Your Christian friend has been staying up late on the internet, listening to Christian short wave and now comes up with a collection of completely bizarre, totally mythological pieces of anti-factual, conspiratorial nonsense—”They drilled a hole to hell,”….”Obama is a Muslim”…..”NASA has proven the sun stands still”….”9-11 was prophesied in Ezekiel”….”Christianity is going to be illegal by the next election.”
What do you do?
Do you correct them?
Do you leave it alone?
Do you write down Snopes.com on a card and give it to them?
Do you laugh? Weep?
Do you top it with a stranger story?
What is the right response to ignorance, factual error and sweeping untruths?
He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, is a fool … shun him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not, is ignorant … teach him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows, is asleep … wake him.
He who knows and knows that he knows, is a wise man … follow him.
Persian Proverb
I then spend a lot of time in prayer seeking for an opportunity to point out the error(s).
While on the subject of provervbs I apply this one to my own reaction in cases like this.
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
reinhold niebuhr
I actually was confronted with this recently. An old friend asked me to meet him at a public library. He came with a long list of topics he wanted to discuss: the Illuminati, the Bildebergers, comets, government takeovers of everything, etc. My friend does not have a job. He lives on Social Security disability, would not attend any church I recommended, and still does not go to church for all I know. He spends a lot of time online. I told him he needed to stop studying these things because he might lose his mind. He may already have lost it. Although he did not make a big fuss about it, he wondered aloud whether the room we were in might be bugged.
Although my postings here might often be taken as acerbic (apologies to anyone adversely impacted) I generally prefer a civil discussion wherein I simply state or explain my beliefs on the subject at hand rather than challenge directly what my friend is saying. More “I think” and less “You are wrong”.
And some things are not worth damaging a friendship over. Just last week I resorted to “Can we please switch to a happier subject? I’m on vacation” when the couple we were staying with decided to go on a tirade, at the breakfast table, about the Obama administration’s diabolical plans for the economy.
I save the eyes rolled, “can you believe what they said” routine until I’m alone later with my wife (who is an saint at staying out of any of these kinds of situations).
there may be a clear course of action in the DSM IV manual that more appropriately diagonses the real issue here – but IMHO..
Most of “these guys” that are prone to the black helicopter / skunk op’s / dental implants group seem to have several things in common
1. They are involved in some form or fashion of dominion theology
2. They often are heavily drawn to contflict and cite Revelations as their favorite book of the Bilble
3. They often live in conflict with ANYBODY who has a different view.. SO…..
My course of action is to slowly back away and make no sudden noises, trying not to alert their overdeveloped sense of awareness or the fact I’m really a secret spy working for the Illuminati via a rogue cell of the Tri-lateral commision.
Seriously – I belive our responsiblity as Christ’s Disciples is to share truth whenever deception raises it’s head IN LOVE, and that might require time and patience for the right moment including letting ourselves resist the chance to ridicule.
Try to identify root issues, I suppose. How we’re not content with God, and his clear revelation about Himself. We want a new revelation about anything.
I don’t see how one could claim a sovereign, loving, powerful God who reigns and will ultimately triumph if one is constantly worried about conspiracy theories and such.
And I don’t see how one could claim to pursue humility if you think the bible is prophetically all about the life and times of 21st century Americans.
…things of that nature.
Remember Driscoll’s talk about idolatry at Advance? These are (most likely) issues pertaining to worship.
Call Chicken Little.
Arguing with a fool proves there are two.
hmmm… this is almost like an open door for a good rant. First, it is, once again, comforting to know that there is nothing new under the sun – we all have these friends, and some of us are these friends.
I get these informative revelation sharings quite frequently. The email forwards, I usually just point to Snopes, which has almost always already debunked whatever apocalyptic nugget is being offered. The personal conversations are a bit more tricky. I think it depends on the “informer” – typically I try to offer up a differing, if not opposing, viewpoint to determine if there is a little room for a discussion. Occasionally, the person who is sharing the (mis)information does it in such a way that it falls under the “pearls before swine” category. I used to feel very conflicted for just leaving it alone, but I’ve learned to accept the gracious fact that it is not *always* my duty to point out the faulty logic in every ridiculous argument I ever hear. I have learned to hold my tongue sometimes and just acknowledge the statement without validating it (quite a balancing act, to be sure!)
