How Can You Enjoy the Decline?
I have been meaning to order Aaron Clarey’s new book Enjoy the Decline after viewing the sample pages from Amazon and reading over the description:
The “End of America?” Most likely. The “Demise of liberty?” You betcha! The “Destruction of Western Civilization?” Of course! But why let all of the above get you down? Learn to “Enjoy the Decline!” “Enjoy the Decline” is mandatory reading for all conservatives, libertarians, Americans, and lovers of freedom who are mourning the slow, but sure death of their culture and their country. America is over. Freedom will be curtailed. Liberty is dead. And above all else, it is inevitable. But the answer is not to get depressed and give up hope. The answer is to change your attitude and learn how to “Enjoy the Decline.” You get one life on this planet and Aaron Clarey explains how to get the most out of it even though socialism and tyranny are all around you. From learning how to adapt your psychology to learning to let go and take advantage of the socialist system, “Enjoy the Decline” carries the freedom loving American through the 5 stages of grief and puts them on a path to enjoy their life regardless of what is happening to their beloved America. Dark, macabre, and morose, but truthful, helpful, and practical all the same, it is guaranteed to make you happier than your socialist counterparts even though they have everything they want. Make leftists, liberals, and progressives miserable. Enjoy the Decline!
It reminds me of libertarian Harry Browne’s premise in his book How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World:
Freedom is the opportunity to live your life as you want to live it. And that is possible, even if others remain as they are.
If you’re not free now, it might be because you’ve been preoccupied with the people or institutions that you feel have restrained your freedom. I don’t expect you to stop worrying about them merely because I suggest that you do.
I do hope to show you, though, that those people and institutions are relatively powerless to stop you — once you decide how you will achieve your freedom. There are things you can do to be free, and if you turn your attention to those things, no one will stand in your way. But when you become preoccupied with those who are blocking you, you overlook the many alternatives you could use to bypass them.
I don’t know that institutions and people are powerless to stop you from freedom, it seems these days that they try pretty hard and often succeed. However, I get the gist of what these authors are trying to tell their readers: that understanding how to work the system or work around it can put you on the path to, if not freedom, enjoyment of life and a sense that you have some control over your fate and life. For example, a reviewer over at Amazon says in response to Clarey’s book:
This book is awesome. I am a little depressed I can’t go and follow the advice being stuck in the Army for 2 more years, but, I know what I’m gonna do: Get a useless degree in Europe on the government dime, just so I can party and have fun with that GI Bill.
How about you? Any ideas on how you will enjoy the decline?
More from Dr. Helen:
I see nothing to enjoy. The America of my youth, complete with Chuck Yeager and Neil Armstrong, is sliding into an open sewer. We have a rat-eared, hyena-faced assclown of a president who is playing war games with black helicopters firing machine guns filled with blanks in major cities, the feds have a 1.3+ billion rounds of 9mm and .40 cal ammunition (why on Earth?!), and most of the women I meet seem to specialize in being pissed off at the world. We’ve all but surrendered our southern border.
I don’t take exception to his politics, but I’m not much of a Capt. Capitalism fan. Whatever is going on in this country, it inspires little warmth. I despise conspiracy theorists, but I have to confess this country looks like it’s readying itself for a civil war or something. If those morons in DC are serious about anything, it’s lining their own pockets before the shit hits the fan.
TPTB are preparing for a total breakdown of social order. It’s not a question of ‘if’, it’s a question of ‘when’.
The fact that they have about 10 bullets for every man, woman, and child in the continental United States chills me to the bone.
And based on the demonstrated shooting skills of the LAPD and NYPD, they’re still about 50 rounds per person short of what they’ll need.
A State of Emergency has been declared so I drive on the great 5th heaven dragon highway from the foot of the White Mountains after I burn away the demons in my private log cabin wood stove to the great City with blizzard conditions as time stands still and I prepare to meet the mystery Lady coming down from the sky my first chance coming indoors from building my SNOW SHIRE HOUSE What a way to enjoy the decline to work with my hands with a record up to 4inches of snow coming down an hour, Lighting and thunder is breaking out meeting my GREAT Robust
after my snow mansion is done I pray for protection for my great city
Exactly.
