Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
The more detached from reality American culture becomes the more strictly ceremonial leadership gets, as illustrated by the raft of bromides Barack Obama floated past the assembled vassalage of government last week in another grand effort to avoid the necessities of the moment.
Those necessities include freeing a hostage public from the tyrannical clutches of corporate despotism — the evil empire of big boxes, big burgers, big pharma, Big Brother — and the atrocious rackets fostered by them that masquerade as an economy. The template of the life we have known is broken and the pieces within are flying apart, and no amount of wishing or promising can keep them going. If this society is even going to survive, the people have to smash their way out of this template prison, probably against the efforts of the people and organizations now running it merely for their own benefit.
The future is telling us very clearly: get smaller, get finer, get more local, get less complex, get less grandiose, do it now. Do you want to eat food in the years ahead? Better make sure you live in a part of the country where small-scale farming and backyard gardening is possible because the General Mills Agri-Biz GMO Cheerios model will be folding its big tent along with its financing agents in the debt Ponzi banking system.
Do you want to have a personal economic future? Think about what you can do to make yourself useful in a local economy made up of your neighbors. And if you live in one of the thousands of soulless, neighborless suburban wastelands that amount to nothing but big box and big burger plantations, you better get out and find a real town in some other part of the country.
Do you believe that computers and robot factories will define the years to come? Maybe you have failed to notice that the US electric grid is decrepit and in need of at least a $1 trillion upgrade-and-rebuild, which, by the way, is not going to happen. What is all that crap going to run on? America’s disappointment with the broken promises of technology will be so epic that we’ll be lucky not to slide back into a world ruled by superstition and ghosts.
Do you think that $50 oil is going to make the world safe for WalMart, Walt Disney World, and Happy Motoring? In fact, $50 oil is going to crush what is left of the US Oil industry, especially fracking for shale oil and deep water drilling. And guess what — everything else is depleting at about 5 percent a year. The frackers will never again get access to the sort of junk bond financing that allowed them to ramp up their Ponzi demonstration projects in the Bakken and Eagle Ford. And they will never again regain their current level of production — which is the net result of past Ponzi financing, now ending in tears. So, forget “Saudi America” and “energy independence,” unless you mean living in a walkable community near a navigable waterway.
Do you want to be an educated person, that is, someone capable of comprehending reality and functioning within its demands? In the USA, that means you must learn how to speak and write English correctly, especially if you are in a “low performing” ethnic minority group. If you can’t conjugate verbs, you will have a hard time distinguishing the past, the present, and the future in your daily activities. Among other things, you’ll be incapable of showing up on time. And that, of course, is only the beginning. It’s that simple. These abilities used to be the result of an eighth-grade education in the United States. We would be lucky to get back to that high standard, and our knucklehead fantasies about universal access to community college be damned. It’s only a new layer in the current racket that pretends to be education.
That is the current state of the union and a glimpse of the trajectory it’s on, which the inept leaders of our country do not comprehend and cannot communicate.
Note: JHK’s 2015 Forecast is available now at this link: Forecast 2015 — Life in the Breakdown Lane
The new World Made By Hand novel
!! Is now available !!
“Kunstler skewers everything from kitsch to greed, prejudice, bloodshed, and brainwashing in this wily, funny, rip-roaring, and profoundly provocative page- turner, leaving no doubt that the prescriptive yet devilishly satiric A World Made by Hand series will continue.” — Booklist
My local indie booksellers… Battenkill Books (Autographed by the Author) … or Northshire Books…
or Amazon…
Jim on fire today! For once, hard to argue with him!!
Greetings,
I am of the opinion that the underpinning of our upcoming epic fail is the failure of our system of education. Frankly, we think in words. It is that simple. When I come to the realization that I need to go to the grocery store to acquire toilet paper, I think the following: “I need to go to Costco and get toilet paper before I run out.” That is what goes through my head. I do not think about rainbows and elephants and that somehow means I need toilet paper – I can only think about it in words and, of course, I must use words that I know.
Our failure to fill the heads of our youth with words means that they are incapable of thinking. They can not think about economics because they do not have the words needed to form those thoughts. They can not think about a fair number of things.
Kunstler is correct in that when the grid does finally fail, the uneducated masses will return to a world ruled by superstition and ghosts.
The template once provided ways for a logical structure to life.
Now it’s all past tense. Go to college to acquire debt and live at home afterwards, either underemployed or unemployed. For some professions – the jobs may be outsourced to India. No longer are employers looking for bright, educated people – they want someone who has used ‘X’ and they need you for a 3 month job.
