You and what army?

Bankrupt banks, Ayn Rand, and our grim future

Mark Petrakis shared an Ayn Rand quote on Facebook today that left me thinking for hours, especially as I watched the spreading waves left behind by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The quote describes how you can tell when your society is doomed.

I certainly read the orchestrated bank crisis that will unfold after Silicon Valley Bank as a sign that the parasite class has decided that opposition to their rule has reached an unacceptable level and that the final card of their hand must be played earlier than expected: destruction of money and the end of all financial interactions. In a sense SVB is the equivalent of Wuhan in December 2019, only this time the virus has infected money itself.

See my cartoon from three years for a taste of what is in store for us.

You will note that “banks bankrupt” is the final card here (although obviously all the others are being played to some degree or another already).

Here is the quote from Ayn Rand:

“When you notice that in order to produce you need to get permission from those who do not produce anything;

When you observe that money flows to those who do not deal in goods, but in favors;

When you realize that many become rich through bribery and through influence, and not through their work, that the laws do not protect you from the powerful, but, on the contrary, that laws are used to protect the powerful from you;

When you discover that corruption is rewarded and that honesty is an act of self-sacrifice, then you can assert, without any fear of being wrong, that your society is doomed.”

Alissa Zinovievna (Ayn Rand)

I agree with Mark that whatever criticisms of Ayn Rand there may be floating around out there, this quote seems to be right on the money, right at this time. I am agnostic concerning the origins of quotes. As Frederick Douglass said famously, he learned the most about freedom from Thomas Jefferson, a notorious slave owner. I second that opinion.

But what do we do? How do you stop the collapse of a civilization? I fear the gangrene has simply gone too deep. There are solutions, but no one wants to contemplate them.

Yet, this question of what to do keeps following me around as I look for a way to stop this drive for world war at any cost. Clearly creating a military economy is the only way to save the parasites at this point.

One could imagine a conversation like this:

“We need to end this drive for war, this destruction of the environment, and this evisceration of the economy!”

“Yeah, you and what army?”

This joke here, in light of the situation that Rand describes, is no joke. If there are many, well organized, who are willing to kill in order to protect their assets (which is clearly true) then the only way to stop them is to form your own army, or to get an army, that can oppose them. Quoting the constitution and speaking the truth is not going to be enough.

Yet an army, by its very nature, feeds into the dangerous spiral of death and destruction that we face.

I do not have a solution to offer today, but only want to point out just how serious the current situation has become at every single level.