I might buy this book but Aaron Clarey has elsewhere told men that marriage is a good idea if you find “the right woman.” This is horrendous advice given the horrendous sham that marriage has become and he should know better.
It’s true, but it’s a vacuous comment: “something is right as long as you find the right person for it”. Don’t take too much offense to it.
…as long as you find the right person…
Trouble is, a man can only know she’s “the right person” when he’s dead.
There are a lot of vacuous statements in the book frankly. His point about marrying is don’t do it unlesss you choose your spouse carefully. He also suggests that you think twice about having children. Don’t put money in a 401k, don’t work to hard, and seriously consider killing yourself as a retirement plan.
Well, the key is to let go. Not worry about things to much. Of course, that is more difficult if you worry about your kid’s future.
On the other hand, I’ve come to believe that those who want their freedom don’t have to drop out. But a frontal assault is going to do little but get you shot. I think the trick is to look at this like a covert operative operating in hostile territory. Go along to get along when necessary but at every opportunity throw a monkey wrench in the works. Help the oppressors along with a bit of “bad luck.” While quietly and being non-confrontational offer an alternative view to the cattle, I mean loyal subjects.
Only a few people are able to last a lifetime as a double agent.
For most, such a life is mentally and emotionally exhausting – a meandering trip into madness.
So true. I’m a market-oriented, libertarian’ish scientist and strategy consultant working in the healthcare space, and many of my clients are in places like Cambridge, MA and San Francisco. The real-world ignorance and politics are ten times more exhausting than the practical work!
I really am thinking of following Hugh Akston’s example: becoming a short order cook at a diner.
JKB, brilliant insights. I think your concept of being an undercover operative in hostile territory is accurate and very useful.
I also agree with your point about options being very different depending on whether you have kids or not. I’m convinced that this is the only way tyranny has ever been able to prevail: Satan and his minions in this world exploit the best thing in human nature — our love for our children — and perversely, sadistically use it to blackmail us. No decent human being can placidly contemplate watching their children suffer, which is what the tyrants’ threats always boil down to — they will take your children away if you don’t comply; or they will kill your spouse and children if you don’t comply; or they will destroy your livelihood (and thus your ability to feed your kids) if you don’t comply; or they will destroy your house (your kids’ shelter) if you don’t comply; etc., etc.
I have no answers to that conundrum. I just know that I burn with fury against those who are robbing my children of opportunity and robbing my parents of peace in their old age.
I believe the first mention of imminent decline was found in a cave painting in southern France. Empires grow sclerotic and decline; democracies do not. Democracies are self-cleansing.
Since I’m in my declining years
And rid of my once youthful fears
I find the prospect of decline
To be a little short of fine
But on the whole I can’t complain
My life has been good in the main
I lived when honor was the way
That men and women lived their day
When presidents did not tell lies
And games we played could end in ties
The country was much better then
And better still will be again
The present always looks so dark
The prospects always seem so stark
But we’ll survive we always do
We’ve miles to go ‘fore toodle-oo
Democracies are not self cleansing they are self destroying.
Democratic republic of limited government are self cleansing.
At the moment, we don’t appear to be very “self-cleansing.” Wallowing in filth, more properly.
Enjoy the bread, circuses and orgies because tomorrow the barbarians come? Buy ammo while you still can… if nothing else, it (and cigarettes, booze, etc.) may well end up being currency after Democrats “fundamentally transform” everything– Cloward-Piven strategy destruction of the economy can get mighty nasty and this ain’t neutered ol’ England that’ll just putter along amiably after some collapse for a generation or so (left/liberals expecting a European-style soft landing where they can impose “social justice” and rainbows/unicorns to bring us to joyful equality may be sadly mistaken if they manage to survive it). Not looking forward to such and hope it don’t happen, but would rather keep it from happening and focus upon doing that. It ain’t over ’til it’s over.
When I was a kid, booze and cigarettes were currency.
It was how my CIA father recruited low-level informants in a far-away land where we were stationed.
I have a stamp collection. It was given to me by my grandmother and is quite remarkable really. She had a friend who worked at the post office that made it for me.
I have the complete collection of all the stamps for the American Revolution, the Bicentennial, and the space program, all on commemorative envelopes, stamped first day of issue. I have the moon landing stamp on a commemorative envelope that’s not only stamped first day of issue but also the day of the moon landing. That has to be incredibly rare. It might be the only one in existence.
