Made For Each Other

Guest Post by Jim Kunstler

Don’t be fooled by the idiotic exertions of the Red team and the Blue team. They’re just playing a game of “Capture the Flag” on the deck of the Titanic. The ship is the techno-industrial economy. It’s going down because it has taken on too much water (debt), and the bilge pump (the oil industry) is losing its mojo.

Neither faction understands what is happening, though they each have an elaborate delusional narrative to spin in the absence of any credible plan for adapting the life of our nation to the precipitating realities. The Blues and Reds are mirrors of each other’s illusions, and rage follows when illusions die, so watch out. Both factions are ready to blow up the country before they come to terms with what is coming down.

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What’s coming down is the fruit of the gross mismanagement of our society since it became clear in the 1970s that we couldn’t keep living the way we do indefinitely — that is, in a 24/7 blue-light-special demolition derby. It’s amazing what you can accomplish with accounting fraud, but in the end it is an affront to reality, and reality has a way of dealing with punks like us. Reality has a magic trick of its own: it can make the mirage of false prosperity evaporate.

That’s exactly what’s going to happen and it will happen because finance is the least grounded, most abstract, of the many systems we depend on. It runs on the sheer faith that parties can trust each other to meet obligations. When that conceit crumbles, and banks can’t trust other banks, credit relations seize up, money vanishes, and stuff stops working. You can’t get any cash out of the ATM. The trucker with a load of avocados won’t make delivery to the supermarket because he knows he won’t be paid. The avocado grower will have to watch the rest of his crop rot. The supermarket shelves empty out. And you won’t have any guacamole.

There are too many fault lines in the mighty edifice of our accounting fraud for the global banking system to keep limping along, to keep pretending it can meet its obligations. These fault lines run through the bond markets, the stock markets, the banks themselves at all levels, the government offices that pretend to regulate spending, the offices that affect to report economic data, the offices that neglect to regulate criminal misconduct, the corporate boards and C-suites, the insurance companies, the pension funds, the guarantors of mortgages, car loans, and college loans, and the ratings agencies. The pervasive accounting fraud bleeds a criminal ethic into formerly legitimate enterprises like medicine and higher education, which become mere rackets, extracting maximum profits while skimping on delivery of the goods.

All this is going to overwhelm Trump soon, and he will flounder trying to deal with a gargantuan mess. It will surely derail his wish to make America great again — a la 1962, with factories humming, and highways yet to build, and adventures in outer space, and a comforting sense of superiority over all the sad old battered empires abroad. I maintain it could get so bad so fast that Trump will be removed by a cadre of generals and intelligence officers who can’t stand to watch someone acting like Captain Queeg in the pilot house.

That itself might be salutary, since only some kind of extreme shock is likely to roust the Blue and Red factions from their trenches of dumb narrative. If the Democratic Party had put one-fiftieth of the effort it squanders on transgender bathroom privileges into policy for mitigating our tragic misinvestments in suburban sprawl, we might have gotten a head-start toward a plausible future. Instead, the Democratic Party has turned into a brats-only nursery school, with the kiddies fighting over who gets to play with the Legos. The Republican Party is Norma Desmond’s house in Sunset Boulevard, starring Donald Trump as Max the Butler, working extra-hard to keep the illusions of yesteryear going.

All of this nonsense is a distraction from the task at hand: figuring out how to live in the post techno-industrial world. That world is not going to operate the ways we’re used to. It will crush our assumptions and expectations. Lying about everything won’t be an option. We won’t have the extra resources to cover up our dishonesty. Our money better be sound or it will be laughed at, and then you’ll starve or freeze to death. You’d better hope the rule of law endures and work on keeping it alive where you live. And nobody will get special brownie points for the glory of sexual confusion.

I look for the financial fireworks to start around March – April, as the irresolvable debt ceiling debate in congress grinds into a bitter stalemate, and it becomes obvious that there will be no voucher for the great infrastructure spending orgy that Trump’s MAGA is based on. Elections in France and the Netherlands have the potential to shake apart the European Union, and with that the footing of European banks. Pretty soon, everybody in all parties and factions will be asking: “Where did the glittering promises of Modernity go…?” As we slip-side into the first stages of a world made by hand.

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Anonymous
Anonymous

Man, that’s a lot of verbiage to say, as near as I can tell, ‘the world isn’t going the way I think it should and I don’t like it’.

Outside of that, nothing seems defined specifically enough to address it without guessing if that is what was said or not.

