A lot of this is cynical manipulation, a reaction to the legitimate threat once posed by the Occupy movement. We're seeing a lot of gamesmanship at work, a lot of people being given the rope with which to hang themselves. That will become more apparent by this time next year. Politics at every level is all smoke and mirrors today- believe nothing you see.
But there's something much deeper at work. We're seeing mass die-offs of wildlife, particularly that of sealife, all over the world. Most troubling are the mass die-offs of bees, animals that our food supply is so dependent on. Whether through carbon emissions or through geoengineering, we're also seeing dangerous levels of pollen on the increase and the attendant increase in respiratory illness.
And there have been attendant signs in the sky- the Sun seems to have gone quiet, perhaps presaging a long and difficult period of solar inactivity, one that could presage a mini-ice age. After years of mocking "believers," scientists are once again recognizing that there are two giants beyond Pluto (one may be a brown dwarf)*.
What effect they might have on our planet is debatable (some claim they are the source of all the invaders we've come to worry so much about; asteroids, meteors, etc), there's no shortage of "Nibiru" scare mongers on the Internet preaching apocalypse one minute, then selling "survival" trinkets and gimcracks in order to stave off your doom the next.
We've also seen strange signs on the earth- a rise in earthquake and volcanic activity (a major volcano could block out the Sun for many parts of the world, causing famine), an increase in gigantic sinkholes (massive hollowing out of the surface layer of the earth) and in the Pacific, violent typhoons. Hurricane season in the Atlantic has been relatively quiet since 2012's Superstorm, but that might be the literal calm before the storm.
And of course, there is the endless drumbeat of war. There is the endless slaughter and massive displacement in the Middle East (with ancient Gnostic sects such as the Druze, Yazidi and Alawites targeted for genocide by Jihadists) and the growing tension in Eastern Europe. There's also the uptick in terrorism in Europe (Charlie Hebdo, the attack in France today), although intolerable is not even a speck of the carnage people elsewhere in the world suffer on a daily basis, especially as struggles between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims escalate to global proportions. Syria, Yemen, Pakistan...the list of sectarian carnage is mind-numbing.
Toothless NATO protectorates like Sweden are easy targets for the Sino-Russian ascendancy, which is why the US is moving heavy artillery in the area. But the state of constant war is such that drone pilots are reporting record levels of stress and burn-out.
Poltical and social tensions have increased in this country, though in comparison to what's going on in the rest of the world it seems like a footnote (certainly the endless political bickering on the 'Net does). On a personal level, I'm seeing so many people I care about under serious stress. It's as if the entire solar system is in convulsions, from the macrocosm to the microcosm.
As many of us warned about, the corporate Christianity of the 80s and 90s has sparked an enormous backlash, with many young people walking away from religion (and pretty much everything else) entirely. Church leaders are now realizing the error of their shotgun wedding to partisan politics, even as Christianity rises in ways once unimagined in Africa, Russia and China.
But the collapse of religious faith especially among vulnerable working class populations has left a huge void, one which pandemic drug abuse is filling.
A deep and abiding nihilism has gripped the entire world-- not just the West-- and all of the chaos and upheaval we are seeing now is a symptom of that.
What is going to heal that?
Science is increasingly proving itself to be corrupt and compromised. Transhumanism (now just a fading dream, despite some of the hysteria you still see) won't fill the void, virtual reality (which never has and probably never will live up to its hype) won't fill the void, forcing the world in a Borghive will just make magnify the problem, just as the Internet can turn a quiet, Type B "nice guy" or "nice girl" into a raging, misanthropic troll.
So was 2012 the turning point? The beginning of a period of upheaval? Hollywood sells us the myth of overnight apocalypse ("The Day After Tomorrow") but history teaches us that periods of upheaval are slow in getting started, so much so that they are hardly recognized as such until it's too late.
History also teaches us that chaos has its own genius and often turns on the men who seek to unleash it for their own benefit. We're not seeing true chaos on a worldwide scale yet, but the beast is straining at its leash, that's for certain.
And you can also bet the farm that we'll see what Jacques Vallee calls the "Control System" awake from its slumber. It already has, though that too has largely gone unnoticed. But not for much longer.
You will live in interesting times...
UPDATE: Speaking of which, are you watching what's going on in the Chinese Stock Market?
UPDATE: The weaponization of space is proceeding apace, ostensibly to counter threats from China and Russia. There are strange linguistic undertones in the press release, however....
*The reason I don't pay any attention to astronomers' bold claims of distant solar systems is that they have no friggin' idea what's floating around in ours. Or they do and are lying about it. Either way.
