As you might imagine, this ad was found on a more...right-leaning website. The kind that suggests you convert some of your investments into gold. And that's a perfectly reasonable idea - a diversified portfolio is a good idea, and precious metals are always a good investment. But the people who visit these sites and listen to these shows aren't looking to diversify their investments are honestly afraid that things are going to get so bad that pretty soon nothing that won't give to a gentle bite or scratch glass will be worth anything. They're expecting a world out of an FPS videogame like Borderlands.
So the idea of having emergency food, or an emergency seed supply (cause when the apocalypse comes, surely it's the garden centers they're going to hit first), or hard assets you can use to trade with the local warlords seems a reasonable investment for them. And that horrifies me.
But even worse is the reason. Do these people fear a nuclear war? some plague of natural blight? Alien invasion and enslavement?
No, they fear this collapse will come because we're spending too much on the poor.
These nightmare scenarios are all economically sourced. the banks will give up the ghost, we'll see hyper-inflation, and your only hope is to give massive amounts of money to the rich. So instead of Borderlands, we'll have a feudal-based system like Stronghold.
Now, it would please me to think that this isn't a case of so many people buying into this idea as much as it is the people selling the products (and ideas) being very good at convincing them that it's so close to happening that it couldn't hurt to grab a few cases of MREs and distilled water. And hey, if nothing happens, we can have a big party with it all.
But as I've mentioned before, I tend to be extravagantly optimist.
This goes back to the "Survivalist" movement of the 1970s, when (usually far right) people were preparing for the collapse of the nation.
ReplyDeleteOne of the few very unfortunate habits my wife has is listening to right-wing radio programs. What frightens me is that these people consider other American citizens to be as much an enemy as they do people in other countries. Not only that, but the atmosphere seems to be growing more overtly hostile.
I hope your optimism is prophetic. I've seen websites where you can purchase an entire year's worth of food (with a three-year shelf life). And I don't even want to think about ammunition.