throes; “’tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man. (Damn good pun there Shakespeare! Dude’s a boss!)
Reality and people’s inner constructs diverged. Slowly at first and faster as the process built; they stopped checking with reality and went too far. Now comes the part where they come up for air and ask “what have I done”? I’ll be there to greet them. “No need wondering when the shit will hit the fan. It has.”
I was never sure what thing would be my life’s Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man; nuclear war, acid rain, overpopulation, GMO cornflakes, starvation, Johnny can’t read, cities on fire, cities on fire again but this time it’s “peaceful protest”, thirteen channels of shit on the T.V. to choose from, peak oil, green shoots, “unexpectedly the reports had to be adjusted”, fiat currency, global warming, crack, meth, what the hell is fentanyl, sketchy politics, sketchy elections, elections that break records and bend statistics, national debt, personal debt, the greatest debt ever amassed in human history, pay no attention to the debt behind the curtain…
It’s been interesting. I’ll admit to that. The greatest show on earth!
For the medical version of death by imagination, there were a half dozen false starts; AIDS, Lyme, Zika, West Nile, Ebola, Swine flu, SARS. If 2020 didn’t do it they’d have tried again in 2025.
Regardless of what events future historians settle on as the cause, it’s clear that it’s a done deal. Pick your favorite version of minty fresh destruction and enjoy it.
Don’t wonder why the tinder was so dry; Boomers aging, Social media driving monkeys crazy, the completion of a long march through the institutions, age of Empires, people be crazy… It doesn’t matter why. The thing is… it happened.
It’s good that everyone is figuring it out. The wait is over! Not even the Kool-Aid huffing Karens at the HOA think the toothpaste can go back into the tube. Normies and muggles finally figured it out.
I hope the frightened, unthinking, human livestock don’t do something they regret. They’re herding up, looking for an amoral bastard to tell them which way the wind blows so they can stampede off a cliff. What will be their scapegoat? Seventy years ago it was Jews. This year it’s things that don’t exist. The FBI creates crimes so they can solve them. Media whores scour the world looking for a white racist. Such beings were more or less hunted to extinction 50 years ago but so they invent phantoms to meet the supply. Much of the government used up their racist freak-out indulging Saint George Floyd’s arsonist minions. Following it with NASCAR garage doors seemed silly but nothing is too silly for the unserious. At a loss for the new year, they sought something even weaker to fear. Now they’re hyperventilating about soccer moms at school board meetings. The (recently) most powerful nation on earth is screaming like a little girl. It’s afraid of soccer moms and garage doors and FBI stooges. They’re a soccer player taking a dive and clinging an ankle. Hopefully the ref will give a free cookie but everyone watching is saying “dude tripped over his own feet, fuck him”. Soon CNN will announce the Pentagon was defeated by two mimes with a whiffle bat.
President Potato, seeking a scapegoat of his very own, went the other way. He picked 80 million Americans and insulted every single one personally. His patience with 1/3 of the nation has worn thin. What’s the matter? Couldn’t find a larger group? No time to have a fistfight with the moon? Next time he’ll pick a fight with gravity?
Regardless, President Paperwork claims your failure to wear a life vest is making him drown… and he’ll burn the world down if he has to. Which is why he’s less popular than chlamydia.
The search for witches exposes the minds of the weak. Why do you burn a witch? So a mob can attack an individual? Because only death can stop death?
Speaking of death, we’re two years into perma-panic and nobody thought to stock the place with piles of dead bodies. That would have helped me buy in to their plotline. CNN just imagines them; a form of verbal CGI. “Eleventy zillion new ‘cases’ in Flyover-ville. A ‘case’ is as real as a ‘corpse’. Don’t ask any questions!” Without stacks of dead bodies, it seems a bit weird to me. You might be sick but not know it, so you need a test to tell if you’re sick, because the virus is killing everyone, which wouldn’t happen to vaccinated people, who are sick because you didn’t wear a mask. I live on earth. I can’t follow their logic.
For two years they’re talked about death which is always menacing from the back of the room and never clearly focused. Where are the corpses stacked like cordwood? Are nurses heroes, dead from Covid, dancing on Tik Tok, or fired because they’re unnecessary without the shot that all of intelligent people are delighted to take? It’s a two year long fable about this one time at band camp when this guy who was my friend’s buddy had a girlfriend from Canada…
I’m told people who vote properly are superior humans. If they get a virus it’s caused not by a virus but by bad behavior. All bad behavior is done by the wrong sort of people. The plebs are always dying but never dead. Every biker in Sturgis, every person at every football game, everyone who votes wrong, and the entirety of Nebraska. They’re all dead. If you’re standing in Nebraska and it looks exactly like it always looked, you’re not allowed to ask what the heck they’re talking about. The question means you’re a misinformation terrorist who’s been blocked from commenting for the good of society. The best way to know something is true is to crush any questions, obscure the numbers, and scream loudly while doing it.
The girlfriend from Canada was hot. Trust me.
CNN’s fake bajillions dead is bad for the mind but I like the absence of actual death. Stalin, bless his cruel heart, wouldn’t have left that box unchecked. I don’t knows how long it will take for that phase… or if it ever will get traction. American witches seem to get pissed when you try to burn them.
All is not lost. People lost their shit and now life has changed. What was, is gone but something new is gained. Eventually. Maybe. I hope it’s good, or at least OK.
I’m strangely optimistic without knowing why. The optimism, and a short personal story, will be in the next post…