Homeless

Guest Post by Jim Kunstler

History is moving the furniture around in the house of mankind just about everywhere but the USA. Things have changed, except here, where people come and go through the rooms of state, and everything looks shabbier by the day, and lethargy eats away at the upholstery like an acid fog, and the walls reverberate with meaningless oratory. The USA is going nowhere because it doesn’t like the new place where history wants to take it.

That is, first of all, a place of far less influence on everybody else, in a new era of desperate struggle to remain modern. That fading modern world is the house that America built, the great post World War Two McMansion stuffed with dubious luxuries in a Las Vegas of the collective mind. History’s bank has foreclosed on it and all the nations and people of the world have been told to make new arrangements for daily life. The USA wants everybody to stay put and act as if nothing has changed.

Therefore, change will be forced on the USA. It will take the form of things breaking and not getting fixed. Unfortunately, America furnished its part of the house with stapled-together crap designed to look better than it really was. We like to keep the blinds drawn now so as not to see it all coming apart. Barack Obama comes and goes like a pliable butler, doing little more than carrying trays of policy that will be consumed like stale tea cakes — while the wallpaper curls, and the boilers fail down in the basement, and veneers delaminate, and little animals scuttle ominously around in the attic.

Everybody I know is distressed by this toxic languor, this sense of being stuck waiting in a place they want desperately to move on from — like the prison of elder-care where so many find themselves hostage to the futility of staving off a certain ending, while all the family resources drain into various bureaucratic black holes. Do we care that the generations to come will have nothing left, nothing at all?

This Memorial Day the usual pieties are noticeably muted. Few politicians dare to utter sanctimonies about our brave soldiers maimed on far-flung battlefields, when so many of them are stuck waiting alone in dark rooms with only their wounds and phantom limbs for company. If regular civilian medicine is a cruel, hopeless, quasi-criminal racket, imagine what medicine for army veterans must be like — all that plus an overlay of profound government ineptitude and institutionalized ass-covering

Even the idle chatter about American Dreaming has faded out lately, because too much has happened to families and individuals to demonstrate that people need more than dreams and wishes to make things happen. It’s kind of a relief to not have to listen to those inane exhortations anymore, especially the idiotic shrieking that “We’re number one!”

Others have got our number now. They are going their own way whether we like it or not. The Russians and the Chinese. The voters in Europe. The moiling masses of Arabia and its outlands. The generals in Thailand. Too bad the people of Main Street USA don’t want to do anything but sit on their hands waiting for the rafters to tumble down. My guess is that nothing will bestir us until we wake up one morning surrounded by rubble and dust. By then, America will be a salvage operation.

There’s a long and comprehensive To-Do list that has been waiting for us since at least 2008, when the nation received one forceful blow upside its thick head. We refuse to pay attention. First item on the list: restructure the banks. Other items: reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act; disassemble the ridiculous “security” edifice under the NSA; upgrade the US electric grid; close down most of our military bases overseas (and some of our bases in the USA); draw up a constitutional amendment re-defining the alleged “personhood” of corporations; fix the passenger railroad system to prepare for the end of Happy Motoring; rebuild Main Street commerce to prepare for the death of WalMart and things like it; outlaw GMO foods and promote local food production; shut down casino gambling.

That’s just my list. What’s yours? And when will you step out of this rotting house into the sunshine?

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AWD

A pretty good description/analogy of what’s going on. Kunstler seems to be getting more libertarian as time passes. Nice to see him waking up from his former liberal progressive nightmare, and voting Obama into office twice.

At the top of my list is impeach Obama, and try him, Hillary, and Kerry for treason. They are funding Al Qaeda and supplying them with arms, and they are still our enemy. Holder, Pelosi, Reid, and Boner must also be impeached and removed from office.

Obama must be removed from office before anything can happen in this country, period, end of story. He’s the one holding the reigns of NDAA, the DHS, NSA, TSA, IRS, and all the other government fascist organizations he’s used to terrorize our own people and silence opposition and dialogue.

We have to end the Federal Reserve, wipe away the debt, and start over, based once again on capitalism. Taxes have to be removed as well. Taxes are killing people that work for a living, are productive, and contribute something to the economy. Welfare, disability, unemployment insurance, union government drone pensions, union government drones themselves all have to be eliminated. The socialism has to end. It will end, either voluntarily, or because our entire economy and country collapses.