James
James

Hell,the bill is way overdue,been coming on for over a century at least with 1913 and all.The real question is will we as a people take this as a opportunity to clean house/get our country on track,and arise from the ashes of our self immolation like the mighty phoenix or do we die out with a whimper and other countries completely take over the US,the choice is ours and we want to go into the future strong we need to plan and prepare for this now. We can survive and even thrive but will be a tough/bloody and sad path in our history.

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

Fiscal policy really got out of control in about 2003. Since then, we’ve just been riding the tiger.

Stucky

FYI ….. Kunstler is an eeevil Joo, not a regyoulah Joo.

TampaRed
TampaRed

but is he correct,even partly?

Mike Fuller
Mike Fuller

When the rule of law has been destroyed by the thousand cuts of selective enforcement, the resulting tyranny will be of virgin birth as no one will claim parentage. I hold that it is Kuntsler and his ilk, his leftist commie intellectual chattering class that are its rightful patriarchs. His entire career has been one polemic article after another tearing at the fabric of American tradition and her institutions.

Having successfully participated in the disgusting Leftist tactic of destroying or delegitimizing all that is good and wholesome about America, he finds, late in his career, that trust in the social system is an essential part of making our hard-fought rule-of-law system function properly. He and his moronic leftist communist comrades so successfully infiltrated every branch of gov’t, the ivory towers of academe and the culturally bereft ‘entertainment’ industry that now there scarcely remains any trust.

The debt bomb may serve a useful cathartic purpose when it detonates. There is no such catharsis available to fix the hearts and minds of men whose world view has been so misshapen by the leftist intellectual elite that they hate the very country they live in.

Trump, warts and all, is doing his best and I believe will continue to do his best to ‘circle America’s wagons’ while conducting triage and bringing force to bear on the cultural rot that must be stopped and excision begun in order that America doesn’t sink under the weight of worldwide claims on her credit line. If this administration fails – and there is never a guarantee of success – then America’s remaining trust will be spent wondering about the man on your right and the man on your left.

No avocados for you, old man.

Hagar
Hagar

“And nobody will get special brownie points for the glory of sexual confusion.”

No shit!

davidnrobyn
davidnrobyn

This is a better–and more concise–assessment of the current situation than the above article. Kudos.

ILuvCO2
ILuvCO2

Again. Oil Bad. World Made by Hand Good. And on and on it goes with Kunstler.

DRUD
DRUD

Yes, on and on it goes with the comments here as well. I disagree with this point, so the article is shit. I don’t like the way the guy voted in the last two presidential elections, so he is an idiot. Gas is ubiquitous and cheap at the moment, so it will always remain so. Everyone is stupid except me.

There is a a lot of good stuff here and some bathwater that can be expelled AFTER the baby is removed. The 2 party system is bullshit. Period. I thought we knew that around here. But, of course, we quickly forget once “our” letter runs things again. Again, Trump was the lesser of two great evils, but he is not a savior–the system is so fucked and has been so long, salvation is NOT possible and should be the last thing anyone craving liberty should want–he is a Molotov cocktail. A year ago, everyone around here was mocking (remember “We Shall Over-comb?”) the Orange One and now most have become Trumpeteers.

The very idea of thinking Trump can effect positive change is, by fucking definition, placing faith in the Government of the United States. How many fucking times to we have to be screwed by this particular institution before we learn?

If I disagree with anything in this article…its that the left ever could have made a positive difference in the course of the future. No chance ever. Neither could the right. The PEOPLE could have, but let’s be honest, it’s one hell of a lot easier to sit on the couch and be entertained than to go Galt en masse. Not one person in a thousand has the means, opportunity and fortitude to opt out of a system that makes meeting our basic needs so easy and giving us luxuries only afforded to kings in ages past (HSF notwithstanding). NO, unfortunately, human nature is such that the only way change will come is after reality reasserts itself to all and there is massive, widespread suffering. First, people will react with fear and greed and paranoia (very human), then–after MUCH suffering–we will recognize, slowly one by one, that liberty, love, service, self discipline and gratitude are the only ways forward as a species (if we survive, that is).

I tire of the mindless casting of stones that has become rampant here and most especially the almost total lack of introspection. THAT is what we hate so much about the left…yet we’re no better. Emotional reaction is easy, logic is hard. Disseminating ideas because of their source is easy, critical examination is hard. Casting stones is easy, introspection is hard.

If anyone wants to make a better world, the first thing to do is look into the mirror.

Trapped in Portlandia
Trapped in Portlandia

DRUD, two big thumbs up. Very well stated. I agree with you 1000%.

B Lever
B Lever

Free energy sources are here today, big oil won’t let you have them.

http://www.automoblog.net/2012/10/06/maglev-cars/

Plenty of youtubes on this- Jay Leno’s garage for one. Also on maglev trains.

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