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August 6, 2008
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What's so "Third Rail" about this topic?
I mean, when I wrote two weeks ago about feminism causing cancer,
obesity, and a nice portion of our financial disaster, that was
unspeakable (see:
JOHN ASHTON
TOUCHES THE THIRD RAIL: WHY
AMERICAN FEMINISM IS A LEADING CAUSE OF OBESITY, THE DEBT CRISIS,
AND CANCER.)
Last week when I dubbed Christianity a problem destroying America,
that's a no no outside of Moderate Independent-land (see:
JOHN ASHTON TOUCHES THE THIRD
RAIL:
How Christianity is Destroying America.)
Compared to those, this week's topic is
not so clear at first, so let me, as I tend to do, get right to the
point.
The entire American economy, and much of
the world economy, over the past few decades has come to be built
around the fact that Americans are the biggest mindless suckers in
the history of mankind. They are idiots who will buy
'lemonade' that doesn't have a drop of lemonade in it. They
are gullible chumps who you can sell nutritionless, imitation food
to in quantities twice the size they would want just so you can
charge them more, and they will buy and eat it up, giving themselves
diabetes and debt without questioning. For crying out loud, we
are a nation who has a cheese named after us that, yes, isn't
actually cheese but rather an extremely unhealthy imitation made of
hydrogenated soybean oil - yes, that deadly trans-fat stuff.
And this idiocy hasn't just applied to
food. Charge them $38,000 for unnecessarily large,
ridiculously fuel-inefficient SUV's when all they really needed was
a $15,000 station wagon that would get double the mileage. Go
ahead, don't worry, they'll buy it en masse without questioning -
even though they can't afford it and will have to borrow beyond
their means to make the purchase.
Sell them multi-thousand dollar TV's
they can't afford - not the $200 box that's all they really need.
Sell them computers only nuclear engineers really need, a new, more
expensive cell phone each year, when all they need is something to
make calls on.
Or how about this one: do away
with the extendible antenna that cell phones used to have and
replace them with internal antenna so the radiation is right up
against the head and into the brain rather than more safely put off
a few inches. Go ahead, they won't question.
Put pesticide on all the fruits and
vegetable, sell them lotion to "protect" them from the sun that in
actually has increased the skin cancer rate, give them mindless
shows about "nothing" and call it "Must See TV." Go ahead.
They'll do whatever you tell them to do, buy whatever you tell them
to buy, eat as much and as crappily as you tell them you want them
to.
At least, that has been the case in the
Conservative Era of America. But see, there's a bit of a
problem now.
Americans have hit their wall. And
their indebtedness and obesity has led them to a point where they
simply have no choice but to start making at least a few intelligent
decisions.
And so, now even the most stable staples
of the economy you would think would do best in time of need are
starting to crumble.
Take McDonald's for example.
McDonald's loved using American gullibility to pad its bottom line.
Take its $1 double cheeseburger, for example. Why and how
could they sell so much meat and cheese for so little?
Well, the answer was simple.
Americans were so stupid without exception that; 1) They didn't
actually put actual cheese on the "cheeseburger," but, yes, that
fake cheese substitute known as American cheese - yes, the cheaper,
extremely bad for you stuff basically no American had the basic
self-respecting decency to refuse to allow to be pushed as cheese;
then, 2) (and this is the real fun part) the whole
premise of McDonald's and other restaurants is the bait and switch -
sure, it's a great bargain, $1 for two meat patties and, um
"cheese." Wow, amazing. You were so budget conscious and
value oriented. Now, you stupid sucker-type American, it will
be $1.50 for the 5 cents worth of sugar water called a "Coke" you
will buy without thinking, and another $1.50 for the 10 cents worth
of nutritionless potatoes in oil and salt known as "French Fries"
which, of course, you will also buy.
Now, an intelligent person would
exercise their right to just buy the burgers, and then go home and
serve them with a salad and some vegetables and maybe an actual
potato, spending 1/4 as much on the rest of the meal. And to
drink, maybe some juice, which would be healthy, or the same Coke,
but at 1/6 the price of buying it from McDonald's.
According to a report this week,
approximately 14% of McDonald's sales if of stuff off of their $1
"Value Menu." But a problem has started to emerge. You
see, people are coming in as much as ever for the $1 double
cheeseburgers, but now they are not throwing the extra $3-$4 at the
unnecessary extras. Yes, Americans are doing what is smart.
And so McDonald's scheme is starting not to work.
