They Can Have My Gold When They Pull It From My Cold Dead Teeth

I've noticed the reemergence of a golden thread running through the various paranoid media outlets I visit. (I hate myself.) If you're a certain type of paranoid, now is the time to invest in gold.

Well... I suppose you don't have to be paranoid to turn to gold to offset currency instability, but I'm sure this ad is meant to appeal to a specific someone:

Someone not necessarily concerned with inflation or currency exchange. Someone that still has foodstuffs left in their Y2K stockpile. Someone who generally feels haunted by some vague fear but who is also much more terrified now than they were of even Y2K.

I've said before that we have experienced a kind of apocalypse, and now we see it is a zombie apocalypse- Obama seems to be raising the Clinton dead for his administration. So sure, I can see why you'd be afraid. But gold?

I've never understood why gold is so valuable generally, but it seems especially worthless if things are about to go horribly wrong.

Like so much of contemporary Conservatism, I think hyping gold is a move to squeeze a little more blood from REAL AMERICANS (thick-skulled rubes) who are only too happy to dig their own graves if they think it means they're taking the next guy's plot. (I should think of a more artful way to construct that image- it seems like a good one.) The fear on which selling gold depends seems not only a scam but also a misdirection. When there's a run on gasoline and bullets... and football pads, S&M gear, mohawks, dune buggies, and Tina Turner anthems- then we'll know it's all over. But by then it'll be too late, and who's going to want your shiny yellow rocks then?