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Recently, an article reminded me of a book I'd read almost twenty years ago - in it, historian David Fischer pointed out that there were four distinct migrations to the shores of America, and that each one laid the groundwork for the social structure which led to the Civil War and the cultural divide we have between the northern and southern states today.

Revisiting that book was an interesting experience this week, as I was compelled to view the material in a new light - a far darker and less-romantic vision of America, as the fundamentals of our makeup have led us to this pass - the reaction to 9/11; the ascendancy of the Right, and especially the all too real possibility of another civil conflict.

Fischer identifies these waves of migration as follows:

1.   Puritans, who settled mainly in New England.
2.   Cavaliers, who settled in Virginia.
3.   Quakers, who settled mainly in the Delaware Valley and surrounding regions.
4.   Borderers, who settled in the backcountry of the rural South.

While these weren't the only migrants - there were French Canadians and French who settled Louisiana, for example - these were minor migrations which did not materially affect the fabric of American society, save for their local influence.  It was the four major migratory 'waves' which literally created America.

In the 1770's-'80's, the Revolution was fought primarily due to a union between the Puritans of New England and surrounding northeastern states and their Cavalier counterparts in Virginia.   The American Civil War of the 1860's was more of a continuation of that conflict than a 'new' war - the Puritans, wanting an end to slavery, could not force the hand of the Cavalier culture in the South at the time the Constitution was written.  This happened when the two cultures turned on each other in the 1860's, settling with a Constitutional amendment the issue of human slavery, and settling (for the time being) the ideas of states rights and secession - more on that later.

Approaching the whole as a socio-anthropological study gives us the ability to detach much of the emotion from the thing, and look at our past from a very human standpoint, devoid of the twin concepts of politics and religion.  It's the aftermath of the Civil War period which gives credence to the concept, and gives us pause as we ponder our future as a nation - it also gives us the framework by which to answer a perplexing question - why is nearly half of the nation - made up almost exclusively of working-class people who are (or should be) at fundamental odds with the core tenets of, yet are supportive of, the political party of the 'ruling class'.


The startling thing about this map is that it almost exactly reflects the Borderer migrations pre and post Civil War.   While the Republican party has maintained some of the classic Cavalier philosophies of money and privilege, paradoxically the Republicans have also, in order to gain a broader base, adopted a Borderer culture with Borderer values.

Who are the Borderers?  

The Borderers are those peoples who resided on or near the borders between Scotland and England.   In a state of near-constant conflict since the 1100's, the border regions were finally 'pacified' (read: Militarily defeated) in the 1700's.   Many of them - in fact, entire regions along the borders were stripped of indigenous populations, these people suffering wholesale-deportation to America.

Capitalists from England came to the border regions to create estates from the newly-vacated land.  Not content with what they had, mass evictions of Scots and border-English families became common - the evicted took ship for America in droves.

These people were not like the Puritans, who aspired to education and who had loftier reasons for leaving England - religious and political freedom; the ability to speak one's mind without sufferance.   The Borderers came to America with one goal in mind - material improvement in their lives.

The lands to which they were relegated were in the backcountry of America at the time - the southern regions of the colonies and westward to what is now Kentucky and Tennessee.   These areas were already populated by First Nations peoples, and the Borderers wasted no time inflicting on them the same treatment they had suffered themselves.  

Borderer politics were rough-and-tumble; Andrew Jackson is probably the best example of this, along with John C. Calhoun.   Their religion was also far less structured, taking the form of field meetings and prayer-groups, with semiliterate preachers giving broad-ranging interpretations of the Bible and its meaning.   Living a hardscrabble life, these people were easy converts to the teachings of people like John Darby and the Dispensationalists; pre-millenial 'rapture' was prominent in their church culture, and the desire to hasten Christ's return (when, ostensibly, life would be better) was also a prominent feature.

Coming from a culture of definite superiors and inferiors based on material possessions (mainly land and cattle), which gave rise to an order based on social rank, the Borderers who came to America mimicked this structure in their New World lives.  Conservative to an extreme, they routinely ostracized people who didn't conform to the 'rules'.  Whereas they had well-defined notions of 'freedom', the freedom to dissent wasn't one of them.

Indeed, violence in Borderer culture was ingrained for a thousand years before any of them came to America.  The concepts of shooting trespassers; the beginnings of America's 'gun culture'; favoring property over civil or human rights - all are hallmarks of Borderer culture.

Fighting ability was valued highly - to the extent that favoring anything military (if you'll pardon the almost-pun here) bordered on worship.  

On the other hand, there were things which were not valued in Borderer culture - top of that list is education.   In England, education was only reserved for the most-promising or the most-wealthy; while schools were built in backcountry America, most adhered to the 'blab-school' concept, offering very little in the way of genuine education, save the little a child could learn by rote or repetition. 

