Yeah, keep your eyes on the road, your hand
upon the wheel
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Yeah, we’re goin’ to the Roadhouse
We’re gonna have a real
Good time
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Yeah, we’re goin’ to the Roadhouse
We’re gonna have a real
Good time
The Doors – Roadhouse Blues
Spending a week
driving around a western state 1,700 miles from my stomping grounds in
Pennsylvania provides a different perspective on the level of economic, social
and political degradation impacting the country. With a daily commute along the
crumbling, crummy, gridlocked deathtrap roadways into West Philadelphia, the
squalor and decomposition of our civilization is self-evident.
I live in a
corrupt state with the highest gasoline taxes, highest tolls, massively
underfunded government pension liability, failing government run public
schools, suburban sprawl dotted with ghost malls, vacant industrial parks, and
urban ghetto shitholes plagued by drugs, murder, welfare mentality, excessive
taxes, and left wing politicians.
Politically, the
state is virtually split down the middle, with the urban enclaves of
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh dominated by Democrats, rural areas dominated by
Republicans, and suburbs capable of going either way – but leaning left. Trump
won the state mostly due to the lack of enthusiasm for Hillary in Philly and
Pittsburgh. If the Democrats weren’t so dysfunctional and beholden to the far
left, a moderate Democrat would win the state easily.
The governor is
a Democrat and the legislature is Republican controlled, so budgets are
virtually impossible to pass, with the only predictable outcome being higher
taxes, fees, tolls, and deferral of essential actions to address the billions
in underfunded government pensions. The Federal prison has a wing just for
corrupt PA politicians. At least life is predictable.
Living in the
northwest suburbs, 30 miles from the City of Philadelphia, and commuting into
the city on a daily basis for the last 12 years, has given me a good vantage
point in assessing the state of the infrastructure, economic trends, and
societal decay in my part of this exponentially delusional, debt dependent,
chaotic country. The U.S. and my corner of PA. have supposedly been in the
midst of an economic recovery for the last nine years.
The government
data shows a declining unemployment rate, rising GDP, non-existent inflation,
record corporate profits, low interest rates leading to a growing housing
market, soaring consumer confidence, and a record high stock market. In the
parlance of Jim Morrison, we’ve been at the Roadhouse having a real good time.
We’re gonna need more than a beer to recover from the inevitable hangover.
My suburban
slice of Montgomery County is prosperous and growing, based upon demographic
and economic data produced by the government. The populace is mostly upper
middle class white collar families. I’ve lived in the same house for 23 years,
through the 2000 internet bust, the Greenspan created housing bubble, the 2008
Wall Street created financial implosion, and the supposed nine year economic
recovery. Within three miles of my house we had two strip centers with 100%
occupancy in 1995. For the last eight years one center has been 90% vacant and
the other 50% vacant. Office buildings built in 2005 still have numerous
vacancies. Entire 600,000 sq. ft. office parks remain unoccupied, except for
weeds, rodents, mold and decay.
Grand government
plans for new retail outlets never materialized. Numerous gas stations have
been shuttered, rotting and weed infested testaments to better times. Numerous
grocery stores, locally owned restaurants, and small businesses have gone belly
up during these supposed good times. Imagine what will happen during the next
official recession.
This Potemkin
economic recovery is buttressed by unpayable debt, Federal Reserve easy money,
fudged financial industry accounting, fake economic data, endemic political
corruption, and a perpetual flow of propaganda from the corporate media spigot
convincing the mathematically challenged masses all is well and going into debt
to keep up with the Joneses is a brilliant strategy for success. If you ignore
the fake news and false rhetoric from politicians, bankers and the media, you
can see the continued economic deterioration with your own eyes and your own
bank account.
You can tell
what our society values and supports by observing your immediate surroundings.
The only construction I see are new bank branches, new medical facilities, drug
stores, new fast food joints (creating the need for new medical facilities),
and new government buildings. The once teetering Wall Street banking industry
is alive and well due to tens of trillions funneled their way by the Fed and
feckless Washington political machine.
