A Year To Wake Up!

It’s always a gamble to make predictions. I’ve had the benefit of seeing the 2012 predictions of the greats, and so far they don’t bode well. Marc Faber is not excited about our prospects for prosperity. Chris Mortenson and Gerald Celente and Richard Russell are also concerned. My sense is that 2012 will be a year of learning, of realizing, of waking up. My predictions are as follows:

2012 will be a bad year for rats. Technocrats, bureaucrats, kleptocrats and other central planners of the superfamily Muroidae will be rightfully credited for the persistent global economic and political malaise. People around the world will ever more rapidly recognize – and dislike, disdain, and hold in contempt – the ‘rats that plague us. Whether the tax-eating voles of municipal governments, the hamsters and pouched rats of state government, rattus norvegicus in D.C. or the New World Order lemmings, members of the ‘rat family will be increasingly viewed negatively. Ways to avoid the ‘rat, to starve the ‘rat, disrupt the breeding cycle and nest-building activities of the ‘rat, and to recover from ‘rat-bites will dominate the airwaves and the Internet. ‘Rats themselves will become more cautious and avoid publicity, while storing food and attempting to reinforce their most important nesting and feeding areas. Reports and viral videos of aggressive ‘rats will increase in 2012, even as Americans and others successfully avoid and in some cases, eliminate ‘rat centers of control.

2012 will be a bad year for a good old-fashioned D.C.-devised war. As governments everywhere go bankrupt, print money, and fail to deliver the goods domestically, historians will justifiably predict war. In previous eras, the wars associated with the collapse of empires arrived as apocalyptic and mysterious surprises to the people. But in 2012, the serfs have Internet. The young people are not loyal to the nation-state, and often see politicians and state employees as self-serving, arrogant, and parasitical. If educated by them, they’ve learned to hold the state authorities in contempt. If educated outside of the state, they’ve adopted a classical liberalism that doesn’t trust or believe in central state apparatchiks. Of those who do not fight our wars, the old are embarrassed at what has been already wasted, and have lost enthusiasm for war. The middle-aged are frightened and confused, feeling the financial pinch. It won’t be easy to march to war with other countries, and even another Pearl Harbor or 9/11 style event won’t be enough, not after what veterans and citizens alike have learned from Washington’s failed and costly occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

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