Again paradoxically, early American backcountry sexuality was dominated by the twin concepts of promiscuity and Calvinism - the 'shotgun wedding' literally got its start in America's backcountry.   Girls became pregnant as teenagers; illegitimacy was rampant, and due to the low population both in English-Scottish Borderer country and America's backcountry-South, the population didn't draw such a fine-line regarding sexual congress between close relatives.

Always an insular culture brought on by the differences they brought and the remoteness of their location, Borderers were always quick to join-ranks against any outsiders - or outside ideas.  Their own peculiar brand of conservative activism prevented the dissolution of slavery during the Constitutional convention, and led to the Civil War in the 1860's.   American Backcountry xenophobia, wrapped up in a culture which predates the founding of the nation, exists to this day.

_________________________________

So, what of today?

Some of the dots are easy to connect - the Republican Party is the party of the conservative South and America's backcountry; it espouses much of what Borderer culture has become, and while it represents a fixed-point cultural anachronism in American society, it also has the benefit of great financial support from America's ruling class, and a ready-and-willing set of culturally-ingrained servants - a form of political servitude not much distanced from its 16th and 17th-century roots in the border-ridings of England and Scotland.

In fact, much of traditional Borderer values are present in recent headlines and conservative gatherings.  A quick look:

--  Fear of religious persecution
--  Promotion of a 'thugocracy' - beating-down the 'liberals'
--  Shooting abortion providers
--  Actively calling for a 'Christian revolution'
--  Conservative activism, carried to extremes (assault-rifles at speeches; etc.)
--  Defense of 'traditional marriage' at the expense of the civil-rights of others
--  "Taking their country back" (through force of arms and a gun-culture, if necessary)

This 'culture-within-a-culture', while not unnoticed, has caused many a journalist, politician, and other pundit no small amount of alarm and confusion.    Until we examine its sociopolitical and anthropological roots, however, we can't begin to understand its meaning.

The polarizing effect of this culture is evident both religiously and politically.   With pastors calling for 'a new Christian revolutionary war', and with Congressmen like Joe Wilson shouting 'You lie!' from the floor of the House, it's not hard to see that there are highly-charged emotions running rampant over common sense.

This sort of thing, regrettably, isn't new to the American political scene.  Let's connect a few dots:

Borderer culture gave rise to John C. Calhoun, the firebrand of the senate during the years prior to the Civil War; it was Calhoun who advocated (as early as 1832) outright secession from the United States, and who later stated that slavery was a 'positive good' in America. 

We cannot forget another Borderer, Preston Brooks (who, like Calhoun, was also from South Carolina); Brooks beat fellow senator Charles Sumner almost to death with his cane, having disagreed with Sumner's speech vilifying then-recent pro-slavery violence in Kansas.

It appears that Calhoun-style politics has raised its head again in America, thanks to the persistent Borderer culture.

We only have to look at the rhetoric of Michele Bachmann, who has called for a 'revolution in America' so that Liberals 'can't achieve their ends.', or the recent calls from Governor Rick Perry of Texas for outright secession.

Ignoring the media at this juncture is a mistake.   We only have to look at the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly to see the true nature of Borderer-culture-made-manifest in modern American politics.

Economic marginalization has always been part and parcel with Borderer culture.  It shouldn't be a surprise to see right-wing extremism - seated in 'red' states with heavy Borderer ancestries - on the increase.


The ranks of disaffected Americans are growing.   The recession has disrupted the plans of 1 in 3 Americans - a level not seen since the Great Depression.   Extreme philosophies; honed for decades by 'red' state residents, have greater appeal with the advent of a bad economy.

On one side, we have a philosophy which espouses property rights over human and civil; xenophobia over openness, and a culture of violence over a culture of peace.    On the other side, we have a philosophy of enlightened, educated reason. 

If I'm right, we have the rest of this year and the next to straighten things out.   If we don't, our own history and cultural differences suggest serious civil conflict - this time, as before, a cultural divide, but the stakes are actually far higher:   We'll be deciding whether we remain a republic which values property over people, or whether we become a true social democracy. 

The choice, I fear, will be made by those with the loudest voices.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Economic Wrapup - May; 2009....

Posted by Astra Navigo at 2:49 PM

Blog Entry A Fable for Otherworld -- Part I: Dec 1, '07 7:45 PM for everyone
(Submitted for your approval, and in keeping with recent events, the notion that truth is stranger than fiction, and fact is stranger than fantasy….)

Somewhere beyond the shores of Northland, but before the Blue Horizon, there was the continent of Outland.

Outland was a peaceful enough place, if you counted the fact that the Outlanders had, since time unremembered, tilled their dry land and managed to extract a living from its meager resources. Geographically, Outland was half-mountainous and half-plain, with a river running more or less the whole length of the place (the only source of water, as no jet-stream made landfall on Outland to bring clouds or rain – storms were infrequent, but were enough to keep the river full, and the irrigation working).

Outlanders made and sold products to the people in Northland and Southland (the two other major continents), as well as to the peoples of Everland (made up of the small countries of Smalland, Bigland, and Badland.)