At the Christian school where I teach, it often falls upon me to refute these Christian urban legends the day after a guest speaker builds his chapel talk around one or more of them. I’m glad you brought this up. One year recently, without my knowledge, the wife of a board member “sponsored” the biggest urban legend spouter ever to speak to our students. Several days later, after learning that I had set the record straight in my classes, she tried to get me fired (almost succeeded) arguing that even if the stories weren’t always totally verifiable, they served their purpose by deepening the kids’ faith, or fear of hell (or whatever it was). I’m eager to read comments.
I usually play along, and try to get them to say something even more nutty. Bush was actually a reptilian alien, there’s actually no law that says we have to pay taxes, Proctor and Gamble worship Satan, the earth is hollow and we are living on the inside…whatever might get them to cross the line into territory EVERYBODY thinks is crazy.
One good line is that if there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of a conspiracy, that means the conspiracy has succeeded in covering it up.
The most important thing is to try to keep them from getting elected.
i gently correct them when they come on email and add the
snopes link. I even hot “reply all” when the person has been uncool enough to not blind copy.
Amazingly, this pastoral loves often ends relationships..
Set up a rule so their emails go directly into the “junk” folder.
Seriously I have no idea. After too many arguments about whether or not Obama was the Antichrist or the legitimacy of 90% of modern “prophecy” I usually just keep my mouth shut unless I know it is a person open to actual discussion and exchange of ideas.
I’m with Ed though. My poor wife ends up having to hear what I really think later.
Good question, Michael.
My usual answer is the conspiracy is so big it seems normal because everyone is in on it.
Which means its really sooper-dooper top secret. So we don’t have to worry about it anymore.
My bigger concern is for the rising paranoia/schizophrenia such talk seems to produce among people who feel like they don’t have enough information to get along in this world. It’s kind of like information overload short-circuiting a person’s thought processes.
Remember Future Shock? I think this is the result in some people’s lives.
Oh Michael, you’re talking about a group of people that I know all too well. It runs in my family (my father believed that all Jews stayed home from the twin towers on 9/11). Conspiratorial thinking is easy. It’s deeply Manichean. It solves so many problems. Trying to talk to someone who holds strongly to these views is difficult to say the least. I work in Christian retail. Most of the time I have customers who are local and who know me. Generally they know I’m knowledgeable about theological issues, and are willing to listen. But occasionally I get someone who has a firm conviction that a certain “truth” is real. Nowadays it revolves around Obama. He’s a convenient scapegoat. Sekrit Muslim, radikal kommie, etc, etc. If it’d been fifty years ago, we’d be talking about Kennedy being a pawn of the Papists. Fear of the other is deep rooted. The world changes, and that scares people. Right now I’m trying to figure out how best to talk to my evangelical friends about faith and science as regards evolution. Ultimately it’s a mindset. If someone you’re talking to allows for alternate views, engage them. If they immediately launch into attack mode, nod and smile…and walk away.
Be firm and gracious. But make sure that you stay with each no matter who you engage with.
good question(s) – go out for some drinks, a movie or a ball game (the more people the better)…get’em out of the mind funk and back to reality!
Definitely depends on the type of crazy, but my experience has been that with a particular type, namely the paranoid, government is taking over everything, etc that Michael of http://www.psonnets.org/ mentioned, it’s best to acknowledge the possibility of their fears first. It’s easy to allow them to frame the argument as “it’s possible this thing is true” vs. “you need to prove this crazy thing isn’t true”. Allowing for the possibility and moving on (as quickly as possible!) allows you to address the deeper problems, like “so what if the government is insane, what’s important is that God is taking care of us”. I have no idea how far that method applies, but I remember the “sure it’s possible, but what’s likely and real given that God cares for us?” question more or less saving my mental life during my skeptical college years.
I’m curious–do you dismiss the crazy beliefs, or investigate them and see them as crazy, or do a bit of work to recognize the crazy beliefs as such? It might just be my personality, but I often fall into the last category, which means I have trouble quickly talking people out of bad beliefs unless I have talked myself out of such beliefs. If it’s something I haven’t investigated, I usually just listen and ask them to call me when they’re having a particularly bad day.
It’s everywhere. I’ve lost a lot of good friends over these stories. Not because I was rough on them (I treat these people with velvet gloves) but if refuse to join their nonsense (Y-2-K prep Bible studies . . . just a starter) they get mad and don’t want anything to do with me again.
