Expanded Universe Part 48

Our National Debt will never be paid. We are beyond the point of no return. Inflation will continue and get worse . . . and the elderly on fixed incomes and the young adults trying to start families will continue to bear the brunt.

Every congressman, every senator, knows precisely what causes inflation. . . but can't (won't) support the drastic reforms to stop it because it could (and probably would) cost him his job. I have no solution and only once piece of advice: Buy a wheelbarrow.

The Age of Unreason

Having been reared in the most bigoted of Bible Belt fundamentalism in which every word of the King James version of the Bible is the literal word of G.o.d- then having broken loose at thirteen when I first laid hands on THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES and THE DESCENT OF MAN-I should have been unsurprised by the anti-intellectual and anti-science ground swell in this country.

I knew that our American temperament, practical as sharp tools on one side, was never more than three quarters of an inch from mindless hysteria on the other side. I knew this-my first long story was IF THIS GOES ON-, a yarn based on the a.s.sumption that my compatriots were capable of throwing away their dearly-bought liberties to submit to a crude and ridiculous religious dictators.h.i.+p.

(In forty years of letters about that story no one has ever criticized this a.s.sumption; I infer that I am not alone in believing it.) I had read much about the Ku Klux Klan during the Tragic Era, talked with many who had experienced it, then experienced its nationwide recrudescence in the early 1920's. I had seen damfoolishness from dance marathons to flagpole sitters, and had made considerable study of crowd behavior and ma.s.s delusions. I had noted, rather casually, the initial slow growth of anti-science-&-intellect-ism.

Yet the durned thing shocked me. Let me list some signs: a) I CHING; b) Back-to-nature cults; c) The collapse of basic education; d) The current respectability of natal horological astrology among "intelligentsia"-e.g. professors, N.Y. lit'rary people, etc.; e) "Experts" on nuclear power and nuclear weapons who know nothing whatever of mathematical physics and are smug in admitting it; f) "Experts" on the ecology of northern Alaska who have never been there and are not mathematically equipped to a.n.a.lyse a problem in ecology; g) People who watch television several hours a day and derive all their opinions therefrom-and expound them; h) People who watch television several hours a day;

return of creationism - "Equal time for Yahj) The return of witchcraft.

The mindless yahoos, people who think linearly like a savage instead of inductively or deductively, and people who used to be respectful to learned opinion or at least kept quiet, now are aggressively on the attack. Facts and logic don't count; their intuition is the source of "truth."

If any item on the above list strikes you as rational, I won't debate it with you; you are part of the problem.

But I will ill.u.s.trate what I mean in categories where I think I might be misunderstood.

a) I CHING- easier than "reading the augurs" but with nothing else to recommend it. Chinese fortune cookies are just as as accurate-and you get to eat the cookie. Nevertheless this bit of oriental nonsense is treated with solemn seriousness by many "educated" people. It is popular enough to make profitable the sale of books, equipment, magazine articles, and personal instruction. Paralleling I CHING is the widespread use of Tarot cards. Fortunetelling by cards used to be a playful parlor game, a mating rite-a nubile girl limited by the vocabulary and public manners of the Mauve Decade could convey to a rutty young male almost any message by how she chose to "read his fortune"-with no impropriety. But neither he nor she took the cards seriously.

Tarot cards formerly were used only by Gypsy or fake-Gypsy fortunetellers; they were not an article of commerce, were not easy to find. Today they are as easy to buy as liquor during prohibition, and also books on their "interpretation." Reading the Tarot is taken with deep seriousness by a dismaying number of people-having the Hanging Man turn up can cause great anguish.

b) Back-to-nature cults: I do not mean nudist resorts or "liberated" beaches. The growing realization that human bodies are not obscene is a sane, healthy counter trend in our crazy culture. By back-to-nature cults I mean people who band together to "return to the land" to grow their own food without pesticides, without artificial fertilizers, without power machinery, self-reliant in all ways . . . but with no comprehension that a spading fork implies coal mines, iron ore, blast furnaces, steel mills, factories, etc., that any building more complex than a log cabin or a sod house implies a building-materials industry, etc.

If all of us tried to go back-to-nature, most of us would starve rather quickly. These back-to-nature freaks can't do arithmetic.

c) The collapse of basic education-no need to repeat.

d) Natal horological astrology-Baseline: fifty-odd years ago astrology was commonly regarded as a ridiculous former superst.i.tion, one all but a tiny minority had outgrown. It is now the orthodoxy of many, possibly a majority. This pathological change parallels the decay of public education.

Stipulated: Ancient astrologers were scientists in being able to predict certain aspects of descriptive astronomy such as eclipses, positions of the sun, moon, and naked-eye planets, etc. Whether or not they believed the fortunetelling they supplied to their kings, patrons, or clients is irrelevant. The test of a science is its ability to predict; in the cited phenomena the Chaldean priests (for example) performed remarkable feats of prediction with handcrafted naked-eye instruments.

It has long been known that Sol is the heat engine that controls our weather. Recently, with the discovery of solar wind, the Van Allen belts, et al., we have become aware of previously unsuspected variables affecting us and our weather, and successful predictions are being made empirically-no satisfactory theory.

"What sign were you born under?"-I don't recall having heard that question until sometime after World War Two. Today it is almost impossible to attend a social gathering (including parties made up almost solely of university staff and spouses) without being asked that question or hearing it asked of someone else.

Today natal horological astrology is so widely accepted that those who believe in it take it for granted that anyone they meet believes in it, too-if you don't, you're some sort of a nut. I don't know what percentage of the population believe in natal horological astrology (sorry about that clumsy expression but I wish to limit this precisely to the notion that the exact time, date, lat.i.tude, and longitude of your birth and the pattern of the Sun, Moon, and planets with respect to the Zodiac at that exact time all const.i.tute a factor affecting your life comparable in importance to your genetic inheritance and your rearing and education)-I don't know the percentage of True Believers but it is high enough that newspaper editors will omit any feature or secondary news rather than leave out the daily horoscope.

Or possibly more important than heredity and environment in the minds of True Believers since it is seriously alleged that this natal heavenly pattern affects every day of your life-good days for new business ventures-a bad day to start a trip-and so forth, endlessly.

The test of a science is its capacity to make correct predictions. Possibly the most respected astrologer in America is a lady who not only has her daily column in most of the largest newspapers but also annually publishes predictions for the coming year.

For ten years I clipped her annual predictions, filed them. She is highly recommended and I think she is sincere; I intended to give her every possible benefit of doubt.

I hold in my hand her predictions for 1974 dated Sunday January 13, 1974: Here are some highlights: " .. . Nixon . . . will ride out the Watergate storm . . . will survive both the impeachment ordeal and the pressures to resign . . . will go down in history as a great president . . . will fix the responsibility for Pearl Harbor" (vindicating Kimmel and Short).. . "in... 1978 . . . the cure for cancer will be acknowledged by the medical world.. . end the long search." (1974) "The dollar will be enormously strengthened as the balance of payments reflects the self-sufficiency in oil production." "The trouble in Ireland will continue to be a tragic situation until 1978." (Italics added-R.A.H.) "w.i.l.l.y Brandt"

(will be reelected) "and be in office for quite some time to come. He will go on to fantastic recognition about the middle of 1978." (On 6 May 1974 Brandt resigned during a spy scandal.) She makes many other predictions either too far in the future to check or too vaguely worded. I have omitted her many predictions about Gerald Ford because they all depend on his serving out the term as vice president.

You can check the above in the files of most large newspapers.

e) & 1)-no comment needed.

g) & h) need no comment except to note that they are overlapping but not identical categories-and I should add "People who allow their children to watch television several hours a day." (Television, like the automobile, is a development widely predicted... but its major consequences never predicted.) i) The return of creationism-If it suits you to believe that Yahweh created the universe in the fas.h.i.+on related in Genesis, I won't argue it. But I don't have to respect your belief and I do not think that legislation requiring that the Biblical version be included in pub- lic school textbooks is either const.i.tutional or fair. How about Ormuzd? Ouranos? Odin? There is an unnumbered throng of religions, each with its creation myth-all different. Shall one of them be taught as having the status of a scientific hypothesis merely because the members of the religion subscribing to it can drum up a majority at the polis, or organize a pressure group at a state capital? This is tyranny by the mob inflicted on minorities in defiance of the Bill of Rights. Revelation has no place in a science textbook; it belongs under religious studies. Cosmogony is the most difficult and least satisfactory branch of astronomy; cosmologists would be the first to agree. But, d.a.m.n it; they're trying!-on the evidence as it becomes available, by logical methodology, and their hypotheses are constantly subjected to pitiless criticism by their informed equals.

They should not have to surrender time on their platform, s.p.a.ce in their textbooks, to purveyors of ancient myths supported only by a claim of "divine revelation."