I also have an autographed picture of Elvis Presley from 1956. Yeah, my mother got it when she was 14. Elvis played in San Antonio on the Louisiana Hayride, and she and her friends went backstage and met him. She was too shy to kiss him, which to this day she says is her greatest regret. But she did get his autograph. She gave it to me after I bought her a car when I got my first job out of college. (Elvis bought his mother a car.)
That’s the America I grew up in. It was a culture that celebrated its past. And a time when people didn’t have to lock their doors at night.
Those days are gone forever. I graduated from high school in 79, didn’t become a full-time teacher untill 88. And I have to tell you, it was shocking to me. When I went to school, it was hard. I’m talking about spelling quizes, vocabulary tests, and sentence diagramming every week. But when I became a teacher, I was like, are you serious? This is your curriculum? In less than ten years, the whole thing had been corrupted.
I took a class in college, History and Philosophy of Education. We studied everything from Plato, the first Academy, through the 20th century. You wouldn’t believe the curricula and tests in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Those kids were doing what today would be PhD level work in the eigth grade.
My grandfather dropped out of school after the third grade. He went to work plowing a field with an ox. He read every newspaper and magazine he could get his hands on, and every night he helped his sisters with their homework. So he read all the textbooks; he got the benefit of an education without going to school.
When he was 18, he walked into the business school in San Antonio, took the entrance exam, passed, got a degree–which would be the equivalent of an MBA today–and became a bank manager.
Later, when my grandmother was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the doctor said all we can do is cut out one lung and half of the other. That would be a $500,000 operation today. So he went down to the bank he managed, stole the money, paid the doctor, and saved his wife’s life. When she was home and safe, he turned himself into the police and went to prison. She outlived him.
They don’t raise men like that anymore. But they don’t raise women like that either. These days it’s all women all the time. You see it on TV every night, women superheroes. Question: How many young, attractive women become homocide detectives, as opposed to how many become actresses that play homocide detectives on TV?
I resigned from teaching because my father got sick. I help my mother run our company and try to look after her, which is what I promised my father I would do on his deathbed. These days, I spend most of my morning time doing research and most of my afternoon time driving around and standing in vacant, repossesed homes, taking pictures and writing notes, forming a price opinion.
How am I going to enjoy the decline? I’m not. I just do what I have to do. When my mother retires or dies, I’ll liquidate everything, retire with millions and no debt. That’s not exactly the way I wanted it to be, but if it is, so be it.
I could have been, I was, a teacher. I was my students’ worst nightmare, because I enforced the grading standard, without passion or prejudice. Oh, they hated me, but I didn’t care. I just did my job.
It’s the same today. Every seller thinks the property is worth more than it really is. I just do the research and give a reasonable estimation of what the property will sell for. And I’m usually right, within +/- 5%.
How am I going to enjoy the decline? I don’t believe in decline. The American people are above all things resilient.
I’ll just ride out the storm and retire rich.
Remember, a dead forest has to burn down before it can regrow.
“I’ll just ride out the storm and retire rich.”
I guess I’ll see you beach-side in Vietnam when it all goes to hell?
A close friend of mine runs a couple of PGA Golf courses there. See you on the links.
Thanks Dr. Helen!
Heck, more than happy to mail you a copy. You and your husband beat me to it before I could even inquire where to mail them!
Cpt
I get equally annoyed at doomsayers and pollyannas. The war between good and evil will never be won by either side.
The point is the fight, not the impossible victory.
So get off your arses, stop moaning and get to work fighting the good fight.
“So get off your arses, stop moaning and get to work fighting the good fight.”
Nice empty platitude there; got an REAL recommendations?
Screw the “good fight.” Just stay as invisible as possible to the “fighters” of the world and maybe one day their genes will finally be eliminated and we can all just enjoy life.
The Cappy sure is a smart chappy with reassuring ways to enjoy the economic Decline.
But even more so, Dr. Helen, Cpt. Capitalism is approaching a gold standard rating in advice for men of all ages to find a way to enjoy (circumvent) the decline thrust upon us by the cadre of feminists poised perilously with their anvils of Dworkin above our heads.