Across the economy, this issue is
playing out. Starbucks milked American stupidity with
impunity. They added sugar syrups to coffee and charged $4-$5
for a single person's drink. Americans couldn't hand over
their money fast enough. The $1 bottomless cup of calorie-free
coffee up the street, forget it. You want to sell me a 500
calorie, non-refillable cup of coffee with lots of sugar in it for
five times the price? Ok, I'll be back every day - even will
wait in line to give you my cash.
Well, that is done. Starbucks
tried to save its ass by offering - Wow, how did this become
possible?!? - a cup of coffee for only a buck and change. Wow!
Only twice as expensive as others had charged, and still
non-refillable. But now, Americans are so changed that even
that hasn't cut it, and Starbucks is closing stores left and right.
SUV's? RIP. In fact, car
purchases in general. You know, in places like Poland, people
actually keep their cars for as long as they can keep them runable.
Yes, there is actually no need for most Americans to buy cars at
this point. And for the first time in a generation they are
showing some basic sense and financial sanity.
We could go through example after
example, but the long and short is this: the American economy
- and through it, the world economy - has been predicated on the
fact that Americans are suckers who will buy anything you tell them
they should without regard to whether they can afford it, need it,
or consuming it will harm their health. Pop out new computers
each year, and despite the fact they only use the internet, which
any low level computer can do, they will keep upgrading - well
sorry, not anymore.
Gone are the days when Americans
actually gave a shit about what you had to sell, what gadgets you
were about to put out. America has had a massive change for
the positive. Though born of necessity and not choice, the
fact is simple: The Conservative Era has ended, and American
Common Sense has returned. And as a result, it is now "Seller
Beware."
Beware that you actually have to provide
things we need and do so in reasonable portions at reasonable
prices. No joke, if you make it too big, charge too much, or
try to push something unnecessary we simply won't buy it.
Yes, this is America talking.
We now, at least for the time being,
will only buy things we need, will only replace and upgrade things
that really need to be replaced or upgraded - which, sorry, really
isn't much if anything. No, we have everything we need and
then some. In fact, instead of buying that latest cell phone
this year, we're going to be on eBay trying to sell off the 10 cell
phones we have taking up space in our drawers.
No thanks, we don't need even bigger or
"cooler" TVs. We can watch the low quality shit on whatever
boxes we happened to have ended this musical-shopping-chairs game
with. Our computers - they are good enough to last us and our
families an entire generation, barring a change of career into C++
code generation. Our cars? Yes, there are repair shops
should anything come up. As far as purchasing, no thanks,
we're good for about the next 10 years - we have adequate,
functional transportation for the moment and no longer buy the bull
that we require something more than that. Your car won't
change my life - the bill from buying it will. And, yes, we
are going to make - can you imagine - the smart choice; the right
one. We are not going to buy the unnecessary nonsense as we
have for decades. Sorry, don't care if you collapse.
Fat is a tissue that is a store of
energy for a time of need. And Americans have lots of fat,
both physically and materially, at the moment. In fact,
Americans have so much physical and material product fat at the
moment that we really don't need to eat or buy much at all for the
next decade or so. No, we can and have instantly become
frugal. And no, we're not going to just change back in a few
months or a year or even a couple of years, as the non-Moderate
Independent media keeps saying we will. No, we are not going
to re-enter the debt and over-consumption cycle that got us here
anytime soon.
We are a new nation, a nation of people
with recently booted up brains. A nation that longs not for
that new thing, but for freedom from debt - and yes, beyond that, to
have something called savings.
We are a nation that will demand wages
we can actually live on, because we no longer accept the myth that
debt upon loan upon debt is a sane and sustainable way to live.
We'll want value for our money, nutrition and adequate portions, and
actual attention to our needs - yes, that's right, no more letting
Katrina-like disasters be a requirement for domestic spending.
And while all the business that have
duped and raped us while we were trusting and easy-going will now
collapse and crumble, the world - in particular the Middle East and
Europe - better take note: within 10 years, you will see an
America more powerful than you ever imagined a nation could be.
Take what we were in the 1990's and add to that all the wealth that
currently goes to the oil producing nations. Instead of us
sending money there, the world will be giving that money to us as we
bottle up energy from our deserts and technology from our labs and
schools and become the energy capital of the planet. No other
nation has both the research and development capabilities and the
pure natural resources of expansive sun-drenched desert and
wind-swept plain that America does.
Americans, we have been idiots.
It's been a long, stupid binge. I won't fault you for it.
While I may not be overweight or in debt beyond repair, I've been
guilty of my own binges from time to time. But now we are all
together, united. The Conservative Era of disaster is done.
Welcome the dawning of the Age of American Reason.
Or, we may just vote for McCain because
we hate black people and finish off our collapse.
Who knows. Stay tuned.
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