Peoples in Northland and Southland were blessed with a large country; well-timbered and watered, with many other resources besides. The peoples of Everland were more in number, and had fewer resources, but were well-off. The peoples of Outland were the only ones who had to scratch a living.

For all that, the Outlanders sold their produce, bought some things in trade, and considered themselves well-off. They didn’t give much thought to the things the Northlanders made (flying machines; great factories; things that moved people from place to place in a hurry).

 Instead, the Outlanders had built small cities which were gaily painted, clean, orderly, and which shone like small jewels upon the sea. They had houses with red-tiled roofs; on their expansive patios they would watch the sun go down after a hard day’s work. They were, on balance, very, very content.

Now, the people who lived in Badland were not ‘bad’ – but they had a history of not doing things in half-measures; they either wrote music that was considered very, very good – or very, very bad. Their chefs created cuisines that were either very, very good – or very, very bad. On balance, their land could and should have been called ‘Extremeland”, but the name “Badland” was applied to them longer-ago than anyone could remember – so the name stuck.

Through all the lands, regardless of their separate beliefs, there was a group of people who dyed their noses green.

The Green-Noses were of a different belief – harmless; but whoever accepted the belief had to dye his or her nose green. They stood out – and were accepted by everyone through the history of Otherworld (the planet on which they lived), as being of a different Belief – but the same as everyone else.

It was said that many of the ancestors of the Green-Noses had once hailed from Outland – but no one paid much mind to this; in the mists of time, many things had been accepted as ‘fact’ which were later proven not to be – contrariwise, there were things which had been dismissed which had later been proven to be ‘true’. Either way, no one much considered this, one way, or another.

Then, the people of Badland did a very, very bad thing indeed.

Along with their music and their cuisine, Badland had a habit of producing leaders which were either very, very good, or very, very bad. They produced a very, very bad leader – perhaps the worst of those which Badland had ever produced – and he set about telling the people Things Which They Wanted To Hear.

“People!”, he said, “You are better than everyone!

To this, the people of Badland cheered. “People!”, he said, “Because you are better than everyone else, I will lead you to a greater glory than you have seen before!” To this, the people of Badland also cheered. The Badland Leader set about doing what he had promised (this is a good thing in any leader, but a Bad Thing Indeed if the intended result is also Bad).

He conscripted labor, and built large roads for the people of Badland to use. Because they had nothing to drive upon the roads, he had People Movers built, along the lines of those which had been in use in Northland and Southland for many years.

He built homes, and factories, and great airships which moved people and goods from Badland to Northland and Southland and the other countries of Everland.

Then, he began to think. True to his nature, his thoughts were bad.

He thought, “It is not enough.”

“We must”, he continued with his Bad Thoughts, “TRULY be better than anyone else.”

He gave orders to his factory-owners – who owed their existence to his orders – to build people movers which could hurt other people.

 He gave orders to other factory-owners to build great airships which could hurt people and destroy cities.

He then gave orders that every other person above the Age of Reason but below the Age of Ease should be placed in special camps to train as soldiers.

Now, no one in Badland had ever heard of a soldier. In fact, the concept was strange, even to the Badlanders - -but since the Badland Leader had said it was a Good Thing, they enthusiastically agreed.

The Badland Leader even dressed these soldiers all the same – it was, he said, so they could recognize each other. The dressings looked impressive – soon, everyone above the Age of Reason – and many below that age – wanted to look just like one of the Badland Leader’s soldiers.

They trained – calisthenics; marching together (it was fun to march together) – and they also learned how to use the new People Movers with weapons (another word they’d never heard before, but one they learned to like, because weapons went with the new dressings, and everyone wanted to look like a soldier.

They learned how to jump out of some of the Great Airships – the Badland Leader had ordered his Chief Artificers to work very hard on things that would enable his soldiers to do great things – and they had invented something which billowed out above a soldier as he jumped from a Great Airship – several of the soldiers began shouting “Weee!” as they jumped, or other things – and this wondrous device allowed them to land, light as a feather on the ground, miles from where they started!

The Badland Leader built many ships – some with weapons which worked on top of the water, and some which worked below – all of them were wondrous.

Soon, anyone above the Age of Reason could join the Badland Leader’s new group of soldiers. Everyone Believed.

Then, the Badland Leader did some more thinking. His thoughts this time were very, very bad indeed.

He thought, “I have built greatness. I have no where to use it. Why should we be forever confined to the smallness of Badland?” Then, he thought, “Ah! I have the answer! Smalland! We shall Take Over Smalland!”

Meanwhile, the people of Northland and Southland, and the peoples of Smalland and Bigland, were oblivious to the Badland Leader’s Great Works. The people of Smalland were a bit nervous, seeing all these big machines on their border, but for so many years, there’d hardly been a need for a border – they’d lived peacefully with the Badlanders for a Very Long Time.

