I bring bad news. We are already in a depression, and it will not go away until so dearly long after 2012. It will not go away no matter who is the president. Now then, what's your plan to survive in the land of ashes and memories?
You can worry about this weekend's latest display of federal corruption. You can rail against the president, you can threaten a primary. You can lament the demise of the Democratic Party. You can find solace in the opportunities ahead in the political battle. You can abdicate concern entirely. But these are all besides the point.
Whatever you do, know this: time is running out, for most of us. The gray hand is zeroing in, like a rifle target. And no one is going to save us.
How do I know the "great sucking sound" won't cease? You don't need to be a forecasting guru.
Home prices are at 2002 levels. Trillions of dollars simply disappeared from US housing. No band-aid can fix gangrene.
Young people don't have jobs. Black people don't have jobs. And the jobs that do exist are "increasingly shittier." You don't need to go doom and gloom on social security or Medicare or anything still uncertain. China loses momentum every day.
It was never that clear to me that something as divided and broadly focused as the Democratic Party could have actually corrected the underlying problems of the economy. This much we know: Wall Street made a gamble because they would profit to do so, and that gamble took down the human race. The powerful still have all the money and all the access and influence, making identical or equally reckless decisions.
What's more, your government will ultimately fail you for the coming years, not because government itself is incapable, but because the American electorate has become schizophrenic.
I have political solutions I've offered, time and time again, and will continue to offer those. But that is not the point here. Much of the solutions needed also come from the individual and the culture. We cannot have a government of excellence with the people of today, a timid, biting, resentful America. If you or people you know are angry now, well, don't worry about that one: rage will mount, building little by little, like stress on a dangerous fault line.
It's the wasteland growing drier and drier every day that should concern you. It's the increasing obsolescence of our way of life, and the absence of a new way so far, when it is the nature of the universe for new things to replace the outworn.
It's the fact that you will not make up for your lost time or your battered investments. You are in a more severe conundrum now: the steady war to endure in poverty or else powerlessness that some of us have known much longer than you.
The staples I eat every week are lentils, rice (I can't eat much corn and I can't eat wheat or barley at all) and liver. These are your friends, because they are not as hard on your body and are so very cheap. It's a nice diet for someone raised and inspired by a Great Depression survivor.
There are a million ways to think outside the box. You can bring back foods that you won't find in your store. Grow okra (God's gift to cuisine) or butter beans or marionberries or salmonberries or ramps or shallots (a very easy grow). Find ways of selling things, whether goods or services. You know you, your talents, your abilities, better than any of us. You will probably have to think outside of the box to survive. You may even have to adapt to a lifestyle without (enough) income, including government transfer payments.
At the moment, China's economy is still helping the US plod along, and Wall Street is assured. Do not count on either, for all is not as it seems. And you know it. Time is ticking.