The Banality of Catastrophe

The passage of ObamaCare by Congress adds another item to the list of government programs that will, according to projections, take up the entire national budget within a decade or two. We already had entitlement programs, first among them being Social Security, on a projected course to bankrupt the treasury... to which one should add both current and proposed environmental (read: “global warming”) measures... and the endless wars... and the interest on the money we've already borrowed (and continue to borrow) to pay for things like bailouts, economic stimulus plans, wars, and so on. When you combine all of these programs, or clusters of programs, into a single vector, they will eventually add up to far more than the gross national product... and yet Congress blithely carries on, hoping for some sort of deus ex machina, like maybe UFOs will appear in the skies above Washington and friendly aliens will slither down spiral staircases carrying a million tons of gold bullion. Unlikely? Yes, but that appears to be the plan.

But in fact, catastrophes of any sort and of any size are seldom neat, clean, and surgically precise. The exceptions are so rare as to be noteworthy. For example, if you were a resident of Hiroshima or Nagasaki in August of 1945, you would have seen the world change in, literally, a flash. And one can always point to volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. But most catastrophes are somewhat ponderous by the standards of our short-attention-span age. Even the Black Plague required a few years to do its work... and a recent book devoted to the topic, “Collapse” by Jared Diamond, shows that very few things go wrong overnight. How long did the fall of the Roman Empire take – certainly in the first rank among civilizational catastrophes, at least. And yet, by the time the political/military fall was complete, the empire was already being revived and reconstituted in an entirely new form by the Church. Most empires do not, in fact, fall even over the course of a lifetime; it can take many generations. The 20th Century provides a somewhat distorted view of the situation, with its 12-year “Thousand Year Reich” of the Nazis and the breakup of the Soviet Union after two-plus generations. Nazi Germany did not have an empire worthy of the name – only conquests. The Soviets, on the other hand, really did have an empire but were unable to hold onto it primarily because of fatal flaws in the Soviet system. (And yes, they did get a gentle push from Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II, but that would not have been enough if the Soviets had had a sustainable and rational system.) Older empires, perhaps, provide better examples – starting with the European colonial empires and working back. They at least were predicated on the notion that an empire should be a good thing for the mother country, i.e. be profitable – unlike our current concept, which is that the more we invest the more successful we are, even if there is absolutely no return on investment. And perhaps it's true that the age of geographically- and militarily- based empires has passed, and we now have to look to international financial empires to find the real thing. This is, of course, highly disorienting, since throughout human history there has been a fixation on military conquest, occupation, and administration, with the economic benefits following along behind. But in our time, in many cases the military conquest part can be skipped, as can the occupation; only the administrative part needs care and feeding, since success depends on the installation and continual bribing of the right “leaders”. So while wars are still fought – at least in part – by men in uniform, they ultimately answer to men in expensive suits in high-rise buildings with tinted windows. The real warrior kings of our time have offices on Wall Street, and in London, Paris, Moscow, and so on. And you can even tell this by their attitude and demeanor! Take any number of titans of the financial world who periodically parade before Congress, basically daring our befuddled representatives to do anything about their predatory behavior. Where do you think these guys would have been in days of yore? In saddles atop a war horse, encased in armor, leading an army. That's why I'm saying that we are in a disorienting time – we truly don't understand what we are dealing with. Congress, for example, doesn't realize that, in dealing with the brigands of Wall Street they might as well be dealing with the Huns, or the Golden Horde -- people who have absolutely no interest in the economic welfare of the U.S. or its citizens, except to the extent that it's correlated with their own interests.

