HANG-FIRE
by Kurt Saxon
Anyone who has played with firecrackers or higher explosives understands
the term, "hang-fire. In case you haven't, hang-fire means a fuse has seemingly
gone out, yet smolders. The experienced will wait several minutes to make
sure the fuse has died. But the novice will pick up the object to relight
the fuse, only to have it resume burning and go off in his hand.
For many years demographers, those who study human societies and where they
are headed, have been warning of civilization's eventual collapse due to
a surplus of people. Worse than a mere surplus is the increasing inferiority
of so many being borntoday.
As the educated and employed limit their births the ignorant on welfare go
on having as many babies as biology allows. They have swamped our civilizations
until crowding, pollution, inflation, violent crime, etc., has lowered everyone's
standard of living. Over the years, such professional men as Dr. Paul Ehrlich,
Garrett Hardin, William and Paul Paddock, Karl Sax, William Vogt and many
others have warned of the consequences of uncontrolled fertility among
homo-sapien populations. Their warnings werestudied and logical. However,
all to often, the endangered their credibility by dating their predictions.
The problem with dating such projections is that unforeseen variables implemented
from within or from without a stricken culture can make the prediction and
the predictor seem wrong. William and Paul Paddock's book predicted "Famine
1975!" Although in 1975, conditions in third-world countries were worse than
in 1967, when the book was published, technology and economic juggling averted
actual famine on a broad scale. Of course,malnutrition was more common in
1975 than in 1967 but since this best-seller's titled date was premature,
its warnings were ignored.
Famine did hit in Africa's Sahel region in the mid'80s. Millions starved
and are still starving. Idiots, wanting such predictions to be wrong, blamed
the famines, not on the surplus populations, but drought. There was no
exceptional drought. The famine was, and is, being caused by desertification.
A desert is an area whose ecology does not create its own rainfall. The Sahel
is a band of desert stretching nearly across the whole of the continent of
Africa. It has been widening at a rate of five miles a year. Ignorant primitives,
overgrazing the grass and brush and cutting down the trees for fuel, have
been creating their own desert out of a once verdant area.
Years before the famine, the natives were given all the benefits of modern
science to save more of their useless offspring, as well as the offspring
of their cattle, goats and sheep. Those offspring grew to have all the offspring
they could. So, as they all chewed and hacked away at the vegetation, the
desert widened and millions starved.
In 1985 the famine was a media event. One could not avoid specials showing
pot-bellied, skeletonized children who should not have born in the first
place. The most disgusting scene I can remember was of a woman at one of
the feeding stations leaning against a wooden fence, while having yet another
baby. On the other side of the fence were crowds of starving natives not
lucky enough to have gotten inside the feeding station.
Incidentally, the famine didn't go away. It just became boring as Americans
wasted more and more money to stave off the inevitable doom of millions of
useless primitives.
The TV evangelists were the worst offenders in the media hype. As I remember,
Jimmy Swaggart raised $300,000 before he was assured the food would not be
delivered. Even so, he went on to raise a total of $3,000,000 none of which
went to Africa.
The most ridiculous example of misplaced compassion was the New York school
project where little children, many on welfare, were urged to give their
nickels and dimes for an airlift of grain to the famine area. I worked it
out and the one planeload of wheat cost over $3,000 per ton. Such foolishness
only makes people more callous to human suffering.
At any rate, William and Paul Paddock were right. But since they were premature,
their warnings were discounted.
Dr. Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" was published in 1968. In this book
he predicted the worst in nine years, or 1977. His observations were correct
but his time calculations were off. So he, too, was considered a harmless
alarmist. Although his findings assured doom for most of mankind and were
based on the laws of cause and effect, he too, was ignored.
Of course, Paul Ehrlich was often featured on the Johnny Carson Show. This
was a mixed blessing. He did reinforce his arguments and sold a lot of books.
But he is so genial and sophisticated in his delivery that he made Johnny's
largely moronic viewing audience feel superior to such an egghead.
I was on the Phil Donahue Show in June of 1980. I told what was happening
to world civilization and was treated to jeers and angry shouts. I loved
it.
In 1980 there weren't nearly 4,000,000 homeless in the U.S. with 60,000 in
New York City alone. Family farms weren't going under at the rate of 380
per day. Banks weren't failing all over the place. Businesses weren't going
bankrupt at a record rate. GM announced the closing of ten more plants in
the next three years. More work is going out of the country, even as more
Latin Americans are sneaking across the Rio Grange.
But everything is being worked out, the politicians, their economists and
the media tell us. This is because broadcasting the truth would cause a panic.
Politicians who can't do anything, anyway, wouldn't get reelected.
Media ads for trash wouldn't pull, so the TV stations would lose revenue.
Sure, there's many reasons the Establishment wants people to go on going
on with business as usual, what there is of it. So everyone who warns that
this Disneyland for dummies is going to close down soon must be discredited.
Really, what good does it do the average person to tell him that his culture
medium is coming apart; that the degeneration of civilization, since the
early '70s, has accelerated past the point of no return? What can he do about
it?
I don't blame the politicians and the media for propping up their doomed
Establishment as long as they can. Some of them do believe there are solutions.
But most of them know there are no solutions and are only buying time to
get themselves a secure haven in which to wait out the coming storm.
But all the billions in inflated currency pumped into our economy and all
the media deception will only serve to make the collapse worse when it finally
comes. As I was writing this I was watching a news story about retired workers
protesting their loss of pensions as the companies they had worked for went
bankrupt. They had swallowed the nonsense about a safe and secure retirement.
Now they have nothing but insecure Social Security to fall back on.
Soon people will be surprised to see that their banks accounts will not be
covered for up to $100,000 as promised by the FDIC. If your bank fails and
your house payment comes due, the few thousand in your account will be gone
and you could soon join the ranks of the homeless.
Of course, if you've planned ahead and decided to relocate with a useful
trade, you can avoid the worst. But maybe it's easier for you to put your
faith in others rather than in yourself.
At any rate, the hang-fire principle is about to smolder toward the live
part of the socioeconomic fuse. More people are acknowledging the active
sputter.
On September 7, PBS showed the first of an eleven part series entitled "Only
One Earth", assessing the earth's ecological pastand future. The opener,
titled "The Road To Ruin" backed up most of what I've been writing in The
Survivor.
So now, at the11th hour, the government and the media are telling it like
it is; as I've been doing for years. Either they are reviving a latent conscience
or they want to absolve themselves of blame by being in position to say "I
told you so". Regardless, you should know by now that the hang-fire period
in our final years as a great and prosperous nation is about to end in an
as yet unimagined explosion. But you still have time to save yourself and
some of what is the best of our culture.
Whether you will or not is up to you. However, if you consider your line
worthy to continue, you will draw on your ancestors' determination to survive
and cut all ties to this present order. If you have living descendent a hundred
years from now, you willbe remembered as a credit to your species. If not,
you won't be remembered at all. But that too, will he good for our species.
|
