Optimist, Realist or Pessimist?

When asked if the glass is half full or half empty my usual reply is: It's always full, some portion of it just happens to be air.  I've always been a bit too literal for the average Joe.   I blame it on 30 years of software design.

In general I consider myself a realist, I have my optimistic moments, and my pessimistic ones.   Since 9/11/2001, I've been increasingly pessimistic - or I thought I had until I read this and many like it.  It wasn't the terrorists that made me pessimistic, it was our reaction to them.  All of a sudden, a majority of the country decided to say "Screw Liberty - Give me safety", even many who aught to know safety is an illusion.   Looking at all the other problems in the world - I think a good many of them can be attributed to over population.  As horrible as it sounds (and it sounds pretty horrible); the best thing for mankind might be getting that really serious pandemic the CDC has been worried about for over a decade.  A good 20-30% drop in population might be just where Mother Nature is heading, then again, it might be more like 70-80%.  - Which is really, really horrible.  

It's possible that Iran and Israel will decide to annihilate each other, which will probably result in everything else in that region going nuclear.  If they go, I can see that triggering a Pakistan-India exchange - hopefully it will stop there but I can see N. Korea nuking who ever they can reach, out of fear that someone will do it to them first.  If N. Korea goes, it might pull in the Chinese - but probably not.   If that happens - then Oil prices should put the final nail in the coffin of the world economy.

If that doesn't happen it might be earth quakes, or volcanoes, or a massive solar flair resulting in a world wide EMP strike.   There's upside to a super volcano eruption; no more talk about global warming.  If we get a massive solar flair and the EMP takes out most of the technology in the world, we can probably stop worrying about global warming - the Greenies will get their wish - we'll all be freezing (and starving) in the dark. If none of that happens it probably won't matter because we're well on the way to doing it to ourselves anyway. 

You see, somewhere around 1913; Some folks decided that they were smarter than anyone else in history so maybe it would be a good thing if they made all the decision for the rest of us.   This is not a new idea - every screwball dictator fits this shoe.  They've always been wrong - this bunch is wrong too but like all the others they're too arrogant to see it.  Might have been earlier but that's the point things started to go off the rails, it didn't really pick up momentum until the new deal in the 30's then slowly ramped up to the 70's at which point the education system was FUBAR.  The big difference is the approach - it's long term.  Screw up education by putting a bunch of leftist in charge of teaching.  Regulate business until it's tough to make a profit. Use Unions to hamstring competition, use every crisis to chip away at personal liberty.  The difficult thing is to get rid of the middle class which is where the real power lies - that's where the work gets done; that's were productivity is.  But the middle class is hard to control - it's much easier if they're all poor.  So create a tax system that benefits the poor and the elite and screws the middle class.  Take their money and give it to the lazy because this helps destroy productivity and creates more poor. Then use inflation to tax them with out having to vote on a tax, and presto chango - the middle class become the impoverished class.  Now you get to control them by making them beg for scraps.

They started by lying to us and promising things we can't afford.  Each generation since has gotten more and more entitled, the lies have gotten bigger, the promises more ridiculous, and the control greater.  The power elite have gotten further and further from the average American to the point now, they're so disconnected that they view us with utter contempt.  They're giving the country to the U.N. by bankrupting us and turning us into a new third world country - Don't think so?  Been to Detroit lately?

If the U.S. Economy goes down, I can't see Europe and Japan holding on,  China maybe, possibly India, but I wouldn't bet on it.  Given the direction our government is heading I suspect we're in for a long period of being dragged though the shit before things completely fall apart. On the other had the majority has been trained by the government to expect to be given what ever they want and when the government can't do it any more, they're going to throw a tantrum just like any spoiled child. It won't take all that long because they will have destroyed the middle class, leaving no one to tax.  Given the nature of social media, and main stream media, I expect that tantrum to be nation wide in a matter of hours, and pretty much unstoppable.  I expect to see a lot of beatings, murder, arson, destruction of private and public property - it will make the few riots we've had in the past look like block parties gone wild.  There aren't enough national guard or military to control it.  
 
This is the point where I expect there to be a lot of opportunistic terrorism.  When the feds are so busy they don't know which way to look, any terrorist cells already in the country are going to take the opportunity to act.   If half of them have any brains at all - they'll go after transportation infrastructure.  Fortunately I'd guess that over half of them are morons, and I'm not sure there are all that many to begin with.  If they act, blowing few major bridges, crippling the major shipping routes and scaring the shippers in to laying low, you'll get some first hand experience at wide scale starvation - which will really ramp things up. 


It's kind of funny but the one bright spot in all of this is that the political infighting might just stave off the worst for a few more years.

And I'm not even feeling particularly pessimistic to day.