Come-on to Apocalypse

Today, I got a letter, no heading, from the "President of the Sovereign Society." She has a website: she spells the nation, "Amerika," as in escape from! She sells a how-to to gain dual citizenship and more.

These missives come from a conservative publishing group: I recognize the MO.

Many trot out tired bromides of the right, but this one is revealing. It lays out the dream of would-be capitalists, who scream loudest about Freedom, and: America has been ruined (by that Socialist Obama and that cowboy, W). Astoundingly, Erika is selling "government health programs and FREE prescriptions," while you "live like royalty for less than $390 a week;" the four countries most affordable for retirees; how you can gain business and tax benefits with dual citizenship, and so on.

Other newsletters in the network provide interesting stock analysis and questionable advice, but the MO is telling. It never lays out something for you to read, until after you subscribe. They give a presentation: a rolling script, while a voice hypes the argument. You can't move forward or back; it forces you to hear each agonizing minute if you want to figure out what they're selling. If you try to cancel, it yells at you, in print--or voice over it--that you mustn't give up this chance NOW! Every time I've watched one, it concludes by selling a subscription to another, more specialized newsletter that will: solve all your health problems, or make you rich, instantly, protect you from the coming apocalypse, or, in this case, sell you a newsletter for fleeing the United States. The subscriptions go upwards from the $35 for an extended advertisement for other newsletters, to several thousand for the "elite" stock advice sheets.

Having received one for free and then another for $35 (deductible as an expense), I can see a pattern. First of all, a significant share of the financial advice is either to buy gold, since everything will collapse soon, or oil, the more polluting the better. Some recommendations are interesting, but when I check the buy figures, they're almost always late--buy below $6.50, when it hasn't been below $6.50 for weeks. The newsletters are sparing of real recommendations, but lavish in selling other newsletters.

Their star economic commentator, a Brit, gives scornful analysis of the US economy; he lives in Taiwan.

There is something this audience shares with the left: a conviction that the US is in inevitable decline. However, they are sanguine about it--and eager to exploit it. Then, as reward, there are "over 80 beautiful, get-away countries," where you could establish residency, and maintain "your personal privacy and affluence."

They are wannabe Roman Senators; Roman Senators buried their gold before Rome's "fall." Afterwards, the barbarians tortured them to get it for themselves.