Depends on the offense. Simple ones, like my neighbor telling me that God had called him to be a dowser ( http://www.dowsers.org/ ) I just smiled and say nice. When a deacon of a church I was in told me that he had heard on the short wave that Jesus had appeared in India and was already going from village to village raising the dead Christians . . . that I did not allow to get buy.
God is a God of truth. Doubting what men tell you is a gift and an art-form.
The only caveat I have to pooh-poohing every wild idea is that we are tempted to think things will carry on more or less as they always have. America will always be here – till Jesus comes! I think America will fall in my lifetime. How? I don’t know, really. Maybe it will be as simple as this and a few future governments borrowing and spending the dollar into oblivion. Maybe it will be a failed coup, like the Soviet Union’s, and the states will spin off into separate nations, like the former Soviet republics.
I usually point out the error. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that’s the “right” response, though. It’s not uncommon for me to find myself in debates over the stupidest things. I’m not a quitter! ;O)
I’ve learned that you are ANTI-AMERICAN if you point out that there is no truth whatsoever in the urban legend about George Bush blowing off the first 30 minutes of a fancy gala to witness to a teenager and lead him to Christ…but if you say that Obama is a Muslim who was born in Africa/Indonesia/Jupiter/Hell and absolutely *is* the Antichrist, then you’re a true patriot.
(The political ones usually get me in the most trouble.)
I like your last option – top it with a stranger story! Why not have some fun.
Do you ever remember changing any of these folks minds?
I just stopped opening my uncle’s emails…
I actually have a boilerplate letter for when people send me hoaxes via e-mail:
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The only problem with this is that it’s not true. Here’s the true story: <>. Please be sure to notify all the people you sent this to that it is in fact a hoax.
And PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, before you forward any e-mail purporting to be “a true story” or “latest news” or anything like that, regardless of the reliability of the person who sent it to you, check first. Go to http://www.truthorfiction.com or http://www.snopes.com and see if it’s actually true. If you can’t do that basic amount of research, you shouldn’t be forwarding things anyway. God calls us to be good stewards of what He’s given us, and that includes the Internet — He is not glorified by lies being spread, no matter how well-intentioned.
(Sorry, but I get a lot of these hoax e-mails — it’s beyond annoying at this point.)
r.a.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
And then I send it to them, and to everyone else they sent it to. Call it my zero-tolerance policy.
As for people who tell me this stuff in person, I usually just come in when they stop for breath with, “Oh. Thank you for informing me.” Then I walk away. I don’t argue with them for the same reason I don’t teach mules to sing: you don’t get anywhere, and it just annoys the mule.
Have you been listening to Christian Shortwave?? Wow, you still have the desire to get up in the morning. A local group hoisted an antenna up in the suburbs and started spitting out Alex Jones on their unlicensed radio station. It gave me flashbacks to those days of hearing Pete Peters and “Patriot” programming. The stuff gives “unhinged” a new meaning.
(Of course this doesn’t include actual mission shortwave stations like HCJB and TWR. I was at HCJB’s Quito studios and hospital awhile back — real ministry is going on there)
If someone is really railing on and on about a new conspiracy theory, I usually hear them out for a few seconds and then start asking questions — what evidence? What about direct evidence to the contrary? Do you realize how much of life can be explained away with “and that’s exactly what they want you to think”? How much is the book and/or DVD and/or seminar that goes along with the rant? Does that phrase “Bearing False Witness” mean anything to paranoid Christians, even if Obama isn’t a Muslim or Bush isn’t declaring himself emperor for life? As a Christian, why are you spending your life living in fear and worry?
After a few minutes of this, I’m pretty much done. If it’s someone I know and/or deal with daily, I’ll give them what I can to balanced out their thinking….I’m not going to deal with crackpot theories without pushing back. But if it’s someone who I run into at a store or out around town I’ll be more likely to ask a few questions to see if they’re just spreading rumors.
In my early 20s my substitute pastor spread the rumor that Janet Reno was blacklisting Christians and planning for them to be singled out for arrest. I had to be nice, but I firmly told him that it simply wasn’t true. At first he wouldn’t hear of it, but I told him I could send him a few links to proved this was a lie. Later on he recanted.
Oh boy, my Ma keeps some of these “issues” in the weekly-phone-call area of her mind just to share with me !
