A Disturbing Trend In America

I've been writing DOTE for three years now, which is long enough for me to have noticed a disturbing trend which I will describe today. I happened upon Jim Kunstler's latest column, called The Master Meme. Here's part of what he said—

I'm not even sure what to call the current disposition of unreality in the USA, though it is clearly tinged with different colors of grandiosity ranging from the plain dopey idea of "American exceptionalism" to the wishful claim that we're about to become "energy independent," to the lame assertion so popular in presidential addresses that "together we can do anything"...

What's obvious to me is what I have been fearing about this country for some time now: that all the disorders of our time would prompt a campaign to defend the status quo at all costs and to sustain the unsustainable. That is really the master wish behind all the political hijinks of the day, especially the pervasive accounting fraud in all high-order money matters...

Jim reiterates a common theme for him and me, but in the three years I've been writing this blog, the "campaign to defend the status quo at all costs" has become both broader and deeper. As you surely might guess, I have to look at a lot of source material to create these posts. Doing this every day for three years has allowed me to follow this disturbing trend, which is manifest to me in two ways—

• In 2010, when I started DOTE, and only about 15 months after the meltdown, there were a lot more dissenting, critical voices than there are now. I've seen many people I used to read quit publishing. They gave up. How many people are willing to tell you in 2013 that "the recovery" is a joke? That incomes for the many are contracting? A precious few, now. There used to be many others (relatively speaking) who were willing to point out such obvious truths.

• The media propaganda onslaught is far more pervasive and unified than it was three years ago, a situation which is getting worse with each passing day. In 2010, the financial crisis and the big crude oil price spike of 2008 were still fresh in people's minds. Even in mainstream sources, there were considerable doubts about America going forward.

  But look at us now—phony, generally inflated GDP contracts for the first time in over three years, and immediately we are bombarded with a slew of articles like Bloomberg's R-Word For U.S. Economy in 2013 is Rebound Not Recession, which quotes one "expert" after another (economists, of course) telling us there is nothing to worry about. If quarterly GDP had contracted during some quarter in 2010, or even 2011, there would have been a flurry of articles questioning policies and practices in the United States.

  Not any more.

Thus we can conclude in 2013 that inward reflection, critical thinking and self-doubt have been all but banished in America. This manifests itself in a relentless campaign to defend the status quo.

A strong defense of the status quo has existed in all human societies in all times and all places. However, in the United States, this tendency, which I've noticed because I write this blog, has become far more pronounced over the last three years—the consolidation of power by the powerful is accelerating, so-called "thought" in the media is more and more constricted, and dissenting, critical voices have become so marginalized that many (if not most) have given up.

With each passing month, there are fewer and fewer "good" sources of information for me to tap into. For example, I used to milk Yahoo Finance's Daily Ticker blog for stories. That source has become all but useless to me in the last six months. I could name many others.

I'm starting to feel mighty lonely out here.

Bonus Video — Just nod if you can hear me

 

Comments

[Oliver]

Dave - As I see it, there are five main groups of people in the Western world today, in relation to the topic of this posting.

1. The upholders of the status quo, which include the plutocracy and their vested-interest lackeys and apologists, including puppet politicians, fantasy economists and the vast hulk of the bought-up mass media.
2. The ignorant, who go about their daily business oblivious to what's happening, largely because of their passive lack of education/awareness or active subservience to Group 1.
3. The doomers, who rush to catastrophism in their 'analysis' of what's going on, and appear to get off on presuming mass extinction is around the corner.
4. The sapient self-aware, who understand the decline for what it is but are witnessing it in ever-increasing numbness that is beyond frustration, intellectually confounded by their inability to do anything of any import to stop or reverse the descent.
5. The sapient self-aware communicators - more than a subset of Group 4 because of their rare talent and stamina in interrogating and reporting on the decline - who are bound to reduce in number as time goes by and emotional weariness and intellectual loneliness set in, resulting in them slipping backwards into Group 4.

Given this classification, you clearly sit in Group 5, and you are noting that a growing number of your fellow "get-it" reporters are falling by the wayside.

All the more reason to keep on keeping on Dave. We in Group 4 will be bereft if the last outpost of sapience goes down, and if the bad guys have full reign on the airwaves and the cybermush-machine.

I empathize with your loneliness and I can guess that most of your visitors feel similarly alienated in their own locations. I certainly do. You may be the last-man-standing at some point, but your voice should never be silenced while there is an internet. We will never know, but there is an outside chance that you will be known by future generations.

[Aboc Zed]

Dave,

It is heartwarming to see that you are still standing and keep writing DOTE.

Of course one day the trend might get to the point that no dissenting voices except yours are to be found and you may not have much of input into your DOTE posts.

If and when that happen would you consider venturing into analysis of what might happen post empire collapse?

I know that moment may never really come while the grid is still up and Internet is functioning.

I also know that kind of analysis is speculative and is not your preference.

But if intellectual landscape of mainstream is uniformly and completely pro-HOT and dissenting voices quit blogging and you are last one standing will you want to "look beyond the horizon"?

[John D. Wheeler]

Just remember, Dave, crashes don't usually happen when people are cautious. More fools have to come back in to be fleeced. This optimism is a very good contrarian sign that something bad is coming.

[Mike Roberts]

In New Zealand, you'd be hard pressed to discover that even the official statistics in the US showed a contraction in the fourth quarter. The "good news" is certainly re-broadcast but not the bad news. I only discovered it (before your mention of it a couple of days ago)in a corner of a BBC web site, which now shows far more "good news" (about increased incomes in December, improved housing market and indications of manufacturing robustness). The stock markets, for so long oblivious of the real economy, hardly noticed, though some US markets dipped a little (only a little).