The government has to get out of the healthcare business. We’ve seen how they run things, and pretty soon, thanks to Obamacare, the entire healthcare system will be like the VA health system: corrupt bureaucrats giving themselves massive raises and pensions while people die because they aren’t getting healthcare. The government has to get out of education, farming and hundreds of billions in subsidies to farmers. The government has to get out of just about everything it has it’s greedy and corrupt fingers in. The government is the enemy, plain and simple, not the solution.

And I agree with Kunst the corporations and banksters must be reigned in. Lobbying must become illegal; unionization of government employees must become illegal. He’s correct, there is so much that needs to be done, but NOTHING will be done until the whole system collapses and implodes.

The rest of the world isn’t going along with American exceptionalism anymore. Thanks to Obama, Clinton, Kerry, the military industrial complex, the NSA, the IRS, and the CIA, we have become the evil empire, and people want us gone. They’re going to win if something isn’t done.

ragman
ragman

Good one! I remember Jimmah Carters “Malaise” comments from the late 70s and I believe things are actually worse now. Carter was incompetent, for sure, but was he as profoundly evil as the treasonous assholes that inhabit DC now? I think not! Now there just doesn’t seem to be any hope for our nation’s future. Oh well, I have to work tonight so no cerveza and hotdogs for me. Enjoy the day TBPers and have a cold one for this old fat-assed boomer!

Welshman
Welshman

The last paragraph of JK Memorial Day rant could be done in four years and get the U.S. focused again. Won’t happen. California cannot stop building fucking roads and making improvements. We need people moving transit, not bullet trains. .

I love the “Local Theme”, as in my community it is really a workable agenda. I take care of my homes needs, but not it wants. I have solar H2O, solar panels, NG generator, good septic system, and 22,000 gal pool. I have a large garden, dozen chickens, and lots of prepper stuff. I have a 7 ac. almond ranch with a ag well.

Ole JK is starting to sound a lot like a libertarian, bless his heart. Back to basics, kill the military and the empire bullshit, sound money, local, local, and more local LOL He even likes AU and has a nice garden in his back yard. He thinks Jim Quinn is a OK guy, and on his wave lenght. Next he will be donating to the Ron Paul Institute. Glory be Glory be.!!!

AWD

IRAN: DEATH TO AMERICA

Iran’s Supreme Leader: Jihad Will Continue Until America is No More

5/25/2014 Reza Kahlili

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, all but said on Sunday that negotiations over the country’s illicit nuclear program are over and that the Islamic Republic’s ideals include destroying America.

“Those [Iranians] who want to promote negotiation and surrender to the oppressors and blame the Islamic Republic as a warmonger in reality commit treason,” Khamenei told a meeting of members of parliament, according to the regime’s Fars News Agency.

Khamenei emphasized that without a combative mindset, the regime cannot reach its higher Islamic role against the “oppressors’ front.”

“The reason for continuation of this battle is not the warmongering of the Islamic Republic. Logic and reason command that for Iran, in order to pass through a region full of pirates, needs to arm itself and must have the capability to defend itself,” he said.

“Today’s world is full of thieves and plunderers of human honor, dignity and morality who are equipped with knowledge, wealth and power, and under the pretense of humanity easily commit crimes and betray human ideals and start wars in different parts of the world.”

In response to a question by a parliamentarian on how long this battle will continue, Khamenei said,“Battle and jihad are endless because evil and its front continue to exist. … This battle will only end when the society can get rid of the oppressors’ front with America at the head of it, which has expanded its claws on human mind, body and thought. … This requires a difficult and lengthy struggle and need for great strides.”

http://dailycaller.com/2014/05/25/irans-supreme-leader-jihad-will-continue-until-america-is-no-more/#ixzz32q9cxTJm

Steve Hogan
Steve Hogan

Close down casino gambling? Is he kidding?

The biggest casino by far is the stock market, not some guy putting coins in a slot machine.

The author seems to be coming around ideologically after fumbling in the dark for many years, but his world view is still incoherent.

Here’s a clue: the non-aggression principle (NAP). If I want to spend my hard-earned money in a casino, and there is no force or fraud involved, no one should be able to stop me.

