On Feeling Doomed

Please raise your hand if you feel doomed. Don’t be ashamed! You are not
alone. People all over the world are being overwhelmed with feelings that
the “day of reckoning” is imminent. In 1960, the population of the world
was 3,000,000,000. Today it is 8,000,000,000. (A billion is a thousand
millions.) In 2020, the World Health Organization foreboded that the
population of Africa would double from 1,200,000,000 to 2,400,000,000
within 30 years.. The Asiatic world represents 60% of the world’s
population. Europe does not even constitute 10% of the globe’s aggregation
of human beings. (In Italy, Italian racists are doing all they can to keep
Africans in Africa—without feeling the least interested in African lives—
something they should have begun to do 200-300 years ago. Amazingly,
more Italians die each year than are born! The Mediterranean Basin, once
called the Cradle of Civilization, is now referred to—with aplomb—as the
Cemetery of Civilization.) The DisUnited States and Canada, perhaps the
top bananas when it comes to natural resource exploitation, both do not
comprise even 7% of the worldwide assemblage of human beings. Come on,
let me see those upraised hands!

The English mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell, in his The

Conquest of Happiness, noted that it is logical to feel hopeful. How many of
you can feel “hopeful?” Go ahead, raise your hands! When I was a boy and
learned to brush my own teeth, I was told to turn off the water while I
brushed. I have been doing so all my life, but I think that even if half of the
world’s population would do so, not enough water would be saved to stave
off the droughts that are now plaguing the world. Satellite surveillance
proves that there is not enough water for the Earth’s inhabitants—and that
is based on surface estimates. Under the Earth’s crust throughout the
world, water is also drying up at alarming rates.

The English economist Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) speculated that

human population grows more quickly than the food supply until famines,
war, or diseases reduces the population. Where are we today with this
phenomena—if it is at all truthful?
When I was a copy editor of Caracas, Venezuela’s newspaper, The Daily
Journal, an article reached my desk and in it I saw for the first time the
words “global warming, and “climate change.” That was in the late 1970s
when the population of the world was 4.4 billion. I was shocked and I was
convinced that I would never again own a car and would use public
transportation exclusively. I did not want to make the hole in the ozone any
larger than it already was reported to be. I still use public transportation,
don’t own a car, and do not even have a license to drive. Disgracefully, both
in Venezuela and Italy—where I now live—I have known families who own
four, even five, automobiles.

In those days in Caracas, I was moderately optimistic. I foolishly thought

there would be many people in the world who would also want to preserve
our natural resources and attempt to create a lifestyle livable for all of us. I
feel almost like a fool today for thinking as I did in those days gone by.

Ever since serving in the army as a first lieutenant, I have believed that a
good leader must teach by example. And I always tried to do that. But what
good is good example when 8 billion people want a car, a job, an apartment,
and the latest fashion to show off their presence on this Earth. The Earth is
not even capable of supplying us with the materials needed to satisfy the
desires of all 8000000000 people. Some scientists believe that the Earth can
accommodate 10,000,000,000 persons.

Authored by Anthony St. John

7 October 2023

The Age of
Suicide
 BEGINNING WITH THE ITALIANS

Anyone who has lived in another nation other than his or her own—anthropologists
suggest that one needs three or four or five years to acclimate to a new environment
—knows very well more about themselves and the nation they were conceived in.
David Hume alleged that knowledge is the assurance that arises from the comparison
of ideas. Pitting one life experience against another is sure to reap profit for the two-
fisted character burning with curiosity to know still more about herself or himself
and others. It is to be noted here that the extreme difficulty that the European Union
is at present experiencing stems, in part, from the excessively modest cross border
emigrations of its half billion citizens who are not gratified with communicating with
each other as much as they are willing to forge commercial enterprises with them.
There exists in Europe a haunting, strongly paranoid residue of the twentieth century
during which, in two world wars, the Europeans literally obliterated most trust others
might have held in them. For Europeans to coalesce and form a brotherhood, a
European Union, is something almost impossible to do at this time and place in
History; Europeans are still “shell-shocked”—or as it is said in psychiatric parlance
“mentally confused, upset, or exhausted as a result of excessive stress”—from the
desolation that World War I and World War II inflicted on their now physically and
psychically expended, despairing continent.

