Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
I begin to understand why the death of Ferguson, Mo, teen Michael Brown sent such shock waves through America last year. He truly symbolized our country: an overgrown, oafish, wannabe thug making one bad choice after another until his final, suicidal lurch against authority — followed by all the exculpatory lying on his behalf: the “gentle giant,” hands up, don’t shoot! This is exactly how America acts on the world stage these days. We are the Michael Brown among nations, high on exceptionalism, stoned on entitlement, swaggering moronically from one place to another grabbing what we feel like, smashing things up as we go.
Also, as in the case of the actual Michael Brown, supposedly sentient observers do not have the guts to call bullshit on all the excuses we make for ourselves. Has any self-styled presidential candidate made a peep about America’s idiotic campaign to make Ukraine the 51st state? Has Hillary (“It’s Her Turn”) Clinton asked publically why the US is egging on NATO to stage military exercises on the Russian border? Do we still have a senate Foreign Relations Committee, and does it convene once in a while? Is The New York Times so preoccupied with its “Gay Cities” index it forgot that the world is full of serious conflicts and hazards that extend beyond the choosing of apartment décor?
Likewise, there are obvious reasons why we’re so busy demonizing Vladimir Putin. He’s the only serious adult on a stage full of special ed students. When Vlad goes on vacation what does the American media do? It launches into raptures of speculation about his “love child” — because in this country any political leader foolish enough to step out of the spotlight for a few minutes will be gleefully unmasked as a “cheater,” a lothario (because, despite our ultra-pornified 24/7 twerk-o-rama culture, we apparently think sex is bad), so then the peanut gallery can enjoy the grotesque spectacle of apology and the inevitable punishment that follows despite any apologies. Vlad walked out of a winter Olympic venue fourteen months ago and said, simply, “I’m divorcing Lyudmila….” End of story. Oh, and Vlad also doesn’t subscribe to the current American notion that being homosexual is a major life achievement. That truly offends!
This also explains America’s obsession with cartoon superheros, and especially characters who enjoy high-tech prosthetics for projecting power — all those robo-soldiers and cops, and the fabulous American Sniper with his thousand yard kill-shot. Without all this magic we’d be revealed as weaklings, our vitality sapped by decades of Froot Loops, Cheez Doodles, and Pepsi, our brains shriveled by untold hours of conditioning by way of Grand Theft Auto, Dark Souls II, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. What do foreign leaders think when they have concluded their mystifying sessions with our Secretary of State, the haircut-in-search-of-a-brain, John Kerry. Do they look around the floor of their ministerial offices to see if any sawdust leaked out of his head?
Has anyone actually looked around and noticed what a scabrous sight American towns and cities present these days? There are places here in the old Yankee northeast that Borat would be ashamed to call home. We live amidst so much delaminating plastic it’s a wonder that virtually everybody doesn’t have cancer. The squalor is awesome, and to make matters worse, we’re even too lazy to clean up the stuff that is just lying around on the ground — and certainly too lazy to try to grow anything in that ground if it didn’t promise to grow up looking like a pepperoni stick or a corn dog.
America’s moment of getting kicked to the curb by other nations is hand. I don’t think it will be a kinetic war, not right away, but it will be hearty financial beat-down, and many of the members of our insane clown posse in Europe are going to feel the beat-down, too. America tried, at the very last moment, to join the new BRICs development bank. Who finally decided that? Barack Obama? John Kerry? Jack Lew: the Three Stooges? Get gold. If you can.
Note: JHK’s 2014 Garden Report is finally up
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…
We are so easily led and distracted now.
No clear, mass followed, voices encouraging us to stop fighting each other and starve the Leviathan that is getting ready to make many of us collateral damage.
I am often reminded of the old Buffalo Springfield lyric “Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.” It fits perfectly with the state of our nation. We divide complex issues into two sides (False Dilemma Fallacy) and then choose sides and hurl insults over an imaginary fence. Michael Brown was clearly not a fine, upstanding citizen, but he still was shot down in the street by one of many trigger happy copfuks out there with nothing resembling due process. Vlad Putin does indeed look like the only adult at the kids table, but he is also a merciless, brutal oligarch. I think most of us here realize how utterly full of shit BOTH the R’s and the D’s are, but the vast majority of our population could never stretch their minds around the possibility that their votes don’t fucking matter. We live in a world absolutely full of False Dilemma and Ad-Hominem masquerading as debate. We have so much to un-learn so we can un-fuck our world.
Thank you Drud, you understand completely.
Bias and ego cover our eyes. Even the “enlightened” to the corruption remain blind to the bulk of it.
Makes me sad. And crazy trying to figure out “how” to help people open their eyes.
How in the hell did the Founders, and the Contintental CONgress, while infighting to the point of harming their own troops, manage to continue to convince people of the enemy?
Then again, they just invited in new wolves, which over a couple centuries have now become worse than the old wolves.
Anyway, thanks again. So good to not feel alone, for once.
The end is near. I found myself agreeing with the Kuntster.
Where did you get the music on thepost, Media ignores polar bear hunting? I would like to buy a copy of it, if it’s available. Thanks, GJC
Fighting The “War on Terror” By Banning Cash
Submitted by Joseph Salerno via Mises Institute,
It was just a matter of time before Western governments used the trumped up “War on Terror” as an excuse to drastically ratchet up the very real war on the use of cash and personal privacy that they are waging against their own citizens.
Taking advantage of public anxiety in the wake of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket, France has taken the first step. It seems the terrorists involved partially financed these attacks by cash, as well as by consumer loans and the sale of counterfeit goods. What a shockeroo!
The terrorists used CASH to purchase some of the stuff they needed–no doubt these murderers were also shod and clothed and used cell phones, cars, and public sidewalks during the planning and execution of their mayhem. Why not restrict their use? A naked , barefoot terrorist without communications is surely less effective than a fully clothed and equipped one.
Despite the arrant absurdity of blaming cash and financial privacy for these crimes, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin brazenly stated that it was necessary to “fight against the use of cash and anonymity in the French economy.”
He then announced extreme and despotic measures to further restrict the use of cash by French residents and to spy on and pry into their financial affairs.
These measures, which will be implemented in September 2015, include:
Prohibiting French residents from making cash payments of more than 1,000 euros, down from the current limit of 3,000 euros.
Given the parlous state of the stagnating French economy the limit for foreign tourists on currency payments will remain higher, at 10,000 euros down from the current limit of 15,000 euros.
The threshold below which a French resident is free to convert euros into other currencies without having to show an identity card will be slashed from the current level of 8,000 euros to 1,000 euros.
In addition any cash deposit or withdrawal of more than 10,000 euros during a single month will be reported to the French anti-fraud and money laundering agency Tracfin.
French authorities will also have to be notified of any freight transfers within the EU exceeding 10,000 euros, including checks, pre-paid cards, or gold.
* * *
Just remember… it’s for your own protection.
Let’s ramp up those Civil Asset Forfeitures…anyone carrying a significant amount of cash is clearly either a terrorist or a drug dealer…and copfuks can’t be expected to pay for their own margarita machines.