One night, the Badland Leader told his Oversoldiers, “The time has come. Take over Smalland.” The Oversoldiers had planned, and fretted, and gotten everything Just So – and, in the middle of that night, they sent all their soldiers with their Great Airships and their Jumping Devices and their Weaponed People Movers over the borders of Smalland, and by the next day, without firing nearly a shot from their weapons, the soldiers of Badland had taken over Smalland.

Now the leaders of Northland and Southland, plus the leader of Bigland, were very, very distressed.

They realized that in ignoring a problem, they hadn’t made it Go Away.

This was very, very bad indeed for everyone.

In order to restore peace to the lands of Otherworld, now, the peoples of Northland, Southland, and Bigland had to work together. They had to fight the soldiers of Badland, and keep them from doing this to anyone else.

It was, of course, too late.

The Badland Leader launched his ships against Northland and Southland, and sent his army clear across Smalland and across the border of Bigland. He was even planning to send ships full of soldiers to Northland to take it over, too. All of a sudden, Otherworld was too small – the Badland Leader wanted it all.

Everywhere, people troubled the Badland Leader.

Many people in Badland started to think, “We always get called names because of our food and our music – but we’ve never been THIS bad before. Should we do something?”

These people were rounded up and put in Bad Places.

Others said, “We are always called names because of our food and our music! We’ll show EVERYONE this time!”

These people were given positions of authority.

Then, there were the Green-Nosed People.

They refused to take a stand. Their Belief prevented them from doing so. They preferred to dye their noses green, and continue the Way Things Were.

The Badland Leader treated these people Very Badly Indeed – probably the worst of all. He rounded up as many as he could. He put them all in Very Bad Places. He rounded them ALL up in Badland – and rounded up as many as he could in Smalland and Bigland, as well. He had plans to round them up all over Otherworld, if he could conquer it.

(Next - Part II of the Otherworld Fable)

A Fable of Otherworld -- Part II (Conclusion):

Dec 2, '07 10:02 AM for everyone

Meanwhile, the people of Northland raised soldiers of their own. They began building ships, and Great Airships Which Dropped People, and Great People Movers With Weapons. They gave some to the people of Southland and Bigland, saying, “There are too few of us to use all of these Wondrous Things. Use them with us – and let’s make Badland a Goodland, minus its Leader!!”

Time passed. Soon, the Badland Leader was no more. Badland was renamed Wasteland, because there was nothing left. No more chefs. No more music. No more Badlanders, either, as they had all been killed by the weapons.

By ones and twos, the Green-Nosed People came out of the Very Bad Places, and out of places where they had hidden during the Bad Times. (The Bad Times was what the rest of the population of Otherworld called the time when the Badland Leader tried to take over Otherworld.)

Most of the Green-Nosed People lived in Badland or Bigland. Bigland had suffered greatly, along with the peoples of Smalland, where a lot of Green-Nosed People had lived, also. The people of Northland and Southland felt very, very badly, indeed, for the Green-Nosed People.

Someone in Northland said, “Let’s give the Green-Nosed People a Place, where they can all be Green-Nosed together!”

The Southlanders said, “This is a wonderful idea!”

The Biglanders said, “This is a wonderful idea – but where will you put them? They cannot live in Wasteland!”

The Smallanders said, “This may be a good idea - -but don’t put them all here! We have no room in Smalland!”

Then, the Northlanders said, “We have an idea!”

They convened a meeting of the other Lands – and they brought out a map of Otherworld.

“In all of Otherworld, there’s only one place where we can put the Green-Nosed People. Here!”, pointed the Northland Leader, to the continent of Outland.

And all the other Leaders said, “Wonderful!”

Now, they hadn’t stopped to think that there were already people living on Outland (they were called “Outlanders”, if you remember) – and hadn’t stopped to ask if the Outlanders even wanted visitors, let alone permanent residents.

The Outlanders had stayed out of the Bad Times, content to eke out a living from their land on the plain, and hunt the game in the mountains where no one could live. They had enough water, and enough food. They noticed during the Bad Times that they got more for their surplus produce, but had no use for Great Weaponed People Movers in trade, so they traded less and stayed at home more.

Then, the representatives of Northland, Southland, Bigland and Smalland came to Outland.

The Northland representative, who had been selected to speak for all, said:

“From now on, you will have people living here with Green Noses.”

The Outlanders looked bewildered.

“From now on”, the representative continued. “All the land south of the river will belong to the Green Nosed Peoples.”

The Outlanders looked incredulous. One of them spoke. “But – but – that is the land we farm! We cannot feed ourselves if this is done!”

Another Outlander spoke. “This is land on which I have ten generations buried. Who will tend the burial places of my ancestors?”

Another Outlander spoke. “And what of our homes? We cannot move them to the mountains! No one can even LIVE in the mountains! There is no water – no farmland – “

His voice trailed off. The Northlanders had come with many Great People Movers, many Great Airships, and many Warships. The Outlanders had none.

Silently, the Outlanders moved to the mountains. They left their homes. The women wailed, and the men shed silent tears. The Great Trek to the mountains even became a remembrance date to the Outlanders.

