“You know, when I was a kid, food was food. Before our scientific magicians poisoned the water, polluted the soil, decimated plant and animal life.” – Soylent Green
I pity the fool that thinks we’re done.
In 471 B.C., a group of soldiers of the Roman Republic broke camp one fine morning. The way the story works out, I’m pretty sure it was a Monday. Their plan was to go attack some smelly hill people under the command of the Roman Consul, Appius. As the horn sounded to leave the camp, the smelly hill people swarmed down on the Roman column from behind. In the defense of the Roman soldiers, this was way before the invention of coffee but after the invention of wine, so they probably weren’t exactly awake.
As an aside, I imagine that the whole of the ancient history can be explained by un-showered illiterate people who were hungover most of the time trying to run things. I guess this description also applies to congress, but at least the Romans dressed well and threw great parties. Can you imagine Bernie Sanders or Adam Schiff or Mitch McConnell being fun at a party?
Perhaps the artist was a talented person who had only ever seen birds with lazy eye and just imagined what a person might look like?
Regardless, the Roman column broke under an attack less expected than the Spanish Inquisition. The Roman historian Titus Livius, more commonly known a Livy, is the reason we remember this battle. Livy wrote that the reason the hill people stopped pursing the Romans were that the Romans were running away faster than the victorious hill people could wade through the dead Romans, but remember, the smelly hill people didn’t have coffee, either, so maybe they just got . . . tired. The Roman Consul, Appius, tried to stop the fleeing soldiers, but wasn’t able to do so, no matter how he tried.
Appius rallying the troops. Colorized.
When the Romans made camp far enough away that the mean hill people weren’t going to attack them, Appius lined all of the soldiers up. Every soldier was asked, “Where are your weapons?” Every standard bearer was asked, “Where is your flag?” Then Centurions that had fled the field of battle were identified.
All of these men were beaten, and then beheaded, because being beheaded wasn’t quite enough. That made a bad morning worse, but it didn’t stop there: of the remaining men, they drew lots. One out of each ten was executed for the overall cowardice of the unit. Why not ten out of ten? There were still lots of smelly hill people around, and Appius might have been faster than some of them but not all of them.
This latter part where one out of ten was killed lives on today in our language as the word “decimate,” from the Latin “deci” meaning “Lucy’s husband,” and the Latin “mate” meaning, “someone an Australian drinks beer with.” But, in a literal fashion it means losing one out of every ten, and has been a military punishment used all the way up into the 20th century, when the Soviets did it to at least part of the 64th Rifle Division after a very bad day at Stalingrad in 1943, though rumor has it no one had fun in Stalingrad in ’43. If you don’t believe me, read your “Argentinian” grandfather’s real diary.
I know you’re thinking, “Hey, John Wilder, that’s fun, but why are you talking about dead Roman bird-faced men when the economy is collapsing?”
To be clear, I don’t have any dirt on the Clinton family.
The United States labor force in February 2020 was 164.6 million. In the last three weeks, respectively, 3.0 million, 6.9 million, and 6.6 million people filed for unemployment, bringing that total to 16.5 million newly unemployed. For those of you without a calculator or fingers, that’s just over 10%. And as bad as the rest of the news is, I had to search for it, rather than it being front page.
Think of it, the second worst unemployment numbers in the history of the United States not being above-the-fold page one news. Instead? “Could have been worse. At least the sky isn’t dripping blood and lava.”
Employment in the United States has been literally decimated in the last two weeks. Sure, it’s not as bad as being beaten to death because of those stupid scary hill people who had the bad manners to attack before lunch or being a Russian (or a German) at Stalingrad, but it’s not good.
It is catastrophic. And next week will be more of the same, if not worse.
If we listen to some leaders, it could be “until August,” or if you listen to Bill Gates, “until the entire United States can be vaccinated and Windows 14™ implanted into their spinal column.” Neither of those two are acceptable, especially since some people, like Joe Biden, have no discernable spine.
He sniffs, he sucks, he scores!
