Both my wife and I have been feeling rather skitish lately – her reasons are hers and some dovetail with mine, which are freaky enough to stand alone as a testament of fact being stranger than fiction…
Credit is disappearing. That’s the bottom line in all this banking hullaballoo. Lost your job? No loan for you to get a car that runs to find a job that doesn’t exist. Walked away (if you were smart) or got foreclosed on? Welcome to the poor renter class. A shitload of people are thanking ol’ God for food stamps since it’s gotten hard to get out of a grocery store for less than thirty bucks per bag… the mall is empty and the second hand clothes sores are packed.
Where I feel discomfort is seeing all this dismantling of ease and comfort without seeing anything that can change its continuation. Every couple of job losses set up the loss of the job dependent on them. Big whoop – a Hardee’s closes down and the teens formerly manning the counter and fryer can’t upgrade to the latest cell phone. But say Hardee’s stock drops, somebody’s portfolio looses value and an Orange County housewife has to choose between the nail salon and yoga class. Pimply faced high school graduate doesn’t move into an apartment with a couple of friends… Mom and Dad continue to foot the bills for his upkeep.
Lots chatter/speculation on doom boards as to what happens when business as usual “BAU” comes to an end, but I think that “future” happened about three years ago. Here we are banging up against “two oh ten” and if you go back to oh seven and look at the general state of affairs then and now you’d see we’ve come a long way, baby. Hiccups in 07, some bad gas in 08, pure nausea in 09 and I got a bad feeling we’re on our way to a prolapsed asshole this coming year. Economic dysentery. Comes from drinking the Kool Aid.
It’s just disintegrating out there. I sit here in relative ease and comfort with a freezer fulla pork, a basement fulla home canned food, a billion pounds of doomer beans, fifty acres of woods for the cookstove, the wife has a “last to be cut” job teaching college and no mortgage to a bank. You know the feeling you get when you watch a Nat Geo show about refugee camps – all the poor miserable people? I feel much the same thing when I drive through town and engage in “economic activity”. There’s some real sadness in people’s eyes at the checkout counters. But what’s really nagging at me is that though people seem to be adapting, however resignedly, to the new reality that the glass is 1/4 full room for adaptation is rapidly shrinking. When those walls close in I have my doubts that a “can do” spirit will rise to the forefront; I think a collective “this is all fucked up” will be in vogue and individual acts of mayhem will be overlooked by peers and our societal glue will disappear.
It’s going to get more dangerous. Think about getting carjacked so a couple of broke and nothing to loose guys can strip it down for a hundred bucks of scrap metal. Watch out at the ATM for a person willing to strong arm for a couple of twenties. Maybe even having a sackfull of groceries lifted form your cart in the parking lot in a snatch and grab hit. I wouldn’t go on vacation without nosy neighbors watching the house or a trusted house sitter. It won’t take a whole lot of this to make us look at our “fellow man” as a potential threat… and that’s when the gloves come off.
Right about the time cities can’t make police payroll…
Yeah… Our new police chief wants MORE cops. Hell, they just added a bunch more a couple years ago. Hmmmm, would that tell us that maybe crime is on the rise? It is on the rise ’round here. More home invasions, burglary and stuff. Car thefts. Drugs. You name it. That’s why I got guns, ammo, and a nice place in the country to skeedaddle too when the shit gets too deep ’round here. It is gettin’ deep…
Speaking of more cops. . .
I was at the local airport terminal this morning to get my security badge updated. I observed a total of two (2) passengers and still there were over a half a dozen TSA Blue Shirts “manning” the single portal to the departure gate area.
We do not have a police force in this county, just the sheriff’s dept. There is talk that with the budget cuts, they may get rid of the night shift.
Won’t that be interesting!
It all reminds me of a boys grade school joke.
Three boys sitting on a porch pulling on their manhood, and the preacher comes by and says stop or you will go blind. The first two boys stop, and little Jackie says don’t worry preacher I’ll stop when I need glasses.
Too many individuals feel that if they get a can of “Everlasting Seeds” off the web and a gardening book on the bookshelf that they have prepared them selves for a collapse. Too many communities feel if they keep the budget from getting too bad it will stay together. They figure they can “Stop when they need glasses”.
I’ve been gardening most of my life, and on this same spot for ten years. I grew some beautiful 2 1/2 pound potatoes this year, but I don’t have a clue why all the varieties of beans did not produce as they have in the past. Some of my soil is still absolute shit even after ten years of hard work. Hell, I’m still struggling with the food part of the food clothing and shelter thing we learned about as kids.
