Dermot,

As a result of your game, which I accessed through Huf Post, I became part of a much larger PO aware group. I moved to a “doomstead” and grow much of my food. My lifestyle has changed as a result and I am a, I think, better person for it.

The good (or bad, depending on how much you like to drive) news is that we probably can’t afford to.

Saltarello #2 – Chominciamento di Gioia – Ensemble Unicorn

Neptune’s Cornucopia

I agree about the Tea-baggers, mostly. My brother is one, and I have spent considerable time trying to deprogram him over the phone, so I have a pretty good idea of how the average denizen of that subculture thinks. No, I can’t rate the probability of their becoming a source of armed insurrection as very high, although I can easily see them becoming a danger to themselves and each other.

You get a lot of “they” in conversations with Tea-baggers; the “them” that are the source of all our problems (e.g. Democrats, Mexicans, gays, etc.) need to be put down before any progress can be made on most issues. They’ve been very expensively programmed to direct their ire on their neighbors, and away from the people who are actually screwing them (need one ask who they are?).

That’s a point I’ve particularly tried to get across to little brother; that when TSHTF those hated “others” will be his next-door neighbors, while Sean Hannity will be out on his yacht, counting his money and thanking his lucky stars that there are still so many Great (i.e. stupid) Americans. You might as well get on a first-name basis with them, bro, and let the past go. It’s the future you need to worry about.

Still, I wouldn’t soft-pedal the possibility of insurrection or even revolution in this country. Place the following ingredients in the witch’s cauldron and stir, and see what you get:

1) Two hundred and fifty million (at least) firearms in private hands in the U.S.; who knows how many rounds of ammunition (billions?), ditto.

2) G.W. Bush’s great gift to the nation: hundreds of thousands of angry, bitter, not infrequently f***ed-up-in-the-head war veterans, many of whom have small-unit tactical expertise, gained whilst fighting actual insurrectionists in other countries.

3) The fact that the majority of the Central Government’s armed forces are mired in hopeless overseas occupations, from which they will not soon be returning, if ever (read Dmitri Orlov on the possibility of U.S. troops being stranded overseas when the aforementioned S H TF. In fact, I like to goad right-wingers with that one: “Revolution? Go for it, dude! They don’t have anything to stop you with! The troops are all Over There!. What are you waiting for? What are you, some kind of p***y?).

4) And, lastly, the brave boys and girls of The Thin Blue Line, who will soon be discovering that pensions, and even stable employment, are a thing of the past. Yes, it’s fun to lampoon our police, who never saw a donut that didn’t need apprehending, but it’s important to remember that they are often veterans and are quite capable of going full Orwell on your ass (for a precis on how the whole jarhead-to-cop metamorphosis takes place, see author Kent Anderson’s brilliant novels Sympathy For The Devil and Night Dogs.

(To be fair, the other guys must have been on break. You know, like the kind real rioters take).

Many years ago a British journalist wrote about the end of the British Empire, in the late 1940s. As the flag was lowered for the last time over some SE Asian colonial outpost, the officer in charge realised that the soldiers didn’t care a damn either way… he asked himself the question “What causes the sun to set in the hearts of men?”

That always springs to mind when looking at the state of the U.S. today – only 40 years ago they put men on the moon (though a sizable percentage now thinks that it was a hoax), now, you’re lucky if you can get from A to B by any medium without delays or molestation.

Incidentally, little wonder that people think that the moon landings were a hoax. Fundie-rationalists would put it down to base stupidity…but there may be another reason: cognitive dissonance. Why, if the farts of the 60s could do it, can’t we? Were they better than us? Nah, they were fakers and piss-artists, just like us.

The ultimate tall-poppy, perhaps. Chop that flower, all the way from the Lunar Surface.

I doubt very much that the capital investment it would take to salvage the old rail system (as Kunstler suggests) is even possible at this point. The Obama stimulus may go down in history as the last chance we had to make large-scale investments in the U.S. infrastructure (and they screwed the pooch, big time). At this point, it’s not a choice between high-speed rail and the old-fashioned kind, it’s a choice to decide where you want to be living when the hammer falls. Because that’s where you’re going to stay.

Unless, of course, you have a donkey in the garage. Or your boots were made for walkin’.

It probably helped to save a bit of cash as well, having some of the movie in colour!

Wim Winders used the same in “Wings of Desire” – having the angels in monochrome amplifies the desire for mortality … if only for the extra spectral perception!