Needles From Heaven
A storm approaches
I’ve always found the idea of a Kinetic Harpoon to be oddly fascinating:
Imagine you’re in orbit.
Imagine you have a telephone-pole sized rod of, say, Tungsten.
Imagine you’ve made this Tungsten rod as aerodynamic as possible, maybe stuck on some ablative shielding.
Imagine you de-orbit your Tungsten rod right over your enemy.
The rod drops into the gravity well. It accelerates at 9.8m/s² until it hits terminal velocity, the speed at which atmospheric friction slows your Tungsten rod down at the same rate gravity accelerates it.
If your design is any good, that’s very, very fast.
The ground rapidly approaches.
Impact.
Newton tells us that F=MA, Force equals Mass times Acceleration. Your ‘M’ may be relatively low, but your ‘A’ is very large indeed.
The resulting impact is the equivalent of a battlefield tactical nuke, sans the messy radiation.
There’s a certain elegance to the concept, Marcos Inaros’ gauche variant aside. A simplistic inevitability. No propulsion, no guidance, no complex explosives forcing a critical mass, just a fundamental force at work…
Gravity.
Anyone that looks up can see it coming. A fiery (but mostly peaceful) hyper-sonic needle, atmospheric molecules screaming as they’re ripped to plasma in its wake.
You see this approaching Tungsten Rod of Death, and despair. Your only options are to run and cower, or stand and meet your fate. In the end it makes little difference which you choose, but for a long enough time frame that’s true of all things. We tell ourselves that it’s how you get there that counts, because in the end that’s all we have.
When I look into the metaphoric sky I see so many kinetic harpoons hurtling ground-ward.
It’s hard, sometimes, not to despair.
This is a graph of the US M1 Money Supply from The Federal Reserve, basically the government’s bank. It starts in December of 1959 and goes to January of 2022, and basically charts the amount of US dollars in the economy.
Notice anything a little, I dunno… ‘Off’ there around 2020 or so?
Yeah.
Now I’m no economic expert, far from it. I’ve tried studying economics, investing, and such, and mostly have come away with a bad headache, the impression that, as with sports commentating, most of what you hear is obvious post hoc nonsense, and the vague belief that my physics professor was right when he dismissively described economics as “Astrology with numbers”.
Still, even with my lack of economic and business acumen, I can look at that chart and see that there’s no way on God’s green earth that exponential rise can’t end in an equally drastic fall.
Inflation? Pshaw! We’ll be lucky if that’s all we get. Wiemar Republic-style hyperinflation seems like a distinct possibility. Added bonus, given the hegemony of the petrol-dollar, as we go, so goes the rest of the world.
Either way, that’s one big arsed needle from heaven.
There's an old Vulcan proverb: Only Nixon could go to China.
—Spock, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
We thought China would become like us, that there was an inevitability to our notions of freedom.
How wrong we were.
The final descent of our neighbor to the north into outright overt fascism didn’t really come as a surprise. The reality is that the rest of the anglosphere has been there for a while.
We’re not that far behind.
Blackface Castro used the January 6th template we created and acquiesced to, just turned up to 11. Anyone thinking we’re very far behind is ignoring that we still have an unknown number of people in prison for more than a year for what amounts to misdemeanor trespassing, while attempted and actual murderers literally walk a few hours after arrest.
We’re not far behind at all.
Castro Jr. has declared war on his own people.
Why?
He knelt with Antifa, even as they burned churches, looted businesses, and destroyed statues.
The Truckers he never even spoke with, instead he grabbed dictatorial powers and vowed to destroy them utterly.
And many, so very many, cheered.
That is how liberty dies, indeed.
I’ve heard many opine that Castro Jr. bowed before Antifa because they were left, brought the hammer down on the truckers because they were right, but I’m not convinced that’s true. Antifa burned churches, looted businesses, destroyed statues and monuments to people long dead, but they did nothing that challenged the government. Their demands and occupations were so laughably infantile that they could be safely, for the government, ignored or even indulged. That the people of those cities paid a high price matters not to politicians like Brandon or Castro Jr., what’s important is that nothing Antifa said, did, or demanded had any meaningful effect on governmental power.
Both the Truckers and the January 6 rioters took their grievances not to a Target to loot or a Starbucks to destroy, but to the seat of their respective governments. They demanded to be heard, they wanted redress, they were a visible threat to the supremacy of the government.
Tyrants do not suffer the voice of the little people, unless they are singing hymns of praise.
Burn a church?
Who cares? Certainly not Castro Jr.
Loot a Target?
Hope you got a good TV and new Nikes.
Sit in Nancy Pelosi’s seat or honk your horn in the capital city?
The full might of the government will be turned against you.
And then we’ve got Grandpa SniffyHair.
He’s got problems.
Big problems.
His numbers are so far under water the fish all have little lights coming out of their foreheads. His VP is an even bigger disaster than anyone predicted. The economy is even closer to an irretrievable myocardial infarction than he is. Blood is in the water, it’s his, and everyone knows it.
And now Vladimir Putin, Bond villain extraordinaire, wants Ukraine? The Ukraine where Burisma, a company that pays Hunter $83,000 a month to do, umm, well nothing, is located?
Screw that noise, time to go to war!
But, hmm, how do we sell this? Saying we need to protect the Big Guy’s 10% isn’t going to cut it. I know! We’ll try and sell going to war in this place that most people have barely heard of as protecting an important democracy and long time friend of the US. Most people don’t know that it’s actually a highly corrupt oligarchy, about as much a democracy as North Korea, that it is stuck in a trap of its own making, caught between the hungry bear on one side and all of the western elites who use it to launder their money on the other, right?
Ops, turns out they do know all that. Dammit, even that article trying to blame inflation on the Ukraine situation got ratioed so hard the ink turned yellow.
Problem is, I don’t think that’ll stop them. There is a certain desperation for war in Washington. A hard sell that makes me think they’ve convinced themselves that they can get away with this regardless. Or maybe they’ve read the tea leaves and know an electoral bloodbath is inevitable, so why not boost those Raytheon stocks while they can?
Not, mind, that the incoming Republicans are likely to be any more war averse than the outgoing Democrats. Either way, it’s not like they or theirs will fight and die.
Worst case, Grandpa SniffyHair’s handlers, whomever they really are, see this as a road to a Castro Jr. moment, an excuse to grab “temporary” emergency powers.
And who would stop them?
Congress?
That pit of toothless vipers?
Ha!
SCOTUS?
Need I repeat myself?
The people?
I’d like to think so. I really hope so. But the government has, of late, shown a willingness, even eagerness, of throwing you in jail on any pretext, relieving you of any resources without judicial cause, and an outright lust for ruining the lives of any who would dare raise a word, let alone hand, against them.
The process is the punishment, and they know it.
So many incoming Kinetic Harpoons raining down inevitably, but unpredictably.
I’d hoped not to live to see such times.
But here we are.
The time is fast approaching when we, each of us, will have to decide; do we stand or cower?
Prepare now for whichever it will be.
As for me…