But to get back to the hand we are now holding – the impossible array of debt, and proposed debt, that everyone in power chooses to ignore. One possibility is that they ignore it because they know that it's impossible and absurd; these programs can never be paid for and the money already borrowed can never be paid back. So, what winds up taking the hit when that happens? There will be political hits for certain -- but no politician ever thinks beyond the next election. There will also be hits having to do with things like the currency, along with plenty of side effects in areas like employment, productivity, the service sector, and so on. Paradoxically, it is actually easier for an individual to go bankrupt and get away with it than it is for a country to do the same thing. The individual undergoes liquidation down to a certain point, and is then forgiven and allowed to rebuild his assets and credit with no further harassment. But when this happens to a nation, the liquidation can well be total and permanent – it might result in a revolution or a takeover by another nation (friendly or otherwise), and frequently the residual debts or reparations continue to haunt that nation and its people for generations. In other words, nothing is ever truly forgiven -- not really. And it is, in any case, the end of that nation's power and influence, at least until it can manage to build itself up again (which may never happen – and here we can readily see the influence of national character).

So, for instance, is the United States “too big to fail”, just as so many of our manufacturing and financial entities supposedly are? And who makes that call? The problem is that we have been bailing out other nations and other economies for decades... and this is partly the reason we're in the fix we're in. We've spend years, and billions, trying to create economic "mini-me's" around the world, whether or not the people in question had any interest in the matter or any ability to see it through. (And, to be honest, we have to admit that most of the "successes" were on the part of people who already knew the ropes. The failures were on the part of those who didn't know and didn't care, i.e. the majority.) But when we start to stagger and fall, who will bail us out? And even if they could, will they want to? The determination as to whether the “Age of America” on the world stage is over with will almost certainly not be ours; in fact, the decision may have already been made, and all we're seeing now is its implementation. Is it possible, for instance, that international financiers in Europe are conspiring with China to do us in – to render us, as I said in an earlier post, eyeless in Gaza? And don't say it couldn't happen – bigger and older empires than ours have been brought down by conspiracies of just that sort. And don't forget that, even with an economy in ruins, we would still be a country rich in resources – but now more or less helpless to defend ourselves against people interested in acquiring them. This is something people forget when they're talking about the Great Depression. It's not as if the United States disappeared – we still had land, people, manufacturing capability, infrastructure, and so on – we were still, compared to much of the world, the land of milk and honey. What we did not have was a healthy economy. There were imbalances and distortions, mostly caused by, and perpetuated by, the government. The difference is that, back then, the rest of the world was in at least a bad a fix as we were in... whereas in the current case I'm not sure that's true. Oh, certainly the Great Recession, or whatever it's being called, has had some trickle-down domino effects, and some people have borne the brunt to a greater degree than others – one thinks of Iceland, for instance. But overall? World wide? It's clear that some places aren't hurting a bit – and that, in fact, some places – and people, and organizations – have done nothing but profit from the economic woes of others. And while it's a logical fallacy to always judge intentions based on results, it's hard to believe that some of the people who came out of it “smelling like a rose” didn't have something to do with it in the first place. We know that there were massive manipulations going on for years before the crisis... massive manipulations during the crisis... and, right now, more massive manipulations as part of the so-called recovery. If the Great Depression didn't end anywhere near as soon as it should have, it's because a lot of people didn't want it to end; I imagine some of the same dynamics are working at present. Every man's misfortune is another's fortune... and this is true of nations as well, now perhaps more than ever. There is, after all, a finite – not easily countable but finite nonetheless – amount of wealth in the world. Wealth is seldom ever truly “lost” -- it just changes hands. Even the destruction wrought by war, famine, plague, etc. will eventually be balanced out by people and work. Could a better example in our time be provided than that of China? (On the other hand, there will always, I suppose, be Haitis in the world... )

