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  hardie karges 7:44 am on April 9, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history ( 42 ), MONEY ( 7 ), ROBBER BARONS   

  MONEY 

  Money is the root of all evil, not the love thereof, but the thing itself, green and crispy, infinitely malleable. Paper money is the best kind, inherently worthless except as fuel and toilet paper, legally tender in illegal tight spots. It comes from a checkered past of magic ritual undercurrents and shamanistic overtones to its present status as currency for pawns and plaything for bishops. The future is pure monopoly, hotels on the Boardwalk and houses on Park Place, rides on railroads and you get out of jail free. The new robber barons replace the old robber barons, and the world creeps forward on unsteady feet.

   

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  hardie karges 7:26 am on April 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: capitalism ( 26 ), wealth   

  THE RICH 

  Prejudice against rich people is the only prejudice I’ll cop to. It’s not that I want their money; I don’t. It’s just that I don’t like the mother fuckers; that’s all. It’s not just that they’re arrogant; many of them are downright EVIL. Their fortune is other people’s misfortune. But what I dislike most is the pretentiousness. People that wouldn’t be caught dead doing manual labor will put on their brightly colored exercise suits and dance the aerobic two-step while their personal trainer calls out the songs. These same people who would disdain to form a bead of sweat in public will sit in the sauna until their veins are ready to burst. Many of them are downright stingy. They might respond that that’s how they got rich in the first place. That’s part of it for sure, the ability to have money and not blow it. Another part of it is acumen, whether actual measurable talents or merely general ‘people skills’. Another part is pure dumb luck, just happening to be in the right place at the right time. Another part, probably the biggest part, is vision, the ability to see the future and its probable trends, and the ability to deliberately position your self in the right place at the right time. That’s probably my forte’, that and my fierce bottom line. My only true skill is linguistic, and that’s of limited importance in the age of Pidgin Shit. I have no problem with any of this. I am in business, after all. We have to be pragmatic. But somewhere free enterprise gets perverted into capitalism and society falls prey to modern robber barons like T. Boone Pickens, Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, George Soros, and other infinitely forgettable millionaires who contribute nothing to society, but manipulate ‘the system’ for personal gain and to everyone else’s detriment. Top executives in Europe don’t make hundreds of millions of dollars a year like in America. This will be America’s downfall, and rightfully so.

   
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  hardie karges 6:48 am on April 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: capitalism ( 26 ), communism ( 21 ), OIL ( 6 )   

  CAPITALISM 

  Capitalism’s moment of glory barely lasted ten years. Without Communism to keep it honest, capitalism no longer is. The rip-roaring leveraged-buyout corporate-raiding inside-trading era of 1980’s American capitalism only subsided when the more creative Internet era of computing rose to dominance. But by then it was too late. The capitalists had shown their colors too often and made too many deals with too many devils. The colors were the black of oil and the green of money and the devils were too many corrupt leaders of too many corrupt regimes, increasingly those in control of major oil-producing countries. As with yin, so with yang, the seed of one is in the other, the universal law of retribution. The West’s refusal to embrace energy technologies other than oil has funneled money into the hands of Muslim fundamentalists with oil-derived wealth. Islamic fundamentalism is not likely to subside until their oil-derived wealth subsides. If they move us all back into the 14^th century in the process, well so be it. That was a golden age for Islam.

   
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  hardie karges 7:04 am on April 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: communism ( 21 ), Russia ( 4 ), USSR ( 4 )   

  RUSSIAN TO NOWHERE 

  Things are too crazy now. After two or three generations of institutionalized repression in Eastern Europe with pretensions to world domination, Communism has fallen flat on its ass with hardly a moment to spare. Though the reasons for the sudden collapse are complex and varied, I suspect more than a little thanks should go to Japan, who flooded the world with cheap VCR’s and other communication devices that made Berlin Walls seem not only outmoded and irrelevant, but incapable of hiding anything. More than that, they also showed that the for-members-only club of industrialized nations was not only not exclusive, but was not limited to European countries and their immigrant offspring. Leave it to capitalism to overcome racism, doing what religion not only had never accomplished, but which had frequently instigated. This mitigated the USSR’s attraction as the model of development for third-world countries. Of course the USSR was largely European itself, so its lag behind the West’s, and now Asia’s, leaders was particularly ironic. Forged in the pan-Slavism of the 19^th century, the USSR is perhaps best seen as a noble experiment at that, despite its ineptitude as a world leader.