One of the problems is that social collapse is slow. You lose your job and start working from home and the old lady takes up the slack. You back down from two cars and a truck to a car and a truck. You sell the truck to help pay for the kids trip to the hospital. You thought you could stop when you needed glasses, but now your blind.
Yep, if your not scared, your blind and that is just one hell of a way to be in a collapse.
tired john
Many moons have passed since our last discourse. Remember what Buddha said – “A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering.” – Namaste
Love the blog comrade!
But on topic–I finally found a job. Four years of college and several months of searching, and I am finally working part time for minimum wage. I work at a discount store and it is SO damn disheartening.
People working jobs they hate for shit they don’t need (Tyler Durden)
The fabric of society is starting to already show some rips and tears in it, and it’s only gonna get worse. Imagine how bad things would be without another unemployment extension, food stamps, and various other programs. Wandering droves of those infected with Kool-aid induced dysentery, all looking for their next box of easy-mac to pack on their asses…but what are they gonna do when the programs can’t be funded anymore….chaos, I figure. glad I live somewhat in the middle of nowhere, at least I can see’em comin’….
And you gotta love those on some “doomer” forums that think they’re gonna just run to the country with a bag o’ canned beans and throw some seeds out and “survive”, ya right, don’t come’a'knockin’ on my door.
Yeah, Namaste,,, but the people are more like the characters in “Tobacco Road” than monks on a mountaintop.
Hmmmn… good idea for next post.
Not sure how I started coming across these prepper and SHTF blogs, but anyway I find them interesting and informative.
I read the news and hear about all the economic struggles people are facing, but the weird thing is, IT is not happening where I am or in my inner circle. I’m not saying that it won’t or can’t, but right now I feel forunate.
We are a typical middle class family. My husband makes about 50K a year, I’m a SAHM/3 kids. My husband has been at the same company for 14 years. There are no rumors of layoffs for now. None of my family or friends have lost their jobs. And I don’t know anybody in foreclosure. When I go to the mall, I can’t find a parking spot.The stores are crowded! The grocery aisle are full of shoppers loading their carts. Nobody I know looks like their struggling! I’m not trying to be smart…but I just don’t see any signs of a struggling economy where I am. I am in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Maybe things haven’t hit here yet or maybe you think I’m ignorant, but I swear I just don’t see it here.
Hi carol, thanks for commenting.
Listen… the city/town of Joplin could be seen as bustling if I was looking at the traffic and the checkout lanes at vole mart. The college where my wife teaches has increased enrollment every semester and she’s up to her ears building new courses. But I can also see increased numbers of truly down and out people walking down the highways, and for every new construction project being built for no apparent reason there are three closed down shops.
The point here is seeing through a different pair of glasses. Three years ago were there that many rv’s/trucks/campers/boats in yards with for sale signs on them? Could you go out tomorrow and apply and get hired at a job paying more than 10 bucks an hour with benefits? Just because I don’t live in an area with tent cities popping up I’m not immune to understanding that a significant percentage of the U.S. population are down for the count.
My post was to create an historical marking point that we can use to compare then, now, and tomorrows. My wife hangs with the academia crowd, and my circle of people are junkies and thieves, hahaha. Her friends are secure in their worlds, my friends are no more fucked than they’ve ever been. Personally we are doing better in all areas than we ever have… so I could stick my head in a sack and say recession? What recession? You also have to understand that I’m not really concerned with a recession or even a full blown depression – I’m focused on maintaining a mostly comfortable manner of living if and when the power goes out, paper bags are on all the gas pumps and food trucks stop rolling in to the grocery stores. Forget SHTF with the attendant Mad Max’ers or bullshit “prepping” via stocking up on toilet paper and Spaghetti O’s to keep the children happy. Can I grow the wheat, thresh the wheat, grind the wheat and bake a loaf of sourdough off a starter I’ve been able to keep alive?
By a twist of fate you’re living in SE Penn, and not a Michigan city that was booming a few years ago. But no matter where you may live you are stuck with the same rat race, contaminated food supply, trinkets, gadgets and being a willing participant in the most destructive society ever to stamp its boots on Planet Earth.
Here’s an exercise – cold turkey stop reading the doom boards and ignore the caveat soaked mainstream news reports of things being less than perfect. Then you’ll find a nagging in your gut that says shit ain’t right and you’ll be in line to take the red pill.
One thing that will alter things is that the US is awash in guns. True ammo is tight right now but there is enough for the basics and as things get worse more people, law or no law will pack.
This is good in that people be less at the mercy of thugs, bad in that lot of people are going to die.
Hopefully we will avoid the whole mess and figure out a lasting solution before things get too bad. The US is not set up for long term unemployment