If almost everyone believed in Yahweh and Genesis, and less than one in a million U.S. citizens believe in Brahma the Creator, it would not change the const.i.tutional aspect. Neither belongs in a science textbook in a tax-supported school. But if Yahweh is there, Brahma should be. And how about that Eskimo Creator with the unusually unsavory methods? We have a large number of Eskimo citizens.

j) The return of witchcraft-It used to be a.s.sumed that Southern California had almost a monopoly on cults. No longer. (Cult vs. religion-I am indebted to L. Sprague de Camp for this definition of the difference. A "religion" is a faith one is born into; a "cult"

is a faith an adult joins voluntarily. "Cult" is often used as a slur by a member of an older faith to disparage a newer faith. But this quickly leads to contradictions. In the 1st century A.D. the Christians were an upstart cult both to the Sanhedrin and to the Roman priests.

"Cult" is also used as a slur on a faith with "weird ideas" and "weird practices." But this can cause you to bite your tail even more quickly than the other. "Weird" by whose standards?

(Mr. de Camp's distinction implies something about a mature and presumably sane adult becoming a proselyte in a major and long-established faith, such as Islam or s.h.i.+ntoism or the Church of England . . .

but the important thing it implies is that a person born into, let us say, the Presbyterian Church is not being odd or unreasonable if he remains in it all his life despite having lost all faith; he's merely being pragmatic.

His wife and kids are there; he feels that church is a good influence on the kids, many of his friends are there. It's a comfortable habit, one carrying with it a degree of prestige in the community.

(But if he changes into a saffron robe and shaves his pate, then goes dancing down the street, shouting, "Hare Krishna!" he won't keep his Chevrolet dealers.h.i.+p very long. Theology has nothing to do with it.) One of the symptoms of this Age of Unreason, antiscience and anti-intellect, in the United States is the very prominent increase in new cults. We've never been without them. 19th Century New England used to breed them like flies. Then it was Southern California's turn. Now they seem to spring up anywhere and also are readily imported from abroad. Zen Buddhism has been here so long that it is usually treated with respect . . . but still so short a time (1950) that few American adults not of j.a.panese ancestry can claim to have been born into it. Ancient in j.a.pan, it is still a cult here-e.g., Alan Watts (1915 - 1973), who moved from Roman Catholic priest to Episcopal priest to Zen priest. I doubt that there is any count on American Zen Buddhists but it is significant that both "satori" and "koan" were a.s.similated words in all four standard U.S. dictionaries only 16 years after Zen Buddhism penetrated the non-j.a.panese population.

And there are the Moonies and the Church of Scien tology and that strange group that went to South America and committed suicide en ma.s.se and the followers of that fat boy from India and-look around you. Check your telephone book. I express no opinion on the tenets of any of these; I simply note that, since World War Two, Americans have been leaving their "orthodox" churches in droves and joining churches new in this country.

Witchcraft is not new and never quite died out. But it is effectively new to most of its adherents here today because of the enormous increase in numbers of witches. ("Warlock" is insulting, "Wizard" barely acceptable and considered gauche, "Witch" is the correct term both male and female; The religion is usually called either the Old Religion or the Craft rather than witchcraft.) The Craft is by its nature underground; witches cannot forget the hangings in Salem, the burnings in Germany, the fact that the injunction, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus XXII, 18) has usually been carried out whenever the Old Religion surfaced. Even during this resurgence only four covens have come to my attention and, not being a witch myself, I have never attended an esbat (easier to enter a tyled lodge!).

The Craft is not Devil wors.h.i.+p and it is not Black Ma.s.s but both of the latter have enjoyed some increase in recent years.

If witchcraft has not come to your attention, search any large book store; note how very many new t.i.tles concern witchcraft. Most of these books are phony, not written by witches, mere exploitation books-but their very existence shows the change. Continue to show interest and a witch just might halfway reveal himself by saying, "Don't bother with that one. Try this one." Treat him with warm politeness and you may learn much more.

To my great surprise when I learned of it, there are over a dozen (how much over a dozen I have no way to guess) periodicals in this country devoted solely to the Old Religion.

Time Span-The Cancerous Explosion of Government Will Rogers told us that we were lucky in that we didn't get as much government as we pay for. He was (and is) emphatically right. . . but he died 15 August 1935. The Federal government spent $6,400,000,000 in the last 12 months of his tragically short life. The year he was born (1879) the Federal government spent $274,000,000-an expensive year, as we resumed paying specie for the Greenback Inflation, $346,700,000 of fiat money.

What would Will Rogers think of a budget of $300 billion and up?

