And last night I finally realized that I am totally, off my rocker, padded-room nuts. I started the day like I normally do, with a huge pot of Cafe Du Monde coffee and a few hours reading from one website to another. The primary subject of inquiry yesterday was the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, Section 1031 and the assertions, made all over the internet, that the bill would allow the federal government to arrest and hold me indefinitely with no trial. The more I read, the more freaked out I became until by the end of the day, I just had to stop.
So I stopped looking at sites and stories on the NDAA 1031 and turned my focus back to where I spend every day and that is trying to unravel the mysteries of a world financial system that seem utterly and completely out of control. It didn’t take too long before that little line of inquiry likewise sent my head spinning with the visions of chaos and collapse that increasingly occupy my waking hours. The final article that pushed me into a dizzying vision of concentration camps and armed military riding down my street came from some guy named Tyler Durden, who writes a little blog over at ZeroHedge. Now you might remember Tyler from the Movie Fight Club:
Who knew that, in addition to being a motivational speaker, that he was also such a gifted analyst? Now I frankly don’t understand much of the stuff over there at ZeroHedge. It’s really, really heavy stuff filled with lots of charts and graphs and words like, “de-hypothecation”, but yesterday’s title really grabbed me…
Did Fed Quietly Bail Out A Bank On Tueday?
Like I said, I don’t get all the big shot writing that goes on over there, and the words are often above me, but I think Tyler was trying to say that the United States Federal Reserve pressed a button and sent bajillions of US dollars rocketing offshore to make European banks flush. If you have the inclination to go down that rabbit hole, click the link above.
Well, like I said, by the end of the day I was worked up into a fit. But I had to shut it all off, get into my car and drive over to Tampa Bay to watch the Bucs take on the Dallas Cowboys. This was the final game of the season for the Bucs and the stadium was completely sold out so we had to leave early. We didn’t even make it to the Howard Frankland bridge before the traffic backed up and we were stuck at an absolute standstill on I-275. Now mind you, RayJay Stadium only holds 65,000 people and I assume that most of the folks who were choking up the road were heading to the modern-day coliseum, and it was a mess of red lights and lane changing and fender benders and just anxiety-provoking highway madness. An hour and a half later we finally found a spot, eased the car in then headed for the Stadium.
WOW! How fun, tens of thosands of NFL football fans gathered together in one place after spending several hours getting all loosened up before the gladiators take the field. We were all frisked down by the menacing security, we ran the gauntlet of ticket takers and trinket hawkers then rushed our way up to our seats just as fireworks were blowing off, twinkly stuff was flashing all over the field, cannons were blowing and pulsating music was throbbing from every direction. The game hadn’t even started yet and the capacity crowd of 65,000 was already full-tilt out of their minds.
I really gotta give the crowd credit, they were fired up with passion and energy right from the very beginning. Oh, they had cares alright. They cared about first downs and touchdowns and sacks and all manner of critically-important stuff. I was enveloped by the hoarding throng as we took our seats sandwiched in between the super-sized barbarians that are today’s NFL fan and frankly became a bit dizzy by the sensory overload….the screaming, the pulsating sounds, the flashing strobes and fireworks. I wondered why they didn’t post warning signs for epileptics that all these lights and sounds would definitely induce seizures. I stopped dead in my tracks when the National Anthem played and removed my hat. My father and grandfather taught me that’s what you’re supposed to do, but when I did that I really pissed off everyone around me who apparently had no idea what I was doing…and my interruption of the flow was not at all appreciated….
I tried desperately to forget the obsessions that haunt me all day long, but I could stop staring at the people around me and wondering, How many of these people have health insurance? This stadium is filled with people spending an average of $100 on a ticket, for a family of 4 that’s like $500 bucks for a night out…where does the money come from? How many of these people are so deeply in debt they will never pay it all off? How many of these people are in foreclosure or unemployed? How many of these people know who’s running for president? Do the know what the FED is? Have any of them heard of NDAA 1031?
And that’s when I realized that I have in fact lost my mind. I mean I was sitting among 65,000 of our nation’s finest people. Good consumers, patriots, Americans….ignore for the fact the moment that the majority lack that most basic recognition of national pride that you stop everything, remove your hat, place your hand over your heart when the National Anthem is sung…these people are the heart and soul of America.
And that’s when I realized…they’ve got it all right and I’ve got it all wrong. I don’t need to worry about what happens with the traffic trying to leave a city is not a mere 65,000 going to a football game, but a few million trying to escape something in the city or run searching madly for something sort of important like food or water for instance. I shouldn’t be preoccupied with thoughts of power grid failure or banking collapse or food distribution shutdown or anarchy.
Sitting back and looking around that stadium packed with people, I realized that if anything went wrong to disrupt the stability and social order that exists all around us, we’ll all be perfectly fine. These people and their families will execute their well-practiced emergency plans. They will hunker down with the food they’ve got and sit tight for a few days first, then they’ll organize in their neighborhood clusters, forming their neighborhood security leadership structures and work through the tasks and responsibilities that each family in the group must independently carry out.
Indeed, if anything should go catastrophically wrong in this country, like oh, I don’t know…a meltdown at the Crystal River reactor, we’ll all respond just like the Japanese did at Fukishama, quietly going about restoring social order and working together. I mean, clearly, these nutjobs who were out protesting the fact that Progress Energy hired Homer Simpson to fix their nuclear reactor are totally out of their minds like me….right? I mean, the allegations in the St. Petersburg Times that Progress Energy’s plan to fix the crumbling reactor core amounted to using bubble gum and duct tape to fix things up are just false reporting right? And that $50 charge I see on every month’s power bill is just some delusion, right? A recurring visual hallucination….right?
And then it struck me. Tyler Durden is the madman and everyone else is sane. There was no bailout. There is no secret Federal Reserve lending. There is no conspiracy between the banks and Geithner and Paulson and Bernake. There are no quietly organizing plans to institute martial law all across this country. There is no fundamental instability in the world financial markets. There are no potential bottlenecks or disruptions in our nation’s food supply system in a time of crisis.
Everything’s going to be just fine. I’m sure of it.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