I’m approaching retirement in the next few years and after that I intend to enjoy not working my backside off for the government’s stealing 30% or more of it, which I think is one of the tenets of Enjoy the Decline. Yeah, I’ll continue to fight the good fight, but I’ll be prepared as well.
I can’t see how adding 45% of Federal spending to our debt every year is anything but suicide and there are no palatable solutions.
If you cut spending 45%, there will be a major depression and literally riots in the street nationwide.
If you raise taxes 45%, there will also be a major depression and massive layoffs.
If you split the difference you’ll have a depression, layoffs and riots.
If you devalue the dollar, you have inflation – a hidden tax on everything. Think QE1, 2 and 3.
If you kick the can down the road you delay the inevitable, but then the correction is eventually forced on you.
There are no good solutions and desperate times will mean a desperate government and desperate governments throw personal, constitutional rights and freedoms into the furnace.
My plans are to live in a rural area, learn to be as self-sufficient as I can, stock up on supplies, arm up for hunting/protection, and prepare for the economic apocalypse to come.
Unfortunately, the Cloward-Piven strategy
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy )
is about overloading local/state gov’t social spending to the point of collapse then somebody (presumably federal will bail ‘em out and take over in the folk who purposely overloaded the spending’s favor) so when the United States gov’t collapses from oveloaded social spending (hello massive debt and default) who’s going to bail America out?
World Bank? (We give them money.)
Europe? (In debt and got too much money from us already.)
UN? (We give them money.)
China? (They have more debt of ours than they want now already.)
Some Globalist consortium? (Georg Soros and Warren Buffet don’t have enough, wouldn’t like running America anyway.)
Frank, you may well be right. I hope not.
I’ve yet to read the Captain’s book (but I well). However, I have read Harry Brown’s book “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World” and found it to be excellent. How anyone can have a beef with Harry Brown’s book is completely inexplicable to me. Nonetheless, I have heard that many people dislike it.
The decline began when Eve was seduced then Adam follow Eve. this Great snow storm in the past few days building my snow house I am reminded of the Immaculate conception of Holy Mary Mother of God The Queen,the 2nd Eve a stumbling block to Protestant Christians ,Jews and Islam.
i even wonder if they consider her a demon false goddess from paganism but that is the problem when people do not understand what this decline is really all about the need for the 2nd Eve and the 2nd Adam to begin the plan of God on earth as it is in Heaven I believe.
Can’t recall whether it was Dominic Flandry or James Retief who observed that best time to live was in the decadent days of a dying empire. Though it seems either one of them could make the case.
Of course, the aftermath is kind of messy- best not to leave progeny behind.
Any Retief reference is a thumbs up from me. I’ve spent a bit of time working overseas with (not for) the State Department, and hardly one of those days went by that I didn’t think of Retief and the CDT.
Definitely Dominic Flandry. I recollect him musing about this in one of the later novels.
The decadent days of a dying empire are only fun to be alive in IF you have a nice comfy cushion of money. Go down a stratum or two, and it’s every man for himself and the State against all.
I and mine are employing the centuries-old strategy of our people: work hard to maximize your resources, teach your children well, maintain close ties with your community, and try not to attract the attention of any agents of The State/The Law. That worked much of the time. Until about 1933, anyway…
It was probably in one of the Dominic Flandry stories. The general theme of those stories was a declining Earth centered empire and Flandry’s rise up from young officer to be an “Agent of Empire”. However Flandry did not sit back as the empire fell apart but worked and fought to put off the coming dark age as long as possible, even as he accepted that it would come at some point in the future. The James Retief stories did not seem to be set in a declining “the dark ages are approaching” setting, rather Retief repeated kept the Earth and humans safe from (usually alien) bad guys in spite of the Bureaucracy that he had to work within. And did so with style and humor.
Quitters!
Has everyone forgotten John Holdren? His plan is to take up where Mao left off at the cultural revolution. There are still six billion people too many in his opinion. His daddy agrees with him.
I NEVER forget about Holdren, or any of the other eliminationists. The most just and proper thing would be to do unto them what they intend to do onto us. IOW: You first, Johnny Boy!
Is declension no longer seen as a choice in the Reynolds household?
Cappy Cap is not the first to give up. I’ve seen a number of folks do it already. I don’t necessarily blame those who do — but IF you do, recognize that if you are giving up, at least be sure to stay out of the way of those of us who haven’t.
