Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Telling the Future by Looking to the Past

Want to know something interesting? I am the same age as Homer Simpson and Walter White. That means something went bad right around 1974, when all of us graduated high school.

A lot of those I knew in high school were either pot-smoking, party-down hedonists - me - or criminals (could have been me). Homer Simpsons or Walter Whites.

For one thing, Richard Nixon went off the gold standard in 1971, and because of that and several other things, wages stopped going up in January of 1974. They have never recovered, contrary to the claims (I mean lies) of the government.

As for Vietnam, it ended in August of 1973. I was last year to get a draft card.

Since, as Ezra Pound so perceptively noted, artists are the antennae of the race, what do these two characters tell us?

One, there are the stupid, ignorant, beer-guzzling Americans who are basically interested in in bread and circuses. They don't count except as mostly a drag on everything.

Homer is basically a fat drunken hedonist, so I would put modern, fat, high, game-playing neckbeards in his category.

Then we have the smarter Walter White criminal types. They are most interesting.

Since the economy has been bad for so long, and is going is stay bad, I expect some of the smarter people to go black market. Think the Darknet. First there was Silk Road, which is now gone. It has been replaced by 20 of them, stronger and more secure.

Of course, these people can spend their lives working some shit job. That ain't gonna work for a lot of guys. I'd put hackers in this category.

Ever since Vietnam, which went on for ten years and was ended by media coverage, people my age (and younger) have never trusted the government. I operate on the assumption everything it says is a lie. I'm right, too.

After Vietnam a bunch of veterans went nuts. They're still living in shacks up in the rural Pacific Northwest. Think First Blood, the novel on which Rambo was based. In the novel it was a fight between a cop and Rambo - and both died. The government against its own soldiers. And when was the novel published? 1972.

We're producing even more of these guys, coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A lot of men have been lied to. They haven't gotten what they were promised. They're considered disposable.

Conclusion? Some people are going to go Homer Simpson Stupid Slob. Others are, in varying ways, going to go Walter White. Mostly, I think, through some sort of computer "crime."

I am reminded of something Carl Jung wrote: “Everything the anima touches becomes numinous - unconditional, dangerous, taboo, magical.” The Anima can be defined as our our "impersonal, amoral nature."

Then we have all those vets coming out of the current wars - and God knows what they're going to do. I do know the government is going to go after them as a "threat."

Hedonistic neckbeards, and "criminal" hackers and "criminal" pissed-off vets. Homer Simpsons and Walter Whites - and the government, as usual, is clueless about the coming storms. It's going to be an interesting ride. Let's see who "wins" - if anyone.

14 comments:

Glen Filthie said...

I'm a few years younger than you Bob, and as far as the spoiled baby boomers, hippies, and general f-knuckles of the 60's and 70's go...I don't trust them either. Yours is the most selfish, feckless generation ever raised on American soil and you are a shit stain on your parents' generation. Fact is, you make even us Xer's look good - and we are nothing to write home about either.

It does not surprise me that your generation would venerate Walter as he cooks up dangerous chemicals to sell to young kids. Many of them will be destroyed by it. Hero? He is only passing his problems on to the next generation and profiting by destroying it. How is he different from the gov'ts that sold the Viet Nam vets out in the name of political expediency?

As for Rambo - fact is the average draftee of the Viet Nam era was a slug. The cagier flower children of the 60's were draft dodgers like Bill Clinton or opportunistic liars and traitors like John Kerry. Weaklings, for the most part. Men like Stormin' Norman Schwartzkopff took the horrors of Viet Nam in stride and used the experience to make themselves stronger. Strong, intelligent men are not ruined by war as Rambo supposedly was. Men like that always find ways to succeed. Rambo is a pipe dream of baby boomers embarrassed by their weakness and cowardice.

Compare that to the men and women of the Iraq and Afghanistan ventures today: never before did America produce soldiers of this caliber. They were educated and smart. They were well trained and motivated. And they were stabbed in the back by the same liberal flower children and leftist f-tards that the Viet Nam vets were. Yes, some of them have PTSD and problems...but most do not. They are going back to those shitty jobs - often with limbs missing - and they are supporting their families, making their way and doing so with pride...while the scum that undermined them complain and mock them.

I really think you need to re-evaluate your heroes Bob. They are not who you think they are. I also think your generation needs to take a long, hard collective look in the mirror.

sth_txs said...

As an early x-er, I gave up on voting by the time I was 30. After my first couple paychecks out of college I read up on this money thing and saw how screwed we are on this. Since I did not learn about it in civics class, I had to go read Rothbard's What Has the Government Done to Our Money a couple times. I also read Gerry Spece's 'From Freedom to Slavery'. We live in a comfortable corporate/government slave system.

I have to disagree with Glenn's assessment of a veteran. I was not in the military, but I've talked to some veterans over the years. Anyone who thinks every man who comes back from a war a 'weakling' does not know crap. Short answer is that it is stuff you hope you will never experience.

sth_txs said...

Back to the Gold Standard. When Nixon abolished it, the currency was nominally backed by gold and silver.

I think commodity money would take precedence, but I would prefer a free market in money free from government intervention as much as possible. The Liberty Dollar guy tried but got shafted by the Feds. Go look up Edwin Veira sometime. He has written about Constitutional money.

The couple times when I use a bank teller I always laugh at the FDIC sign claiming that my deposits are protected by the 'full faith and credit' of the US government.

Glen Filthie said...

General Schwartzkopff's autobiography should be mandatory reading for all boys. In it, he describes how real soldiers are forged. They are not necessarily born - they can be made but you have to start with an intelligent man. As a young lieutenant his biggest problems were lazy, drugged out flower children that didn't care for their weapons and equipment, who wanted to laze in hammocks and smoke dope while a hostile enemy plotted to kill them, and the incessant whining of petulant children. In his day, fags like Alan Alda mocked the military with great effect and only the worst people got drafted, kicking and screaming into the military.

