Goodbye Baby, and The Short Arm of the Law

Rock-a-bye, Baby, in the tree top.

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.

When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall.

And down will come Baby, cradle and all.

Goodbye Baby, and The Short Arm of the Law

A goodly number of my fellow TEOTWinkies are concerned about Big Brother (Government, Corporate Interests, IMF, WTO, Oligarchs... you choose). 

Me? Not so much.

We have two friends, one an eX-CoastGuard, and the other eX-RightWingNut. Both extremely intelligent, well-informed and capable. But they have diametrically opposed takes on Big Brother and his capabilities.

XRWN: Big Brother is damn near omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. Come SHTF, they will terminate 'undesirables' with extreme prejudice, round the remainder into internment/work camps for 'safe-keeping' and comb the back-country for 'malingerers'.

XCG: Big Brother can't find its own ass, nor discern shit from shinola. If it does crush someone, it's likely collateral damage from some other operation gone wrong. In rare cases, the operation going wrong is targeting those involved, but the actual result is SNAFU, and always back-fires.

It's been amusing to me, over the years, to see how the onrush of data supports one side or the other. And I've got to say, XCG is winning by a mile.

Big Brother IS a Conspiracy, of sorts. A lot of conniving SOBs are colluding diligently to line their own pockets and eradicate anything or anyone that gets in the way of sucking the world dry. And at this, they are fabulously successful. They work together where it profits them.

But they're not all working to line the same pockets - they compete with one another for the plunder. And this creates turbulence. Dare I say teotwurbulence?

One has only to look at history of the last century to date to see the colossal ineptitude of Big Brother. Afghanies, in just the last score of decades, have managed to repel four invasions by three of history's Biggest, most powerful Brothers.

But look deeper...

There's also the Conspiracy of Life. That yeasty ferment that booms unto bust. Growth to the limits; a stunning vista; the plunge.

Human conspiracies of greed and power are but manifestations of that froth. Pale, predictable and pointless.

It has crowded our species- all 7 billion of us -out onto a slender limb of our planet's carrying capacity. We've spent the last several centuries sawing away at that limb, and now we are over halfway through. Splintering sounds fill the air.

And when the bough breaks, the cradle (of civilization) will fall.

But you knew that.

*****

So what does this mean for after it's fallen?

Well, last I looked, extensive planning and logistics are required for the least coordinated military option. An army travels on its stomach. A mechanized army travels on its fuel tank.

In a hard landing, logistics come to a screeching halt. If resources aren't lying around, waiting to be appropriated, search and internment forces of any scale will be dead-in-the-water. 

How will fuel get from well to refinery to Hummer? With what will troops be fed? Paid? How to recover or replace deserters headed home to stand by their loved ones? How to incentivize them to fan out into the dangerous boonies in hot pursuit of the lunatic fringe?

Given that 90% of us (a conservative figure) are concentrated in urban or sub-urban communities, one can bet that any resources they can muster will be directed at high-priority, urban targets.

Oh sure, we on the fringe might get crushed by the flailing colossus as it goes down. Our local police or National Guard may well become the local warlord + militia, with a 'go mission', our address and a local sense of eminent domain. But that's Little Brother, and another matter...   

Big Brother, I'm not too worried about.