12-08-08

Prophet of Doom Drinks Glass of Water

“Half Empty? Half Full? Not my problem now” masked prophet giggles as he rides into sunset.

I over heard David’s Grandfather discussing an article today as I was vaccuming the car. (The above quote was NOT from him.) He stood there waving a photocopied piece, as he is known to have with him. The two younger men around him knodded politely as he spoke. I couldn’t hear what he said at the time over the roar, but you could easily tell they were humoring him until he was finished.

I always enjoy hearing what Mr. Morel has to say. David at times gets annoyed at his extreme conservative views. I, at times, do not agree with him but who am I, a 26 year old punk kid to tell a 90 year old he is wrong? He isn’t wrong. He is very much so right usually. But then again, I am often right too. So how are two people both right at the same time? The paths we took to come up with our opinions are different but equally valid. (The whole “I survived the depression and a couple wars” thing might have a one up on me)

After I finished with the car I picked the paper up off the ground where it was half haphazardly deposited and forgotten. It was “Prophet of Doom Sees Glass Half Empty”, a commentary by Arnaud de Borchgrave. I tracked it down here on the internets for you readers who are interested.

It starts:

“‘If Nostradamus were alive today,’ said the New York Post, ‘he’d have a hard timekeeping up with Gerald Clente’”

He goes on to validate the opinion, citing the accurate forecasts of major economical events as to why the man deserves to take on the Big N in a Celebrity Death Match a la Delphi. He’s cooler than the Fed Chairman Ben Bernake who told us “the worst is behind us” at a time when “public lies of optimism” was the new “send your sons to the army” which was the new “Brooks Brothers Sweater Vest” which was the new “black” of 07′.

It goes on and on and then about a quarter of the way to the end randomly jumps to the Israeli/Palestine conflict…our favorite topic! The point, however, lays in his November 2007 description of the “Panic of 2008″ where he warned of massive devaluation of the dollar and a collapse of Wall Street giants…which was a novel, unique inspired view that the other gagillion humans couldn’t see coming…. because…um…we aren’t Gerald Clente who is Sparta.

What we saw in 2001 was brushed off as “conspiracy theory”, alright, I’ll give you that and even with events like WorldCom and Enron being seen as solitary instances, it’s hard to watch the events around us and not hear the warnings of our wary president telling us to go shopping. Watching the building boom in an area where the houses went up but the people stopped coming, where people traded in automobiles for upside-down loans each year and charged flat screen TVs on cards with 25% interest because “WE HAD TO HAVE IT NOW!” it wasn’t difficult to foresee the impending issues.

This was not a sustainable society, this was a giant mistake. Instead of businesses welcoming the upturn of business as a fluke, their sense of entitlement kicked in and they developed their fiscal year as though these trends would last. You don’t have to be prophetic to see the mess this sets you up for, you just have to pull your head out of your ass, turn off TMZ and start paying attention. Smart managers are the ones who looked at the numbers like American’s Spending $2 Billion a Day More Than They Make and planned their numbers likewise.

His plan for 2012: “There will be a revolution in this country” citing a bloodless coup, the rise of a third party, tax rebellion, job marches, squatter rebellion, and:

a culture that puts a higher premium on food on the table than gifts under the Christmas tree.

pft. Like that would ever happen.

Scribbled on the photocopy on the ground was a star next to “rise of a third party” with a note “*communist?” at the bottom from whoever sent the article to him. The coup, the third party…obviously, the key to being prophetic is in being cryptic and to raise panic.

We are in the midst of the coup, it is rising with each word we type, each program we create, each ad we block. The old garde of media, celebrity and marketer is falling. Information is everywhere, communication is too rapid to contain and even though marketing finds solace in numbers and thinks it understands our actions, our behaviors, our motivations…their numbers are easily screwed. We can ignore their messages.

We are the third party, bourgeois, proletariat and something else, a class not defined yet. Fueled by knowledge and mass communication, identities defined by binary and not material. Education is collaborative, historically based and taught to us through the youth, something akin to folk knowledge in social/family groups.

The coup is on capitalism. It may be called anarchy, socialism, green movements, carrot mobs or something else, but the defining term has not been found and those who take the liberty to define it are not part of it. They are the hypocrites and easily exploited as such.

So what exactly is so hard to see this coming in the future that the man gets a pat on the back and a smug b&w portrait in every big name media outlet out there. This is not the future, it’s not even the now. These are dealings that have been happening for years, wheels set in motion. Mainstream may be that douchebagg-ish to accept it for ratings, but there is a third party that calls your bluff.

There will be a change. It will be hard, but it will be worth it in the end. Follow me and grow a tomato, you’ll never know when you might need it.

On after thought: My question is, if we rebel on our taxes, how exactly are we suppose to pay China back the hundreds of billions of dollars they lent us in bailout funds? Will they foreclose on the US? Or will they have more respect for the citizens of a country and culture completely different than their own than the citizens of our own country have for their own neighbors. The ones who will destroy lives in the name of profit.