I’m not ready yet. I’ve got too much to do, too many bullets still left in my high-capacity magazine to fire, before I can let it go. Moreover, the thought of being damned for my surrender by future generations condemned to live among our ruins, and by future historians on the far side of a thousand-year Endarkenment, just doesn’t sit well with me. I cannot “enjoy” a decline that I haven’t given my utmost to fight.
After all, Rome had no prior Rome as an example, as we do. We don’t have their excuses. Americans have earned the ultimate pride of having built the Nation of the Enlightenment; if they give it up, walk back into the dark with their eyes open, and present their wrists for the chains, they’ll deserve the ultimate historical ignominy.
I never meant to imply that any of us should give up. I think we should fight to the end, but along the way, maybe there are some ideas such as those in Clarey’s book or elsewhere that will help us enjoy the ride.
Before hearing of this, I developed a 23 point Post-Election plan, including:
1 Drop below the radar: No longer fight wars I can’t win. As Ben Franklin and my father said,“Experience keeps a dear school, yet Fools will learn in no other.” As the movie Wargames put it “The only way to win is not to play.”
2 Use government programs to which we are entitled, but expect them to fail.
3 Prepare for hyperinflation. Avoid things government can depress or take. Invest locally.
4 Minimize possessions.
5 Get healthy, fit and light.
6 Build fewer but deeper low maintenance relationships.
7 Develop useful skills.
8 Help others, but only where we can make a real sustainable difference.
Though it’s depressing to admit that the game really is over, it’s also liberating. I recently came to realize that a lot of my stress level the last few years was coming from uncertainty — the internal struggle between what I still hoped we could make happen and what I feared the enemy within might make happen. Once you truly accept the reality, you can grieve for what’s being lost and then MOVE ON. Deal with what needs to be done TODAY. And the next day. And the next day.
I don’t think I would have been ready for this book a few months ago, when I was still holding out some hope of reversing things. But I’m ready for it now, and I appreciate Dr. Helen’s tipping us off to it. I’ve just bought it on my Kindle.
I think the election woke a LOT of people up to reality. Most conservatives I know don’t even watch FoxNews anymore. Everyone knows it’s all just blather, and the game is up.
I was convinced that the election was stolen, and so, for a few weeks afterward, I kept holding out a hope that the American PEOPLE were not a lost cause — i.e., that the election didn’t truly represent who we are. Therefore we might still bounce back. But that hope was killed when I realized that, contrary to a lot of conservative pundits’ stereotypes, it was not just dummies and pagans who voted for Obama. Too many people I know personally who are both INTELLIGENT and CHRISTIAN voted for the evil monster. People who are otherwise sane and decent proved themselves able to hold utterly contradictory things simultaneously in their own minds — such as: knowing that 2+2=4 but accepting the Democrats’ promises that if we just print enough money, we can make 2+2=5; or being pro-life and yet blithely skipping over Obama’s record as the most radical, determined pro-abortionist ever to occupy any office in this land.
When even people who’ve spent their lives steeped in the likes of C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton can turn around and vote for such an evil cretin as Barack Obama, it is indeed GAME OVER.
M in M,
I looked for that list on your blog, couldn’t find it. Would you consider posting it there? These 8 points are very good; I’d love to see the rest of them.
I also recommend, to everyone trying to adjust to the new reality, this fabulous piece from an Ace of Spades guest blogger:
“Where Do We Go From Here?”
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/335824.php
Great essay on living a balanced life in this new reality we find ourselves in now.
Another book in the same vein is Starve the Monkeys.
http://www.starvingthemonkeys.com/
Lots of practical advice and lots to offend nearly everyone, I found it to be a good guide to life under the Obama regime.
Im not giving up,I went Galt 35 years ago. I live modestly, have some old debts to pay off, no new ones and I make just enough money to maintain my standard of living. For fun I taunt the lefties at every site I visit and just walk away.I rarely see Idiots in my daily travels as I have so few places to go most of the time,even for business. I do on occasion need to vent and get it out of my system but thats a given these days.Well, back to the sandy beaches,TaTa.
