Life Between 0 and 1

After recently ordering a plush toy and an A-line skirt for my daughters Halloween costume this year, I was surprised to see that it would take both over 2 weeks to arrive to my home. Inspecting further on the eBay listing and confirmation, they’re both shipping from China. It got me thinking about how, despite a lot of people claiming America is “first”, in reality we’re not. We actually haven’t been for a number of years. Most countries in the world got a really good lesson in how broken we actually are during the 2008 global market crash that in every way, was started by wealthy and greedy Americans. Sure, you can claim that other countries caused the crisis to worsen through a cascade of crashes, but it started with us. What is scary to think about, is that the system that existed in 2008 is the same system that exists today. Nothing has fundamentally changed to stop it from happening again, banks are still huge, and individuals affected by the crash are now past the 7 year mark when a foreclosure is falling off their credit report and applying for credit and mortgages once again.  Forclosure and bankruptcy didn’t do much in the way of learning from our mistakes.

My wife was watching a movie one evening this week as I arrived home, called The Big Short. I missed the majority of the movie and really only caught the last 30 minutes, however I was aware of all the detail surrounding the crash as I had been personally affected by almost losing my house (even though I had never gone underwater). The crash was a blindingly complicated event that had so many facets that helped contribute to the collapse. The focus of the movie was on a group of individuals that saw the collapse of the credit and housing bubble and took on the banks in their own game of insuring their assets in order to capitalize on the collapse, not the expansion of the bubble.  Seeing this movie coincided with my belief that at least the credit bubble is starting to expand again with the double-digit increase of sub-prime credit lending. Sub-prime, as I understand it, is lending to people with credit scores below 640 (I believe this is the FICO score). I’ve read so much in the past few weeks, there may be other requirements to meet the sub-prime categorization I’m still not aware of. My point here is that we’re heading towards another bubble bursting event that currently has NO compensating controls in the system to correct it. The Fed is powerless right now to correct another downturn event due to the fact that the correction mechanisms are already tapped. The rest of the world isn’t much better either. The end of the movie ended in a joke where there was sweeping legislation, hundreds went to jail, and big banks were broken up. Sadly the truth is that no one went to jail except for one person and Lehman was allowed to go out of business to be used as an example for everyone else that was eventually bailed out.

A really good video capture (link below) from a show called The Newsroom gives a fantastically blunt and factual answer to the question “What makes America the greatest country in the world?” I was amazed at how harsh the answer was delivered despite it being a fictional television show.  Everything that was said was based in true and verifiable facts. I believe this is the kind of rhetoric we need to be having across the country, the rhetoric that scares the crap out of career politicians that are also multi-millionaires and part of the top-tier of society. This resonated with me to the core. The question in the video is being asked by someone in a generation that I admit I have trouble relating to on so many different levels. Relating to the previous generation has been a struggle forever and is often referenced with jokes like “Get off my grass” said by an elder to a young child. I don’t have the proper frame of reference to adequately relate to a generation that has grown up with technology and has a fundamental understanding of its potential that will forever be outside of my grasp.

YouTube Video:  Is America the greatest country?

There are so many problems in our society and we’re all pointing fingers at each other. How immature we are for not holding ourselves accountable for all the hate we’re spewing on others. This is not the first time I’ve written about this topic and I’m unfortunately certain it isn’t the last time either. Global economy arguments aside, we can’t help others if we’re not able to help ourselves. The divide between haves and have-nots is a massive chasm that won’t be closed until the have-nots, with their greater strength in numbers, decides to do something about it. My own way of doing something about it is educating myself on the true system, the system behind the smoke and mirrors of mainstream media, and spreading what I know to others. Not by preaching, not by beating it into them. More along the lines of putting reasonable doubt on the table so that, if they choose to, they can pick up and discover for themselves the truth in all the lies. We need an open dialogue amongst each other where flame throwing puts you into time out. We need to start opening our eyes and seeing the truth that is there for the taking if we only just start scratching at the surface to find out what’s beneath.

This is our call to arms to not elect one man who claims he can “Make America Great Again”. This is our call to arms to not elect one woman who claims there is nothing nefarious about tens of millions of dollars in donations to her “foundation” from countries with laws that oppose all the foundation stands for. This is our call to arms to decide for ourselves, not be mindless sheep, and elect a person that has actually listened to us and is willing to join the fight against the system. It isn’t going to be easy, in fact, it will be damn difficult and seemingly impossible at times. I’m starting this fight personally by choosing to elect a third-party candidate, whomever that may be in my state election. I ask you, my small list of followers, to do your own research and decide for yourselves what the best choice for you should be.

America is broken, and it’s up to us, the have-nots, to fix it!