She gets some of these from her Roman Catholic magazine.
When Ma, brings up conspiracy stuff I usually ask a couple of questions, adjust my tin-foil-hat, and then say something like; “… we have no control over any of these problems so why waste time fretting. Get out of the house,look up at the stars and thank God for the beauty all around us…”
Or something like that.
My Ma is much less vulnerable to these scary scenarios when she is getting out of the house and volunteering a lot. The more she is home and isolating the more stuff I (and my siblings) get in the mail. Stuff that I am supposed to be scared of. More phone-time wasted on the merry-go-round.
Maybe it is all true and real but with Christ in our sights why pursue that other junk.
“Several days later, after learning that I had set the record straight in my classes, she tried to get me fired (almost succeeded) arguing that even if the stories weren’t always totally verifiable, they served their purpose by deepening the kids’ faith, or fear of hell (or whatever it was).”
She feels the ends justify the means.
I personally feel very strongly that the Christian faith requires the means to justify the end result. I.E. how you walk the walk is more important than where you wind up.
I was told in a sermon once that only 1 in 4 of the people Jesus personally asked to follow his way did so. (I’d like to know if this is accurate.) If so, why should we expect to bat 1000. And justify this goal via untruths.
Oh and I shouldn’t neglect to add
“chem-trails” to the list .
Mom knows all about them AND the weather machine in Alaska.
Once I asked, “How does spending hours on the computer instead of on family responsibilities increase your personal holiness or advance the cause of Christ?” I got the answer that once learning about the possibility of a Jesuit conspiracy or machinations of the Fed, it is a Christian’s duty to seek truth by investigating the possibility thoroughly (mostly via Coast to Coast AM and the like). I have no idea how to answer that, frankly.
Also tried the “stranger story” approach, bringing up the lizard shapeshifters. I was told that is a silly government-originated story designed to discredit conspiracy theorists and therefore it proves the reality of the New World Order.
When these things pop up on our small group I have to think that we all have some little used room in our brain that we keep some odd things in. And usually we have a civil discussion about it. But at times you just have to smile and say “well, I’m not totally with you on that” and move on. If they will not “move on” they usually leave the group. In my small group we have multiple engineers, highly respected medical professionals, some other PhDs in areas such as math, etc… So it’s hard for some of this to “slip by”.
Laughing and weeping aren’t mutually exclusive in this case.
“â€They drilled a hole to hell,â€â€¦.â€Obama is a Muslimâ€â€¦. â€NASA has proven the sun stands stillâ€â€¦.†9-11 was prophesied in Ezekielâ€â€¦. â€Christianity is going to be illegal by the next election.—
I know a woman in her 70s for which this is just a very very small sampling of her beliefs. Doctors are evil, our colons are 99% clogged with food we ate decades ago, missionaries are raising the dead in dark Africa, and on and on and on. And this started way before the Internet was a dream, much less an idea. Her kids discovered how entrenched these beliefs were when her husband died about a decade ago and things blossomed into full bloom. It turned out the husband had been keeping her quiet when company and family was around. They thought she was off but were only seeing 10% of the real person. And don’t even talk religion, it makes the other topics look mainstream. Did I mention she the best Christian she knows but doesn’t attend any churches because they are full of people who keep judging her? Well that’s her take on their inability to see her points as absolute truth.
Her kids have about given up. Conversations are one way lectures or shouting matches. Her 3 children talk to her maybe 12 times a year total. If that. Everyone who knows her is sad but can’t figure out how to help her. From her point of view it’s everyone else who needs help and she’s glad to dish it out if you even seem to want it.
Oh, yeah. She’s my mother.
Sorry about my multiple postings earlier. Hopefully can delete the first two. The computer kept saying there was an error so I would try again.
As a former journalist, I usually point out that most conspiracy theories require a level of secrecy that is impossible for humans to achieve. My work experience proves there’s always somebody willing to blab the unsavory details. Always. What is whispered in the ear will be proclaimed from the rooftops.
Not everything that sounds crazy is untrue, but one of the things that I would suggest is not to belittle the person. It may be that some of the things that they may say sound downright crazy, but we are to still love them with the love of Christ. Listen to what they have to say. Show interest in them as a person even while what they are discussing may be annoying to you.
Ask questions but in a genuine way, not in a belittling way. If you have an opportunity, pray with them for the Lord to lead both of you in truth.
