The Awful Lull

Guest post by Jim Kunstler

Spring unfolds at last in all its loveliness and Hillary sits back in repose like the matriarch of toads with a clear path to her toadstool throne, having swallowed the mouse-king Sanders. (She forgets that there are millions more mice under the thatched grass, including new mouse-kings awaiting.) And Trump with his bullfrog smile now casts his baleful eye on the two remaining gnats circling his lily pad. Yes, this magical week when the world bursts into leaf and flower, the life of our nation seems like a fairy tale.

Weeks from now when we’re used to the mild air and the greened world, going coatless and care-free, is when the storms of summer strike and the life of the nation turns from fairy tale to horror comic. Both Clinton and Trump are perfect representatives of the nascent forces moving towards some kind of civil war in comic book America.

Clinton perfectly embodies the fortress of the status quo, including especially her praetorian guard of black ghetto grandmothers, giving Hillary the false appearance of some sort of righteousness when, really, she has nothing to offer the greater crisis of black manhood, boxed into prison by the ancient crippling rules of federal welfare policy with its extreme penalties on active fathering. Otherwise, the stone wall of her status quo fortress conceals her privy council of Wall Street necromancers, and the fortune they have helped her lay up in the vaults of the Clinton Foundation.

All of which is to say that Hillary represents the forces that want to keep things just as a they are: rackets rampant. What can crush her triumph of fakery is the sudden manifestation of rackets collapsing under their own weight — a set of awful probabilities waiting to happen, ranging from riots at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia to an accident in financial markets jerry-rigged to mis-price everything for the purpose of funneling carry-trade gains into East Hampton. Look how she croaks about the triumph of the Affordable Care Act, as though it’s a great thing that Americans can shell out $10,000 a year for medical coverage that only kicks in after you rack up the first $6,000 in charges. (Forgetting for a moment that the costs are an hallucination of the “ChargeMaster” system designed to lavish six-figure salaries plus bonuses on the maestros in the hospital executive suites.) What a demonic fraud this woman is.

In terms of sheer persona on persona, Trump is not much better, a walking hood ornament on the faltering beater car that America has become. But at least he recognizes that the beater beneath him needs a complete overhaul, even if he can barely cobble up a coherent list of particulars, or name the mechanics who might be able to fix the damn thing. And, of course, a broad swathe of Americans whose lives have also come to resemble beater cars are very sympathetic to the impulses Trump radiates.

For example, I happen to agree that the nation needs to act on immigration, both on the problem of illegal immigrants and on limiting the quotas of legally admitted newcomers. The Left, sunk in its sentimental sob stories of “dreamers,” and its nostalgia for the Ellis Island romance of 1904, can’t conceive of any reason why the nation might benefit from, at least, a time-out on invitations. The idea undermines their world-saving fantasies. In my little corner of America, the computer chip factory run by Global Foundries (owned by the Emirate of Dubai) has just laid off the majority of its homegrown American technical labor force and replaced them with foreign technicians on H1B visas, thus creating x-number of new Trump voters among the laid-off, and rightfully so, I think.

Really, who says we have to invite every striver from other parts of the world where striving is more difficult? Let them improve the strive-osity of their own nations. Do the citizens already here not have any right to halt the influx and take stock of the nation’s circumstances for a period of time? If only Trump could speak clearly about these issues instead of simply issuing crude and rather dumb threats.

Enjoy this end-of-April lull in the action. Use the moment to gird your loins and perhaps get the hell out of the financial markets while the getting is good. I think you will see things liven up a lot as the heat rises and the seventeen-year locusts emerge from their long sleep underground in frightening storms.

9
Leave a Reply

avatar
  Subscribe  
Notify of
Member Account
Member Account

I think this lull in the action has been good for Trump. Granted I don’t watch cable news, but the low tide of primary season and the end of the “debates” has been a welcome reprieve. It will kick into high gear come the conventions in July and ESPECIALLY come the debates featuring Trump vs. Hillary. That first debate will be the most watched event in television history. I expect this fall, not the summer, to have the spectacular fireworks.

rhs jr
rhs jr

This is a lull like the quiet regions along the San Andreas Fault. The NeoCons, Useful Idiots and Muslims are very active underground.

Member Account
Member Account

We’ve become so accustomed to crisis that even the better part of a week without an event having major implications feels odd. Unfortunately I expect that’ll change sometime soon. It always does. The news media might actually have to do some investigative journalism for once instead of having their stories hand delivered. They must be itching for a white cop to shoot a black teen, Trump to say something offensive about homosexuals, or salivating for the next attack by Muslims so they can wonder who’s behind it without using the term Islam.

NickelthroweR
NickelthroweR

Greetings,

If you read this carefully you will notice that Kunstler is throwing his support behind Trump. I live in about the most liberal place you could ever possibly imagine. Because the people around me live in a faerytale bubble, they believed their own echo chamber and were certain that Bernie Sanders would be next in the Whitehouse and that would alleviate the guilt they feel for living in a place where a 500sqft apartment costs more than than most Americans earn in a year.

With Sander’s loss in New York (a loss handed to him by Blacks and Latinos), the people around me now have to face the prospect of Hillary vs. Trump.

It began on Friday with my business partner of 15 years telling me that he could not support Hillary because she “stands for everything that is wrong” and that he would be throwing his support behind Trump. All throughout the weekend, I ran into people that whispered the same thing to me over and over again.

I should mention that these people are in up to their elbows in the entertainment industry. These are Hollywood Liberals and they despise Hillary – absolutely despise her.

Gator
Gator

At this point, I honestly cannot understand why anyone would want to be the next president. Anyone who thinks trump is going to make America great again is delusional. You want to support him to give the middle finger to the entrenched deep state types? Sure, I get that. But there is no saving this shitshow. The next president is going to inherit a train wreck of epic proportions, both domestically and internationally.

IMO, the status of the financial markets will determine if it’s killary or trump next in the WH. If they can keep some semblance of stability, which looks increasingly likely, she will probably win. If the markets take a nose dive, 20% or more, trump wins. I don’t think anything else matters.

Knustler sure does have a way with words. I laugh every time I read him. Don’t know where he comes up with some of those lines, but they are great.

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

@NickelthroweR: Bernie’s not out of it yet. California here he comes!

David
David

The reason to be president is a varying mix of aggrandizement, avarice, and the chance to pardon who you have to pardon to cover your prior sins.

Ed
Ed

“We’ve become so accustomed to crisis that even the better part of a week without an event having major implications feels odd.”

I quit watching TV, so I’m never abreast of the current hobgoblin scare. Seeing the boogerman shows discussed here relieves me of the urgency I used to feel from watching TV news. I don’t miss it.

Full Retard
Full Retard

Cicadas are hardly frightening or storms. I recall the few summers when they came out and buzzed all day, punctuating the fact that summer is not endless. Like curtains on a stage, they framed my teen years. I was 12 and still enjoyed playing with them cupping one between my hands waiting for it to forget that it was no longer free and start buzzing again. Summer was for tying June bugs on a string, climbing mulberry trees and awaiting the arrival of peaches, grapes and quince fruit on neighborhood trees.

Discover more from The Burning Platform

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading