Charles Hugh Smith...

...is a very wise person.

The Art of Survival, Taoism and the Warring States

We Could Be Heroes...

Just For One Day

I foresee a time soon when a great many people get their martyred hero death wish. Nothing greater than to be a hero, but the shelf-life of herodom is generally brief. Maybe better to be a rich rock star singing about it, but I don't think so.

I've seen heroism in something we call 'real life' (an expression that points out how we have countless forms of unreal life that we consume in increasingly larger and more varied content to the point where some people consume far more virtual reality than the real thing.

'Tell 'em a magic elf named Leroy sent you.'

James Kunstler Is a Very Smart Man

When the Birdies Sing Like the Fat Lady
"And so here we are at a fraught moment in the convergent crises of corona virus and the foundering economic system that it infected, with all its frightful pre-existing conditions. Of course, it isn’t capitalism, so-called, that is failing, but the perversions of capitalism, starting with the appendage of the troublesome term: ism. It isn’t a religion, or even a pseudo-religion like Zoroastrianism or communism. It’s simply the management system for surplus wealth. In a hyper-complex society, the management of wealth naturally grows hyper-complex, too, with lavish opportunities and temptations for chicanery, cheating, fraud, and swindling (the perversions of capital). It’s in the interest of the managers to cloak all that hyper-complex perversity in opaque language, to make it seem okay.

"How many ordinary Americans have a clue what all the Municipal Liquidity Facilities, Primary Dealer Credit Facilities, Primary and Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facilities, Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facilities, Main Street New Loan Facilities and Expanded Loan Facilities, Commercial Paper Funding Facilities, currency swap lines, the TALFs TARPs, PPPs, SPVs represent ­— besides the movement, by keystrokes, of “money” from one netherworld to another (both conveniently located on Wall Street), usually to the loss of non-elite citizens generally and to their offspring’s offspring’s offspring?

"Real capital is grounded in the production of real things of real value, of course, and when it’s detached from all that, it’s no longer real capital. Money represents capital, and when the capital isn’t real, the money represents…nothing! And ceases to be real money. Just now, America is producing almost nothing except money, money in quantities that stupefy the imagination — trillions here, there, and everywhere. The trouble is that money is vanishing as fast as it’s being created. That’s because it’s based on promises to be paid back into existence that will never be kept, on top of prior promises to pay back money that were broken or are in the process of breaking. The net result is that money is actually disappearing faster than it can be created, even in vast quantities.

"All this sounds like metaphysical bullshit, I suppose, but we are obviously watching money disappear. Your paycheck is gone. That activity you started — a brew-pub, a gym, an ad agency — no longer produces revenue. The HR department at the giant company you work for told you: don’t bother coming into the office tomorrow, or possibly ever again. Your bills are piling up. The numbers in your bank account run to zero. That sure smells like money disappearing. Wait until the pension checks and the SNAP cards mysteriously stop landing in the mailbox."

Paging Daddy Warbucks

Pandemic is a Global and Universal Problem...

A global problem is one that has a global reach. A universal problem is one that affects and is affected by everyone involved in a system. When you have a globally universal problem, like a pandemic, you have a problem that requires everyone on the planet to be on the same page following the same protocol.

It is like driving. In the "globe" of traffic, EVERYONE needs to follow the same basic driving protocols and obey the same traffic rules/signs. Otherwise, many many accidents. See:

The Early Wild Days of Urban Automotive Traffic

With a highly contagious virus traveling globally via cars, public transit, trains, planes, and sailing ships, we have a very global manifestation of a very universal problem. We also have a nearly unanimous lack of agreement between nations, states, corporations, their employees, small businesses, their employees, state, municipal and county governments, religions, sports clubs, bridge clubs, billy clubs...

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People need to eat: 

South Africa Eases Coronavirus Lockdown

"South Africa has started to gradually loosen its strict coronavirus lockdown, allowing some industries to reopen after five weeks of restrictions that plunged its struggling economy deeper into turmoil.The economy of Africa's most industrialised nation was already teetering when the lockdown kicked in on March 27 to contain the spread of infections."

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On what is practical:

Backwards into the Future

"Lockdowns can’t last forever, people are social animals. Also, lockdowns don’t solve the problem, that’s not their goal; they merely buy you time. Would you say we have used that time wisely? Would you say it’s safe now to put less distance between people, who are for all intents and purposes potential hosts for a lethal virus?" 
Raul Ilargi of The Automatic Earth 

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Also: Why apex predators should be an elite minority not a 7-billion-plus-and-growing planetary hive colony:

March of the Locusts: Individuals Start Moving to Avoid Cannibalism

Will we achieve the miracle of globally universal cooperation along careful guidelines? Nuh-uh. 

Have we used wisely what we hopefully have learned from our  confused, inconsistent, and generally too little too late lockdowns? Nuh-uh.

Are we immune to cannibalism? I'm not gonna answer that question. I'll let this guy do that:

Little Demon

The above picture is from an article titled: Should I Wear A Mask In Public? ... whose headline says it all: complete lack of consolidated response aka solidarity, cooperation, unity...