But removing those restrictions is important. Even as farmers dump milk that they can’t put into supermarket-sized cartons and break eggs that they can’t put into 18-packs for Wal-Mart, the system is breaking down. At a certain point the economy is important, because a breakdown in the system might be just the key for some of the more fringe elements on the Left to begin to “finally try real communism” in the United States, which will end up with a bigger butcher’s bill than COVID-19 could ever create. Yeah, it’s a worst-case scenario, and I don’t think we’ll go there, but did anyone think the Fed and Congress could imagine $5 trillion dollars in extra debt. In a single month?
The other side of the argument is, “Start everything back up. Now!”
That won’t work, either. You won’t see people crowding into quaint and cramped Italian restaurants, because nobody wants to get Coronavirus from the busboy. People want to see the infection numbers drop before they commit to getting into a stadium with 77,000 other people to cheer on the NFL®. Zero? Nope. But lower than the 30,000-ish daily (hopefully) peak of newly infected we’re seeing right now.
Well, I guess this is the hard part of the Art of the Deal.
And if you really want to see the fireworks over this idea, wander on over to Aesop’s place. Here’s a representative post. The genius (and the real nuclear part) is in the comments (LINK). As you can see, Aesop has a plan. The plan? Probably not. But it’s important, because it’s a plan.
One thing that is owed the people of the United States is the plan, complete with criteria and reasoning. We know, for certain, that after restrictions are removed that more people will die of COVID-19, and that every single death will be placed at the foot of Trump by the Left. Even though we know that collectively the Left couldn’t organize a hunger strike at a fashion show, we do know that they’re aces at blaming everyone for everything, just like The Mrs. blames me for not having the hardwood floor installed six years after having purchased it. Oops. The Mrs. messed up. She trusted me.
We also know that the devastation of job loss and economic collapse will create thousands of ‘silent’ deaths through despair and addiction. Trump will be blamed for that economic loss, as well. There’s no daily graphic for showing economic misery. Well, not yet there isn’t, but as soon as it sells in the news media? Expect it on the front page of Drudge® every single day.
You dirty birds. I have to apologize for this one since Misery the movie came out in 1990, but it’s at least cheap to watch on Amazon®. Which Pugsley and I did, after I wrote this. I guess we’re dirty birds.
When the time finally comes for Americans to emerge out of their basement bunkers fatter than Hillary Clinton after a wine evening with the ladies? And we’re caught up on all of that “must-see TV” (spoiler: fire insurance is a must if you live in King’s Landing®), what kind of a landscape will they see?
Americans are already getting antsy. It won’t last until August. I don’t think it will last past May.
The economy won’t be the same. Small businesses are in really bad shape. Since they don’t have a lobbyist like Boeing®, that steak house on Main Street? Owned by Ma and Pa Steakhouse owners? They don’t have anyone looking out for them. They’ll get loans, sure. But another loan on top of the mortgage on the restaurant? Another loan on top of the bills they have for the steaks sitting in the freezer because no one is coming in? Yeah.
That’ll help. Just like links from the chain of the anchor would help a lifeboat from the Titanic.
I’m an upbeat person, I really am. Work back through my posts, and I defy anyone to find me being downbeat. I’m not. I think that things will generally work out for me, at least until I die. That part will probably suck. Unless Anne Wilkes has a sledgehammer between me and the grave.
But one thing I want to stress is that hope isn’t a plan, and that hope isn’t your friend. Hope keeps you wishing for a future you wish to see, rather than the future you can work to have. If you hope that after Corona-chan is in the rear-view mirror, the United States will be the same, you will be disappointed.
If you hope that the world will snap back into “happy motoring” (thanks, Jim Kunstler) in June, you’ll find that hope will be a straightjacket. Hope is not your friend, to the extent that it allows happy thoughts to replace action.
Don’t hope. Do. And live. Hope is for amateurs and dreamers.
The United States as you knew her in February 2020 is dead. There. You have it. Deal with it and plan your life. You don’t have to be among the decimated.
But know this:
The United States is dead.
Let all of us go and find her. She is there, waiting for us.