*Wyoming Mike why are you so happy?You been playing with the goats again.
Uneducated masses will return to a world ruled by superstition and ghosts….That’s after they try to take all your shit.(House ,food,medicine) and any thing else they can steal.
Nickel are you prepared to face the zombies?
1. Leftists like Kunstler are those pushing endless resources into the black hole of making IQ 75 Johnny a mechanical engineer. His rants against leftist tropes fall flat to me.
2. Societies have made the mistake of driving out the top 20% (the artisans, the entrepreneurs, the shop owners and the bourgeoisie) in the past, and things spiral so fast downward that they beg them to return after a few short years.
3. If the world Kunstler expects does in fact come to pass, relatively few people will try to steal their neighbors’ stuff. Most will just sit down and die.
You vastly underestimate the ineptitude and disability of the have-nots. They are profoundly disabled, to the point where if someone doesn’t feed, clothe and shelter them they (and their offspring) will simply sit down and die in place.
“Uneducated masses will return to….”
WHAT?!
Since when have they EVER been NOT been invested in the belief in magic?
How does an iPad or Android phone work? I mean, the actual nuts and bolts. Could you sketch the operation? Could you (and the others in your neighborhood) make one?
It’s ALL magic to people today. We call it “science” but people actually MEAN magic. That’s why they believe the shamans and soothsayers with Ph.D.’s when it comes to how the economy works, where money comes from and what the proper role of (political) government is.
Look for a come-back of the phrase, “The devil made me do it.” Because religion is headed for major revival, and if that’s not synonymous with a belief in magic, what is?
” If this society is even going to survive, the people have to smash their way out of this template prison, probably against the efforts of the people and organizations now running it merely for their own benefit.”
For people to actually do this, they must first realize just how manipulated, controlled, and exploited they are. Unfortunately, many have been conditioned to accept exploitation because they receive a monthly subsidy from the government. It’s the old Roman empire “bread and circuses” (keep the public fed and entertained to pacify them) with today’s added dose of bribery plus the age old addictions of alcohol and drugs.
The best slaves are those who don’t know they’re slaves. As long as many have their basic needs met (subsidized rent and food) plus a little extra to buy some tech gadgets every so often, they are perfectly happy.
There are those who are born with enough intelligence and common sense to know when they are being exploited and prevented from achieving real prosperity. They are in the minority. Most citizens today (mostly because of genetic traits beyond their control made worse via conditioning and bribery by government and the media) just don’t seem capable of realizing how badly they are being exploited. It would take a serious, concerted effort by both parents and educators to produce well informed sons and daughters who understand economic slavery but there’s no will to do this.
The Ruling class has many tools to pacify and keep the public under control and exploited. But all of this only adds on to the fact that many just don’t have the traits they need to begin with at birth to form a solid foundation to become a informed individual who has self-respect enough to oppose corrupt government and big special interests that undermine their lives.
There were enough citizens in colonial times who understood economic slavery enough to fight for their independence. Now despite the “information age”, all most care about is getting their monthly government check while sacrificing almost everything else including their freedom, privacy, and opportunity to truly prosper.
For most, it’s easier to take a bribe (excluding those who earned their monthly checks), than it is to fight for a far better future. This is what’s truly dragging the middle class and our country down.
Sunsets, like you I have a low opinion of the free shit underclass. However, I think you misjudge their propensity to steal. It is demonstrated daily in Afroghanistan and actual hunger will fuel the frequency and violence.
+ 10 ss.
Jk, you were doing so good. couldn’t you just stop after 4 paragraphs. Those 4 were brilliant. And DC, nice work. You’re killing it today. Your number one is particularly spot on. Never have more resources been wasted trying to turn garbage men into brain surgeons. Look up recipe for failure. I’m sure that would be exhibit A.
Thing will happen the way Martin Armstrong says they will happen because they always have, every time and every where.
The Governments need more taxes and the wealthy will flee and take their jobs with them. Just as they did in Ancient Rome and in modern Detroit.
The U.S. will split apart eventually so the tax burdens of the old America can be abrogated. Just as this nation was founded.
I would say people will move away from Blue States to Red Ones. And move from cities to rural areas. Energy will be more plentiful relative to the burdens of a welfare state.
This will condradict Kunzlers thesis.
something to reflect on…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKYJVV7HuZw&feature=share
SCOTUSES!