Potosì

My timing for being in Sucre couldn't have been any more serendipitous. The city celebrated its bicentenial of independence for the entire month of May. There have been free concerts and parades all over the city. I got to see the Bolivian supergroup Kjarkas play a free concert. Noticably absent from the festivities is the Bolivian president Evo Morales who, despite his nation-wide popularity, is persona non grata in Sucre. The reason for this is that Sucre is, constitutionally, the capital of Bolivia but La Paz is where the center of the executive and legislative branches are. As anyone who has power is loath to let go of it, Sucre has been the site of various protests against Evo Morales, even blockading the airport runway and preventing his plane from landing in Sucre on one occasion. You can see signs scrawled in graffiti that say, "Sucre capital of Bolivia." I think Evo Morales knows that even showing up in Sucre would piss a lot of people off.
I ended up lingering in Sucre longer than I expected, partially because I am lazy and partially because I had an accident between myself and a car on the day I was leaving. I left the accident with only bruises to my pride and my body but my bicycle required a new wheel and I needed to get a new part machined for my saddlebags. I take at least partial blame for the accident as I was being a little too aggressive in challenging a yellow light. What I forgot was that, while the light changes from green to yellow and then to red, the other light changes from red to yellow and then to green. As these are old colonial streets, I thought I could easily beat the yellow light as I only had to cross a one-lane street. What I didn't anticipate, though, was that any driver a distance away from the intersection might try to anticipate the green light by accelerating on their yellow. This led to me slamming into the side of their car as I didn't see the car coming or have enough time to react in order to avoid the collision. I could tell the driver felt a little bit guilty himself for ,even though he stopped to check and see if I was alright, he was quickly gone. I am sure that I probably left a good sized dent in the side of his car as two hundred pounds of flesh, bones, steel, and rubber hurling into anything is sure to leave a mark. I might have even perforated the steel as my metal-spiked helmet impacted with the car first. I am now almost completely healed and my bike is in optimal condition. It didn't even cost me that much to buy a new wheel and machine a new part.
I am in Potosì now, site of the greatest theft of mineral wealth in the history of mankind. I have read before that Potosì supplied half of the worlds silver for over two centuries. The Spanish, ruled by the Habsburg dynasty during most of this time, mostly squandered this wealth on wars and luxury goods and were in decline by the end of the seventeenth century. The Cerro Rico, or rich hill, which looms over the south of the city has also swallowed literally millions of lives. Most of the estimates I have seen range from 4 to 8 million deaths. To put that in perspective the current population of Bolivia is around 9.1 million.
To be a miner in Potosì pretty much guaranteed, and still does guarantee, an early death. There are numerous ways that you can die in a mine: a tunnel can collapse, you can stumble upon noxious or explosive gas, you are exposed to many different toxins, and, if none of that kills you, than you will probably die from silicosis which is caused by the constant inhalation of microparticulate matter. Back when the mercury amalgamation technique for purifying silver was discovered, those who worked in refining the silver would mix the mercury and impure silver with their bare feet. They almost inevitably died from mercury poisoning afterwards. By the time Bolivia gained its independence from Spain, the silver in the mines had mostly run out. People still work, and die, in the mines of el Cerro Rico today, only they mine more tin and zinc instead of silver. This is a sad world we live in where people risk their lives for a pittance to feed the avaricious appetites of people on the other side of the world. If people ever wonder why I don't buy silver, gold, or any other kind of jewelery and I never will, this is why.

