The end of history

Source: http://flickr.com/photos/86685493@N00/2083986682

The bubble burst.
The tide has broken.
The hands point to the eleventh hour.
History is coming to an end. Time is turning.
And capitalism is dying with it.

The proclamations of self-deluding (neo)liberals the likes of Fukuyama may have spoken too triumphantly and too soon, for the markets are crashing like a sudden unexpected freak weather in the stormy Netherlands. Or perhaps not so unexpected, for all the warning signs were there. Uncontrolled consumption cannot last. Rampant desires and wants cannot be quenched with borrowed moneys and mortgages. Phantom hot money and speculation cannot be face up to the reality of creditors knocking at the doors. Capitalism's white-picket fence paradise has consumed one apple too many, and is slowly turning into a hell of indebtedness and bank collapses.

Once sacred temples of monetarism are reduced to humble pawn shops desparately hoping for that now very Visible Hand from the government. Even die-hard neo-cons are scrapping the halls of Congress for billions and billons of cash injection to kill an already malignant and deepseated turmour. The coins of privatisation have been flipped toward 'statisation', as public money is about to be channeled to save the ailing economy. Unheard of in the (Adam) Smithonian utopia. Laughable states (of affairs) in the heydays of the early 1990s when the catch-all and cure-all Capitalist phrases of globalisation, liberalism and laissez-fairism that hemmed the developing world into a perpetual state of indebtedness is now biting back. And who is laughing now?

Perhaps Marx, and the left-leaning liberals who were once scoffed at and marginalised can smile in the dark. But then again, smiles only for a little bit, for we are all in this media-hyped crisis together. So much for interconnectedness that we must share the juicy fruits as well as rotten berries together. The que at the cash machine was exceptional long. And this in a bank with 6 machines next to one another. Unexpectedly there was a meltdown of the electronic payment system. Shops seem to sudden have caught on the 'sales flu'. And every other street are signs of houses for sale, sending prices plummenting even further. Even here in Europe, newspapers are warning of a pending homeless crisis and mass unemployment. 1929 echoes. "It's the economy, stupid!"

But why scramble to the banks when the safes are already emptying? Why cut back on spending when the economy needs a consumption boost the most? If anything, panicking and calling 'crisis' at every shop closure and stockmarket drop is only going to exaserbate the situation even more, sticking the whole modern (read: Western) world deeper and longer in the gutters. Then we will really see who "looking at the stars". Spend like you always have, buy what you need, and brace for the storm, hoping that the politicians we have put in power will finally wake to the ills of a system that sucks on the have nots, and fat-feeds the haves.

The bull has been blinded by the red-clad torerro, and limps on on its final breaths.
The end of history is nigh.
And Captalism is (almost...) dead and buried.
But life goes on.
Nothing really changes but our perception and reaction to a system that has always fed on our desires and fears of want anyways.