Many times there are opportunities in discussions to refocus on what is truly important. If you are having a difficult time with someone, turn to the Lord for help. Ask Him to guide your discussion and also to help you with patience. Ask the Lord for wisdom and humility.
Arguing, scoffing, rolling the eyes, laughing at, and outright dismissing are works of the flesh. With the Holy Spirit’s help, you will be able to love that person and maybe be used by the Lord to help realign that person’s focus on what is true.
What is the right response to ignorance, factual error and sweeping untruths?
It all depends on who the person is, how they are able to receive various sorts of correction, and what your relationship with them is like. In other words, one needs wisdom. Ridicule or scoffing just might be the thing certain people need. Proverbs 26:4-5
You mean that some people think Obama might be the Antichrist? When did this start?
Actually, In Michael D. O’Brian’s book, Father Elijah: An Apocalypse, he described (ten years ago) an antichrist figure who looks too much like BHO for comfort. Made me worry.
I hate lies. How do I respond? It varies. If I’m not part of the conversation, I generally stay out, though I may correct the listeners privately afterwards.
If I am involved, I made a judgment call–I judge the person’s mind.
Some people are too far gone to reconsider their betes noirs–I keep still, change the subject or leave. Madison seems to have a surplus of aggressive 911 truthers, and they are not peaceful to be around. Since I have no special calling from God to administer a clue-by-four, I avoid these people: it seems the only way to live at peace with them.
Other people I know have a fixation on some conspiracy or another but are reasonable enough the rest of the time–with them I just try to avoid the crazy topics. This includes some friends and relatives, btw.
But if it is a dabbler, or someone I think might be amenable to discussion, then I try to ask questions. “How does a weather machine work–it takes huge amounts of energy to evaporate water to make extra clouds?” “If the TOTUS is a Muslim, wouldn’t he be under a death sentence for getting baptized and denying the faith?” “Is the _rate_ of violence higher in the post office than at a burger joint, or do we just hear about more incidents because there are so many more postal workers?” “Somebody told me that XX, which is a little odd with your YY”
With dabblers it helps–until they find a new theory to excite them.
This is what happens when christian parents turn their children away from a scientific education out of fear that they’ll “lose their faith”.
Instead they risk losing their minds!
Ben,
i am with you on that!
You could try filing a bug report with God. On a more serious note, though I’m not a Christian these days, I still admire Bob Passatino’s stuff on legends (in the context of dealing with cults, but more generally applicable, I think).
I think it’s important to remember that as Christians we’re buying into beliefs and assertions that aren’t completely compatible with pure skepticism and objectivity. Since we believe in many things that can’t be proven scientifically, we fall into the same category as those who think Obama is the antichrist (as far as the pure skeptic is concerned).
That said, maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to judge people and their fringe beliefs and ideas along rational lines. Maybe we should concentrate rather on discerning the difference between the fruits of the Spirit and the products of fear.
A while ago I had a friend tell me that some guest speaker at her church said that people in Illinois already had microchips with all their banking information implanted in their hands. When they went to the store, instead of paying cash/writing a check/using a debit card, they just swiped their hands over a scanner. I told her that guy was going straight to hell for telling whoppers like that in church. I also told her that stories like that would be easily verified in this day and age, and shame on her for not checking it out for herself.
Around the time Harry Potter IV came out The Onion ran a very funny story about how Harry Potter was teaching witchcraft to kids. Somone told me Evangelical Christians were sending it around as a real news story. I swore up and down that nobody would be stupid enough to fall for that. It was so obviiously a parody. So, I forwarded it to several friends. A few of them promptly responded by asking if I knew it was from The Onion. Two of them (including she of the microchip) fell for it – hook, line, and sinker.
“as Christians we’re buying into beliefs and assertions that aren’t completely compatible with pure skepticism and ……we shouldn’t be too quick to judge people and their fringe beliefs and ideas along rational lines. Maybe we should concentrate rather on discerning the difference between the fruits of the Spirit and the products of fear”
Talking donkeys, changing water into wine etc…. As noted by RonP above, we need to be careful when we do what looks very much like throwing stones in glass houses.
Oh, well…
As someone who grew up in a gunfire ridden nabe in Queens and now lives in Jersey, I know the appropriate response to this kind of garbage but I can’t write it here. That may sound “unChristian”, but sometimes you have to speak to people in the only language they understand.