Leaving the Road of My Worst Nightmares

I am now resting in Sucre, Bolivia after riding on what was probably the worst dirt road that I have ever ridden on in my life. I will probably have nightmares about this road 20 years from now. There are many parts of the road with rocky, 30 degree inclines, some of which go on for miles at a time. Pretty much all of the switchbacks were at these inclines and also had loose dirt which added yet another layer of difficulty to this road. Sisyphus has it easy. The strange thing is that I actually preferred ascending over descending because I was afraid of damaging my bike. I have no doubt that this road has snapped car axles in half and destroyed transmissions. If I was lucky enough to ride on a flat part of the road I was pretty much guaranteed to be riding through a glorified sand pit. If there was a creek or river there was probably not a bridge. I suspect that the road is impassable during the rainy season. There was very little traffic and only a few towns where I could stock up on food and water and eat prepared meals. Most of the people who go from Oruro to Sucre take the longer, paved route via Potosì but I did not heed the warnings of those who told me that it was a bad road because I did not want to backtrack. I ended up needing just over a week to ride the 320 kilometers of dirt road between the town of Huanuni and Sucre.
The upside to riding on this road was that it was, indeed, beautiful. The mountains seem to painted every color that you can imagine a mountain would be. They are jagged and steep. I rode on many a mountain ridge with 1,000 foot dropoffs. The views were stunning. One night, when I was camping on the side of the road, I even got snowed on. The flurry only lasted about 30 or 40 minutes but left a pretty healthy blanket of snow on my bicyle, tent, and my surroundings. Despite the beauty of this part of Bolivia, I was happy to make it out of the wilderness as the road was definitely testing my morale. My bicycle is happy to be done with that road too and is due for a tune-up.
One casualty of the road was my G.P.S. device. I had already noticed that my G.P.S. wasn't accurately recording elevation gains when I was in Peru but I could live with that. I had also noticed that it would automatically shut off when I was going to down long descents. It took me a while to realize what was causing this problem. I would usually hit some kind of bump or pothole which would jolt the batteries loose for a microsecond and break the circuit therefore shutting it off. This was a manageable problem before but this road was so rocky that I decided it would be better to just turn it off and use it more sparingly. This means that I am no longer recording my total ascent or kilometers logged but I am saving a lot of batteries this way.
I was lucky or unlucky enough to witness something that few gringos ever get to see while passing through the towns on this road. I happened to pass through these towns during the festival called Tinku. Apparently, the townsfolk all get together and beat the shit out of each other but I didn't witness any of that. What I saw was everyone getting dressed up in traditional clothing and parading around town, rhythmically stomping their feet, and playing charangoes and sanpoñas. I was even awakened during the night one night while camping by people stomping through the countryside with their charangoes where I was camping.
The downside of Tinku is that it is pretty much an excuse, like most holidays in Latin America, for the men to get ridiculously drunk. In most of the towns I passed through, at least half of the male population was falling down drunk before noon. This created a volatile situation for me as I had to deal with pushy drunks trying to get me to drink with them in every town. In one town, a group of them even surrounded me when I was going up a hill and tried to get me to drink with them. I am damn near a teetotaler and particularly despise drunks so I politely declined to drink with them telling them that I was allergic to alcohol but they were unswayed by this argument and annoyingly persisted in trying to get me to drink. One of them was particularly belligerent and stole the sunglasses off of my bike before I was able to ride off. I then got off of my bike and politely but insistently asked for him to give me my glasses back. I knew that it was wise to pursue a diplomatic solution to this standoff rather than stab 5 or 6 drunk guys in the throat over sunglasses so I maintained this strategy until one of the more reasonable drunks intervened on my behalf. At this point I rode off and put as much distance between myself and the drunks as possible because I knew that once I was out of sight they would forget that I had even passed through.
One consequence of riding through the Incan nation, as I like to call the Bolivian, Ecuadoran, and Peruvian Andes, is that the iconic image of the masculine cowboy on a horse herding his cattle has now been indelibly replaced with that of an indigenous woman, wearing a bowler hat, following her cows around and cursing at them in Quechua when they don't move across the road fast enough. I have a similar image now for shepherds as well. When I hear, "The lord is my shepherd." I can't help but think of the little Incan lady cursing and throwing rocks at her sheep. I occasionally see a man with his cows or sheep but it is almost always a woman. God only knows where the men are. After Tinku, I am starting to think that they are off drinking somewhere.
I was cut off from the rest of the world during my week on the nightmare road because there was no internet access in most of the towns I passed through. When I finally got to Sucre, I wasn't shocked but I was nonetheless pissed off to find out that the scandal involving the Colombian army's deceiving and murdering of indigent people to pad the numbers of rebel kills they have has only grown. According to the B.B.C. there are now over a thousand cases pending against the army for these unspeakable human rights violations. The Colombian government, of course, claims that most of these cases were actually rebels but I think they are lying. I am so angry about this that I actually going to write a letter to my Congressmen and Senators urging them to end Plan Colombia and demand an international investigation with prosecutions of all those involved. I don't think that this will actually do anything but I don't want to feel powerless in light of these crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of the holy drug war.

