Tell me TB, why is it so important to you that everyone accept your interpretation of reality? Even if you're dead right (and you certainly can't expect everyone to agree with that) why must you make sure everyone agrees with you? After all, no one here caused this situation to materialize. None of us here can do anything to change it. And what makes you our own self-appointed Elijah?

You do realize you are acting like someone desperate to convince himself, but you would gain nothing by getting any one here to change his mind. What you really are doing is reassuring yourself. You are terrified at where the world is going, and you need reassurance that others see it too, and that its not your fault. You're scared, aren't you?

Tom, I don't agree with you on how we have gotten into this situation. I think, its all about greed--and sloth. We all wanted to live well, and we wanted to do as little as possible for it all. We built a culture based on wealth and conspicuous consumption, on keeping up with the Joneses and consumer spending, all the while neglecting development of our infrastructure and investing in our future, and we failed to husband our natural riches. We thought we could all grasp everything we wanted for ourselves and deluded ourselves into thinking that system was the only way everyone would get what they needed. We were able to get away with this because we had a very rich country and a very hardworking people, and because the rest of the world was recovering from the devastation of a great war that spared us.

We went crazy, an orgy of spending and pointless commerce for commerce's sake, we squandered our natural and human resources for a house in the suburbs and tail fins on our V8 cars and planned obsolesence. When we burned through our wealth we fell back on credit: consumer, government, corporate, municipal. And now we are paying the price. It is this ethos of business and commerce YOU are seduced by that has caused our problems. Don't blame me. And don't blame the liberals. All that welfare spending you loathe went to the middle class, in the form of education subsidies and a host of other government programs. The poor got very little.

Now maybe you don't agree with me, and that is certainly your right. Maybe I'm dead wrong, heaven knows I've been wrong about plenty of things before. But don't expect you're going to change my mind by telling me my worldview is bullshit when it has served me very well for the last five decades. I've planned my life around it and it hasn't disappointed me yet. I'm not a stupid person, I have good reasons for believing what I do, both objective and subjective. And I'm not scared or upset and I don't feel the need to convert anyone to my religion. You do, and that tells me you're a scared and desperate man who's not thinking straight.

So I'm convinced the problems we are in are not because of people like me. They're because of people like you.

On the other hand, I don't need to convince you of that. I don't really care if you ever see my way of thinking, or come around to my ideas. It does not matter to me that you agree with me, I simply don't care what you think because I know you weren't personally responsible for the shape the world is in either, and even if you were, there's nothing you can do about it now.

So regardless of how the world got into this pickle (which I think we can agree on) I feel no need to enlist you in my crusade to change it, because I don't have one. And I certainly have no reason to enlist in yours, no matter how breathlessly and desperately you proselytize it.

I have taken the steps I think are wise to ensure my survival until I die. Its what I've done all my life, and I think so far I have been operating effectively and in an informed manner. Although I enjoy talking about how the world got this way, (one of the reasons I come here), I am under no illusion I am going to persuade anyone into accepting my own interpretation of history. And whether they do or not means little to me.

So get a grip, lighten up, and back off. What you and I think does not matter, except to us. Each and every one of us lives, and will die, in the world as he or she sees it. And my world is not the same as yours.