June 17, 2011, Weapons of mass distraction
L'Affaire Weiner seemingly comes to an end, thereby requiring the American media to run around to find another excuse not to cover the impending Greek default, the fallout of which may now have led to massive fallout in Italy and Spain... ignore the tagline of this post ["the war between liberals and conservatives is a false divide and conquer dog and pony show"] at your extreme peril.
Yes, as I walked through the streets of Brooklyn to retrieve my week's produce share from my local CSA this morning (food security first, boys and girls... that reminds me... I need to check on my vegetables up on the roof...), I pondered the seeming disconnects between what's important and what gets our media's attention... in virtually all directions. A little less than three years ago, the nation's focus was on the seemingly critical, but in fact pretty-much-meaningless Presidential election... which created a sufficient diversion of attention all around so that tectonic-scale financial legardemain was played on us all, as trillions in ill-advised financial bets that should have been borne by the super-affluent private players responsible were instead shifted onto the backs of taxpayers everywhere, resulting in "the need" for massive fiscal austerity measures from governments around the world, at the precise time when "the free market" is in d[e]ep- re[ce]ssion... well, misery all around, eh?
Best talk about Anthony Weiner... because, the thing is... all rational measures and observations would tell you that we're heading right into another perfect storm of financial disaster-- this time, the culprit likely to be not private failures like Lehman Bros., Bear Sterns, etc., but by sovereign debt defaults, led, of course by Greece [is the word, is the word, is the word...], but quite possibly followed by the United States, whose Congress has suddenly [quite literally] got religion... and so seemingly wants to trigger a financial event of Biblical proportions, apparently (although the smart money says Goldman Sachs would prefer if Uncle didn't default, thanks.) The irony being... a default by the United States might make sense, in some sick way, anyway. Because we're NOT going to get our fiscal or overall economic house in order using conventional means...
But why talk about any of this, when we can worry about next year's meaningless "Presidential election"... and Anthony Weiner's crotch? That way, we don't also have to think about the implications of environmental calamity from climate change and other by-products of our industrial way of life, rapid resource depletion, the fact that our population is insanely unhealthy at the precise moment austerity measures will dramatically reduce public health availability, the stretched supply lines of our ability to even feed ourselves, dramatic reductions in available water threatened even more by "fracking" and shale-oil extraction and ethanol and other stupid ideas... when the absolute smartest thing we could do right now is NOTHING, and let the financial system collapse and allow levels of industrialism to decline to a more sustainable equilibrium so that when things settle, we actually have pieces to pick up... etc. Anyway, much better we have business as usual so the same morons can be reelected, get their big bonuses this year, etc., etc. Lather, rinse, repeat. Say... anybody seen Weiner?
This has been... "Weapons of mass distraction."