Doug's Darkworld

Another week gone. First, the economy. It’s in big trouble. The “stimulus” of last year has run its course. Printing a huge pile of money and spending it was never any more than a stopgap solution, and there doesn’t seem to have been a “Plan B.” In fact in a very real sense that sums up American foreign and domestic policy since World War Two: “Um, there is no Plan B sir.” If this is the case, I bet we will see a new “stimulus” plan just before the November election. I don’t think it really matters though, sooner or later the house of cards that is the American dollar is going to fall down. Gerald Celente says we are all doomed, and he’s never been wrong before.

Speaking of the economy, there’s a rumour going around that it has been discovered that a lot of the gold bars in Fort Knox are fake, just gold plated tungsten. God only knows how much truth there is to this rumour, it’s one of those things that is unlikely that us peasants will ever know for sure. Ron Paul would like an audit of the US gold supply, so this rumour isn’t completely unfounded. If it’s true, pretty good bet the US government will do whatever it can to deny and obscure the truth. I just like the story because it’s a wonderful example of the looting that has been going on for decades in the USA. Our government has spent enough “money” in the past few decades to make King Midas jealous, and all we have to show for it is a crumbling infrastructure, a giant pile of swords, and now, possibly, fake gold bars. Unrestrained capitalism is rotten to the core, and I guess it’s a tungsten core. I looked it up too, tungsten weighs almost exactly the same as gold, so a gold plated tungsten bar would be superficially indistinguishable for the real McCoy.

The bizarre world that is our colonial wars continues. Bizarre world because what the USA is trying to do in Afghanistan and Iraq is simply good old fashioned nineteenth century overt colonialism. Shoot your way into a country, set up a puppet government, and loot the country’s resources while enriching the tiny minority you are using to rule the country. Um, this stopped working around the 1930s, because by about then pretty much everyone on the planet had figured out that with smokeless gunpowder, they could fight back. In comic book world, our super-soldiers could easily defeat a bunch of towel head terrorists and their grateful woman and children would greet us with flowers. In the real world, the longest wars in US history still only have two of the world’s premier failed states to show for them.

And in another depressing development, Muslim bashing is reaching new heights in the USA. Thank you Sarah Palin and all the rest. Archie Bunker would be proud. On the one hand I guess one can’t blame politicians to resorting to attacking some tiny minority to get votes, I mean, we are talking about people who actually want to have power over their fellow Americans, something that no actual grown up would desire. What’s sad is that so so many people fall for this sort of tripe hook, line, and sinker. No, the massive problems the USA are facing aren’t because of decades  of corruption and greed and mismanagement in Washington, oh no, it’s the liberals/immigrants/Muslims/Martians that caused all the problems! Jesus wept.

In another sign of the abysmal failure of the modern educational system, the annual Mars hoax is making the rounds again. This is an email claiming that on August 27 Mars will be the size of the full Moon in the sky. Don’t they teach anything about the Solar System in the school anymore? For Mars to appear the size of the full Moon it would have to leave its orbit somehow and go careening around the Solar System. Though to be fair, the fact that Velikovsky’s books were best sellers in the 1950s shows that ignorance of basic science has been a widespread problem all of my life.

In the final analysis, I don’t know anymore. The modern world in some aspects is unlike anything that has gone on before, especially when it comes to mass media and its attendant propaganda/advertising. I’m more and more thinking though that every new development in mass media is making the great unwashed masses stupider and more ignorant. Yes, the Internet may be the greatest dumbing down device ever invented. TV turned people’s brains into mush, and now the Internet is whipping the mush into a fine foam.

Have a great weekend everyone.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, yadda-yadda-yadda. Credit and copyright: MBS Astronomy. The image is what you won’t see in the skies tonight. If the gentle reader ever does see such a sight, there’s any number of possibilities, but Mars actually being that close to Earth isn’t even on the list.)