The Green-Nosed Peoples wasted no time in setting up shop.

They built even bigger homes, and even factories, with help from the Northlanders and the Southlanders. They farmed, and made the farms more productive with Northlander help and equipment.

“See what we have done!”, they told the other Lands. “We have taken this place, and made it wonderful!”

All the leaders of the other Lands said, “It is wonderful!”, while the Outlanders starved in the mountains.

Some of the Outlanders were allowed in the new Green-Nosed People-Cities to tend gardens, clean houses, and do other chores. They took what the Green-Nosed Peoples gave them as payment, and went back across the Great River to the mountains at the end of the day.

This lasted a short while. Then, some of the Outlanders began to say, “This is wrong. Two wrongs don’t make anything right – and this is wrong, what the Northlanders and the other Lands did to us.”

Other Outlanders agreed. They couldn’t, however, agree as to what could be done.

Again, time passed. One generation became the next, and as much as the Outlanders tried to pass the memories of What Once Was to their Young Ones, there was little which the Old Ones could do. It was hard to pass only memories of tiled roofs, patios, and jeweled cities to those who had never seen them.

After the passage of much time, one wise Outlander said, “We will go to the Northlanders, and ask them to help us. After creating this problem, surely they will see they have to fix it.”

Meanwhile, the Green-Nosed People began to build a wall to keep the Outlanders from crossing the river, unless they had something called a ‘pass.’ The Outlanders at first wouldn’t carry this ‘pass’ - - they’d never needed to do so when they were allowed to live on the far side of the river, and they weren’t going to do so now.

They learned quickly that they wouldn’t be allowed to clean houses, work in factories, and do similar jobs without it. Some Outlanders starved as a result – with no farms and no work, they could do little else.

As to the Northlanders, they said, “We have put the Green-Nosed People among you. You will have to learn to live with them, as we didn’t stop the Badlanders from sending them to Very Bad Places during the Bad Times.”

The wise Outlander, having traveled at great expense the far distance to Northland, said, “But, don’t you see? The Green-Nosed People are putting us in their very own version of the Bad Places. Don’t you see? We are now as they were.”

The Northlanders didn’t understand. In fact, their patience grew thin. The Northland leader said, “We have given the Green-Nosed People many of our Great Airships, Warships, and Weaponed People Movers. They will punish you if you do not behave. Go home!”

The wise Outlander went home, very, very sad.

He met with his people, who were now ragged and starving. Their small cities, which had been gaily painted and shone like jewels on the sea were now abandoned or leveled so the Green-Nosed People could build their own.

He said, with a heavy heart, “The Northlanders will not help us. In fact, they told us that they would let the Green-Nosed people punish us with their soldiers and weapons if we do not ‘behave’.”

Now, the concept of ‘behaving’ had never been necessary - -they had never had an Overlord.

“Did you not explain to the Northlanders that we are now in Very Bad Places, much as the Green-Nosed People were?”

“Yes,” replied the wise Outlander. “I did so. Their response was the same. To them, it makes no difference.”

Some of the younger Outlanders said, “We may have no weapons. We may have no training. But we have spirit. We should fight these Green-Nosed People until they are either no more, or go Someplace Else.”

This left the wise Outlander with a conundrum. Should he fight, or should he accept what was thrust upon them as ‘fate’?

The wise Outlander said, “Before we do such a thing as fight, let us speak to the Green-Nosed People, and see if there is a way out of this.”

The wise Outlander took several other Outlanders to meet with the leader of the Green-Nosed People.

He asked, “Why have you come among us to cause us such pain? In the mountains, we only starve, where on the plain, we lived in harmony in our small, well-ordered cities without the need for weapons, flags, or soldiers. We are sorry for what happened to you, but what you are doing to us is just as wrong. We want our homes back.”

The leader of the Green-Nosed People would not hear of this. He said, “We now own this half of Outland. In the mists of time, it was once said that Outland belonged to us. We claim it again, now – and we will use our friends, the Northlanders, to help us keep it.”

The wise Outlander said, “This will not have a good end. My people are starving, and desperate. We have no weapons. We never needed them. What will you do for us.?”

The leader of the Green-Nosed People said, “See that!”, as he pointed to a flagpole. “That is our flag! We are now a nation, just like the Northlanders! Now, WE are important – and better than anyone else!”

The wise Outlander could see that the time had come and gone to peacefully solve this problem. The Green-Nosed People could not see that because the Outlanders did not have a flag, or an army, or other such things, that they were Just As Good as the Green-Nosed People.

The leader of the Green-Nosed People continued. “If you try to do anything, we will come and punish you in the mountains with many weapons, and use the resources of the Northlanders, which are many and great and inexhaustible!”

The wise Outlander and his friends were very, very sad indeed. The old, wise Outlander remembered things. Things like the fired-tiles his grandfather made for the floor of their patio from which they watched the sun go down; tiles that looked like the ocean. He remembered the crops they grew, and the times when they were all prosperous. Now, there were Young Ones who remembered none of these things. They only knew squalor and poverty.

