Withdrawal

All day community sing, Pie Town, New Mexico, c. 1940; photo: Library of Congress, US Farm Security Photographs.

Millions upon millions of Americans have been forced into poverty since the advent of this Endless Recession, more millions every year it goes on, and strangely, despite the Occupy Movement and many thousands of NGOs serving the Poor, and hundreds of thousands of churches, and many tens of millions of concerned and generous Americans, there is no general outcry about the impoverishment of so many millions of Americans so quickly and so thoroughly as has been the case.

The official poverty rate today hovers around 15% or 16%, a historic high since the mid 1960's and it is growing. Like the unemployment rate, the "true" poverty rate is probably substantially higher than the official rate (the poverty rate is derived from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey's Annual Social and Economic Supplement; the unemployment rate is derived from the Census Bureau's monthly Current Population Survey for the Bureau of Labor Statistics).

Homelessness is at a historic high as well, even as millions and millions of homes sit empty due to the banking and foreclosure crisis -- that goes on and on and on endlessly as well.

The Masters of the Universe have decided this situation is just right; they want no changes that might cost them anything, and they will have their handmaidens in government thwart any movement from below to adjust matters.

As we've seen over and over again, any serious effort to highlight the plight of the increasing numbers of Americans in poverty or to petition government for redress is met with ever harsher and violent repression.

The absence of a general outcry at the impoverishment of Americans may be due to official repression. On the other hand, many Americans don't have an intellectual, moral or emotional problem with increasing poverty -- as long as it doesn't touch them. As long as the problem of poverty is someone else's problem, what's to worry, right?

This attitude is yet another of the many legacies of the Reagan Era, and unfortunately, it's an affliction of Washington, DC that simply doesn't respond to persuasion or pressure from below. Reaganism took the place of Progressivism a generation ago now, and it doesn't look like the culture and the mindset of present day DC is capable of considering the consequences of poverty and of its policies that increase poverty. Even today's so-called "progressives" don't seem to get it.

I was chatting with my neighbor the other day. He's an older man, has had a couple of strokes, but he's doing very well all things considered, he is quite spry and able to get along well enough. He notices how poverty is increasing all the time, and how nothing is being done to reverse it. There are no jobs, especially for the young. So many people are homeless. Cutbacks everywhere, and the cost of living keeps going up and up and up.

He says that he learned to live simply a long time ago; because of his simple lifestyle, he hasn't been exposed to some of the economic struggles that so many people are going through. He doesn't need or want that much in the material world.

Some of the young people could learn from him, he says, but they won't listen. I say, "Well, you know, they have to learn for themselves; you can't really tell them."

"Yes, but so many want all these things that they don't really need, that no one really needs," he says, "and when they're too poor to afford it... If they could learn to live simply, it wouldn't matter. Not so much anyway."

How are they to do that? How is anybody to do that? This is the dilemma that so many Americans have been facing for years now: how to transition from a wildly over-consumptive lifestyle to one that is easier on resources and on oneself?

Withdrawal is one way, one that has deep historic roots in the American land and psyche. Withdrawal is at the foundation of some of the English colonization efforts; the Puritans, after all, were a "withdrawal" sect, as were many others who came to America for religious freedom (for themselves, not for anyone else, of course).

Historically, there have been any number of withdrawal sects since the Puritans; many aspects of the Westward Expansion of the 19th Century could be characterized as forms of withdrawal -- especially the Mormon trek to Utah and elsewhere in the West.

There was a very active back to the land movement during the Great Depression despite the Dust Bowl and all the other hazards inherent in trying to pioneer on marginal lands.

Of course, the rebellions of the 1960's gave rise to a plethora of urban and rural communes, ashrams and other forms of intentional communities, a surprising number of which are still around, all premised on living simply and withdrawal from the materialist and consumerist culture.

The original Franciscan movement was predicated on voluntary poverty and withdrawal from the violent and materialist society of its own time; many of its critics pointed out how easy it was for rich men's sons (and soon enough, daughters too, with the establishment of the Poor Clares) to "leave it all behind," but it wasn't so easy for someone who never had anything to begin with to do so. Someone who has endured poverty for a long time will not necessarily be so kindly disposed to the adoption of poverty by someone who has lived in luxury all their lives.

