Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
I never subscribed to the nostrums of Marxism, but old Karl sure had a point when he said, “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” Is that exactly where we’re at, or what?
The hologram of capital that was not really there dissolves before our eyes. That capital, you understand, was our notion of how wealthy we used to be, like, five minutes ago. And now the capital, the money, the mojo of modern life is going-going-gone. The hologram was projected by a fantastically hypercomplex hologram machine jerry-rigged with frauds, swindles, and false promises to pay tomorrow for that proverbial hamburger today. The people running it left the robots in charge and went off to frolic with the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, speaking of the profane. Then, the hologram machine broke and the iridescent image just plumb flickered out.
Now, under the shadow of the corona virus, everybody has been sent home to wait and see what happens next, hostages to the flat-screen, where the cable networks show little besides a non-stop real-time horror movie called The End of Your Future. It’s hard to keep morale up when you realize that all the usual conveyer belts of stuff you need to keep going are breaking down. It’s not hard to imagine fights, sure to come, over that dwindling stuff, which we will struggle heroically to allocate because we are really not all bad. Goodness abides, even in that America we managed to so deeply profane. Let’s hope there’s enough of it.
When these convulsions are over, we’ll have to reorganize those real conditions of life very differently in North America. There will still be considerable capital, but not the hocus-pocus Wall Street kind. There will be a lot of places with good-enough soil left – or at least soil that can be nursed back to health – to grow food. There are plenty of well-watered places. We have a marvelous system of navigable rivers, all outfitted with canals connecting them. (The Erie and Champlain Canals that connect the Hudson River estuary to the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence have been kept in immaculate condition, by some miracle of forethought.) Our ancestors moved most of their stuff that way, and so can we.
We have plenty of human capital: strong backs and agile minds. They just have to be reconditioned off their addictions to canned entertainments, drugs, and the Faustian raptures of techno-narcissism – in other words, we need to get real. Real means recognizing that we’ve crossed over into a new chapter of the human project and that it requires different behavior (the relations with our kind old Karl Marx spoke of.) Mostly that means readjusting our attention back to the people and the place around us, while expecting a whole lot less from distant institutions far away. Gawd knows there is enough to do, if we can get our minds right.
I doubt that the federal government as we know it can survive its own desperate measures to re-ignite the hologram of rehypothecated promises to pay back all the debt gone bad. Its adjunct, the Federal Reserve, is desperately trying to do just that this morning by promising to buy everything and anything that the markets are puking up before the open. If that seems to do the trick, the ecstatic rush may not last very long. I can say no more about that for the moment because I discovered about five minutes ago that the Internet is down here and I’m going to have to go looking for it now somewhere else nearby to put this blog up.
When I realized the web was down, and the phone wasn’t working, I turned on the TV to see if that was out too. It was. The real-time horror movie I mentioned above (the cable news) wasn’t even available, which rather darkened my outlook instantly. Did something blow up out there? I confess, I’ve had intimations lately that I am suddenly living in the prequel to my own World Made by Hand novels, which, for those unacquainted with them, are about the collapse of our economy and modern life with it. Believe me, it’s not especially comforting or satisfying, even to me, who anticipated the now-unfolding situation in great detail. As it happened, the cell phone was working, at least. I made some calls and learned that the world was still up-and-running. In the immortal words of Leon Spinks, the morning has been a bit “freaky-deaky.”
I have relocated to a friend’s house in another part of the village, so I can get this blog up a half hour late. I’ll add an addendum later today….
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
How to make face masks and give back to your community. Just be sure to use cotton rather than synthetics and I recommend light or white colors since these masks can be washed w/ bleach and reused..
If you want to make a more filtering mask get some Mer 13 filters for AC units. Another link below shows how to make said mask sans sewing machine.
V
Soberingly spot on. I think this is definitely “The Big Reset”. If we can come through the crisis, and God only knows how long that will be, and what other shit still awaits ahead of us. If we make it through, my hope is that the good will out number the bad and we can start over. If you can’t hope and work towards that, than there’s no reason to continue on. I’m not planning on giving up, never will. But, we all best hunker down and get ready because I don’t think we’ve seen nothin’ yet. The shit is about to get as real as it gets. Keep your powder dry and watch your six.
FAMOUS QUOTE FROM A OLD KANSAS FARMER PARTNER OF MINE: The only thing we know and have to do is keep on keeping on!”
It has hit the fan, atomization is spreading it hither and yonder. You and I will be okay, we know what has happened and what to do. Watch out for your weasel relatives!?
I am slowly becoming convinced that a group of Americans are responsible for creating this crisis as cover for the end of the fiat currency regime they introduced in 1971. This group does not include the President and most of the cabinet, IMHO. The antics of Pelosi and Schumer only add to this feeling.
The current rejection by the market of what amounts to unlimited money printing is surely a siren for those listening. I fear for us all in the borderless world of TBP.
Not poking you in the eye but, the fiat currency was and has been the federal reserves plan since we adopted it in 1913 under wilson. Asshat nixson finished the job in 1971 if I am correct.
That said, the only way we will survive this reset is through pain, suffering, community and an underground economy. This push to total control and socialism is insane. It supports only a few and enslaves everyone else. Push back as hard as you can when you can. Unless that is you enjoy being a slave at all levels. JMO
We basically haven`t a clue.
About what?
The who what why or when.
And neither does .gov
the market won’t move until the small business re-open and people are able to mingle
Can’t spell “pandemic” without “panic”!
THE SIMPLE NUMERICAL FACTS
By Karl Denninger
FACTS:
Last year flu, CDC:
490,600 hospitalizations and 34,200 deaths.