They left the meeting with the Green-Nosed People, and went back to the mountains across the river.

Later, they met with their people, and said, “The Green-Nosed People have told us that they are better than anyone now that they are here, and have a flag, and weapons, and friends in the Northlanders.”

He paused, dreading what he must say, and knowing all the while that he must say it.

“People!”, he said. “We must either become soldiers, or starve.”

“What will happen?”, said one of the other leaders.

The wise Outlander paused again, dreading again what he must say, and knowing all the while he must say it, as he owed his people The Truth.

“War will happen.”, he said….

(Portrait of another world; busying itself with the destruction of Everything That Was Good, and in writing the first stanzas of its own personal “Götterdämmerung”. There are no crystalline beaches; no sunsets; no warm breezes; no happy ending – only the twin concepts of Right, and Wrong, and the certain knowledge that Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right – on Otherworld, or here on Planet Earth.)

Peace.

A Fable of Otherworld - (Epilogue):

Dec 2, '07 4:35 PM for everyone

It is twelve-hundred years in the future.

 

 

Colonel Bruce Jameson, commander of the United Earth Star Cruiser Altair, was on a routine survey mission, having been sent to a star-cluster in the Rigel group two years before.

Surveys were usually boring work; they sought planets which were uninhabited, but which had similar atmospheres as Earth. “Routine” was the operative word; usually, these surveys found very little in the way of habitable worlds.

“Colonel?”, said Jameson’s first-officer, “There’s a planet that shows promise here.”

Colonel Jameson walked over to the spectro-scanner. These things weren’t perfect, but most of the time they –

“BINGO!”, shouted the first officer. “We’ve got what looks like the ruins of a city down there – and another one!”

“Atmosphere?”, said Jameson.

“Oxygen/Hydrogen mix. Not quite Earth, but this one sustains some form of carbon-based life, I’ll bet on it!”

“Ready the shuttle. I’ll take the shuttle crew plus three researchers.”

The shuttle touched down on a dry plain which showed evidence of dry watercourses. Jameson knew from the visuals on the way down that there was a river which ran most of the length of the continent; he knew from the briefing that there were four continents; this being the driest of them.

McKinney, the senior research-scientist, scanned some instruments before giving the go-ahead to open the shuttle hatch.

“Some background radiation, but nothing to write home about. Looks like these cities have been ruins for 1,000 years.”, he said, half to himself.

“Is it safe, Lieutenant?”, said Jameson.

“Oh, yes. Safe enough for jumpsuits, I’d say.” McKinney pressed the switch which opened the airlock; then the hatch.

Eyes adjusting to the light, they stepped outside. Everywhere, they saw partial-walls and collapsed roofs, much like they would have seen in the aftermath of a volcano or other cataclysmic explosion. There were scorch-marks still visible on the walls which remained.

Strange-looking glyphs covered the walls. “Sub-form of early Rigellian script.”, said McKinney, again, half to himself. “I can make out some of it, but it’ll take a Linguist to get it all.”

“What can you make out, Lieutenant?”, said Jameson.

“It’s some form of painted wall-poster. “ ‘Victory Within Our Grasp – Hold On To The Last Man’, or something similar. Looks like we’re seeing the aftermath of a Big One.”

Jameson looked around. “Fan out.”, he said. “Rendezvous back here in sixty. McKinney – you’re with me.”

“Yes, sir.”, said McKinney. “Just keep your Lasrupter handy, if you wouldn’t mind, sir. I’ve only got an Analyzer.”

“Let’s go.”, said Jameson.

They walked what had been a large boulevard; the late-afternoon yellow light casting dust-shadows on the far walls; it was a warm afternoon, and soon both men were warm themselves, although not uncomfortably so.

“Feels good to get some fresh air, even if it is like this.”, said Jameson.

“I could walk old cities forever – you know that, sir.”, said McKinney.

“I’m counting on you to find us something we can report.”, said Jameson.

He didn’t have long to wait.

“Over here!’, shouted McKinney, waving to the Colonel. McKinney had strayed just long enough to find what he was looking for – either a library or a repository of records.

Colonel Jameson walked quickly to Lieutenant McKinney; they both walked up a short staircase to the entrance of a large stone building which had remained largely undamaged. While the doors had long since rotted away, the stone building had preserved much of what was inside.

The cruel trick about a dry climate is that it preserves things - even when those who had created them had long since gone back to dust.

They walked in; the first creatures on two legs to do so in over 1,000 years. They were in a library.

“Oh, my!”, said McKinney. “I was right.”

“And?”, said Jameson, impatiently.

“There was a war.”, said McKinney, gently holding up a periodical; blowing the dust off to reveal a photograph of soldiers and weaponry and what looked like a great tracked-vehicle with twin-guns. McKinney laid the magazine back down.

“Look!”, said McKinney, pointing to another periodical, held open by a falling piece of masonry – it had been open to that page for a long time. “With the help of our – Northland – allies – we will emerge victorious”, McKinney read, haltingly.