Moving Through Bolivia

I spent a week in La Paz. There is something I like about big, massive, congested cities. La Paz has its charming idiosyncracies that make it an interesting place to stay as well. My favorite thing about La Paz is that they have zebras directing traffic. Yes, zebras. Other cities have traffic cops--and there are some of those-- but the local government decided that people dressed in zebra suits would be more effective at directing traffic for some reason.
What did I do in La Paz? Not much. I pretty much just enjoyed eating good food for good prices and indulged in my newfound capuccino addiction. I never drank coffee until I passed through Colombia and then I got spoiled by the good stuff. A cup of cafe con leche with a little bit of sugar there is a cup of heaven as far as I am concerned. After you leave Colombia, you can only find good coffee in the big cities, everywhere else you can only find that powdered, instantaneous shit. Capuccino is the closest I have come to recreating that perfect cup of cafe con leche. Knowing that, as soon as I left the city, I was going to have to endure freezing temperatures and monotonous food, it was easy to stay a week.
I did do one touristy thing while I was in La Paz. I road on El Camino de la Muerte or Deathroad if you like. Back in the day, it used to serve as a highway between La Paz and Coroico to the east. With 100+ fatalities every year it earned the moniker El Camino de la Muerte after a U.N. study determined that it was the world's most dangerous highway at the time. The Bolivian government has since built a new highway and the Deathroad has become nothing more than a high-falutin mountain bike trail. Apparently there are still some fools who die on the mountain bike tour but I was not one of them. We were babysat a little too much by the tour guides to my liking but I compensated by smoking copious amounts of marijuana during the 10,000 foot descent. Even though we had our nannies with us, the tour was still fun. It was nice being able to hurl down the side of a mountain without carrying half of my body weight in gear. I consistently stayed at the front and only had to ask the tour guide in front to move faster once.
After studying a map of Bolivia, I have decided on a rough course of where I want to go in Bolivia. I am in Oruro right now and I plan to traverse Sucre, Potosì, el Salar de Uyuni, and Tarija in that order. Once I get close to the Salar de Uyuni, I will be in a very remote part of the country so I am mentally preparing myself for the monotony of eating nothing but cans of tuna and cookies and riding on dirt roads for days on end. It should all be worth it, though, as the Salar de Uyuni is best described as an extraterrestrial, altiplano desert. If I play my cards right, I should be able to pass through the town where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were killed on the way to Argentina. I had back-to-back one hundred kilometer days on the way to Oruro from La Paz so there is a possibility that I will complete my tour of Bolivia in less than a month.
George Bush really opened up a can of worms with his excessive use of the word terrorist to describe pretty much anyone that disagrees with the dominant imperialist agenda whether it be religiously fanatic Muslim suicide bombers in the Middle East, left-wing narco-rebels in Colombia, or, now, animal rights activists. What the hell does terrorist mean anyway. If the definition of terrorist is someone who terrifies in order to coerce change or adherence to the status quo than I propose that the U.S. government qualifies. We are, afterall, the only country to ever detonate a nuclear bomb on a civilian target. The government of Evo Morales has taken a cue from the Bush school of rhetoric. He blithely calls the supposed international assassins, that his government filled with bullets, terrorists. I usually support Evo Morales's actions but this goes too far. Even if the government has incontrovertible proof that these men intended to assassinate the president, these men should have been arrested and not killed while sleeping during a S.W.A.T. style raid. The pictures of the so-called "terrorist" ringleader naked and bloody in his bed belie the governments case that they were planning actions. If the government really had proof of their intentions they should have tried much harder to arrest these people and bring them to justice. Extrajudicial assassinations of terrorist subjects set a bad precedent but I can only say that the Bolivians are learning from us.
I admit that my creation of the Ganjobicicletholic is more in the spirit of Abbie Hoffman than of Martin Luther but I have been thinking a lot about morality and how it needs a serious updating. My objection to the major religions of the world is that their morality is obselete. I can see how homosexuality would be considered sinful in a patriarchal society. When the man is always in charge in a relationship, who is in charge in a relationship between two men? One uppity bottom challenges the entire patriarchal hegemony of power. When the vast majority of people tend the earth and the average life expectancy doesn't exceed 40, be fruitful and multiply makes a lot of sense. The problem is that when the earth becomes overpopulated, as it has, being fruitful and multiplying only fucks things up worse. Old-time religion also lets people off too easily for their profligate, consumer-whore ways. What is worse, a man stealing bread to feed his family or a man buying a $10,000 Rolex when there are people starving in the world. How about when a man buys a $1,000,000 Ferrari that gets less than 10 miles to the gallon when he could buy a much more practical car for much less or, even better, ride a bike. The religious leaders of the world stand in shocking silence, or worse enable this selfishness as our society celebrates these pompous asses. If this world were truly just, as those who believe in an omnipotent god would have us believe, the Ferrari driver would feel such a palpable sense of hatred anytime he left his house that he would not buy the Ferrari in the first place. For me there is nothing wrong with having money. It is the obscene displays of wealth that irk me. Religious leaders are too busy bickering about homosexuality and abortion to realize that we are destroying this planet we will soon send the human race to extinction if we don't drastically alter our behavior. For this reason, religion needs a serious updating.
As a quick note, the Supreme Court of the U.S. recently said it was okay for the F.C.C. to fine television networks even for the accidental airing of expletives. This decision pisses me off. What the fuck is wrong with cursing, goddamnit? Since the internet is, thus far, free from this censorship, which in my opinion is a direct violation of the First Ammendment, I have only one thing to say: fuck the skull of the rotting corpse of Jesus while fingering the Virgen Mary. I think I will silkscreen a shirt that says this and wear it to church.

