My post today is from Canadian trader and blogger, Bill Cara (a critic of the “shooter” theory).
[NOTE: “Shooter,” gentle reader, is my derogatory name for those who believe in the government’s “fringe” conspiracy theory that “green shoots” are popping up all over the economy. This theory, I believe, is premised on “hatred” and “mean-spiritedness” toward creditors, savers, and dollar-holders. In fact, if you are a “green-shooter,” I’d say you are a racist and an anti-Sinite (since the Chinese are the biggest creditors of the US)]
Bill Cara Quote:
“When I started blogging over five years ago, I noted my concern that in America, everything is for sale and everybody a salesman. The problem, of course, is that a salesman believes his own stories because he has to believe. Facts are perverted, history changed, and truth misrepresented. In five years, America has gotten worse in this regard.
The nation has actually become a parody of itself where the most accurate news now comes from sources like Saturday Night Live, Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jon Stewart.”
My Comment:
There’s the truth from an objective observer. And I’m here to second it. If there’s one thing that’s a problem in America, it’s not “crime,” or “violence,” or “drugs,” or “porn.”
All of these are just secondary manifestations of the underlying problem. That problem is – unreality.
In Language of Empire, I referred to the plastic, virtual world in which the country lives.
That’s the rub.
We leave in a world of phony perceptions, phony reality, phony problems, phony solutions, phony political divisions, phony theories, phony experts…
All other problems America shares with other nations.
But this one problem is more unique to her than to any other country – almost because of her virtues, rather than on account of her vices.
Other people don’t have governments that are nearly as efficient, thorough-going, or as clever at spin as ours.
That’s their good fortune.
I recognize the America you describe, but out here in the middle, on the southern plains I recognize another America as well. This is the America of people who the marketing companies think they understand. We are reliable red staters, not very bright and very, very predictable, right? Well, that’s what they think anyway.
We are actually the resistance. We know we’re being spun and so many of us, when asked to buy the digital converter for our TV sets simply gave the sets away. Mine is at my parish hall where it is used to show DVDs for religious education. We have come to realize that our government is run by corporations whose goal is to enslave us through debt, and so we simply refuse to play no matter what they do to us.
I used to think I was an oddball, but now I realize that I was simply ahead of my time. I even have the perfect escape route planned. Montevideo and Buenos Aires may be nice, but so is Pampa, Texas and they’ll absolutely never come out here to get me. We have rattlesnakes and nothing scares an coastal elite like a rattlesnake. Personally, I love the little critters.
I believe you…
I’ve lived in quiet resistance to the prevailing spirit since about the age of 12.
I didn’t want to continue in high school…
but that was a resistance to an institution
In the US, I’ve been in a kind of resistance to the whole mindset, since the 1990s
I do recognize that what I’m saying doesn’t apply to everyone, and that a lot of people see through the plastic reality…but you’d be surprised how many bright people still assume many of its premises even when they think they see through it
The coastal elites need to get some dirt under their finger nails, smell a little body sweat, and go hungry – really hungry for a while..
Yes!
As mentioned before–its an empire cycle. All of the attitudes and tendencies you describe are brilliantly chronicled in Musils, “Man Without Qualities”. People pursuing ideas insteead of reality, theories instead of feelings, contrived concept and intellectual mental masturbation pursued as the society is faced with real tangible problems. All is explained away–fight the taliban on other side of world but not the MS-13 up the street, bankers get millions and families live in cars, unemployment is Officially 9.5% but oddly we need to issue more visas. DRving over the cliss economically we have to engage in a lobbies driven health care plan–with all manner of intrussions. Its funny, tragic and dangerous all at once! Its America 2009!