“Colonel – if you can give me a few minutes here, I think I can piece some things together.”, said McKinney. Jameson took the hint, and wandered off, out the door, toward the sound of the surf.

Twenty minutes later, Jameson returned.

“What did you find, Lieutenant?”, said Jameson.

“Could make out a lot of it. Fragments of news reports; hard to tell what was propaganda and what was truth. A lot of talk about – if I got it right – people with green noses – some sort of religious thing, I’d wager – and the cause of the war; it was the displacement of the people who originally lived here. Looks like we had the fortune to land right here in the middle of what was their biggest city.”

“Go on,”, said Jameson.

“Anyhow, looks like they fought this war right on the tail of the last one – fifty or sixty years later, anyhow. First one brought down a bad-guy; last one was fought over what to do with some refugees, near as I can figure – this green-nosed bunch. Started here, then involved everyone else.”

“So, who’s left?”, said Jameson.

“Looks like no one. Background radiation is almost negligible after this length of time, but it suggests that toward the end, they used atomics. That would explain the dry watercourses we saw on the plain – they likely suffered the winter that follows the indiscriminate use of atomics. Snow fell, and when it melted, those courses were formed. Never happened since, so there they sit. The river remained right where it was when the weather cleared up.”

“No survivors at all?”, said Jameson, impatiently. Their time was running out; the shuttle would be ready soon, and they’d have to be in position to make the jump to the next survey-point.

“Well, if what I read on the walls was right, there were a few. Mainly survivors trading insults via graffiti. Wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing didn’t end with knives, bats, and whatever else they had. Looks like the last survivors died off a couple of years after the war.”

Colonel Jameson pressed a button on his transceiver; activated navigation mode. “No point in prolonging this. It’ll take the Linguists, Historians, and others nearly ten years to figure this one out – but we know all we need to know right now. Signal the others. We’re going back.”

Jameson pressed a button on his transceiver. “Altair! Altair! We are four for the ship – there’s nothing here. Any word on your end?”

Jameson’s transceiver came alive. “This is Altair. Read you 5X5. No, Colonel, nothing here. No transmissions of any kind. We see no sign of life on any of the other continents. Appears that the original inhabitants really DID have themselves a war.”

“Altair – coordinates are C-57-D Relative. There’s an open space just to the north of us. Land the shuttle there.”

“Altair – over and out.”

“McKinney?”, said Jameson.

“What, sir?”

“What do you suppose prompts an entire race to kill each other off?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’ve studied things like this for years, and I still don’t know.” Glancing at Jameson, he added, “What have you got there, sir?”

Jameson said, “While I was on my walk, I watched the sun starting to set. Beautiful. I wondered if the people who lived here thought it was as beautiful as I did. I found this.”, he said, holding up a fragment of the past.

It was a blue tile.

“Oh, my!”, said Lieutenant McKinney. “So old – yet it looks like it was made yesterday! Almost three dimensional in the light.”

“Yes.”, said Colonel Jameson, putting the tile back in his pocket. “It almost looks like the ocean.”, he said, as the shuttle landed, ready to take them back to the ship, and on to another world.

(Elegy for a dead planet -- the discovery of which is a footnote in the log of an expedition on the way to Nowhere Special from Somewhere Else. No marker; no monument -- just the living -- and the dead....)

Mortgages, Banks, the Economy, and Why You Should Be Concerned Now....

Aug 20, '09 12:39 PM for everyone

"All the way to the bottom, son, if we don't do something to stop her."

This was the response I received at age twelve when, in the 'tow' of my father while touring a submarine, I asked the question, "How far down will she go?"

(As submarine operational statistics are considered classified, this is the stock-response to that question.   It's also a piece of gallows-humor - because every submariner knows that a submerged submarine is, in essence, a sunken ship - it may be operating in a form of balance and harmony with its environment, but it's also underwater - and because humans can't breathe underwater, the time the ship can spend in that environment is limited -- which means that when the plug is pulled, sufficient resources have to be in place to bring it to the surface again - or the crew dies.)

It's that simple.

Likewise, economies are fragile things - a deep moral discussion of just-when bankers decided to become the New Age version of Dark Age bandits is well beyond the purview of this post, however.   Frankly, the ship has taken on too much water; it's going to sink, and it's up to me to tell you why, and why you should pay attention to the next few months.

Here's the good news:  There's going to be a recovery.

Here's the bad news:   It's not going to last.

While the trigger to all of this is likely hyperinflation (as I've mentioned earlier, you'll first start to notice this when gasoline goes from $2.50 to $8.00/gal in the next twelve months), you'll also see it in a rapid increase in credit card rates (Tip #1 for you - if you haven't already, get rid of your credit-cards.  Pay them off, cut them up, and send them back.  Now.)

The underlying causes are more insidious - inflation was the government's means of answering the question, "What do we do now?" after the credit-markets dried up.


A Brief History....