Bolivia, Web Piracy, and the Ganjobicicletholic Church

I finally left Peru two days ago and I am now sitting in an internet cafe in La Paz. I arrived here last night after a long, tiring day. La Paz sits in a large valley which makes it difficult to navegate for someone who is visiting for the first time. After, blatantly disregarding a sign that prohibits cyclists from entering the highway that descends into the valley from Barrios Altos, I arrived in the hotel zone of La Paz, about a half-hour later, ready for the embrace of a nice, warm bed.
My first impression of Bolivia is that it is dirt-cheap aside from the $135 dollars I had to pay to enter Bolivia. I actually paid $140 since I didn't have any change. The immigration office claimed to not have any change and I didn't protest the extra $5 as I saw it as a fee to expedite the process. I have heard from other Americans entering Bolivia that they have been given a hard time by the authorities. Aside from paying the money and filling out a long immigration form, I found the process to be relatively painless. My first meal in Bolivian territory cost 5 bolivianos and my first stay in a lodging cost 12 bolivianos. The current boliviano to dollar ratio is 7 to 1. There don't seem to be many places to spend my money here so I wouldn't be surprised if I spend less money in all of Bolivia than I did to enter it. I should mention a certain caveat: the 12 boliviano lodging did not have even a collective bathroom for its guests.
Bolivia is the only country I know of where the president goes on hunger strike when he doesn't get his way, legislatively speaking that is. I am a fan of Evo Morales. I think he is overplaying his hand with a lot of the social reforms that he is trying to enact but, overall, I like him. There are not enough presidents in this world who are single and Evo Morales is one of them. He has made his sister the offical First Lady of Bolivia. His life story pretty inspiring for me. He grew up in a family where the vast majority of his brothers and sisters didn't even reach adulthood. He is a polarizing figure as evidenced by the recent attempt on his life in the Santa Cruz region but I believe he really cares about the long neglected Bolivian indigenous majority. I hope that he succeeds in elevating the indigenous poor of this country.
Recently, it was in the news that the proprietors of Pirate Bay have been convicted in a Swedish court of making copyrighted material available for illegal downloading. I have high hopes that they win their appeal as I would like to see recording industry go bankrupt. The music industry has been producing too much homogenous shit for too long. I am tired of hearing songs that range from cliched love songs to celebrations of self-indulgent narcissism. The copyright laws which grant protection to a copyright holder up to 150 years after the death of the original artist need to be changed, too. Even if the proprietors of Pirate Bay lose their appeals, I hope that pirates of the world unite to bring those motherfuckers to their knees.
I have been thinking a lot about creating the Ganjobicletholic Church. The Native American church won the right to use peyote a long time ago from the U.S. Supreme Court so I figured why not use religion as an excuse to smoke pot. The question is how does one create an officially recognized religion. My solution is to apply for I.R.S. tax-exempt status. In order to do this I will have to submit Articles of Confederation and a Constition, among other things, to the I.R.S. I figure if the Jedi Church can get offical recognition in Great Britain than I should be able to achieve official recognition in the U.S.
The next step is to create an official mythology and rituals of the Ganjobicletholic Church. I figured I would just borrow from other religions to create a patchwork of the positive aspects of various religions, kind of like the Unitarian Universalists. We will worship, the sun, the moon, the winds, and nature in general. Prometheus, the bringer of fire in Greek mythology, will be rebranded as the bringer of technology. As fire can grow out of control if one isn't careful so can the use of technology as evidenced by global warming. It will behoove us, the members of the Ganjobicletholic Church, to limit our use of technology in order to achieve a greater balance with nature.
As far as rituals are concerned, I can think of a few rituals that we will borrow from other religions. I like the Day of the Dead which is practised in Catholic Latin America but not much elsewhere. Honoring our dead ancestors is a positive thing as far as I am concerned. I also like the Muslim idea of a once-in-a-lifetime religious pilgrimage. Instead of going to Mecca, though, the end point of a pilgrimage will be discretionary as long as the pilgrimage is made using only human and sail power. Every full moon, we will have a feast and smoke-out which culminates in a large group bike ride afterwards. The use of hallucinogens will be encouraged with proper supervision.
I don't like any of the religions that the world has to offer me. I consider Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to be obselete religions as they were all created at least a thousand years ago in response to the trials and tribulations of said ancient times. I would like to have a religion that incorporates wastefulness and profligacy into our concepts of sinfullness. Jesus never said anything about people who drive Hummers but I think that it doesn't take much imagination to see that this is bad for the world and should, hence, be considered sinful. I don't want to be considered godly or messianic or elevated beyond the rest of humanity so I don't want to be the leader of this new church. I will happily accept the title of Grand Supreme High Archbishop of Austin, though.