I think the thing NOT to do is lend any credence to this nonsense by even superficially taking these people seriously. It may seem kinder and more “Christian” to be polite and try not to make them feel like the, well, things I can’t write here, but that’s what they are and the sooner you let them know, the sooner they can go about fixing themselves.
If they’re still too stupid to get it, they’ll probably end up doing something that qualifies them for a posthumous Darwin award, so…whatever…nature has a way of weeding out the ridiculously moronic among us.
We don’t get the more Christian-y versions of this kind of stupidity and ignorance in my neck of the woods, but we do have more than our fair share of 9-11 “Truthers” and all I can say is that sometimes it’s okay to haul off and punch someone’s teeth through the back of their heads. Sorry, but it’s true. There are some things you should NEVER tolerate, and that would be one of them.
It’s amazing how far “gone” the people are whom the respondents above have encountered. It appears virtually no one can confront them, even in the gentlest way, and a substantial number of respondents have had contact completely ended if they tried. It appears that the great majority of people do not even try any kind of response anymore.
Why is this? And do you ever encounter people at an earler stage of these more or less paranoid obsessions, when one could conceivably have a dialog? I never have – the obsessions seem to spring full formed, move from one to another, and are never eased.
I think Sean’s response above makes sense for a Christian. Tell them that their beliefs should allow them not to worry about such goings-on, that they have better things to think about, and that their creed tells them that God has ultimate control.
The Holy Spirit works. If He doesn’t give you anything to say then don’t say anything. On the other hand….
I was ministering in a hospital in 1989 to a guy dying of Aids. He was a militant Gay guy big into the ‘Agenda’ crowd. He told me that Jerry Falwell had paid the US Govt millions of dollars to create Aids in order to devastate the Gay community. I listened patiently wondering what I would say to him. When he finished I simply said, ‘Ok, but if you think this was a US Govt plot do you really believe it would have been this effective?’ He was stymied.
N – you can be my hero for today.
“Several days later, after learning that I had set the record straight in my classes, she tried to get me fired (almost succeeded) arguing that even if the stories weren’t always totally verifiable, they served their purpose by deepening the kids’ faith, or fear of hell (or whatever it was).â€
I would tell this chick that a lie is a lie is a lie, and we all know who the father of all lies is… This kind of non-sense also helps to drive young people out of church when they realize they’ve been lied to. Church is supposed to be the place you go to hear truth not lies. All too many people make the mental connection that if they lied to me about A,B,C – then everything right down to X,Y,Z is a lie.
I’m just amazed how long this thread has gone on without an actual kook kicking down the door (possible exception: psonnets) insisting that no, no, no: They DID drill a hole to hell, Obama IS a gay/commie/Muslim/antichrist/Indonesian.
This kind of rhetoric just confirms my belief that reformed theology in its current iteration is a stunted and unlovely thing. It has nothing to say, or perhaps more correctly, says little about the relationship between the individual believer and the culture, philosophy, politics, etc. The gospel message is often little more than you’re a sinner, Jesus saves. We have a lot of work to do to help believers think through what it means to live, really live a life that’s pleasing to God, bearing fruit in every good work, etc.
“Your comment was published on the front page of InternetMonk.”
I’d have put that statement right up there with Obama’s birth certificate being faked, but gosh, it’s actually true!
I’m blown away. What a blessing this blog is.
Peace and Grace
Michael/Psonnets:
*The only caveat I have to pooh-poohing every wild idea is that we are tempted to think things will carry on more or less as they always have.*
Why? No viewpoint in history has ever been more sturdy or well-supported than, “What’s up ahead? Just one damn thing after another.”
*America will always be here – till Jesus comes!*
Uh huh.
*I think America will fall in my lifetime. How? I don’t know, really.*
Yeah, I think someone’s been staring too long at the old Course of Empire painting series.
*Maybe it will be as simple as this and a few future governments borrowing and spending the dollar into oblivion.*
‘Cause that’s *so* different from individual consumers borrowing and spending it into oblivion, right? Currency inflation: Not even *remotely* the worst thing that could befall a people.
*Maybe it will be a failed coup, like the Soviet Union’s*
Pretty sure that was a *successful* coup, that was.
*…and the states will spin off into separate nations, like the former Soviet republics.*
I can imagine many worse a fate than for Vermont to no longer have to subsidize Mississippi.