"The Great Liquidation"

Everyone is talking about the Great Resignation, the fact that more and more American workers are dropping out of the workforce. Or else, they are resigning from their jobs in order to find better opportunities.

In New York City, for example, the expectation is that it will take three more years for employment to reach pre-pandemic levels. Walk around town and you will see shut down restaurants and shops, to say nothing of near empty office buildings.

And yet, when it comes to concepts that tell us the current state of America, I prefer David Foster’s concept, The Great Liquidation. And not just because Foster has frequently commented on my posts. 

He is quite right to see America in its last days, selling off its pride, its confidence, its successes and its achievements. He is quite right to see America failing to educate its children, failing to prepare them to do tomorrow’s jobs. He is quite right to see America failing to build, failing to produce, failing to manufacture. America is squandering its wealth, not putting it to work.

America is selling off its assets, the better to consume its way to oblivion.

In Foster’s words:

America is hanging by a thread.  A great liquidation is underway, with the many of the structures that support American society..or, in some cases, any viable society…being kicked away, sold off piecemeal, or just wantonly destroyed.  I’m talking about physical structures, legal structures, and social structures.

I recommend the essay to your attention. I will summarize some of the points, to whet your appetite.

If I may summarize some of what Foster sees:

A nation declining. A nation that is selling off its assets. A nation that is selling down its past glories, squandering its physical and psychological and social capital. A nation that is pretending that it has no borders, no structural integrity, America affords no value to citizenship. Heck, in New York City, non-citizens are now allowed to vote in local elections.

America is not building, not preparing for the future. It is running down its line of credit, as though there will never be a tomorrow when it needs to pay back its loans. It is living on borrowed time, refusing to educate the next generation, producing useless social justice warriors and expecting them to compete against their peers who have studied science, math and engineering. 

The great American military is selling its pride in order to foster diversity and inclusion. The government sits idly by when rioters destroy America’s past; it punishes those schoolchildren who would declare their pride in America. Silicon Valley is silencing the voices of patriots, because Democratic lawmakers told them to do so.

The Biden administration is leading the way. Make America energy dependent. Go all in for unreliable solar and wind. Shut down nuclear facilities and hope that the blackouts are not too bad. 

As for manufacturing and industry, we can no longer compete effectively in the world markets. So we are becoming a nation of consumers, living on credit, buying what others have made. 

And our supply chains show us to be incompetent at unloading container cargo ships. Even when we do so, the scavenger classes around Los Angeles loot and pillage the containers before they leave the rail yards.

And then there is the massive effort to shut down freedom of expression, social media censorship that systematically silences conservative voices.

Just make sure that no one notices that the great liquidation is underway. And if anyone does notice, deplatform and cancel them.

A nation that has confidence does not suppress dissent. A nation that is declining does.