How Bad Will It Get?

Where do we look for success?

Photo by Ihor Malytskyi on Unsplash

by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ January 10, 2022

Our dilemma is figuring out how bad this is going to get. While there has been a great effort in putting a positive spin on things at the start of 2022, the reality is not promising.

We have lots of lipstick that is not helping the pig of the new year. Maybe it will grow into something prettier, but how that could happen is not apparent. There are many routes to hell and only a few to general wellbeing.

Denial and avoidance are dominant, and, I think, a majority of people see this. But, even if you cannot boldly face what is happening, you realize that none of us can permanently avoid reality. Avoided realities have a vicious bite.

I have trouble with the constant upbeat patter on American economics that is thrilled with expanding capital flows to the same small group that got us into this disaster over the last decades. The simultaneous trumpeting of doom over inflation rings equally false.

We know from decades of experience that fears of inflation are inherent in the boom-bust cycles of capitalist economics, but these are excuses for austerity that further enrich the same elite. The system is old and tired, and the patterns are so ingrained in our society that most people see them as normal.

There is nothing new here. The only mild surprise was the arrival of some emergency redistribution of wealth that began, temporarily to change the flow, but that was not to be. Instead, the forces of planetary destruction are definitely in control, with only enough change allowed to mesmerize the easily deluged and distract for the short term.

America is part of the disaster, but it should not be seen as the only reality. The facade of American-led imperialism is fragile and rife with dysfunction, but the decades of work to hide that are still somewhat effective. For most people in America and, to some extent, the other members of the Western imperialist coalition, the military-industrial complex pays the bills. It also maintains vast wealth for the capitalist elite, destroying the planet be damned.

But the planet's youth know this and are worried sick about it. Unfortunately, many older age groups also…