Depression 2.0

[BO]

Let's mark this day as the start of this century's great depression.

The bank bailout bill -- aka 'the septic bank bill -- has failed and the DOW dropped 778 points today. Undoubtably, not the big crash yet to happen. The credit markets are frozen. As Paul Krugman states...the gears on wallstreet are full of sand.

You might not have been affected yet. You will. Let's hear some personal stories on what folks are doing to prepare. Have you stocked the pantry yet? Do you have a contingency plan should you lose your job? Supposedly the run on banks has started. Have you moved your savings out of the bank? What are doing about about your investments--your 401k, pension, etc.

Maybe you'll say, 'I ain't got nothing, so I got nothing to lose'. Truth is, unless you're homeless, with everything you own in the shopping cart you're pushing, well, that ain't exactly true. Maybe the reality of the situation hasn't hit yet. It will soon.

Welcome to the next great depression. So, what's your contingency plan?

[Mouse]

The rabbits sold this kindred here, every time I tried to join in.

There was a man with a beard who looked promising, the place down the road where I got my degree. He seemed to be in charge of the literary side of things, poetry readings and creative writing. I thought he was there to help, but he avoided me very cleverly and I never found a way in to that part.
Years later I passed him in the street and started to tell him about something, that dreadful way I do. He interrupted, said he wasn't interested in anything like that because he only had two years to go before he retired.
That shocked me hours later, as I realised how he might be living, how unattached to his presence and duty, though he looked, marvellous. He looked like a wise old man, he was gentle and kind I think. But I couldn't find a way in, and I was almost a writer once. Elizabeth Smart made me promise to always write, she said, "You're a much better poet than me, you must never stop." She was one of those truly kind and gently souls who waft the lovely womanly of themselves about like mothers and sisters. Warm and soft and quiet. And funny.

Anyway, he retired last year and died of a heart attack a few weeks later.

[pan]

he retired last year and died of a heart attack a few weeks later.

not an uncommon occurance in academia.

[Mouse]

Yes, I heard about that. And in other professions too. It seems the surest way to die is to stop working.
So, these artistic types, creative people tra la, who always work at the beck of the celestial winds, and obsessive inextinguishable academics and other good servants of devotion, never retire and consequently never die.

[BO]

I think yer right little mouse. It's the damn obsessiveness that keeps us humming.

[waldopaper]

OK- so I'm going to quit posting to the COTO group because the clunky stopsign picture comes up and clutters the page. And I've been digging more into Chiam Rumkowski: "...Chaim Rumkowski’s story raises difficult moral questions regarding power and compliance. “We must cut off the legs in order to save the body,” Rumkowski asserted. But at what point should the body fight to save its legs? When does compliance become collaboration?"

This is a question every USAn should ask themselves. For most of us, it never enters our heads. It's not work-or-die. Yet. I don't know whether to work on our land base or mobility. The reason I'm so fucking dirt-poor now is that I see very little difference between compliance and collaboration. The question in the Łódź ghetto became: "...how should we die?" So right now... it's a "base camp" water purifier... about $658. "Collaboration" is the reason I can no longer make it in the corporate environment... but I'm just fooling myself... "academia" is just as corporate as everything else.

The Rumkowski question is very disturbing.

[BO]

Tis true that to reap the rewards in American society, one must adapt its morals. Unless, you're incredibly lucky and were born with a huge trust fund, or wrote a hit song. Or, like me, you've already been exterminated from corporate life but can continue to exist on your wife's meager salary. That ain't fun either.

Moral dilemma's are a bitch--especially when so few around us have any morals left. That's why it would be nice to have faith. You can always look forward to the next thing. Barring that--welcome to my world. There's no meaning in any of this, and my only concern is for my family's survival. The rest of mankind can go fuck itself. That said, I could never send a kid to a gas chamber. They'd have to shoot me first.

You need to give yourself a break dear Waldo. Teaching the stoods is quite a bit different--morally--from designing, building, or running a gas chamber. Especially when you approach teaching as YOU do. Consider me an example. Just knowing you has enhanced my life significantly--you have no reason to feel guilty.

I do believe the same evil that drove the Nazi's exists here in the US. I don't have to go far to find it--It lives in my own neighborhood. I can see it in my neighbors' faces. I see it when the post their flags on every holiday. It exists in their inability to be introspect, their willful ignorance and their willingness to subscribe to the great American delusion. No one can change their minds. And that's what makes them dangerous.

I have but one primary goal. That's to short circuit my son's indoctrination into the American hologram. Reality therapy. I can't think of a better form of survival than knowing how to recognize trouble before it happens. My son is well on his way to knowing who the real enemy is. There are plenty of other parents ready and willing to donate their kids to the executioner. I can't help that.

I vote for mobility.

