There can be no doubt that large numbers of people are engaged in a Y2K post mortem where they are being made to feel like fools by the corrupt elite. The sneering newspaper articles about the people with 5000 gallons of water and the 20,000 dollars spent on Y2K preps. The talk of hype and fear. Not so fast. Was it reasonable to believe that Y2K would turn out to have a more significant effect on basic infrastructure than it did? The answer is certainly yes. Was it perfectly reasonable for large numbers of people to mistrust the official denials of Y2K problems? The answer is certainly yes.

In JRR Tolikken's "Lord of the Rings" epic fantasy trilogy, there is a part where the armies of Gondor and its allies march up to the gates of Mordor and speak with the voice of Sauron. The voice of Sauron is a human puppet who speaks lies and treacherous deceit for the evil non human Sorcerer Sauron. I think one of the reasons that many people, including myself, took a much more serious view of Y2K is because Kossi the klown was the voice of Sauron/Clinton. Unfortunately for Kossi the klown, he was the official Y2K information dispenser for an administration viewed with deep contempt, hatred, fear and loathing by tens of millions of Americans, also including myself. In hindsight, it's not too surprising that anything Kossi the klown said would be viewed as less than awe inspiring.

It's sort of amusing that now Kossi is becoming something of a doomer and getting surly when questioned about the 8.5 billion dollars spent by the Feds. Don't worry Kossi, you can always use the spy system collapse as a very effective rebuttal. If the Federal Government does in fact survive Y2K without collapsing, it will be because they executed a massive, crash, emergency program that went from $1 billion to $8 plus billion. The positive way to look at this is the Federal Government didn't collapse. The realistic way to look at it is those beady eyed politicians, bureaucrats and court mooches finally saw Y2K as a real threat and did what all threatened bureaucracies do; namely, spend the taxpayers money with complete and reckless abandon. Time will tell if they spent enough to maintain governmental bread and circuses. I'm glad the electric grid didn't go down, but if the Social Security checks don't go out-Al Bore is going to be the second Y2K political victim. Boris Yeltsin is the first, but more about that in another essay.

The correct answer to the sneering media is to get right back in their face. I intend to do this both because I enjoy it and it's needed now during this Y2K doomer witch hunt. Do any gold-eagle.com readers think fiat money, the debt ridden global economy or the political systems are any more stable now than last week? I'm glad Russia didn't suffer a Y2K collapse, but they did suffer a political earthquake. I did read one programmer who feels that embedded chips and what he calls "control systems"-power plants, pipelines and that kind of thing-are out of the woods. They are out of the woods because these systems are closely monitored by management, relatively simple to fix and have backup systems in place. Even if I had seen this kind of information last week, I'm not sure I would have believed it. Also in "Lord of the Rings" there is another character called Denathor, the Steward of Gondor. This man spent so much time looking in a crystal ball at the evil might of Sauron that it warped him and drove him mad. He became so convinced that Sauron would win that he tried to cremate his own son when he was wounded in battle. I don't think this applies to most Y2K doomers because I think the objective evidence supported the case for serious economic, political and infrastructure disruptions. To some this may seem like a case of Y2K folly, but I don't see it that way. I see it as prudence. The best advice I ever saw about Y2K was early 1998 in a newsgroup where someone said, "Don't do anything about Y2K that will cause you problems if nothing happens." In other words, don't go overboard. I can honestly say that my Y2K preparations have raised me to a level of emergency preparations that I should have always had. I've looked at emergency preparation in a systematic, well organized and thorough way. I've learned a lot about myself in the process. All in all, Y2K has been a positive experience for me. I'm already starting to eat some of my emergency food, rotating it like I normally do, and I've cut my stored water from 75 gallons down to my normal 30. I stored 75 gallons because the objective evidence indicated to me there could be a problem with embedded chips in water treatment plants. Now that the objective evidence indicates to me that six days into Y2K there will be no water treatment plant failure here in Portland. My hero Winston Churchill once described a fanatic as "one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." There will come a time on Y2K when both need to be changed, but that time isn't yet.

My best read on Y2K at this time is that the long term economic and political effects are still unknown. The reason they are unknown is that most of them haven't happened yet. The pure technological Y2K impact began several months ago, is going on right now and will continue for the rest of the year. Up to this point, these effects either haven't reached critical mass for the synergistic effect I wondered about in an earlier essay. What we have right now are swarms of small Y2K effects happening. These are easily fixed, haven't grouped together to take down networked systems and seem to be in administrative, accounting and data systems. In other words, just the kind of economic effects I talked about in my battle with Wachovia Bank. The question is when do these stop? The second question is what happens if they don't disappear within a week or two. How will people react if they are dealing with these kinds of computer irritations in say June? It's all right to laugh about being billed $91,000 for an overdue video until it happens to you.

I think Y2K is like the great Luftwaffe daylight raid on London in September, 1940 for several reasons. The first is that the RAF expected a massive bombing mission and prepared for it. The Royal Air Force husbanded all its Hurricane and Spitfire fighters to protect the vital air bases in the south of England. In other words, the RAF declared some things to be "mission critical" and some to not be. The RAF knew that if the Luftwaffe managed to pound these bases with 2500 planes England would lose the war. The RAF also knew that Hitler had promised not to bomb London. The RAF knew they could not defend both London and the vital air bases at the same time. In other words, the RAF allocated it resources to protect mission critical and ignore the rest. Like Y2K, this situation relied on the enemy not doing the unexpected.

The Luftwaffe took off for England with Hitler's secret order to "break the will" of these pesky Englishman. Rather than do the expected, bomb the heavily defended air bases, the Luftwaffe did the unexpected, attack the virtually undefended British capital London. Just as Y2K continues to baffle the experts, by not doing what it was supposed to do and doing what it was not supposed to do. The British didn't really understand what they were up against even though they had radar early warning. The RAF couldn't put the big picture together until it was too late. The Luftwaffe took off in small groups of planes. The British radar operators would look at their screens and see thirty planes here, forty there, and not realize they were all coming together. Then they would look a few minutes later and there would be 150 planes here and 300 planes there. A few more minutes and there would be 500 planes here and 600 planes there. And finally, there would be 2500 planes here, over London dropping bombs, while the RAF watched helplessly from the unattacked airfields. Like Y2K, the RAF could claim that the key infrastructure held. They could claim, with absolute justification that they had won the war. Unfortunately, the RAF lost the battle and London, that "fat tethered cow" had been pasted.

When I look at Y2K now, I'm beginning to feel like a British radar operator. I see a glitch here and a glitch there. I know that the important "mission critical" things have been well protected. What I don't know is how many glitches are coming in and where they will attack. I don't know if I'm looking at the beginnings of a mass attack, a few glitches on a strafing run, or an illusion. There is no way I can know this until more time has passed. There is no way I can tell if my concern over power plants and water treatment plants was misplaced. Maybe it was always the data systems, payroll systems and administrative systems that were most at risk from Y2K. And maybe, like Denathor, I was only seeing what I wanted to see, or Sauron wanted me to see and missed the dull, but obvious, truth.

Although, in many of my essays I certainly indicated the economic and political implications of widespread Y2K data chaos. I do know my employer won't be paying me by electronic deposit this Friday. It seems there are some Y2K problems with it that they only disclosed on December 31st, 1999. I'm real glad the power stayed on, but if I don't get paid; well, then an entirely different kind of Y2K chaos will be unleashed in my life.