My dear reader, have you noticed the bran-new way war is being waged? It is really
unparalleled. Nothing like it has ever been before prosecuted. In “the old days,”
artillery units and air forces just fired away and bombed away to their hearts' content
not thinking, in the least, what the accuracy percentages of their wipeouts were.
Cities in Japan and Europe—to cite two far-famed for instances—were unmercifully
razed to the ground. Today some “Chicago Boys” boast that this “creative
destruction” helped both the devastated Japan and Germany to “miraculously”
redesign their infrastructures to adapt to some laissez-faire Future without remaining
solidified in a Past reminiscent of today's uncompromising Portugal, Italy, Greece
and Spain—the proverbial weisenheimers, the “PIGS”—that war might be thought to
be something that the means of which justify its ends. Monsieur Small-minded
Machiavelli? Monsieur Buttoned-up Clausewitz?

Throughout the world, in present-day times, “little, itsy-bitsy wars” are being
combated with aplomb. Photojournalists and “war” correspondents are feeding the
world's media business establishments with live footage of the mini battles they
witness after they have swooped into areas already smouldering with the stench of
dead bodies and the fearsome screams of the victims' relatives. Their CVs are
replete with “combat actions” from here and there and over there! These diarists
more frequently see the consequences of an event rather than that outcome's causal
agency. Television commentators, preposterously, continue to debate the why's and
when's and who's and where's and how's of how these violent clashes will bear upon
the peace of the world, while arms dealers are cashing in, as never before, outfitting
even teenage boys and—you guessed it!—girls. The DisUnited States' armed forces
are scurrying left and right—globally!—from one point on our planet to the next,
with their unconvinced allies in tow, knowing no limits to their virtuously biased
desires to inculcate a new-found international hegemony very often smuttily
Christenized. It is as if no one has read the Constitution of the DisUnited States of
America.

The implements of war's technological advances which these “little, itsy-bitsy wars”
employ would raise to the skies the eyebrows of Sun Tzu. The novel methods of
combating for what powerfulness stands for is in real time a complicated,
sophisticated mixture. The enormous world-wide industrial military complexes of
not only the major industrialized nations but also China and the Russian Federation,
are more than generous in supplying militants—even the umpteen mini soldierlike
factions—with the technical savoir faire and versatility they demand for providing
what is to be used on the battlefield or on some city's streets. On the sea and in the
air, electronic military ordnances are tremendously efficacious. Nothing and no one
escapes their detection if it has been decided to null and void some nailed target.

If the progress in armament development is staggering, so too is the forward motion

that has influenced military tactics and geopolitical strategy. There are too many
instances which testify to the fact that nations are not in the main fighting unfriendly
nations; rather, peoples are fighting each other in their own countries. Conflicts are
not exploding outwardly; they are imploding inwardly. Sun Tzu's dream come true?
Political leaders appear toothless attempting to balance the polarizations of their
citizenries, and in some body politics the tensions of the opposing factions are so
fierce, they are causing very formidable economic, social and political troubles for
all concerned. Government by the people is becoming, more and more, an obsolete
notion.

How are we to react to the significance of these “little, itsy-bitsy wars”—if they have
any meaning at all? To begin, we should observe that probably only “20%” of all
combatants—engaged in all the wars that have ever been contended throughout
History—in reality harboured the “will to kill” and even went about doing so. Any
successful armed force earnestly depends on rear-echelon emplacements where
pacifists and corrupt supply sergeants and relatives of politicians “courageously”
serve their country. Of that approximative “20%,” there are embedded combatants
who will either respect or not esteem those conventions defining the do's and don'ts
of warfare. Roughly “80%” of the soldiers who have joined up to fight, when they
have been finally trained to go into combat, or have actually experienced what battle
is about, regret that they ever enrolled or were recruited, and they do all that they can
to avoid being killed or even waffle at killing the enemy—in reality one of their
confreres, philosophically and anthropomorphically speaking! From a sociological
point of view, most of the “hoi polloi” living in any country are not individuals who
are looking for any form of conflict. These “couch potatoes” might be enlisted to
help wage a war, but they will not generally react violently unless they are made to
become part of the “20%”—those “deranged ones” with that major affective disorder
to “terminate others,” and who are vigorously instructed to do so after being
carefully culled from their non-combative fellows.