You can’t swing
a dead homeless person without hitting a Too Big To Trust Wall Street bank
branch. Why do we need these monuments to greed and hubris when you can make a
deposit with your smartphone, pay your bills on-line, and use your debit or
credit card for every transaction? It’s insane to waste money on thousands of
branches. But, when you can get your money from the Fed for free, everything
looks like a good investment.
The trillions
flowing out of people’s bank accounts and into the coffers of the sick industry
complex have enriched these corporations to such an extent; they feel the need
to build palatial complexes and numerous outlets for their “legal” drug
distribution. You know an industry is rolling in dough when they build high
tech glass palaces with concierge service and upscale restaurants, to service
sick people.
Those Obamacare
premiums and insurance payments are going somewhere, and even after paying the
corporate executives their obscene salaries and bonuses, there is plenty left
over for the construction of medical Taj Mahals and lobbying corrupt slimy
snakes in congress for more. Despite the extravagance of these medical
facilities, the service still sucks, a Tylenol costs $25, the physicians are
barely adequate, the mis-diagnosis rate is sky high, and the staff is surly and
rude.
Local
politicians build themselves new grand municipal buildings, even though there
are vacant office buildings out the wazoo. New Social Security Administration
buildings are constructed at an astounding pace, especially in the Democrat
controlled urban ghettos. New Section 8 housing estates are built with union
labor on the taxpayer dime. That is the common denominator in all the new
building occurring in this country.
The funds for
this frenzy of banking, sick care and government construction has materialized
out of thin air by a privately owned banking cabal called the Federal Reserve
in conspiracy with the Deep State. This entire engineered Potemkin recovery and
building boom is built on a liquefying foundation of bad debt and lies. Let it
roll, baby, roll.
My little piece
of suburban paradise in this failing and falling empire of debt may be decaying
slowly, but my daily commute into the putrid, dilapidated, crumbling ghetto
killing field called Philadelphia is a different matter. This corrupt liberal
bastion of unfunded government pensions, outrageously high taxes, overpriced
union labor, criminal Democrat politicians, dreadful public schools, potholes
that could swallow a small car, crumbling infrastructure, murder, mayhem, and
an enslaved underclass of welfare dependent minorities, is much further along
the track to collapse. This city has pockets of prosperity, but its death
rattle is unmistakable. The decay is too far gone and debt too large to
realistically reverse course, even if there was a will to do so – which there
is not.
My week in
Colorado further clarified my view the American empire is in decline, but it is
a cascading decline with regions and cities at various stages of collapse. My
relatively rural suburban enclave is probably fifty percent of the way there.
Philadelphia is eighty percent of the way there. Colorado only appears to be
twenty five percent of the way there. I would ponder much of the western U.S.,
excluding the liberal bastions in California and Washington State, is also
further from collapse than the heavily urbanized debt burdened northeastern
U.S.
Driving up I-25
to Fort Collins, down to Colorado Springs and west to Boulder and Breckinridge,
presented a fairly broad view of the greater Denver area. The most conspicuous
aspect of Colorado, from my perspective, is the vast picturesque expanse of
open space as far as the eye can see. Every direction seems to be framed by
snow-capped Rocky Mountains. It’s the diametric opposite to my daily commute
through the 30 Blocks of Squalor in West Philly.
The beauty of
the Colorado landscape is somewhat obscured by a seemingly never ending
proliferation of retail malls along the entire expanse of I-25. They all look
alike, bathed in a beige sandstone design. The malls are populated by the same
national retail chains inhabiting the ghost malls on the east coast. They are
still constructing new malls, something not done on the east coast for years.
It seems there
are still a significant number of people with disposable income in Colorado.
Their labor participation rate has actually increased as their unemployment
rate has fallen. The plunge in the participation rate has produced fake
unemployment levels on the east coast. From that perspective Colorado is in
better shape than most of the country.
You can’t help
but notice the weed dispensaries sprinkled across the countryside. The
legalization of marijuana has certainly had a short term economic benefit, as
it has generated jobs and a massive inflow of tax revenue into government
coffers. The longer term negative impact is revealing itself by the inordinate
amount of homeless addicts in downtown Denver, at interstate off-ramps, under
bridge overpasses in Boulder, and loitering in public parks in college towns
like Fort Collins. The seeds of collapse are already planted. The influx of
liberals fleeing California and the east coast are already indoctrinating a
formerly conservative self-reliant state with socialist, feminist, and nanny
state philosophies. This was borne out by Hillary’s narrow victory in 2016.