It's called 'It Doesn't Take A Hero' and it delivers a powerful message that runs exactly against Unca Bob's: YOU are in control of your destiny. Make no excuses for yourself. Choose your options in life, make your decisions, draw your line and make your sacrifices. Reading that book saved my life. Had I not run into that book when I did I might have ended up like Walter.

The young people in the military today are all volunteers. They all competed to get the positions they have. For every effed up PTSD veteran you can show me, I can show you a hero like Chris Kyle (who could kick Rambo's ass around the block seven ways to Sunday - in real life). I can show you Marines with legs blown off training for their first half marathons on artificial prosthetics. Those are just a couple - there are hundreds of unsung, living breathing heroes back from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Fact is one of my customers up in Grande Prairie is a Bronze Star winner. He got out, got mixed up in the oil patch and ended up here in Canada. He's always a pleasure to deal with, he's modest as hell and I am proud as hell to know him.
I did not say our vets are weaklings. I am saying the listless flower children are, and the poseurs like John Kerry.

Why, I had almost forgotten the good General and need to get his book back into my collection!

kurt9 said...

The Liberty Dollar guy tried but got shafted by the Feds.

The liberty dollar guy was prosecuted because he deliberately made his coins look like U.S. currency. It would have been far more interesting if he had, instead, deliberately made his coins look totally different from U.S. currency (e.g. hexagonal shaped or something like that).

Anonymous said...

I've known vets who were really shaken up by war, vets who took it calmly in stride, and even one crazy guy who swore he never had more fun than armed combat in Vietnam (he was wounded three times, once in the face, so he wasn't just a REMF).

Generally, people who have the most extreme reactions- breaking down and becoming completely non-functional at one end, or taking extreme pleasure in combat at the other- probably had a few screws loose even before they went to war. Most normal people will fall somewhere in between- stressed and disturbed in some ways, but basically able to continue with normal life. Either way, it's not an experience with which to burden someone lightly, since you never know what it'll do to him until it's over.

Unknown said...

I met one guy who said he had the time of his life in Vietnam. Guys who served with him said he'd crawl under the wire with a knife in his teeth.

When I visited in the Pacific Northwest I was told by the locals to be careful in the woods because there were several Vietnam vets living up there and the didn't much like strangers. Makes me wonder if that's why the movie Rambo was set there.

A.B. Prosper said...

Some men are made for war ,others broken by it. I've know both though more warriors than broken men.

As for "threat" its the born warriors you need to worry about, if they can be motivated to follow something or someone, they are dangerous especially right now as bored and generally annoyed and angry as they are.

My guesstimate to the big threat not yet arrived though is next rampage killer or revenge killer who is a biohacker instead of a spree shooter

I'm clearly not the only one thinking about this, the mediocre new show "Scorpion" covered the same topic last night actually.

Those guys aren't going to fight for something, they'll be as nihilistic is a Santa Muertre drug lord and well you can figure the rest out.

Unknown said...

That's why I pay attention art - the stories told reflect life, and they include things I miss.

sth_txs said...

"The liberty dollar guy was prosecuted because he deliberately made his coins look like U.S. currency."

That was the Fed's argument which was lie, but any dope could see that the coins looked entirely different from US currency. I guess we know who drinks the Kool-Aid.

They have yet to sentence Bernard von NotHaus after 3 years. Innocent people had their property stolen by the US government.

sth_txs said...

"Those guys aren't going to fight for something, they'll be as nihilistic is a Santa Muertre drug lord and well you can figure the rest out."

Wait until the forgotten veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan that were familiar with bomb making and their tactical uses start training the malcontents of the occupy WallStreet crowd or other jobless malcontents. What fun!

Glen Filthie said...

Good lord.

Vox Day recently made a stellar observation about liberals (pussies, betas, wimps, manginas...rabbits)writing about being wolves (alphas, patriarchs, warriors). That is what Rambo is - Hollywood faggots and wimps writing about warriors.

Boys, special ops guys don't break and turn into emotional or homicidal wrecks. Weaklings, manginas and twinks do - in other words - your average pasty faced effete urban male.

That is why a character like Rambo is so ludicrous. Men like that don't turn into homeless ruby-dubs and bums. They are far too smart, and too motivated.

A character like Walter? Cutting into the drug trade? Pbfbfbffffft. Sure - and a 5' 120 lb. hot blonde in a modern SF yarn can go toe to toe with an alien space monster and beat him senseless without breaking a finger nail, right? Those cartel guys would kill guys like Walter and cast him aside without a second thought.

These characters appeal to weak men because they are everything the average beta male is not: strong, adaptable, and intelligent. And - in the real world...thoroughly impossible.

little dynamo said...

The PNW is fairly full of vets, lotsa viet vets too. Not shacks though, mostly trailers, with hook-in to some landowner's electric and a drain field. Some off grid with wood heat.


A few drift into the small towns during local stand-downs but not the hardcore of course. They're rarely dangerous if left in peace, and lead simple lives with basic masculine necessities. A little kindness goes a long way with these doods. Cheers.

little dynamo said...

'Boys, special ops guys don't break and turn into emotional or homicidal wrecks'


During a gig in the PNW I worked with a forward recon guy with viet and Cambodian experience. He channeled his stuff into game-hunting and fishing. A calm and non-threatening guy. I enjoyed hearing about his in-country days when he felt like talking. He was not a braggart (nor an apologist) about what he'd done, which reinforced his cred. Cheers.