But, if conflicts are occurring not between nations but within them, amongst peer
nationalists, the entire orientation as to what war signifies must be put to the test.
Any police commissioner, with a PhD in sociology, will concur with that “20%”
figure noting that it is a so-so measurement but one that helps him collocate his
community's statistics of violence. (In Europe and South America, the football
stadium is the rectum into which the sociological thermometer is inserted to measure
the violent somatic sensations of sports' partisans.) Police are required to zero in on
those areas of their constituencies that report the most grievous crime data—usually
those spheres where the poor and uneducated orbit. Law enforcement agencies do
not patrol university libraries or Sunday church services—yet! “Little, itsy-bitsy
wars,” evermore, are being “contained” and “restricted” through the use of electronic
contrivances and the analyses of social media promulgation. Police units are coming
to look decidedly militaristic.

The ethical implications of this novel method of killing off human beings are
uncannily provocative, and the consequences of this know-how must be vigorously
debated. On one hand, we have the point of view of the authoritative elements who
claim that theirs are those prophylactic measures that are impeding the outcome of at
least World War III—or, some kind of Universal War I. That “little, itsy-bitsy wars”
among recalcitrant factions—whether they be considerably large in scope or mini in
dimension—are being checked, restrained. The authoritarians also contest that they
are in the right to even agitate confrontations—using clever diplomatic ploys and
social media networks to disseminate their doctrines—to acerbate discords which
“smoke out” the “bad guys” who are then blacklisted in police and intelligence
dossiers. Psychological warfare and Newspeak have therefore been raised to still a
higher level with the use of the Internet. To what degree are the despotic ones
responsible for their actions? Are they? Under what concepts of jurisprudence do
they operate? To whom must they respond? At this writing, it appears that we are in
an ethical free-for-all with no point of reference to achieve a sense of respect and
serenity for the binding customs and practices of a community that we require to
peacefully live amongst ourselves.

On the other hand, the heavy-handedness (“Might Is Right!”) of the Surveillance

State is desultory. Double-faced. For the most part it spins its wheels not gaining
traction. The SS imparts the notion that it has under control the PCs and
Smartphones of some 7,295,000,000 individuals (world population at the moment of
this writing, 16 February 2015). An insurmountable task. There is no one who does
not believe that he or she might be subject to some kind of “police work.” All are
living in a state of suspicion. Children who go to high school cannot escape the
thought that one of their mates, freaked out on some violent electronic game, might
go crazy enough to shoot them. People travelling on commercial airlines have to
think—after extremely accurate security procedures—that the worst is that their jet
just might blow up. What if you were a Jewish worshipper in some French
synagogue; or, a Roman Catholic in Libya or Nigeria? It is unrealistic not to be
uneasy. The SS makes certain that all are extremely fearful—that our dread will
make us alert, make us be sentinels in order to make us report the questionable
behavior of others.

Strapped to our backs is not only the yoke of psychical torment. The uncertainties
that plague the world's economic institutions are still another subject matter that
haunts us viciously. Corruption, financial finagling and the unjust distribution of
wealth in favor of the few, are direct sources of pain and anger. Billions of people
want to share in a success that enables them to procure for themselves and their
families that which their more affluent neighbors already possess sometimes in
abundance. Already, 2,000,000,000 somebodies live on a mere $2.00 per day. It is
estimated that by 2050 there will be 10,000,000,000 persons inhabiting our planet.
Today, the seas are glutted with plastic bags that are killing off marine life.
Countries are threatened with megadraughts. Uncontrollable viruses are the
unvarying apprehensions of health officials in all corners of the world. There is a
horrible sense of precariousness even at a time when civilization is at one of its
highest, if not utmost, developmental peaks. What is this price we must pay? Is this
enormous toll negating any sense of achievement we might have hoped for? Is our
victory one that brings down a devastation beyond the accomplishments we have
fought hard for?
Ample evidence already exists that our lifestyles—especially those lived in the
industrial nations—are flagrantly out of whack. The use of licit and/or illicit drugs
and medications, unhealthy dietary practices, violent crime, addiction to work and/or
play, discrimination against women, racism...ad infinitum, put to question the sanity
of the way we conduct our lives. Pharmaceutical companies have created a pill for
more ailments than we are able to count. The business of health is unhealthy. The
accumulation of wealth is not a gratification; it is an addiction. People are in love
with themselves more than they are in love with others.