Sorry, but unlike Browne, it seems Clarey is advocating out-and-out participation in, well, evil. Trying to make peace with or work around a world that has become a statist war of all on all (funny how statism in practice more closely resembles Hobbes assessment of the anarchic state of nature) for largesse of the state is one thing. To actively participate? Well, count me out. Regardless of whether liberty is inevitably lost or not, I kind of like to be able to look at myself in the mirror. And the truth is, I can’t see how I could look an honest man in the face knowing that it was him or me and I was in on the scam.
Did Isaac Davis or John Parker “enjoy the ride” into monarchical despotism?
Did Jimmy Doolittle “enjoy the decline” and stand back to watch the Pacific get gobbled up?
F that static.
Americans do NOT roll over.
Yes, some in the halls of power who are not just self-interested but are actually *hostile* to our own country. Yes, this coming generation has some of the worst self-entitled brats of our history.
But we *also* have the most incredible young men and women this nation has seen in half a century. You’ve seen them – the polite homeschool child who can carry on a conversation of peers with adults three times her age. The tanned young man back from Iraq, who’s got that quiet steady in his eye and a work ethic that won’t – can’t – lay down and die.
Those young men and women are the ones who will rebuilding the America to come, one way or another. And your generation and mine will be the ones making the road straight before them, or letting their future wither on the vine.
“enjoy the decline?”
No.
The longer I live, the surer I become that each of us will be accountable both to Almighty God and to posterity to come for our actions in this world. And of all the things I have to make account for, I pray and work so that one of them will never be having to say -
“I could have saved you this life of ashes…but I chose to dance in the bonfire instead”
I am blessed to count among my friends and acquaintances many of those good young people you describe, Jenny.
And the REALLY good news is: They’re having lots of kids!!
I’m pretty sure that Brown, the author of the second book is the big Libertarian (capital L) who always runs for US President, right? How’s that siphoning off votes so Democrats win working out for you, Mr Brown?
Is the author of the 1st book one of the leading lights of Libertarians? I’m just guessing … and asking.
Because no one is more irrelevant in America than Libertarians.
1. Browne died in 2006. His “campaigns” for President were in 1996 and 2000.
2. In the 1990s I took the Libertarian Party seriously to the point of joining and paying the annual dues. Then I watched Browne’s faction take over. The particulars of how they ran things have faded from my memory, but I made, have kept, and will continue to keep a commitment not to give the LP a dime of support ever again.
OK, this is the author of the 1st book:
http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/
Does he sound like he’s “enjoying the decline”? Not to me, he doesn’t. He sounds angry and defensive and provocative.
Sigh.
I read the book. It has some interesting food for thought, but I was pretty seriously irritated by the last couple of chapters. As far as I am concerned, anyone who asks questions like, “Have you ever seen a happy feminist” has let their hyperbole get the best of them. I detest progressive thought as much as any man, but his characterization of liberals a people who never achieve things and people who are terminally unhappy is extremely childish and off putting.
And while I cannot tell if he was joking in saying Hogan’s Heroes is a significant achievement of western culture, it did not seem to me that he was. One of his arguments is that western culture today does not stand up the the high mark set by, say, Hogan’s Heroes. I personally would put the Firefly series up against anything created for TV.
Anyway, ultimately the real information available in the book is not worth the price, so borrow it for free in the Kindle lending library like I did.
Geez Doug. Stop reading a book called “Enjoy the Decline” if you don’t want to read advice on how to enjoy the decline.
One of Clarey’s target readers is the male who has come on bad times at no fault of his own. The decline has hit 20% of working-age adults who are out of work, and many more who are under-employed. Many workers, mostly men, assign their worth to their employment. And because of these bad times, many of these men are depressed. Some suicidal.
Clarey’s message throughout the book is to these men. He is telling them to redefine self-worth and suggesting they seek happiness and satisfaction by other means. Doug, your comments suggest you are missing this message. Maybe you have a happy and healthy career and a bright future.
BTW – the author is right. Liberals ARE unhappy and they DO destroy everything they touch.
I was quite interested in reading advice on how to enjoy the decline, and when he is suggesting specific strategies there are, as I said, things to think about. But the book goes completely off the rails in suggesting that all liberals are unhappy underachievers. I happen to know many that apparently love their lives quite a bit, and have achieved great things. That they are utterly wrong politically does not make them failures in all ways, and it is an indication of extremely blinkered thought to suggest otherwise.