[waldopaper]

yer too kind, brother. mobility sounds best to me too... as in AWAY from the boiling peeps... but nacherlly- lotsa peeps gonna get THAT idea. road mobile? bike mobile? slog afoot mobile? And the stood peeps aint responding... it's like blowing beans at a mad rogue elephant. The Skools have dug themselves into the "kareer hole." But the stoods... who seem to be very good at math... can't seem to figger out that going into debt for $100k+ so they can get a $30k "job" don't quite pencil out.

And they don't wanna get into all this bullshit... I'm spozed to teach them "English." Well sezzeye, you can save yerself some serious boodle and but the software: http://www.stylewriter-usa.com/ ... in lobbying the "department" for an educational discount/ bulk buy for the software I was asked... not shitting you... "well then what would WE teach them?" I ran up a little white flag in my head and went home.

How much more fucking obvious does it have to get? Stone's rant machine must be reaching critical mass: http://stonefruit.blogspot.com/ ... and check out Palast's latest ditty Fuckall... they don't even bother to HIDE IT any more. How soon is the other shoe gonna hit?

[Kate]

The style writer thang Waldo izandt dat cheatin???? Blimey !

[Mark]

Yeah, the economy will collapse. Depression 2.0.

History does repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

Ouspensky once asked Gurdjieff what would happen if the people suddenly woke up. Gurdjieff said that they'd continue beating each others heads in. That's what usually happens.

There actually have been some breakthroughs. Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador have elected indigenous leaders and rewritten their Constitutions to try to respect human rights and the environment. But it isn't easy. The United States and the multinational corporations pour billions of dollars and devote all the covert operations they can to destabilizing such governments. In order to survive, they have to compromise. Venezuela is what a friend there calls, "a socialist petrostate."

So we wake up and we discover that nothing we own is ours, that everything we have was stolen, and that we have the blood of billions (no, not millions, billions) of innocent people on our hands. You'd better believe that no matter how principled we wish to be, the first impulse is to wash our hands. And once we've washed our hands of it, the cycle begins again.

[hannah j]

http://www.twilightearth.com/2009/05/we-have-we-become-a-spoiled-ob...


I’ve spent a lot of times in foreign countries. I’ve seen people in Bosnia eat the bark off of trees and I claim the Appalachian Trail as a previous address.

Editorial by Adam Shake

I may be jaded but I also realize that for thousands of years, people lived without the luxuries that we now consider necessities. In fact, a recent study just found that what we thought were necessities just last year, we think of as luxuries. Things like cell phones, air conditioning…. Not too long ago, electricity and automobiles were luxuries. Maybe as a result, I think that we can all toughen up just a tiny bit.

In 1st world countries, we have become a spoiled, obese, expectant and fearful group of people. We have learned to manipulate nature and our philosophies to our benefit, our comfort and our profit, to the detriment of our planet, our society, our ethics, our health, our children and ourselves.

* We live in climate controlled 72 degree homes, offices and cars, 12 months a year.
* We demand and get, fat and ripe strawberry’s grown in Latin America in the middle of February.
* We build our homes further into the woods and mountains and then kill the animals who stray into our yards.
* We eat beef that has been doped with antibiotics from birth.
* We leave our porch lights on all night, not realizing that 130,00 Americans die every year from fine particulate matter spewing from coal plants.
* We buy bottled water, not realizing that it takes five bottles of water to make the plastic for 1 bottle and that 82 percent of those bottles end up in that the land fill. Not to mention that bottled water cost’s 4,000 percent more than tap water. (which most bottled water comes from)
* We like the idea of renewable fuel sources, but balk when we realize it may cost an extra ten dollars a month. (While spending at least that on pizza and fast food)
* We spend our time shuttling our kids to soccer practice while feeding them boxed cereal for breakfast that we wouldn’t even feed our dogs.
* We are so paranoid about what we see on CNN that we don’t let our kids explore the fields, streams and woods right outside our doors. The whole time, not knowing that our children are safer doing exactly that, than we were.
* We continue to fear things like salmonella, the news of the latest outbreak on our lips as we purchase non-local foods at our grocery stores.
* We continue to fear the mercury in CFL’s while having worked most of our adult lives under 6 foot long florescent lights.

long piece from a good guy= continued at link. kindo mad as hell, etc.....

[pan]

So, the Idaho Board of Education just voted to give each of the three state university presidents raises of $37,000 each. This is while, at the Uni in Pokietown, tuition has been hiked 10%, 72 tenure line positions have been lost, the adjunct line erased and several programs have been discontinued. The Presidents of the other two unis had the good political sense to return the money to their respective institutions - our pres otoh told the press to stuff it, its his money and he will do what ever he decides to with it.

[BO]

I dunno, Pan. Wouldn't this bit o' news be more appropriate for the American sociopath thread? Seems the higher you are in the kleptocratic food chain, the least likely you are to know that depression 2.0 even exists.
Gonna have to research the Pokietown Uni prez--out of morbid curiousity--to find out how sociopathic the guy really is. I'll come back with my diagnosis shortly.