The issue of hypocrisy doesn't go away simply because one who is privileged declares one's sincerity in living "poor". One way the privileged can demonstrate sincerity is to withdraw from materialist society. The Buddha as an example...

One of the ironies of "living simply" -- that is to say, consuming fewer resources -- is that it can be very expensive. Various forms of energy conservation, for example, can cost individuals and households extraordinary amounts of money. If they don't have the upfront cash or credit, what are they to do? Even with various subsidies, reducing resource consumption can still be an extremely expensive path to take and often is only realistically available to the well-off and rich.

Part of the path of Withdrawal is to find ways to get away from the necessity for relative wealth in order to live simply and well. The pioneers and refugees in Pie Town cut their own trees, built their own log cabins and dug-outs, grew their own food, and insofar as they could, they lived as simply as possible -- without all the modern conveniences such as electricity and running water, for example. Basically, they substituted their own labor for the consumer goods and services that most people relied on. It was not an easy life by any means, nor was it one that very many of the Pie Town pioneers could endure for very long. Not so much because it was so tough at the outset - though it was that. Inability to endure this primitive life for very long had perhaps more to do with the fact that there was little or no hope for improvement; the situation did not get better. In many cases, the situation got worse. Pioneering ideals don't last very long when, for example, the weather doesn't cooperate, crops fail and you're going hungry because you can't grow anything to eat, or when you or your children are sick and there's no medicine or doctoring and you don't know what to do.

Thus many communities that withdraw from materialist society don't try to start anew from scratch, they utilize the surpluses and overabundance of the materialist society around them to create an alternative, an alternative which may or may not be a stop-gap on the road to something else again.

What happens when the surplus runs out?

That's a point that Americans have yet to get to. As a rule, though, people are highly adaptable to whatever conditions they find themselves in. If at some point in the future, the surplus of materialism is all used up, then people will adapt to their new conditions, whatever they may be.

The key is for there to be some kind of transition.

The Race To the Bottom -- and What To Do About It

The economic and political race to the bottom continues with remarkable energy and speed. It appears that the Governor -- and now the Government -- of Wisconsin is simply ignoring the injunctions and restraining orders of the courts and barreling ahead with the Koch-funded ALEC-Walker "budget repair" provisions passed by the Republicans in the legislature.

They don't care what you think or what anyone else thinks about it. They are going to do what they want -- and they dare you to do anything to stop them. Double. Dog. Dare you.

This is part of the process of "reform," don't you see. It is the way :Leadership: should be practiced.

In California, we don't know how much worse the budget atrocities are going to get. We just know they are going to get exponentially worse because the rump Republicans in the Legislature adamantly refuses to allow the People to vote on the extension of higher taxes to fund essential services. Absolutely refuses, that is, unless the Governor and the majority Dems in the Legislature adopt the Republican policy program in its entirety and then agrees to govern as if Republicans had won any statewide office at all.

In all of the wrangling over state budgets and their "repair", one thing seems to be universally agreed on: there can be no increase in taxation on the rich, on corporations, or on wealth whatsoever, and in fact, taxation on the well-off must be reduced.

This is Doctrine.

Everywhere and for all parties.

And it is, of course, a leading factor in the race to the bottom.

Wages and pensions of workers must be cut; prices must rise. But absolutely nothing whatever can be allowed to take even one feather from the comfortable nests of the High and the Mighty. It cannot be contemplated. The idea is verboten. Don't even think about it. (This was also a problem in the 1930's -- despite higher tax rates on wealth then than now -- and it is one reason the Great Depression went on so very long.)

Economic policies must be adopted to foster another series of bubbles, because that's how the High and the Mighty get so High and Mighty -- the only way, in fact, for most of them to continue to accumulate their riches and their power.

The untermenschen must be made to pay more for the privilege of being ruled by these ever fattening predators.

What is so striking about it is that the Overclass is literally offering the proles nothing in compensation for the pillage. Their program is simple: reduce everyone else's standard of living to -- or below -- the barest minimum so as to ensure the continued comfort and convenience of the merry Masters of the Universe. What do the proles get? They get to "live." If they can. "Freedom!" Don't you see?