The
infrastructure is not in a state of disrepair. Instead of trash and garbage
along its interstates, there are clean-up crews picking up tumbleweeds.
Everything still has that new smell feel. You just don’t see dilapidated
structures. There are no potholes. Stop lights always function. Traffic is
heavy at peak times, but not gridlocked. With the best ski resorts, awe
inspiring tourist attractions (Garden of the Gods, Red Rocks), the majestic
Rockies, growing economy, lack of government pension liabilities, and the weed industry,
Colorado will sustain itself far longer than the Democrat run putrefying urban
ghettos on the east coast. Make no mistake, the American empire is in the midst
of a cascading collapse, and it will reach Colorado eventually.
If ever the
lyrics “The future’s uncertain and the end is always near” were more
applicable, it would be this past week. The stock market plunged by almost
1,300 points (no tweets from Trump taking credit), Trump accelerated his trade
war with the world, he replaced a warmongering general with a warmongering
neocon psychopath, the first quarter GDP estimate continued to decline to below
2%, a bunch of useful idiots were manipulated by Soros, Bloomberg and other
liberal billionaires to protest against their own rights, and Trump topped it
off by stabbing his supporters in the back by signing a bloated Democrat/RINO
$1.3 trillion spending bill funding left wing priorities while ignoring
everything he supposedly stands for. The Deep State either has pictures, or he
is just a wolf in sheep’s clothing with no moral compass or desire to fulfill
the agenda he ran on. It was a profoundly disappointing week for Trump
supporters, even as the financial markets and economy show unequivocal cracks.
As we enter the
second half of this Fourth Turning, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the
specific events which will propel us towards its climax. We do know the events
will be driven by the three catalysts of debt, civic decay, and global
disorder. We’ve breached the $21 trillion national debt level, with Trump’s new
budget poised to blast through $22 trillion in less than a year. The $200
trillion of unfunded liabilities looms in the foreseeable future. Corporate
debt stands at an all-time high. Consumer debt stands at an all-time high.
Global debt approaches $200 trillion. The coming financial dislocation will
blow this powder keg of debt sky high. Matches are being lit on a daily basis.
Civic decay
accelerates as gun grabbing left wing billionaires attempt to disarm the
deplorables before the real conflict arrives. The Deep State wages war against
the insurrection within their swamp. Surveillance agencies commit acts of
treason. The Constitution is shit upon by those in power. An ongoing coup
against the sitting president proceeds unabated. The citizens are treated as
sheep being led to slaughter.
The few critical
thinking dissenters are treated as criminals for exercising their First
Amendment rights. The social media conglomerates, acting as the eyes and ears
of the Deep State, lure the masses into willingly sacrificing their private
information. There will be no compromise. The animosity between right and left
has reached civil war levels. There is no middle. This will be a fight to the
finish.
Trump has
surrounded himself with neo-con war mongering philistines, while provoking
nuclear powers, and embroiling our military in unwinnable conflicts across the
Middle East. Trade wars, whether warranted or not, will ratchet up the
intensity and antagonism. The Muslim hordes invading Europe are already provoking
a political uprising across the continent. The North Korea problem is far from
solved. Politicians across the globe facing unsolvable domestic issues will
turn to foreign conflict as a way to distract the masses. Once the Rubicon is
crossed the law of unintended consequences will rear its ugly head. The future
of humanity hinges on the push of a button. Do you trust the current lot of
feeble minded sociopaths to do the right thing?
The future may
be uncertain but the end is always near. Within the next decade the future will
be revealed. I believe we are headed for harder times. There is no going back
to better days. Trump is the catalyst for conflict, both domestic and
international. He will not save this nation. It will be up to individuals
across the land. It’s time to mentally, physically, and financially prepare for
the bitter winter ahead. Keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the
wheel. In the meantime, follow Jim Morrison’s advice and get yourself a beer.
