In the aftermath of September 11, I actually don’t think I was as afraid of world destruction as I was when the Cold War was still going on. I remember having recurring nightmares about nuclear holocaust. What has especially haunted me since I was a little kid is that image of Hiroshima where people’s shadows were blasted permanently into the walls, the only thing really left of them. It gives me the willies.

But what I was afraid of after September 11 was that the idiot cowboy was going to somehow screw it up totally and squander the world’s good will. I remember the hope that I had amidst those dark, awful days when the rest of the world expressed their solidarity with us. As one commentator noted, “We are all Americans now.” Boy, do I regret how right I was going to turn out.

I remember one of the funniest signs I saw at one of those international anti-Iraq-war rallies, held up by an American: “We’ve succeeded in uniting the world! Against us!”

Somehow, we have become the Evil Empire™ and believe you me, it ain’t just the Islamic extremists who are plotting our downfall. Clearly our American neighbors down South have had enough of our imperialistic bullshit, and, as a side effect, they will likely succeed where Simón Bolívar failed and manage to unite Latin America. Nothing unites people like a common enemy.

And this further escalation to a stand-off with Iran is completely absurd. Iraq was one thing. No one liked Saddam Hussein. We were really the only ones rooting for him, and once we turned on him, he was painted tight into a corner. Iran is another thing entirely. For one thing, it is a wealthier country than Iraq, not having been completely plundered by a pro-American dictator in the guise of staving off Communism. For another thing, both Russia and China like Iran, and I have feeling that neither of them will be very happy with us starting yet another war not too far from their borders. I also have a feeling that they will be extremely unhappy if we start setting off nuclear bombs, not least because fallout is unlikely to respect national boundaries.

So I guess my nihilistic fantasy occurs on a less immediate timescale than my nuked-to-death scenario. (The movie that captured my angst the best was probably “Terminator II,” what with that dramatic dream sequence where L.A. gets hit with a nuclear missile.) It’s an open question whether or not American democracy will remain intact within my lifetime, or whether we will devolve into tyrannical Empire a la Rome, but, remember, things happen a lot quicker these days, and we probably don’t have another five hundred years before the barbarians come knocking at our gates. God knows we’re already enraptured with bread and circuses tax cuts and TV. It’s only a matter of time unless someone can right our course.

What I fear is that John Titor will be right, and we’ll nuke ourselves into the Stone Age.

What I fear is that the end of Capitalism will occur in a very uncontrolled and destructive fashion, and I’m pretty sure that American-style Capitalism is soon going to come to an end. We will soon be leaving the log phase of unfettered growth, and entering the steady-state phase, where we are at a decided disadvantage given that we have such a massive debt to the rest of the world, and we also have such a massive trade deficit. Now I’m not saying that Capitalism is going to implode and leave us in a Communist paradise, but I’m thinking something more along the lines of the increasing success of planned economies, like how it works in Japan or in many parts of Europe. Unwarranted speculation on pipedreams and pies-in-the-sky, once the source of vast amounts of income in the log phase of American-style Capitalism (note the tech bubble of the late 1990s or the real-estate bubbles that effervesce every so often here in sunny Southern California), will be answered by a harsh smack-down from the Invisible Hand.

When Americans were all gung-ho about the Iraq War, when W kept egging both North Korea and Iran on (especially North Korea, man, maybe my nuclear annihilation nightmares can still come true), I thought we were heading fast into the cesspool. My mood worsened greatly when W managed to snag a second term. That really diminished what little faith in humanity I had left.

But, rightly or wrongly, I’ve become a little more optimistic now that W’s poll numbers have entered Nixonian territory. Sure, all it may be doing is speeding up the time frame at which we will transform into a tyrannical dictatorship, but when someone whips out that martial law declaration, I’m out of here for sure, even if I have to burrow under the border, or if I have swim out to sea. Being brown=skinned and liberal will surely not be a winning combination when that time comes, and I’d rather not get rounded up and sent to Gitmo or some other CIA secret torture camp. (Yes, I know the NSA is reading this as I type it, but, well, despite W’s depradations, no one has officially declared the Constitution null and void yet, and I know a bunch of lawyers who are ready to come out with guns blazing, figuratively speaking, so there.)

And so I get to the point of this rambling diatribe: now that I don’t feel like the world is necessarily going to end tomorrow or that I’m going to be imprisoned at Gitmo the next day, I’ve been thinking about the future.

What looms quite hugely is the enormous amount of educational and consumer debt I have managed to rack up. While the numbers register in an abstract manner, I really don’t have a good conception of just how much money $200,000 (give or take a few thousand) is. To put it mildly, the mind boggles.

The worse problem is that I have no concept of how to manage money, either. Strangely, I don’t have this problem when I’m playing a game that requires management of a money-like quantity (although I do tend to be a deficit-spender when I play Civilization.) Or when I’m managing the fluid status of a teeny-weenie 800 gram baby, where every milliliter counts. But for the life of me, when it comes to money, real, honest-to-goodness filthy lucre, I can’t seem to understand that what comes out needs to be less than what comes in.

I do, however, understand the concept of compound interest all too well, and I do recognize that it is governed by the awful constant e, meaning that exponential growth is involved in the process. The payments I make every month simply feel like I’m pissing in the wind, but there’s no way I can make more money at this time without jeopardizing my medical license by writing interested parties prescriptions for controlled substances, something which I’m not really eager to do considering that I just literally got my medical license a few days ago. I’m also leery of the whole moonlighting bugaboo, considering that what you tend to end up doing is paying a shitload of taxes instead of actually making any money.

Anyway, the other thing that has sort of gotten me on edge is that my landlord has decided to raise my rent a $100 a month, which I feel just borders on this side of highway robbery. I’m not sure how I’m going to find time to find some new digs, but I’m thinking that that might be the prudent way to go.

And the idea of moving reminds me of all the crap I own, and all the crap I own reminds me of how much debt I’m in, and so on, so on into this ravening whirlpool of outright despair.

Maybe it was better when I was depressed about being lonely, instead of now being depressed about being excruciatingly broke. Bah.

And now that I think I understand Capitalism a little better, I don’t think things will be getting better for me once we hit the steady-state phase. If anything, thing are likely to get worse, as we start experiencing inflation and escalating interest rates. Unfortunately, from an economic stand-point, the only way things are going to get better is either we reach the economic singularity some time soon (which isn’t going to happen very easily given Marx’s crisis theory, meaning that said singularity is divergent rather than convergent, and the closer we get to it, the harder it will be to actually reach it), or the U.S. will successfully plunge the world into Global War (which would bump us back down into the log phase of economic growth, what with the suddenly huge demand for bigger and better bombs and such.) Neither scenario is very pretty.

What I need to do is find some country where the U.S. won’t be able to extradite me for defaulting on my loans. (Just kidding, Mr. Negroponte!)