These are all important considerations. But the main point I'm trying to make here is that, while our current and proposed governmental/economic vectors all point to the same thing, namely catastrophe, it is unlikely to be an overnight affair. We won't go to bed one night with currency worth something and wake up the next morning with it worth nothing. And what level of national debt per capita will turn out to be literally fatal? I mean, my share of the national debt could be a million dollars – or a billion. What's the difference if I can't pay it? Are they going to put me to work washing dishes in some restaurant in Hong Kong for ten million years? You see the absurdity of the situation. Even slaves have to be fed and clothed – otherwise the system collapses even faster; and is that what they want? See, long before any of these trends reach the “Hiroshima point”, or the “Black Death point”, the system will start to break down. Remember the population alarmists of the 1960s who predicted that, on a certain day not far into the future, everyone on Earth would starve to death? Pretty much at the same time? People on the Upper East Side of Manhattan would be in the same boat as residents of Mali. It would be food one day, and no food the next. Or – how about the notion that we're all going to run out of potable water at the same time... or breathable air? Or we're all going to succumb to the effects of the missing ozone layer? And for that matter, what ever happened to "heterosexual AIDS"? There was a film some years back – and I forget the title – but the premise was that the population of the Earth had grown so precipitously that now the entire planet resembled a subway platform in Tokyo during rush hour – standing room only. All, that is, except for one acre of green, open space which was the prize in a lottery. So at the end of the movie, the family that won the lottery is seen lounging in its own little greensward (fenced off, of course) while this densely-packed crowd consisting of Everyone Else On Earth mutters and mumbles in the background with a sound like a giant hive of bees.

But see, even allowing for poetic license, this is very seldom – hardly ever, in fact – the way things actually work, and I don't care whether you're talking about natural disasters, wars, famines, plagues, economic crises, or anything else. Not only are there frequently counter-forces at work, but the main force of the catastrophe tends to be self-limiting (think: “killer bees” -- where are they now?). Famines, for example, are seldom total; when the population goes down enough to match the remaining food supply, we can say that the crisis is past. A war can devastate a nation, or a countryside – but aren't there always some survivors? (There have to be, because otherwise who's going to fight the next war?) The Black Death changed the face of Europe – permanently in many ways – but civilization did, in fact, survive.

So what can we expect in the current situation? Sudden and catastrophic, and simultaneous, failure of all major government programs, along with the economy and the currency? An overnight return to tribalism and a barter economy? Mass migrations of the sick, the homeless, and the starving? A thousand civil wars fought on every imaginable level? No – and it's not because negligence on the part of the government could not go that far. Clearly it could. But what I'm saying is that it won't happen because it's impossible; something else will happen first. In fact, many “something elses” will happen first, and it's not by any means certain what the dynamics will be. If you take any historical upheaval, movement, or trend, the “straight-line” projection would have given you one answer, but actual outcomes provide another. I always think, for example, of the “black power” movement that was so prominent in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Militant, heavily-armed, radical blacks were busily taking over neighborhoods and even entire cities, and who knew when, or how, it would end? But a funny thing happened on the way to a black American utopia. A lot of the leaders wound up dead or in jail... others softened their rhetoric or simply left the scene... and others got co-opted by politics and the power structure. So the wave washed over the country, but when it receded things were left pretty much intact. The New Deal is still very much with us, but it doesn't have nearly the sharp, cutting edge that it did in its heyday – although I must admit that ObamaCare looks and feels mighty New Dealish to me. And hey, let's not forget the blessedly-short Era of Jimmy Carter, when all “indicators” pointed to a sudden and irrevocable decline in America's fortunes, both at home and abroad. Ronald Reagan, whatever his faults, didn't buy the hype and decided to do something about it – and enough people agreed with him to actually make it happen. And maybe that's all you need much of the time – sufficient numbers to imagine, and believe, that things can be, and ought to be, different. Will this still be possible as the dead hand of national debt weighs ever more heavily on the populace, and the economy? Hard to say. Certainly a spiritual renewal is always possible, regardless of how dire our economic straits are. But in either case, at some point people have to become truly radicalized – more radicalized than they have ever been in American history. And this, I suspect, is the least likely scenario – at least for the current generation. But if the next generation ever gets in touch with the absurdity of what they have been left with, we might see some real hope, and real change.