Implicit in the suggestion to “enjoy the decline” is the assumption that you accept the decline.
You might want to consider further implications of that assumption.
It is certainly impossible to imaging scenarios that will avoid a complete collapse of the economy in some fashion or another. I have been thinking about pulling all my money out of my 401k for several years now. I am too fiscally conservative to accetp the huge loss it would incure. But I do suspect I will regret some day not having done so. I will enjoy the decline by stopping work in a couple years. I just hope the decline is not so rapid as to overtake my plan.
I cashed out my mutual funds and IRA over a year ago. When a friend, shocked, asked me if my financial advisor had approved of that, I said “sure”! (My “financial advisor” being the great Ann Barnhardt, whom I’ve never even met, but at whose website I read every single thing she posts!)
ANNOY A LEFTIST……BE HAPPY!
There is no decline and of there is, it is because of the criminal Bush and the vermin in the Republican Party, who never offer solutions to any problems, only racial slurs at Obama and other slurs at women, children, minorities, gays, the elderly, and the disabled who desperately need the social safety net thanks to the criminal Bush and his policies of hate. The only people that will decline are the opulent rich, who have way more money than they need and thanks to Obama, will now pay their fair share. All the criminal Bush and the criminal Republicans care about are Big Oil, Halliburton, Wal-Mart, Wall Street, and the Cayman Islands.
You forgot to include the Military Industrial Complex and the National Rifle Association in your census of Pandæmonium.
And the Baptists. Always the Baptists.
Good answer. I hope that was sarc. It’s really hard to tell sometimes in our unhinged world.
Troll. Parroting the usual leftist BS false narrative talking points.
Brian G:
You forgot the /sarc tag. Your satire almost works because you do a pretty good job of imitating a cartoonish, buffoonish, ignorant leftist, but adding the /sarc tag insures that you will not be considered an imbecile, but, rather, a clever witty fellow who understands how stupid and destructive leftist/”progressives” are.
Do what I did and get lucky. You can bear with about anything short of your kids being hurt.
Marry somebody smarter than you who is both selfless and frugal and likes her job. Quit your old career only to decide you hate your second choice once there (med school) and walk away, not owe anybody much of anything, live simpler, and have a really tolerant spouse, who is just glad you’re not pestering her.
I don’t drive Acuras or Lexus’ anymore, but hey. Honda Accords are pretty nice now! Anything that provides butt warmers for a cold morning is luxury in my book. With my worn out old truck, I can throw the hound in the back and take long walks anytime I want. Still provides a sense of adventure.
Kids are out of school or almost out of school and doing well. For the most part, got my health.
Are you unemployed if you never received benefit and aren’t actively seeking employment either? I don’t know if that makes me unemployed, bum, or retired. But it’s not a bad life and frees up a whole lot of time to dump on PJMedia when it’s raining.
And my wife loves the new lawn.
Somethings are still beyond Obama’s heavy hand and reach. The question is, will it stay that way.
Read the book; thought it was great. Although it confirmed my observations more than anything else. Also enjoyed his other book, “Worthless,” which I should have read before college. That said, I couldn’t live the way he prescribes; rather, I have to take the general theme of “don’t worry, be happy” to heart.
Some takeaways for me personally, from this book and others:
- Don’t escalate your living expenses with your income. I.e., if you start making more money, don’t go buy a new car or move into a fancy apt.
- Learn marketable skills (taking a free programming course through MITx at the moment, and will see where it goes)
- Try to acquire performing assets and minimize liabilities (i.e., a house in of itself is NOT a performing asset, unless you rent it to someone profitably)
- Prepare to work forever in some capacity (because this keeps you sharp, and because retirement will not be there when you’re older)
- Minimize debt
- Don’t waste your time in most graduate school, esp. if you have to pay for it
- Live near the beach
- Stay where your friends/family are
- Continue the fight for freedom, but don’t let it have adverse effects on your health. The biggest problem with this battle is that it requires individuals to think, and you can’t force them to do it!
Learn to enjoy the decline by learning to love frugal living. It’s gotta be a natural human tendency, to get satisfaction out of “waste not want not” living, yes?
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
It’s time to gird up your loins and be men, little boys.