   
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  hardie karges 7:10 am on April 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history ( 42 ), politics ( 33 )   

  MUSICAL CHAIRS 

  Politics is musical chairs.  Wherever you sit when the music stops is yours, more or less, depending on how fat your butt is.  In the case of our political map, the music stopped about 1948, with the demise of colonialism in the aftermath of WWII.  With only a few exceptions, boundary changes since then have been the result of realignment, not conquests or land grabs.  Circumstances like these have a life of their own, following topographical boundaries and ancient animosities.  Most of the action of the last century has been the break-up of empires, first the medieval Habsburg and Ottoman, then the colonialist British, French, Dutch and Portuguese, and finally the Communist Soviet and Yugoslav states.  These fixed borders just might be the cause of much tension and stress, the fact that some countries have much land and few people, and that the ability to change that situation is limited.  It’s even gotten a bit ridiculous with the situations in Timor, Biafra, Nagorno-Karabakh, and others, but laudable, in my opinion.  If there’s ever to be a world government that’s truly effective, then there will have to be world political units that are meaningful.  If Dixie tries to secede again, though, then that’s going too far.

   
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  hardie karges 8:10 am on April 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: consumerism ( 5 ), technology ( 12 )   

  CARGO CULTS 

  The cargo cults demand obedience.  The cargo cults demand sacrifice.  The gods of the cargo cult are jealous gods.  More more bigger bigger, you have to build a longer runway to attract the jet planes of the really important gods with the really important goods.  Entire populations build symbolic ports and harbors to place upon altars in their own private homes to placate the restless gods looking for devotees to reward and the ignorant to punish.  Consumerism is a jealous god, a god without face nor gender, just legal tender, no idols nor idleness.  Hard unceasing work is the ultimate sacrifice, the only thing that will placate the spirit of a God with no name, only number.  These gods drink sweat, not blood, and count their conquests in sales, not souls.  The only conversions allowed are for currency, the arbitrage of circumstance, prostitution to a higher god, complete immersion in the blood of money, the word of the book of the united states of sacrifice.  Leave if you can and don’t look back.  The whore of Babylon disobeys and receives her Lot; Saddam and Gomer and Bin and Tony share a bed of their own making, the fearsome foursome caught in the act of the sins of their fathers, sharing shallow graves in empty deserts, forbidden fruits long gone to seed and drifted elsewhere, leaving the trees of life to their own devices.

   
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  hardie karges 9:31 am on April 2, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Apocalypse ( 12 )   

  And the Meek will Inherit the Earth 

  We’ve got bleacher seats for the Apocalypse, a bird’s-eye view of armies of the night, jockeying for position and positioning their jockeys for the final thrust to the nether never lands of the vast Godless underbelly.  Mindless middlemen follow the age-old instinct to put hard things in soft places simply because it is written, simply because it is there.  The things we love most are at the total mercy of the things we love least.  Assholes became rich and powerful by being assholes.  The meek will only inherit an earth that is spent and wasted.  The earth in its youth belongs to the young, the brash, the violent, bullying the hesitant into submission and following the war gods into battle.  Our sons are conscripted into the Janissary Corps and forced to the serve the state, becoming the thing we hate most, in order to ensure its safety.  We can’t destroy the state if our sons are defending it.  Hopefully we’ll get smarter as the Earth gets older and civilization spreads to the countryside, erasing those borders that divide us from ourselves.