(Figures quojed from THE STATISTICAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, Prepa red by the U.S. Aureau of the Census) Fed. Employees Fed. Receipts Census State & Local Fed. Expenditure Year Population JPub.E~p. Surplus/Deficit Fed Public Debt 1910 91972,266 388708 0675,51 2000 01,146940,000.

693,617,000.

(-/018,105,000 1920 /05,710,620655,265 06,648,898,000 024,299,321,000.

6,357,677,000.

$291,221,000.

1930 /22,755,046601319 $4,057,884,000 016,185,3/0,000.

2,622,000 3,320,211,000.

3.223,3/9 0737,673,000.

/940 131,669,2751,042,420 06,900,000,000 050,700,000,000.

3,206,000 9,600,000,000.

4,248,420 (-/02,700,000,000.

1950 150,697,3611,960,708 040,900,000,000 0256,900,000,000.

4,098,000 43,100,000,000.

6,058,708 (-)$2,200,000,000.

1960 178,464,2362,398,704 $92,500,000,000 $290,900,000,000.

6,083,000 92,200,000,000.

8,481.704 0300,000,000.

/970 203,235,2982,981,574 $193,700,000,000 $382,600,000,000.

9,830,000 196.600,000,000.

12.811,574 (-/02,900,000,000.

(/980) (222.000,000) (3,600,000)($300,000,000,000) ($525,000,000,000).

(14.500,000) ($310,000,000,000).

(18,100,000) (-)($/0,000 000,000).

(1980 figures are extrapolations = wild guesses) (Too timid?) Much too timid!-as you knew when you read them, as I knew when I prepared them. I plotted all of the above figures on graph paper, faired the curves, suppressed what I knew by memory (even refrained from consulting World Almanacs to bridge the 9 years since the close of compilation of THE STATISTICAL HISTORY) and extrapolated to 1980 by the curves-not tangent, but on the indicated curve.

By the best figures I can get from Was.h.i.+ngton today (20 Nov 1979) the budget is $547,600,000,000; the expected deficit is $29,800,000,000; and our current Federal Public Debt is estimated at $886,480,000,000.(!!!) The end of the Federal fiscal year, September 30, is still over ten months away. In ten months a lot of things can happen. Unexpected events always cause unexpected expense.. . but with great good luck the deficit will not increase much and the National Public Debt will stay under $900,000,000,000.

In case of war, all bets are off.

What is happening is what always happens in fiatcurrency inflation: After a certain point, unpredictable as to date because of uncountable human variables, it becomes uncontrollable and the currency becomes worthless. Dictators.h.i.+p usually follows. From there on anything can happen-all bad.

The Greenback Inflation did not result in collapse of the dollar and of const.i.tutional government because gold backing was not disavowed, simply postponed for a relatively short time. The Greenback Party wanted to go on printing paper money, never resume specie payment-but eventually we toughed it out and paid hard money for the Greenbacks that had financed the Union side of the war. From 1862 to 1879 gold and silver were not used internally. Our unfavorable balance of trade for 1861-65, which had to be met in gold, was $296,000,000. Hard times and high taxes-but we made it.

The French Revolution inflation was unsecured. Between April 1790 and February 1796, 40 billion livres or francs were issued. New paper money (Mandats) replaced them that year; the following year both sorts were declared no longer legal tender (waste paper!)- and 2 years later Napoleon took over "to save the Republic."(!) We could still keep from going utterly bankrupt by going back on some hard standard (gold, silver, uraniurn, mercury, bushels of wheat-something). But it would not be easy, it would not be popular; it would mean hard times for everyone while we recovered from an almighty hangover. Do you think a Congress and a President can be elected on any such platform?

One c.h.i.n.k in the armor of any democracy is that, when the Plebs discover that they can vote themselves Bread & Circuses, they usually do . . . right up to the day there is neither bread nor circuses.

At that point they often start lynching the senators, congressmen, bankers, tax collectors, Jews, grocers, foreigners, any minority-take your choice. For they know that they didn't do it. The citizen is sovereign until it comes to accepting blame for his sovereign acts-then he demands a scapegoat.

I used official figures without comment to show where we have been the past 70 years. . . and how we got into the mess we are in. But, while I think our government is more nearly honest than some others (see INSIDE INTOURIST Afterword, page 439), there is a lot of hanky-panky in those official figures. Example: Social Security taxes go into the general fund and are spent. If Social Security were in fact insurance (the basis on which the gimmick was sold to us by FDR's "New Deal"), the receipts would be segregated and invested and not shown as income . . . OR a competent insurance actuary with staff would calculate the commitment and it would show in the National Public Debt.