When Greenspan lowered interest rates to near-zero in the early part of this decade to ameliorate the recession, what he put in place was a chain-of-events which led to too much money, too soon, spun up from nothing and put in the most-convenient place - real-estate.  

This drove the price of real-estate to unsupportable levels.  People were talking about retiring on their real-estate portfolios, and in '06, the new head-of-the-Fed, Ben Bernacke, said that there wasn't a 'housing bubble'; things were fine.

I didn't share his enthusiasm then, and I see no reason to support his sunshine-and-puppies predictions now.

In late 2007, due to the large banks having taken on far too much debt, the credit markets dried up.   Banks simply could no longer capitalize loans - they were underwater by any standard - and there was no way to bring the 'ship' to the surface again.

With no credit, American business simply ground to a halt.  


Enter Obama....

Bush, having all but given the order to 'dive' by pressuring Greenspan to prevent a recession on his watch, did nothing while the crisis materialized.   The nation had taken on debt well beyond its ability to pay, and this debt had pushed the banking system underwater.   A crisis of international proportions loomed.

After election day in 2008, the new president announced his 'stimulus' packages.   In essence, he was going to crank up the press and monetize the debt of the Wall Street banks, favoring them over the regional and local banks which are responsible for the loans which create most of the jobs in America.  

Doing this was like fighting a fire with gasoline.

When done, Obama had 'monetized' (that's a roundabout way of saying 'printed') nearly five trillion dollars.   The total of the stimulus packages actually exceeded America's GDP.

I'll say this plainly:  There's no way our economy - or any economy - can support this.


What They've Done With It......

For their part, the Wall Street banks favored by Obama have sat on this money - you see, they know something we don't:   Serious inflation - probably hyperinflation - is right around the corner.  

Most small and intermediate banks are still in trouble.   The mortgage-mess is still there.   The prior decade saw the dismantling of the regulations put in place after the era of J.P. Morgan and the banking crises of the late 19th/early 20th centuries.   In fact, during Bush's watch, there have been an astonishing number of regulations abolished - banking leverage has been increased; money can flow between commercial and investment banks, and the prior controls on the SEC have all but disappeared.

Putting the fox in charge of the nation's financial henhouse wasn't enough - the Bush administration, having created the perfect petri-dish to breed this mess, turned the economy over to the next group - who administered the coup-de-grace in the form of printed money.


Where We Are Today.....

Banking:    The banking system is underwater.   (1) Banks simply aren't doing enough business to keep going; an annual growth rate of 2% isn't enough to keep them alive; (2) If you watch CNN and read any financial news at all, you're seeing that banks are failing at a rate unprecedented in the nation's history (annualized bank-failures have almost gone vertical); (3) The FDIC is bankrupt - holding only $41B in reserves as of March of this year, with four regional banks having failed this month; (4) Defaults are projected to increase through 2011, further impacting bank balance-sheets; (5) We are at or near historic lows in bank credit at 2% growth.

Real-Estate:    In March of this year, one in four American mortgages were underwater (more was owed on the home than it was worth).   With the economy still shedding jobs as an outgrowth of the credit crisis, fully 50% (one in two mortgages) will be underwater by the middle of 2010.


The Political Implications:

Big banks in America now have a power they didn't have before - they've been favored with more money than the nation can support via GDP.   In spite of the support they're getting from the Right, they're not opening those purse-strings and creating jobs.

That's because the large banks no longer believe in America.   They believe in more profits - and they've monetized their own debt, improved their own balance-sheets, and invested in other currencies to hedge their bets.

What Obama has created is a form of nascent National Socialism; a modern-day feudal system not unlike what was created in Germany in the late 1930's.


Summary:

The good news is that the leaks have stopped; there's pressure in the hull, metaphorically speaking - likely, the recession has hit bottom.

However, as with a submarine, once you've repaired the damage and you're not losing your air-supply, you still have to take stock of things and get the water out of the boat - or she'll still keep going down - all the way to the bottom. 

Ending the recession is well and good -but it's not what's needed here.   What's needed is a recovery of near-heroic proportions.   I'm doubting it'll happen - the forces at play here are going to push us back down into recession, and probably depression.

Over 40% of America's wealth has been erased - thus far.   If the government were to add up everyone not just on unemployment, but those for whom benefits have ended and those who have simply given up looking, the unemployment rate is nowhere near 10% - it's more like 20%.

The Obama Administration has seen fit to behave in banana-republic fashion, purchasing key industries, printing money and shoveling it into the economy via the large Wall Street banks, who now enjoy an oligarchy-of-sorts not seen since the 1870's.   

I'd hate to think that, having sufficiently turned things over to the large banks by default, we're going to see a repeat of the banking crises near the turn of the last century - but there's little in today's news or the stats (go click on the links) which tell me otherwise.


Remember that the pumps buy you time - but minutes only.   Everyone; get to a lifeboat.   Red lights lead to green lights; green lights lead to exits, and exits lead to an uncertain future - let's all hope it's better than the alternative.