The signs of overwhelming social decay are ubiquitous, however the Idiocracy slept through history class and therefore can't recognize the point of recognition...
Here is Palin decrying New York's ban on the Idiocracy's right to gallon size sodas. Apparently there is nothing more important to stand up for than buckets of sugar water...
Bloomberg fucked up though. He shouldn't have banned gallon sized sodas outright. He should have triple taxed them into oblivion. That way anyone with a grain of common sense wouldn't be subsidizing the 400 pounders who feel the need to bury us all under a mountain of health care costs resulting from rampant diabesity.
Below is the full cost of toxic waste euphemistically called "food" i.e. healthcare costs that are 2.5 times the OECD average and rising with each Big Gulp. Say what you want about "Obamacare", which doesn't even take full effect until 2014 - much of the cost differential shown below is really about an abject lack of personal responsibility (and a corrupt healthcare system, granted):
Below is the full cost of toxic waste euphemistically called "food" i.e. healthcare costs that are 2.5 times the OECD average and rising with each Big Gulp. Say what you want about "Obamacare", which doesn't even take full effect until 2014 - much of the cost differential shown below is really about an abject lack of personal responsibility (and a corrupt healthcare system, granted):
Consumer Non-Confidence
While we are discussing consumption, might as well mention that on Friday, Consumer Confidence took its biggest plunge ever - to a 15 month low. The combination of higher taxes, the government forced spending cuts aka. "sequester", and higher fuel costs are bludgeoning the already fragile "consumer".
From no less than military.com via Brown University. $2.2 trillion and 190,000 lives. The war cost a mere 40 times more than initially estimated, leave alone the human toll.
Pedophilia No Longer A Crime
The article of the day had to be this one indicating that no less than a Cardinal tells us that Pedophilia is not a crime, it's an inherited illness - this coming from a high ranking member of the world's largest church no less. Perhaps this purported "illness" could be better forgiven had it not been surreptitiously passed down from one nefarious generation of "god's helpers" to the next over the past thousand+ years. Hideous.
The Idiocracy is Too Stupid To Recognize Its Own Latent Collapse
This is a sick and decadent society wherein even the self-proclaimed "holiest" are willing to overlook the most heinous of crimes. This society would have already collapsed had it only been intelligent enough to recognize the overwhelmingly attendant signs of decay. Unfortunately, the Idiocracy slept through history class and therefore has no clue that all of the indicators of collapse for any "Great Nation", are already well entrenched:
1) Depletion of the Treasury - see debt clock
2) Strategic overreach i.e. troops in 140+ countries
3) Hubris aka. Faux News
4) Wars of military adventurism - see above
5) Debasing the Currency aka. "Quantitative Easing"
6) Financial engineering aka. Wall Street
7) Competitive decline aka. mass outsourcing and recurring trade deficits
8) Overriding consumption - see Total Debt
9) Stagnant R&D - see "Saturn V to iPhone V"
10) Energy shortage - see "WTF?"
All of this is just another way of saying that the full force of the decline, having not been recognized in advance, will be swift and brutal and come seemingly out of the blue for a society preoccupied with Reality TV and otherwise gazing at its own navel.
Put a fork in it already.
1) Depletion of the Treasury - see debt clock
2) Strategic overreach i.e. troops in 140+ countries
3) Hubris aka. Faux News
4) Wars of military adventurism - see above
5) Debasing the Currency aka. "Quantitative Easing"
6) Financial engineering aka. Wall Street
7) Competitive decline aka. mass outsourcing and recurring trade deficits
8) Overriding consumption - see Total Debt
9) Stagnant R&D - see "Saturn V to iPhone V"
10) Energy shortage - see "WTF?"
All of this is just another way of saying that the full force of the decline, having not been recognized in advance, will be swift and brutal and come seemingly out of the blue for a society preoccupied with Reality TV and otherwise gazing at its own navel.
Put a fork in it already.