(The fact that a debt is amortized over the years doesn't stop it from being a debt. It was an amortized mortgage that got me into this racket. The prospect of years and years of future monthly payments spoiled my sleep.) The only way the Government can go on paying Social "Security" to my generation is by taxing you young people more and more heavily. . . and each year there are more and more old people and fewer and fewer young people. It won't help to run the printing presses faster; that causes food to rise in price, rents to go up, etc.-and people over 65 start putting pressure on Congress .. . and there's an election coming up. (There's always an election coming up.) One thjng I learned as a wardheeler was that (with scarce exceptions) people in my age group want one of two things: 1) They want to keep on clipping those coupons and collecting those rents and they don't give a d.a.m.n what it does to the country, or 2) they want that raise in Social Security (Townsend Plan) ("Ham & Eggs") (you name one) and they don't give a d.a.m.n what it does to the country.

(I don't claim to be altruistic. Just this pragmatic difference: I am sharply aware that, if the United States goes down the chute, I go down with it.) I use the term "Federal Public Debt" because what is usually termed the "Public Debt" is by no means our total public debt. There are also state, county, city, and special-district debts. It is difficult to get accurate figures on these public debts but the total appears to be larger than the Federal Public Debt. I can't make even a wild guess at the Social Security commitment but our total public promises-to-pay have to exceed two trillion dollars. How much is a trillion? Well, it means that a baby born today owes at least $4,347.83 to the Federal Government alone before his eyes open. (No wonder he yells). It means that the Zero Population Growth family (who was going to save us all-remember?) of father, mother, and 2.1 children owes $17,826 in addition to private debts (mortgage, automobile, college for 2.1 children).

Of course papa won't pay it off; that debt will grow larger. But it will cost him $2000 a year (and rising) just to "service" his pro-rata; any taxes for which he getsanything at all-even more laws-is on top of that.

A trillion seconds is 31,688 years, 9 months, 5 days, 8 hours, 6 minutes, and 42 seconds-long enough for the precession of the equinoxes to make Vega the Pole Star, swing back again to Polaris, and go on past to Alpha Cephei. Or counting the other way it would take us to 29,708 B.C.. . . or more than 25 thousand years before Creation by Bishop Usher's chronology for creationism.

I don't understand a trillion dollars any better than I do a trillion seconds. I simply know that we had better stop spending money we don't have if we want to avoid that Man on Horseback.

But I don't think we will stop "deficit financing," the euphemism that sounds so much better than "kiting checks."

You may have noticed that 1970 figure for public employees (not my extrapolation for 1980, but the official 1970 figures straight from the United States Bureau of the Census).

That figure does not include the Armed Forces. It does not include some special categories. It is easier to learn the number of slaves imported in 1769 (6,736) than it is to find out exactly how many people are on public payrolls in this country. And it is not simply difficult but impossible to determine how many people receive Federal checks for which they perform no services. (Or food stamps. Are food stamps money?) But one thing is certain: the number of people eligible to vote who do receive money from some unit of government (aid to dependent children, Supreme Court justices, not growing wheat, removing garbage, governors of states, whoever) exceeds the number eligible to vote but receiving no pay or subsidy of any sort from any unit of government.

Have you read the Federal Register lately? Have you ever read the Federal Register? Under powers delegated by Congress certain appointed officials can publish a new regulation in the Federal Register and, if Congress does not stop it, after a prescribed waiting time, that regulation has the force of law-it is law, to you and to me, although a lawyer sees nuances. I have vastly oversimplified this description, but my only purpose is to point out that "administrative law" reaches into every corner of our lives, and is the major factor in the enormous and strangling invasion of the Federal Government into our private affairs.

I can't see anything in the Const.i.tution that permits the Congress to delegate its power to pa.s.s laws.. .

but the Supreme Court says it's okay and that makes my opinion worthless.

I'm stopping. There are endless other gloomy things to discuss-the oil shortage, the power shortage (not the same thing), pollution, population pressure, a projected change in climate that can and probably will turn the problems of population and food into sudden and extreme crisis, crime in the streets and bankrupt cities, our incredible plunge from the most respected nation on Earth to the most despised (but we are nonetheless expected to pick up the tab). Bill Gresham was right but he told only half of it: you not only don't get rich peddling gloom; it isn't any fun.

So now come with me- "OVER THE RAINBOW-"