Goodbye Peru, Hello Bolivia

Peru is one of those places that strikes you as just another poor place but them grows on you as you scratch the surface and discover that the richness of the culture more than makes up for the poverty of worldly possessions. I have had the good fortune of getting to know a number of Peruvians who have turned me on to some of the more beautiful aspects of Peruvian culture. Even now that I am going to be in Bolivia in a couple of days, I am still discovering new things about Peru. I am going to really miss Peru as I have completely fallen in love with it.
When I first arrived in Puno, I made friends with a photographer who is just a little bit younger than me. He saw me on my bike and realized I was confused about where I was and decided to help me find the place I was looking for. Usually, upon arriving in a new city, I am extremely wary of strangers as my white skin attracts all sorts of conmen and charlatans, but I could tell that Giorgio was not using subterfuge to try to liberate me of my possessions. I have only known Giorgio for a few days but I am so glad to have met him. He is one of the people who has helped open my eyes to the beauty of Peru by introducing to me to new things. I also got to spend some time cooking with Giorgio and friends of his as well as go on some bike rides with them. All in all, Giorgio and his friends have shown me a wonderful time in Puno.
As some of you are probably aware, this week is Semana Santa or Easter week for those who are ignorant of Latin culture. To understand Semana Santa it is important to understand that Easter is much more important than Christmas here, even as far as religious holidays are concerned. When I was living and working in Mexico, I got the day off for Christmas but two weeks off for Semana Santa. All throughout the Catholic world, but especially in Spanish-speaking countries, there are all sorts of parades and pilgrimages honoring the last living days of Jesus.
Here in Puno, there is a large procession to the top of a hill where there is a giant cross. People then light candles at the top and make there way back down the hill. My new-found amigos puneños and I decided that it would be a fun idea to drink a bunch San Pedro cactus tea and go on the procession in a happily altered state. Maybe we could speak to God that way. Despite the rain and the cold, the hill was packed with the faithful and it was still a beautiful ceremony.
In the past I have made some pretty damning statements about religion and, more specifically, Christianity. I should say, however, that I do appreciate some of the symbolism and the beauty of some religious ceremonies. Catholicism has so much history and tradition (not all of it good) that I would have to choose it over other forms of Christianity if I had a gun to my head. Evangelism doesn't hold a candle to Catholicism when it comes to integrating beauty into its ceremonies. It is just a cheap, tacky, plastic church for cheap, tacky, plastic people living in a cheap, tacky, plastic society. Catholicism gave us Michaelangelo's sistine chapel while Evangelism gave us Pat Boone and ugly, suburban megachurches.
Ganjobicicletolismo is the name I have given my religion of one in the past and I thought I might expound on it since I am the high priest of it after all. As a true cultural syncretist, I have decided that I am going to borrow some of the symbolism from Catholicism since not every single aspect of it is bad. As a non-Christian I have to say that I, nonetheless, like the concept of human sinfulness. I only wish more people could see their own sinfullness instead of the sinfulness of those around them. During the procession to the cross on top of the hill, one thing that I saw that I really liked was that there were people carrying stones up the hill and placing them on the various prayer stations before they reached the cross at the top. My friends explained to me that the rocks were symbolic of the people's sins and that carrying this burden up the hill was seen as a form of pennance. This really jived well with me since I had already kind of thought of myself as performing some kind of pennance by hauling my bike with all of its gear up the sides of massive mountains. So there you have it. I have a way of paying pennance in ganjobicletolismo. Also in the spirit of cultural syncretism, my friends and I used one of the candles used in the procession to light our weed. Marijuana use is one of the central tenets of my religion.

