Here There Be Dinosaurs
Hubris and the American future

Dinosaurs, scientists tell us, big and successful as they were, were done in by a meteor.

Now we have a bunch of bloated, greedy dinosaurs wrapped in the American flag and genuflecting to a hate-filled Jesus who never existed galumphing around the landscape like they owned the place.

Actually, they think they do. Some, because of the amount of money they have. Others, because they think their God is bigger than anybody else’s.

What do we do? Wait for a meteor?

That’s a tempting—if depressing—possibility.

Normal electoral resistance is clearly futile, as the 2004 election showed. The dinosaurs have so much money and control so much of the media that they can use the Big Lie technique to great effect, again as the 2004 election showed: Tell ‘em something often enough and a clear majority will believe it.

Classic armed resistance is also futile in the face of a military budget approaching half a trillion dollars.

Are we trapped, then?

No. To see why we must go back to the Greeks, who very painfully learned a thing or two about tyranny.

The behavior we’re seeing in the American dinosaurs is nothing more or less than good old-fashioned pride.

The Greeks had a name for it: hubris.

From bloody experience they also knew what happens to those infected with hubris.

They also knew that the greater, more extreme the hubris, the greater, more extreme the collapse.

Therefore, resistance may be futile, but collapse is inevitable.

Why?

Not because of angry gods or some such, but simply because the pride-filled inhabit an illusion, a dream, which means their judgment, their thinking, their decisions become more and more divorced from reality.

Thus we resist where we can, and we wait. Certainly we can—and must—make preparations, both to try to protect ourselves when the downfall happens and to be ready to rebuild the world once the dinosaurs are gone.