Case fatality rate on the same testing basis for Coronavirus today: 6.97%
Right now, US, 31,888 positives, 398 deaths.
Case fatality rate considering that essentially all Coronavirus tests to date have been in hospitals: 1.25%
But that’s not fair, because the CDC says only 12% of “cases” are hospitalized. Ok, so we’ll adjust:
3,826 positives, 398 deaths.
Case fatality rate when comparing like for like: 10.4%.
Is Coronavirus more deadly than seasonal flu? Yes.
Is it 10 or 100x more deadly to the point that we should shut down the economy and spazz out?
NO.
These are not my numbers. They’re the CDC’s numbers. The same CDC and folks like Fauci that are trying to scare the living **** out of you, and being intentionally falsely reported by both politicians and the media.
This is all public data folks. Most people never see a doctor for Coronavirus, just as most people never see a doctor for The Flu.
Amen Admin
Damn, common sense. That is why Admin is the man.
So I have to agree that this virus is a cover story for the umpteenth failure of the financial engineering that passes for economic activity, you can’t make people wealthy by magic equations, and insurance payouts based on gambling.
Here is one other possible way to look at this:
Let’s say there is a group of people who want to change the world, from oil to electric (but only for the little people, the elite still get to guzzle gas in sports cars and jet planes, it just becomes more expensive)
you can see this agenda, with saint greta, and the introduction of electric cars, and the myth of global warming.
Now, there will be winners and losers in this shift, so, let’s say that they wanted to run a test, so they could prove if man and his oil burning, was indeed the cause of “climate change”, of course this sounds insane, but ask your self, who is going to benefit from killing all of the worlds economies, simultaneously?
and ask yourself, who are all these insane people who pretend to run govt. but are just puppets for big money.
I believe there will be a lot of data collected during this event, to see if it can be scientifically proven, that man and his pollution can be stopped, and at what cost.
This will all have to end, within 1-2 weeks or at most 1 month, or else, there will be a world wide depression,
and there will be more deaths caused by the depression, than any virus.
a depression will lead to a kinetic world war.
who knows, maybe the war already started, and we are waiting for China to respond with their own biological weapon?
something is going on, and it is not about a virus, only 15k dead, vs 200k-500k for the flu (global deaths)
why destroy the world economy, for a rate that is 13x less deadly than the regular flu/
Why destroy the economy? Georgia Guidestones and Deagel tell you.
Fill in the blank:
The economy grew and inflated to where it could no longer be supported, then collapsed.
The population grew and inflated to where it could no longer be supported, then_________.
I expect the author wishes to see his predictions come true. I’ll be convinced when the EBT’s run dry, or there’s no food to buy with it, and the millions of Mexicans return home while hordes of Negros migrate to farms to till, plant and harvest, having given up their addiction to gibsmedat. I’ll be convinced when I see women quit the pursuit of becoming men and start the pursuit of being mutually complementary to just one man. I’ll be convinced when the social media of the whores, Hollywood and otherwise, go ignored, or even better, shamed.
No, I think this pandemic is being used as a fig leaf to obfuscate the cause of the financial collapse. See, the markets weren’t overpriced, the US wasn’t bankrupt, globalism isn’t anti-human, it all would have worked out fine except for that pesky, meddling virus. The elites, who wanted to loot the US and leave us with our tikkun thoroughly and completed olamed with Totalitarian Communism, they haven’t changed their plans at all. The reaction to this pandemic isn’t the collapse of Jewish Bolshivism; it’s a convenient opportunity for the next click on the rachet.
The reset button with a lingering relay switch.
Not too sure about the Leon Spinks quote, Jim. Your own “clusterfuck” is a great descriptor for the shituation – just add total or global.
I do think, however, that the Mike Tyson classic apothegm is more appropriate: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
The world of hyper-finance tekno-farce and whoever thought of (calling Dr. Kissinger) the complete off-shoring of manufacturing jobs to China is getting more than a punch in the mouth. The entire globe is getting the living crap beaten out of it (to keep with the boxing metaphors) by the Klitstchko brothers and Tyson Fury at the same time. Going be a beat down for the ages; think the sacking of Rome by Alaric; Mongols on the march in the 13th century; the conquest of the Inca empire by Pizarro; France 1940….
FOr the positive, like you say, if traditional and Human-centric ways can make a comeback then everything will be fine within a couple of decades.
With the following caveat: The Evil Fuckers and their tools must be spay and neutered first to that to happen.
Until then things are looking mighty Medieval with the exception of robots and A.I. which is the wild card for the match.
GOOD news i have been waiting on has arrived!!!
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/us-gasoline-crash-50c-lowest-2001-amid-unprecedented-demand-collapse
I paid $1.459 for regular at Costco last Friday. Could not get into the store, as more than 200 in line and they were limiting the number going in.
All of us on TBP, have been musing for years, how this 4th Turning, would manifest itself:
2008 the beginning of the Great Recession – which never ended, except by manipulated statistics.
The great ‘education bubble’ – trillions loaned to teenagers with no income, no assets, no jobs.
Then came the lowest unemployment rate in decades – most minimum wage jobs / gigs / uber -evaporated.
The attempt of the Democrat Party to unseat an elected POTUS.
Now COVID-19. The virus continues to demonstrate the house of cards our economy is built upon. The highly leveraged stock market was abruptly deflated by margin calls.
Real productivity is not cruise ships / flying for elaborate vacations, or Vegas, etc / or buying shit from China.
I predict there will be a final nail in the coffin – perhaps the global internet will crash – a week or so would do fine.
Not a crash, but a strategic outage as they make their final moves. Telecommunications going out, as well.
Come on, Kunstler, you’re not the tiniest bit satisfied having your predictions come true? You’re allowed. We’ll all understand.