Colder Than a Snowman's Pecker

Unfortunately, it looks like waking up and finding frost on my tent and bicycle is going to become more of the norm rather than the exception as I continue to advance southward. I purchased some new heavy-duty socks in Arequipa for when I am asleep in my tent. I wear three layers of socks when it is real cold. I have been blessed with sunny weather all the way from Arequipa to Puno where I am now. All in all, I would take the sunburned face from the nose down and the chapped lips over having to ride through cold rain and hail. At higher elevations the U.V. rays are noticably stronger as I have to wear my sunglasses to prevent snow-blindness and cover my body more to prevent sunburn. Despite the sunny days, it still freezes at night. I rewarded myself for reaching Juliaca with a nice warm hotel room and I intend to do the same here in Puno. A fun fact: I always thought it was strange how my Army Field guide to survival recommends to always have matches in a waterproof container rather than a lighter. I have since discovered that lighters barely function if they function at all at higher elevations. My theory is that the thinner air does not provide enough oxygen for the combustion reaction.
Recently President Obama rejected yet another call for legalization of marijuana from an internet forum. The person who posed the question, unfortunately, only reinforced the popular image of the idiot stoner. He suggested that legalizing marijuana would be some kind of panacea for our economic woes. President Obama was right to ridicule this line of reasoning but he is wrong to reject the call for the legalization of marijuana. I have read a somewhat dubious statistic in Foreign Policy Magazine that 60% of the Mexican cartels revenue comes from marijuana smuggling. I don't believe this statistic because almost everyone I know who smokes weed smokes hydroponic weed with an American provenance. Nonetheless, legalizing marijuana would remove a major revenue source from the Mexican cartels, not to mention, empty our jails and free up law enforcement resources to focus on real crime. I think, as more and more states face potential bankruptcy, that marijuana will become more or less decriminalized as a fiscal measure to free up prison space especially in local and county jails as there are over 700,000 arrests every year for marijuana possession. Currently, all these people have to spend at least one night in jail. The illegal drug industry is one of the few truly recession-proof industries so people will keep buying these drugs.
I was pleased to discover, after leaving the wilderness, that gay people can marry in Iowa now because of a new court ruling. It pleases me that the Christian right is losing the culture wars in the U.S. In the last ten years the percentage of people that claim to be atheist has risen from 5% to 15% of the U.S. population. I only hope this trend will accelerate in the next ten years. I envision an atheist majority like in Germany. For the record, I do not consider myself atheist or agnostic but I am definitely not Christian. You could say that I am an animistic pantheist. The Incas worshipped the sun. Since the sun melts the frost off of my tent and warms me, I would say that I am a sun worshipper, too. I strongly dislike the Christian church and I would say that I have declared open war on Christianity after a Brazilian archbishop recently excommunicated a nine-year-old rape victim and the doctors who performed a life-saving abortion on her but not the pig of a stepfather who continually raped her. I can't wait for the next pair of proselytizers to come and knock on my front door. I am going to tear them a new asshole.