This reminds me of the revelation last week that the UK economy is in its worst spell (the last 4 years) since records began - apart from post world war periods) - and yet the stock market there continued to rise. But the rising stock markets seem to be the only indicator that anyone seems to take note of, even as jobs continue to be lost and most other economic indicators worsen or stagnate. It boggles the mind.

[Paul Stahnke]

Nicely said, Dave. With the Dow approaching 14,000 it looks scarier everyday. My biggest concern is the accepted 'debt is necessary' philosophy. We all know in tough times debt might be necessary, but the books never balance when times are good, either. This can't end well.

Take care....Paulo

[Makati1]

As I sit here in Makati, Philippines, reading your articles regularly, one of about 30 similar sites that I visit, I see what you are saying. I lived in the US for the first 63 of my 68 years. I too was blind to reality until I bought a computer in 2003 and looked at the world outside of the US MSM.

My family has been in the US since 1734 but I decided I didn't want to be there anymore. My two daughters are blind to reality even when I try to point out examples of the lies. My grandson is a drug to keep him 'docile' in school (3rd grade) and my daughter sees nothing wrong with that. "His grades are improving".

We (the US and most of the West) are in a great depression. If you took the 47 million on food debit cards and stood them in soup lines, they would stretch for over 17,000 miles. Now do you see why the government must work to hide the depression? Revolution would happen overnight if the situation were obvious and the 1% would last as long as it took to get rope from WalMart.

[Alexander Ač]

To the previous post "Are Humans a Plague"? Here is another evidence:

British moths in calamitous decline, major new study reveals --

"There is some good news but overall the pattern is very gloomy," said Richard Fox of Butterfly Conservation, the lead author of the study. "Our suspicion is that the primary thing driving the decline in the south is habitat loss."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/01/british-moths-calamitous-decline?intcmp=122

Alex

[ralph m]

I'm noticing the same trends up here in Canada Dave! Canada doesn't seem to be as liberal, environmentally conscious and generally tolerant as it used to be.....then again, I used to be a conservative myself, so I've been moving left, while this country has lurched to the right. Difficult to say if that's skewed my opinions a little.

But, using the Alberta Tar Sands as an example, even our quasi-socialist party - the NDP is reluctant to say much of anything about the ramping up of tar sands developments and attempts to force pipelines through native territories.

A shocking development would be a recent poll which concluded that Canadians feel less informed about First Nation's issues now, in the midst of Idle No More protests across the Country than they were 10 years ago, and they are not only less informed but say they could care less about their ignorance! They just want the issue to go away so we can get on with cashing in on the last drops of petroleum in Canada (natives be damned).

This seems to me to be more than ignorance and indifference, but also showing a new ruthlessness to take what's available and bulldoze anyone standing in the way of development....even if full scale tar sands development is the ruination of Northern Alberta and likely to force the entire world into a new set of tipping points to increased global warming.

So, Canadians may be getting to be more like Americans every day. Except the U.S. example is to send in the military and the CIA to make sure the right handpicked despot is set up to smooth the way for oil development. If we combine the indifference to torture, increased surveillance etc., it may be reflecting an attitude of beligerence that is trying to use ignorance as a cover for tossing all of our values over the side to try to maintain present levels of material wealth.

[Clyde]

A financially well-off, educated, enabled and well-informed population of workers/peasants is a recent historical anomaly.
This is currently being corrected. Quickly.

[Martin H]

Dave,

The weakness of your article is that you do not give an example of someone who has "quit publishing."

Oliver,

Re: doomers who "appear to get off on presuming mass extinction..." Are you really scandalized by this, because, if so, I might have to place you in your very own category 2.

[Dave Cohen]

@Martin H

Do you think there might have been a reason I didn't give examples of people who quit publishing?

Why don't you try to figure out what that reason was.

But anyway, here's one

http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/

and here's another

http://www.billhicksisdead.blogspot.com/

and there are many more. Some people didn't quit altogether, they publish very infrequently now

http://www.financialarmageddon.com/

And so on.

-- Dave

[Oliver]

Martin H - ?ⁿ∞

[ralph m]

Oliver, I think I am a category 4 on the scale, because I am sick of being accused of being category 3, and the realization in the last few years that the category 1's are essentially reckless psychopaths who can't be reasoned with appeals to their own longterm survival or the welfare of their children and grandchildren.

When I first became aware of the climate change issues, I had an underlying assumption that the vast majority in those first two groups would see the light (so to speak) once there was more conclusive evidence of global warming. I never expected that the reaction - even among the 2's would be to get even more hostile to the message that the Oil Age has to be brought to a close. And, lately I am suspicious that this is more than just ignorance and denial; like the 1's, a lot of the people at my level are using denial to cover for the fact that they likely don't give a shit anymore and just want to enjoy the ride as long as it lasts!

[Oliver]

Ralph M - I journeyed a very similar route and have given up trying to make headway with Groups 1, 2 and, for slightly different reasons, 3. I imagine most of Dave's regular readers are in 4. We're a motley crew from all points of the compass, but I get a modicum of satisfaction from listening carefully to everyone here and learning new insights based on facts rather than vested interests, ignorance or hysteria.

Let's keep communing. I've said it before, but it's good to share ideas with fellow intellects trapped in a jail called Earth.