Debacle!
Sure, we were all caught unawares by the swift victory of the Red Army. Nobody expected Capitalist resistence to collapse so quickly but that is the nature of class struggle.
The bourgeoisie lives by the acceleration of production but, at the same time, seeks to slow the pace of struggle.
But, in the end, the contending forces will take their position.
Stay alert, comrades!
The Red Army advances!
And, at last, the ruling class, appalled and disheartened, removes itself from the scene and retreats to the dustbin of history.
Will I feast on the entrails of my opponents, drink the very marrow from their bones and show them a hell unlike any from their worst nightmares...or will I merely gorge myself on Fritos and Schoolboy cookies, and let the dice roll as they may?
The young, the old, the idle rich, the dissolute, the desperate and the rapacious; by this stage all the parasitic elements of society have entered the game. Speculators surge from auction to auction snapping up classics and forgeries alike blinded by the belief that whatever unbelievable price they may pay today someone else will double tomorrow. Even untutored musicians gamble and win.
Until, that is, the game ends.
"As is always the case, prosperity very rapidly encouraged speculation. Speculation regularly occurs in periods when overproduction is already in full swing. It provides overproduction with temporary market outlets, while for this very reason precipitating the outbreak of the crisis and increasing its force. The crisis itself first breaks out in the area of speculation; only later does it hit production. What appears to the superficial observer to be the cause of the crisis is not overproduction but excess speculation, but this is itself only a symptom of overproduction. The subsequent disruption of production does not appear as a consequence of its own previous exuberance but merely as a setback caused by the collapse of speculation." Karl Marx
Stage Two: It All Comes Crashing Down
There comes a time in all markets when promises and professions must give way to solid objects. As St. Peter says to Dante "Now the alloy and the weight of this money have been well examined; but tell me if you have it in your purse." Or, as Marx goes on to say, "Under the ideal measure of values there lurks the hard cash." And so the hapless and the hardy race across the denuded landscape scrambling for guns and groceries before popping into the shelter, if they're lucky. This fellow was, but what a price he paid.
Stage Three: Madness
Which brings us around, as so often before, to the inexplicable, tangled world of Lovecraft. I've done that already and we all know where it leads: Look carefully into the Die of Fate. Take heed in these dangerous times. Board games, are they the answer or can overindulgence lead to this:
