Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
Anybody truly interested in government, and therefore politics, should be cognizant above all that ours have already entered systemic failure. The management of societal affairs is on an arc to become more inept and ineffectual, no matter how either of the current major parties pretends to control things. Instead of Big Brother, government in our time turns out to be Autistic Brother. It makes weird noises and flaps its appendages, but can barely tie its own shoelaces.
The one thing it does exceedingly well is drain the remaining capital from endeavors that might contribute to the greater good. This includes intellectual capital, by the way, which, under better circumstances, might gird the political will to reform the sub-systems that civilized life depends on. These include: food production (industrial agri-business), commerce (the WalMart model), transportation (Happy Motoring), school (a matrix of rackets), medicine (ditto with the patient as hostage), and banking (a matrix of fraud and swindling).
All of these systems have something in common: they’ve exceeded their fragility threshold and crossed into the frontier of criticality. They have nowhere to go except failure. It would be nice if we could construct leaner and more local systems to replace these monsters, but there is too much vested interest in them. For instance, the voters slapped down virtually every major ballot proposition to invest in light rail and public transit around the country. The likely explanation is that they’ve bought the story that shale oil will allow them to drive to WalMart forever.
That story is false, by the way. The politicos put it over because they believe the Wall Street fraudsters who are pimping a junk finance racket in shale oil for short-term, high-yield returns. The politicos want desperately to believe the story because the background reality is too difficult to contemplate: an American living arrangement with no future.
The public, of course, is eager to believe the same story for the same reasons, but at some point they’ll flip and blame the story-tellers, and their wrath could truly wreck what remains of this polity. When it is really too late to fix any of these things, they’ll beg someone to tell them what to do, and the job-description for that position is dictator.
It’s certainly remarkable that the years since the troubles of 2008 have been so seemingly placid and uneventful, at least here in the USA — not so much if you live in the Middle East or Ukraine, or in the decaying economies of southern Euroland, or the septic failed states of Africa. The many formerly-middle-class Americans living in economic ruin apparently blame themselves when, for instance, they’re billed tens of thousands of dollars for some routine surgery performed “out of network” by a bureaucratic happenstance. They must be punch-drunk with cable news, or over-medicated. Don’t expect this national mood of paralysis and surrender to last indefinitely.
What troubles me at the moment is that when that mood snaps, it will be for a bad reason in the wrong way. Ferguson, Mo., is still sitting there like an unattended back-pack on the courthouse steps. Before Christmas, some kind of grand jury decision is going to come down. All the reality-based chatter points to the probable exoneration of Darren Wilson, the policeman who shot teenager Michael Brown. I expect the trouble arising out of that to be a lot worse than most people currently suppose, and then we’ll literally be off to the races. If that happens, it will be a huge and tragic diversion from the things that really matter to keep the project of civilized life going. In a way, it will be the true beginning of the end. The end of what? Of pretending that the people in authority know what they are doing.
If you think that President Obama is lonely and bereft now, just wait. Some excuse will be found to try an impeach him and then the nation will spend another two years conducting a three-ring circus while the shale oil “miracle” crashes and burns and the banking system melts away to nothing. It’s been fun watching Mitch McConnell get ready to preside over all of this. History could not have found a less sympathetic patsy.
The new World Made By Hand novel
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“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…
What about the fuckin’ turtle???????
He mentions a turtle in the headline, but nowhere in his article. I wanna know what happened to the turtle!!!!
The turtle became Senate majority leader again.
Stuck….the turtle ( a metaphor for America) got run over by an 18 wheeler ( a metaphor for Wallstreeet )….And turned into road pizza.
The country is like a turtle lying on its back baking in the sun and dying a slow painful death.
I was looking for the turtle reference, too, but realized what it was when I read the final paragraph.
Stucky, here’s a turtle for you: Beast of Busco
Kunstler is in fine form this week. When it comes to Doom Porn, no one dishes it out like him. This guy is all-in on the whole World Made by Hand apocalypse that is always just 6 months (or less) away.
Of course, things will always grow in size until such time that growth becomes impossible and the things breaks apart and the process starts over. The break apart process can be very unpleasant but not always. With that in mind, why worry about it? There isn’t too much than any single one of us can do by ourselves and since we are not organized then the problem has not reached critical mass.
You will know when it is happening for real when you find all of your modern communications to be out of service and you must organize in order to survive. Until that time, Happy Motoring!
That Mitch is one piece of ass hole work art for sure.
Where the Republicans come up with ass holes like that is really shame full.
Head honcho on top of it with ass hole #2 Boehner.
They have no charisma, make no sense, no leadership qualities, lack zeal, inspiration, orator skills.
Two mumbo jumbo mumbling shit heads in love with themselves.
You got no choice but to be a Libertarian the way I see it.
I like some of Kunstler’s work – The Long Emergency is great for example. But he really pisses me of with stuff like this:
“For instance, the voters slapped down virtually every major ballot proposition to invest in light rail and public transit around the country. The likely explanation is that they’ve bought the story that shale oil will allow them to drive to WalMart forever.”
NO – people aren’t voting down ballot propositions just so they can burn more gas. They’re saying ENOUGH GOVERNMENT – government fucks up everything it touches, so no more new projects, no more expanding scope. Just no more.
Kunstler can’t see that. He’s only anti-government to the extent that it’s not doing what HE wants it to do.
They have no charisma, make no sense, no leadership qualities, lack zeal, inspiration, orator skills.
I have to imagine this is what comes from leading such a duplicitous life – trying to appear as if they give a shit about this country while selling themselves to the highest bidder for power, wealth and influence – all the while being smart enough to realize it’s going down in flames and taking the rest of us with it.