Empire never lasts. Oh, it can cover lifetimes of agony but all empires of all types are doomed to fail and fall, usually when the participants just decide not to play the game any more.

As for me, I'm perfecting a lot of old skills people will need when it does fall and I'm teaching them.

Cause if you are that's a good thing. I'm learning lots of stuff

but the fall won't be bad in a lot of areas, landfills will keep us going for a very long time.

However, I do love talking to homeless people and picking their brains. You want to learn survival skills for any sort of a crash, those are the people to talk to, not the idiots on TV amassing the huge arsenals and building bunkers.

They also fucked our dear planet Earth -- to the extent that it might be uninhabitable. They fucked polar bears and First People. The oceans and the forests. The air. The water supply.

So going back to the old ways or the survivalist mentality will not ameliorate their damage.

I spose many of them think the "rapture" will make the ruination of the Earth immaterial.

as best we can - make noise about it and what they did.

We have to demand prosecutions. Demand restitution. Demand Shame and poverty for the greedy.

Change the law so that it is no longer so attractive to be filthy rich ("Of whom much is given, much is expected&quot .

Level the playing field. Do what the prosecution does to the 99%, find an obscure part of the law that they have actually broken, and nail them with it.

I know all the stupid idiots at treasury think no laws have been broken, many of us were in fact stolen from. 100,000 "little" civil suits all asking for our money back from the same bank managers or mortgage granters might get their attention.

Bury the bastards in their own paperwork.

Its not about politics.

The 1%, and the next 5% (their enablers), have no intention of being "reasonable" or magnanimous, and they have no intention of ceding even an inch of their power or wealth to anyone. They will use spying, propaganda, coercion, intimidation and even force, to keep us compliant, vaguely hopeful, ignorant and divided in order to protect their privilege.

The war on the middle class and poor must be seen for what it is. The plutocracy and its aspiring henchmen collectively shit their pants in the late '60s, and realized that an educated, empowered and Just society would not continue to tolerate their callous disregard for human life and dignity. They vowed to never let that happen again, and have been pushing ever since, for a restoration of a neo-guilded age.

What we can do is apply some practical anarchism. Stop consuming the news. Turn off the TV completely. Invest some of that time listening to the cicadas, crickets and katydids and accept that we have more in common with nature than we do with do with corporations. Then start talking to your neighbors, and get to know your community. Create bonds based on kindness and empathy. Exchange the currency of knowledge, goodwill and mutual respect. Defend homes. Mic check bullshit. Question authority. Physically stand up to brute force. Don't consume what you don't need, share what you have. Slow productivity at work. Jam culture.

But we must also realize that the measure of our success is not the polluted industrial skylines of the 1960s. We don't have much to win if we measure our success in terms of returning to our glory days of consumption and waste.

However as it stands we have everything to loose. If successful we may reclaim our humanity, and possibly abundant food and shelter, some fresh air, and clean water for future generations who can then use their free educations for the good of all.