A Swiftian Economic Proposal

News about the economy is getting scarier and scarier by the day. The American spending glut that fueled not just the American economy but the world economy as well is over now that the bills for the debt that fueled our historic consumption are now due. The government has run up a deficit of well over a trillion dollars this year in a desparate attempt to get people to start spending their money again but to no avail. Despite the trillions of dollars being spent, no new jobs are being created as we have in fact lost millions of jobs in the last year. This creates a vicious cycle as even people with jobs are even more likely to stop spending money for fear of losing their jobs in the future which leads to even more job losses. There must be some way to stimulate the economy.
The solution lies in class warfare. We wouldn't even have to spend more than it cost to buy bullets since there are already 200,000,000 estimated privately owned firearms in the United States alone. I just propose that we put them to use. Yes the rich own a portion of those firearms and they also have the police and the military at their disposal and they would ultimately win a class war against the poor and middle class but at a great economic cost. It is precisely this economic cost that would stimulate the economy.
Fear is what is largely driving this recession but we can harness fear to provide for an economic stimulus. As of 2006 there were an estimated 2,700,000 millionaires living in the United States using net worth valuations which excluded the value of their homes. The number has no doubt dropped since then but let us just walk through some math assuming that their are still around 2,000,000 remaining such millionaires. These people have enough available money to start spending it now but aren't because they don't want to rub other's faces in their financial security so they have been avoiding the usual ostentatious displays of wealth that they are accustomed to. However, if they legitimately feared for their lives they would no doubt begin to spend their money on security for themselves. As the police and military forces would be overwhelmed just by the sheer number of firearms in this country they would no longer be able to provide around the clock protection for the rich and, therefore, the rich would have to hire private security. Since the only way to ensure their safety is 24 hour surveillance this would create the need for many armed security personel. Each week is exactly 168 hours long so to have at least one armed guard around the house one would have to contract at least 4 full time employees and one part time employee in order to avoid having to pay overtime. As the rich have larger properties to protect, no one security guard would be able to protect more than four houses at a time. Using these numbers one could calculate that this would provide 4.2*500,000=2,100,000 new full-time jobs to the economy ( the .2 trailing the 4 is for those 8 hours left over after the four full time employees have been allotted their 40 hours a week). Moreover, these are higher quality jobs as armed security personel require a variety of special licenses in order to be able to carry firearms on the job. Also, the ultrarich would no doubt hire 24 hour security detail to escort them throughout their days. Assuming that only 100,000 of these 2,000,000 would qualify as ultrarich we get that they would hire an additional 4.2*100,000=420,000 armed security guards as their personal escorts. These security guards would be even more highly paid as they would have to be highly trained in counter-assassination and counter-kidnapping tactics in addition to their usual licensing requirements. That is 2,420,000 new jobs created thus far.
There is no doubt that the U.S., state, and local governments would, at the least, match the number of new private security hires with police and military new hires. That is 4,840,000 new jobs thus far. No doubt all the new private security, police, and military trainees would need instructors to train them in the counter-assassination and counter-kidnapping tactics as well as general firearm use for their licenses. Assuming that we would need at least one instructor for every 10 cadets that is an additional 484,000 jobs. These jobs would be permanent as security, police, and military personel need to renew their various licenses and training. That now brings the total of new jobs added to the economy to 5,324,000.
All of these 5,324,000 new employees would need to be properly equipped with weapons. As the U.S. gun manufactures currently produce and sell about 4,700,000 guns every year in the United States, the capacity to produce and sell weapons would need to be expanded by 112%. It has been estimated that at least 500,000 people are employed in gun manufacturing and gun retail. As both the gun manufacturing and retail jobs are already highly mechanized, the companies would have no choice but to hire about 112% more workers. That means there would be an additional 500,000*1.12= 560,000 new jobs added. The total is now comes to 5,884,000 permanent new jobs.
Gun manufacturers would no doubt have to build new factories, gun retailers would have to build new display rooms for their weapons, and the instructors would most definitely need additional training facilities for all the new trainees. All this new building would stimulate the construction industry which is currently reeling from the housing bust. This would put more construction workers back to work albeit only temporarily as this would only be a one-time expansion. All these new workers would undoubtedly spend their hard-earned money on their mortgages and rents, either directly or indirectly helping decelerate the foreclosure crisis which has led to the downward spiral in house prices that we have been experiencing as of late. There are no doubt countless new jobs which would be added to the economy as these security personel spend their money. Before we know it, we would have replaced all the jobs that have been lost in this recession.
If you don't have the guts to kill a rich person, there are other ways to do your part. Armed kidnapping will more than suffice as would arson which would have the added benefir of further stimulating the construction industry as the houses are replaced. Rich people would now be so fearful that they would probably even be willing to take on debt to pay for all their security upgrades. So all of you that were hesitant to engage in class warfare before because you feared being seen as a communist can now do so with a clean conscience knowing that you are helping stimulate the economy. You would be a true capitalist patriot.