They get the "Freedom" to support their betters or to starve. Genius.

It's a masterpiece of reactionary bullshit.

Seemingly no one knows what to do about it, despite the fact that there is a spreading grassroots world-wide revolt-revolutionary movement against this sort of garbage, some of it taking place right here in the United States, that has captivated attention.

The success or failure of the Revolutions remains to be seen, but it is clear that the Ruling Class, no matter where they are, is not giving up without a fight, and in the United States, they are not giving up at all. They are if anything doubling down on their demands and they are simply ignoring the People's Will and the Public Interest in their quest for ultimate Victory.

There's plenty of opposition, but they don't care, and they will not yield. They want what they want and they fully intend to get it, regardless of any and all opposition.

It's interesting that some observers seem to recognize and to diminish the importance of the truth of the matter by asserting, for example, that the Koch Brothers -- among others -- are not really all that powerful or all that important in the larger scheme of things, and that whatever they are doing is not really making all that much of a difference in the long run.

Um. Sure. Whatever.

The implacable Will to Power of the MOTUs doesn't really make all that much difference. Never did, never will. If you believe that, there are any number of poorly maintained and dangerous bridges on the market... cheap.

Even Sweet Baby Ezra seems to have caught on to the notion that an Opposition that is predicated on Preserving Remnants of What Used To Be, ie: keeping the Looters from Taking Everything, is simply inadequate to deal with what is really going on.

Even he sees that trying to maintain Social Security as it is is a losing strategy, when the crying need is for critical and systemic improvements to a system that is set up to barely cover the most minimal retirement and disability costs of those who rely on it. In other words, the Social Security system is not even remotely adequate as it is, yet all the talk is about making it less so.

This is, in a word, stupid.

So. What to do?

Of course the first thing is to recognize there is a problem.

Our political class does not recognize it.

But the key to reversing the trend toward declining living standards for the masses so as to ensure the continued comfort and convenience at the top of the pyramid is for the proles to come up with their own demands, not to "preserve" the status quo but to significantly improve the condition of the masses. This should be simple to understand, but apparently it is not.

Instead, the opinion leaders of the proletariat seem to be content to await the pleasure of the political class to tell them what is important and what to think about it.

Whenever actual improvements of programs and services to the masses are brought up, actual methods of improving the economy or putting people back to work, or whatever, the political class says, essentially, "No. Nothing like that can be done. We will be lucky if we can preserve this, that, or the other aspect of What Used to Be, and we can consider that a Victory."

This is where we've been for years. And years. And years.

As conditions get worse and the race to the bottom accelerates, even the idea of making improvements in the conditions of the majority is lost.

Restoring that idea and developing it further and further is the key to bettering conditions for the Many.

I've talked and written about it frequently. I'm still waiting for anyone else to pick up the thread.

We want Better.

It's that simple.

Pietown

The Media Narrative has suddenly and completely changed. The United States is now in a Depression. The economy is faltering and is soon to crash. Some people are daring to say that even if the "$700 Billion" extortion money is paid to the Bushevik cronies, the Crash is certain to come anyway. There is no escape.

Pietown was a response to a previous economic, environmental, and climate catastrophe. Refugees from the Great Depression and the Dustbowl, from Texas and from Oklahoma and from parts farther afield, trekked to a remote section of New Mexico, west of Soccoro, to set up a self-sufficient community of pinto-bean and corn farmers, living off the land, around Clyde Norman's pie shop on Highway 60 .

It was a rough life.



Despite all the fearmongering coming out of the corridors of power and privilege these days, I somehow doubt that most Americans are all that moved by the efforts to goad them into additional passive submission to further looting and plunder.

There are signs of fighting back against Wall Street, and other signs of endurance in the face of hardship.



It's time for the Globalist Rich to lose the Class War they have been conducting against the rest of the nation and the world for lo these many years. Time to reverse the pendulum.

The Congressional Democrats have showed us just how "efficient" they are at plundering us -- or would be if the Republicans would let them. But no, the Republicans have -- mercifully for once -- thrown some sand in the gears of the plunder machine.

There is a pause.

From this point, all hell is liable to break loose.

Batten down.

And remember Pietown.