Where Is Your Lifeboat?

Some years ago, I watched the movie TITANIC (except for the pornographic parts). One significant plot element in this fictional story was that some idiot forgot to equip the vessel with an adequate number of lifeboats, so a bunch of passengers perished!!!! As if anyone would be that stupid !!!! Of course, some of the rich and powerful passengers figured out ways to secure themselves a seat on a lifeboat.

Anyway, I thought back to the movie THE PIANIST (with Adrien Brody). In the story, a large number of Jewish families in Poland were victimized, persecuted and forcibly relocated. I noted that, whether the families were formerly rich or poor, after the brutal purges, all of them were equally destitute and impoverished.

I read an article by an Iranian woman (Setareh Sabety). She wrote about her experiences around 1979, when the Shah of Iran was ousted by the Ayatollah Khomeini. She relates how there was a fervor for a change in the political regime. People were largely oblivious of the tyranny and oppression awaiting them. She reports that her rich father was blacklisted and stripped of the vast wealth and land he had hitherto possessed. His former class and status were abruptly revoked.

I remembered seeing a recent plug for a book titled "The day after the dollar crashes", and then I thought - Wait! If the dollar crashes, then all those 401k and IRA accounts (electronic bookkeeping entries) will be annihilated. All the insurance policies, checking and savings accounts - they will all be MEANINGLESS. Then Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates will be as rich as me. They'll be like the rest of us - looking for a loose brick to throw through the nearest grocery store window.

Surely these rich and famous and powerful people have a contingency plan. Don't they already understand that when the new (totalitarian) regime takes control, the teachers, doctors, poets, clerics, musicians, and all of the old-school intelligentsia will have to be sent to a Gulag or vanish? Do Bill and Oprah have a special plan? Have they already talked to Obama, Hillary, Pelosi and Bernanke, and arranged for a pre-paid ticket and seat on the lifeboat? Have they arranged for a way to get deep underground (with their fellow progressives and revolutionaries) for at least three weeks while the bombs fly and while they wait for the hot fallout to dissipate?

Where is your lifeboat?