* * *

Perhaps Italy, the bellwether of so many other historic phenomenon, can give us a
clue as to what end we are in the direction of as we bang along in our delirium. The
Boot is a very particular conglomeration of tradition and artistic endowment. Once
it was the fifth richest nation in Europe. Now it is the nineteenth. Once it was in
third place at attracting tourists from all over the world. Now it places fifth. In
March 2015, it is considered one of the worst fifteen economies in the world. There
is an on-going decline not only in business opportunities—economic growth has
been receding since the 1990s—Italians, like the Greeks, are horribly indebted, so
much so that Italy is well on its way to reaching the €3,000,000,000,000.00 liability
tier. 11,000,000 Greeks x 5.4545454 = 60,000,000 Italians!

Let us refer, still further, to the Italian people. There are 60,000,000 Italians...20% of
the Italians are more than 65 years of age...Italian debt, at this writing, is
€2,595,933,000,000...Italian unemployment, at this writing, is 12.9%...56% of the
Italians have a high school diploma...river beds and sewers are stuffed with debris…
there are fissures in foundations everywhere…roofs leak in offices and homes…
flood walls are in ruins…in the autumn, Italy becomes the Land of Landslides…
cigarette ashes are on the floors of hospital delivery rooms…cockroaches scurry
about on the surgical wards…coffee cups are contaminated with microbes…Italian
cars begin to fall apart only months after they are purchased…telephone, electric
and gas bills are Russian roulettes…trailer trucks zoom through residential areas and
spew black smoke in the faces of children…cars are upped on sidewalks, cracked
and broken…one arrives at an airport or train station asking not when departure time
is, but how late the plane or train is…many cities in Italy are suffering an epidemic
of clinical depression...streets and highways are impregnated with breaks and
holes…lights in buses and apartment hallways are lit in the middle of sunny days…
monuments are crumbling; or, air pollution is corroding them…downtown areas are
gas chambers…school bathrooms and heating systems often do not function…there
are not adequate sports facilities for children…Swiss ladies have clauses in their
health insurance policies to escape in an air ambulance flight to Switzerland if they
become ill…banks offer 3% interest on savings then, after a month, decrease the
interest to 1% without advising depositors…crooked churches threaten to collapse…
construction sites—left abandoned for years—dot the countryside…floods, then
droughts, damage crops…filth is in the air and on the ground…stadiums are wrecked
habitually by the acts of violent fans…hills are polka-dotted with garbage…
supermarket shelves often are missing products…television programming is the
worst in Europe…thousands of companies are in debt or going bankrupt…fountains
are choked with scum and refuse…repair work is shoddy…trees and plants are dying
whichever way you rivet your eyes…urban planning is non-existent…motor scooters
zoom to a standstill blocked in traffic…50% of Europe's bank robberies occur in
Italy...Italian teachers are the lowest paid in Europe...Italy is a prisoner of its
Past...only two Italian universities are listed in the world's top 200...Italy is last in
Europe for the employment of women in managerial positions: 11.9%...Italian
women are the most violent in Europe...one of every five Italian fifteen-year-old kids
is illiterate...30% of Italian boys and girls 15-19 left school in 2012...7,000,000 of the
12,000,000 Italians over the age of 65 take at least four medications each day...after
Greece and Turkey, Italy is the most corrupt nation in Europe...Italy's economic
growth is the slowest in Europe...50% of Italian youth between the ages of 30-34 live
with their parents...50% of Italian university students do not finish their
studies...40% of Italian business managers read a newspaper...22% of Italian teachers
are over 60 years of age and are mostly women...the Italian judicial system is a
syndicate of criminal elements that fail to offer Italian citizens the satisfaction of
belonging to a nation that guarantees fairness and justice for all its nationals...one of
every three gasoline pumps in Italy is fixed to defraud customers...Italian youth
dream of having a sleek motor vehicle and not a university degree...ad infinitum…

Henry Miller (1891-1980), American author, once narrated an event during which an
insurance salesperson sought to sell him a policy. After explaining adequately the
importance of protecting his family, the broker began suggesting a list of insurance
options all of which HM accepted without hesitation. The agent was perplexed. He
asked HM why he was so cushy to transact with. HM replied: “Do you think I care
what will happen to me once I am dead?”