NAP indeed means folding the tent on our ridiculous military empire and all the illegal wars. It means abolishing the NSA and the CIA. It means no more welfare, especially for corporations.

It also means a return to sound money, which means an end to the Fed and its reckless counterfeiting operation.

bb

Never going to happen. Obama still has a 45% approval margin according to a poll I saw yesterday done by a republican group. Hard to believe that many people still support this lying piece of shit.

El Coyote
El Coyote

“Ball Of Confusion”
People moving out, people moving in
Why? Because of the color of their skin
Run, run, run but you sure can’t hide
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
Vote for me and I’ll set you free
Rap on, brother, rap on

Well, the only person talking about love thy brother is the preacher
And it seems nobody’s interested in learning but the teacher
Segregation, determination, demonstration, integration
Aggravation, humiliation, obligation to my nation

Ball of confusion
Oh yeah, that’s what the world is today
Woo, hey, hey

The sale of pills are at an all time high
Young folks walking round with their heads in the sky
The cities a flame in the summer time
And oh, the beat goes on

Evolution, revolution, gun control, sound of soul
Shooting rockets to the moon, kids growing up too soon
Politicians say more taxes will solve everything
And the band played on

So, round and around and around we go
Where the world’s headed, said nobody knows
Oh, great Googamooga
Can’t you hear me talking to you?

Just a ball of confusion
Oh yeah, that’s what the world is today
Woo, hey, hey

Fear in the air, tension everywhere
Unemployment rising fast, the Beatles new record’s a gas
And the only safe place to live is on an Indian reservation
And the band played on

Eve of destruction, tax deduction, city inspectors, bill collectors
Mod clothes in demand, population out of hand, suicide, too many bills
Hippies moving to the hills, people all over the world are shouting
‘End the war’ and the band played on

Great Googamooga
Can’t you hear me talking to you?

It’s a ball of confusion
That’s what the world is today, hey, hey
Let me hear ya, let me hear ya, let me hear ya

Sayin’ ball of confusion
That’s what the world is today, hey, hey
Let me hear ya, let me hear ya
Let me hear ya, let me hear ya, let me hear ya
Sayin’ ball of confusion

overthecliff

AWD you definitely have the cure for what ails us. However, it aint gonna happen. We have passed the point of no return and it is just a matter of ending in a bang or a whimper.

Chicago999444
Chicago999444

“Thanks to Obama, Clinton, Kerry, the military industrial complex, the NSA, the IRS, and the CIA, we have become the evil empire, and people want us gone.”

How about Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushi?

We’ve been the Evil Empire for a lot longer than the past decade. Since about WW2, really. No sooner were the lines down at the end of that war, when our OSS (Office of Strategic Services and forerunner to the CIA) helped spirit Nazi war criminals to South American banana republics run by psychopaths who we placed in power. The CIA was set up specifically to destabilize and topple regimes that did not do our bidding, and we knew no scruple as to the means, whether it was disinformation, funding “revolutionary” cells, or outright assassination, such as the assassination of Allende in Chile, an operation conducted by William F Buckley during the Nixon administration. We then set our evil puppet, the monster Pinochet, up in power there, just as we supported the Pol Pot regime in Vietnam and placed vicious and weak Shah Riza up on the Peacock throne in Iran and placed our own facilities at the service of his murderous secret intelligence force, SAVAK. We set Batiste up in Cuba. We never hesitated to support the most vicious, murderous, corrupt regimes as long as they let our business people operate with no obstruction.

I could go on. It all really began long before WW2, as General Smedley Butler attested. But we really got our wings at the end of the “Great War” when we were able to posture as the saviors of the “free” world. The spread of Soviet style communism gave us a perfect excuse and cover- we were not being evil imperialists, we said, but were protecting the world from “Bolshevism”.

Ya, sure. One woman remarked that “communism” had become a buzz word, the bait we would always take, no matter how flimsy the pretext and how obvious was it was that the term was invoked to justify supporting regimes so vicious that striking workers had their hands fed into sugar shredders in these South American hellholes. I swear, when Reagan was beating the drums and tripling our defense budget, I was afraid that some Chicago street gang would go to him and extort funding to fight “commies” on the streets of Chicago.

And no one out here, at least not “right thinking” middle class people, ever thought for one minute to oppose our imperialism and militarism. Those who did were labeled as “subversives”, “pinkos”, and “commies”

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