   
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  hardie karges 10:57 am on April 1, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: America ( 59 ), communism ( 21 ), Europe ( 19 ), history ( 42 ), jihad ( 8 )   

  The Death of America, the Re-Birth of Europe 

  It’s Europe’s turn to lead the world again, not as English or French or Greeks or Romans, but at the head of a united Europe that returns something to Russia that it took away from the Soviets, and respects its status as a major player in the community of nations.  America is not fit to rule the world any more.  They’ve made too many deals with too many devils, mostly previously under the guise of Soviet containment and anti-Communism, now mostly under the guise of increased oil flow.  When American tanks rolled over the Arabian Desert and into Iraq for the second time, they crossed the line.  The Afghan War was justified, slimly, to remove a Taliban regime that sustained al-Qaeda.  The Iraq War was not.  At that point al-Qaeda won in its quest to remove America as world leader.  If I were a Conspiracy Nut, I might think they planned it that way, themselves having no great love for Saddam Hussein.  Not that it’ll make any difference with respect to Israel; it won’t.  Israel is a fait accompli, and no more than a pretext for the current jihad worldwide.  But if Europe can unite, they’ll have accomplished something that’s never been done in history, which means they’ll have the moral upper hand to lead the world and set an example.  America did that once, until wars of independence became a rite of passage for a developing country.  Europe is now fighting a war of inter-dependence.  If they succeed, then look for a united South America, United Turkistan, etc.  FTA’s are a major step in that direction already.  America has gone too far in its excesses and its negligence.  European corporate executives don’t make a billion dollars a year.  Europe doesn’t leave half of its population without health insurance.  When Americans voted for George W. Bush in 2004, they voted for ignorance, greed, and selfishness.  Now the bill is due.

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    Stiv 7:28 pm on April 19, 2008 Permalink | Reply

    Yes, but you’ll be “leading the world” as Eurabia not really Europe any longer. The weakness of Europe has allowed that to happen. Have fun with that.

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  hardie karges 10:11 am on March 31, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ego ( 33 ), history ( 42 ), Western civilization   

  EGO 

  Ego extrapolated leads to cultural self-righteousness.  This is what the West is doing, assuming that it is superior, given its preeminent position in the world over the last five hundred years.  That ignores its total lack of eminence for the preceding thousand years.  Whatever the greatness of Greece and Rome, they were no greater than many others were.  But they were ours.  Egypt, Sumeria, Persia, India, and China were theirs.  They all overestimated their greatness, made grave mistakes, and had to start all over again.  Of course, some mistakes are so grave that you can’t dig your way out.  We played God once before with the Bomb, splitting atoms just for the Hell of it, the absolute Hell.  Now we’re inside his genes, cutting and splicing as if it were nothing more than a Hollywood blockbuster, special effects, busting blocks and rearranging them as if it were all a game.  Ostensibly, we might cure some diseases, but what problems might we cause in the process of curing another?  This is the problem of egotism, personal or cultural; it knows no limits.  It can create great art and great entertainment without end, great families and great cultures.  It can also destroy everything that it creates, and more.  Cracking the code is one thing; re-arranging it is another.  The temptation is just too great and probably won’t be resisted.        

   
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  hardie karges 9:37 am on March 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history ( 42 ), IMMIGRATION ( 4 )   

  IMMIGRATION 

  We’re all immigrants here, crossing oceans in search of something better, we know not what.  We worked until our backs ached and our spirits almost sank, saving every last penny for the long voyage to an unknown land with only scant knowledge of what lay ahead, just rumors and gossip.  The only thing that bound us together was faith in a God so close that we could feel it in every breath we took.  Crowding into steerage, we unrolled our bags and broke our bread, passing it around so that all could share.  The people nearby spoke another language, but it didn’t matter, because we’re all Americans now.  It’s always been this way.  It’s human nature to explore, see everything there is to see, look for something better on the other side of the hill.  Primitive men didn’t wander over the Bering Strait or over the vast oceans.  They were driven, in the candy-flake streamline baby of imagination.  The American Happy Hunting grounds were the all-you-can-eat buffet of all times, mammoth, camel, and horse for the taking, mammal, bird, and fish for the baking.  The stupid creatures never knew what hit them.  They’d never seen apes dressed in imitation of them selves.  They were laughing so hard that they never saw the spears flying, nor ever felt points so sharp.  “Those apes are good,” were the last words they ever thought, if indeed they could think.  Surprise is the greatest weapon ever invented, experience taking advantage of naivete’ standing there with its mouth wide open in a windstorm, hunger taking advantage of bounty in all its nakedness.