No better analogy can describe Italy. Italians have not the least interest about what
might happen to them down the road because today they believe there exists no hope
for their country or themselves. They are genuine predestinationists. There is this
mindset: Eat, drink and be merry because we will never be able to pay off our debts!
There thrives the notion that the insurmountable difficulties The Boot is confronted
with are not the concerns of the Italians. Some other thrust will have to assume
Italy's oppressive social and economical burdens simply because Italians are not up
to doing it themselves. As if to say “if no solution is lined up for Italy, that is just
tough luck for everyone else.” In fact, most Italians believe that others must assume
Italy's quandaries—that even they should feel privileged to do so! How can the
Italians pay their debts if they still have not learned—after 2000 years!—how to
regenerate their race! (The Italians are the creators of the political philosophy,
movement, regime that exalts nation and race above the individual, that stands for a
centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic
and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of the opposition. Notate bene:
Since the end of the Italian monarchy, seventy years ago, Italians have made a
burlesque of democracy—confirming their subconscious reaffirmation of Fascism.
There are 113 DisUnited States of America military bases scattered throughout the
Italian peninsula.)

To just understand to what extent Italians have evolved to in their masochistic

revelries and ironclad determination to get their way in these regards, we must reflect
on the suicidal shenanigans that are germinating these days in Italy. Throughout the
Italian provinces, hospitals are overflowing with the elderly who have been bloated
beyond belief with licit and/or illicit drugs and medications manufactured in
England, France, the Americas and, of course, Switzerland. These vegetating
patients are so subdued with synthetic pills, liquids and salves, they find it difficult to
locomote to hospital lavatories. Many of the decrepit ones are in their eighties and
nineties. (Central Intelligence Agency statistics state that the average life expectancy
for Italian males is 79.4 years, for women 84.8 years.) Cemeteries do not exist for
the 12,000,000 Italians who are now over 65 years of age. As a matter of fact,
during the rainy seasons each year, landslides (Land of Landslides) break open
cemetery grounds and coffins are seen floating all over the place. Sometimes, you
can view a skeleton in the muck. The response to this difficulty is, naturally,
cremation, but this act is anathema to Roman Catholic church canon laws, and many
religious Italians are ardently opposed, scared, at the thought of being cremated.
There are not many churchgoing Roman Catholics left in Italy, nevertheless Italians
can be counted on to knee jerk to the medieval folderol of popes, cardinals and
bishops who blackmail the emotional states of Italians with guilt and hocus-pocus.
79% of the Italians believe that they are protected by a guardian angel.

An Italian doctor, even conscious of the Hippocratic Oath, will secretly perform
euthanasia if sufficiently coaxed and rewarded by family members. The Italian
judicial system will brand him or her a “murderer” if push comes to push. The
Roman Catholic church will accuse the doctor of committing a sin—a mortal sin.
The pope will say nothing except “Let us pray.” (The only ones in Italy who are
praying are pious, non-violent Islamics who are frequently victims of Italian racism
and religious persecution.) There is chitchat about an “underground railway” that
illicitly transports euthanasic candidates to Switzerland.

For those in Italy, who possesses a trace of dignity and courage and would like to
leave this world on his or her's own terms, there exists another “extrajudicial”
possibility. For €700, they will kill you, burn you, and in Tuscany, the Cradle of the
Renaissance, sprinkle your ashes upon the Arno river, flowing through Florence,
where that residue will commingle with the cocaine and heroin and other lawful and
unlawful substances which are urinated each day into the Arno and which
consequently find their way to the Tyrrhenian Sea where they there fuse with the
plastic bags that are choking off and poisoning the marine life upon which so many
Italians depend for a living. Naturally, Italians dress—excuse the pun!—to kill for
these occasions wearing the most elegant Ferragamo shoes, toting the most
exquisitely beautiful Gucci bags, and Italian women are made-up to the hilt with
their nails so elegantly polished with an assortment of scintillating colors.

By the way, an Italian nurse is holder of the Guinness World Record for serial
killings. She is reputed to have killed off 90 elderly patients in the hospital where
she was employed. Police are still investigating to determine whether or not she sent
even more Italians to their Happy Hunting Grounds. Italians do it better!

So much for Western Civilization I (Europe) &

Western Civilization II (DisUnited States of America)!

If you are thinking about taking a spin on a gondola around the Venetian canals,
hurry up before it is too late!
And, bring a pair of galoshes—like those that reach your hips!

And, of course, have a nice nightmare!

 Authored by Anthony St. John
The Ides of March MMXV
Calenzano, Italy
www.scribe.com/thewordwarrior

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