The End is Nigh. Awesome.

We are so deeply messed up as a nation, I hardly know where to begin. Lenin famously wrote that the capitalists “will sell us the rope with which we shall hang them.” Nope. We’re not even that greedy and shortsighted; now we just give the rope away.

Sorry for whatever, jihadi — may I build you a scaffolding, too?

The next thing that comes to mind is a link Glenn put up yesterday to this book, The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure.

Think of a gallon of gas. The government gets paid a fee when the oil comes up out of the ground. It taxes the profits on the oil. The oil goes to a refinery, where more profit is made and taxed. The gasoline is delivered to the station by truck, which pays about 25 cents a gallon on the diesel fuel needed to make the truck run. Then you pump the gallon into your car, and pay another 18 cents on top of all the rest.

So I have no idea how to calculate all the taxes and fees and hidden costs the government imposes on a gallon of gas, but I know it’s a hell of a lot more than the official 18.4-cent “fuel tax” that they’re actually upfront about.

All of that. Taxes and fees and costs imposed at every level and stage of getting one damn gallon of gas into your car. And it isn’t just gasoline. There’s not a product or service that in some way, every step of the way, isn’t providing revenue to Uncle Sugar. And yet they still can’t provide adequate screening to keep jihadis from becoming citizens. But welfare for nice men who want to blow you up? Maybe! Sure!

We’re going to have to go broke to fix it, because there’s no other way to kill a beast to big and so greedy and so fundamentally (and dangerously) incompetent.

Let. It. Burn.