Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
Spring is always convulsive, with new things heaving into life. Under every dead leaf, something stirs and seeks light, the old must make way for the new, and to some degree the earth is not quite the same place as it was the last time it turned, though the scene looks superficially familiar. Winter’s torpor is, at least, a cold comfort, but springtime’s warmth and movement rattle the nerves. Things unseen shift ominously beneath us. Everything is pending and tending, and nothing is resolved.
Having wrecked its latest business model —hypertrophic financial fakery — Western Civ stumbles into the blinding new reality that it takes real stuff to run an economy, and that money itself is not an adequate replacement for the stuff. The trillions supposedly vested, for instance, in stock market valuations mostly represent mere wishes and promises, and for what? Why, for more money — which responds by losing value, so that we’re racing ever faster toward a receding horizon.
The net result: a world with less available stuff and plenty of money that’s increasingly worthless in pursuit of stuff. It isn’t long before people recognize the disutility of both conditions. The idea that we can fix this problem with central bank digital money is hilarious. When faced with less available stuff, resorting to “money” ever more abstracted from any relation to stuff only puts you in thrall to more empty wishes and promises when this is exactly the moment to be less in thrall and more in touch.
America has had enough of being in thrall, especially to figures and forces dedicated to our destruction. This spring is the beginning of a national life with less stuff, including, looks like, stuff to eat. That will sure enough put folks in touch with something real, and then they will naturally have to do something about it. Centralized control of the population via trackable digital money is the last thing that will avail in the face of hunger and desperation. In fact, that is just another set of empty wishes and promises.
The reality is that centralized government, such as the one in Washington DC, is less and less in control of anything — except the manufactured pretense that it can fix the problems of less stuff and decaying money. The federal government is increasingly impotent, unable to discharge its basic obligations to preserve public order and safety. Its previous attempt to fix something was the response to Covid-19, which has culminated in the fiasco of the mRNA vaccines, now pending and tending toward an astounding wave of early deaths among those in thrall to the transparently dishonest promises of officialdom (“safe and effective”).
That’s the trouble with thrall. It narrows the field-of-vision so badly, you can’t see what’s coming at you indirectly, like: hardship and death. The country has been in serious trouble for more than a decade. Cavalcades of bad choices — and then lying to ourselves about these bad choices — has shoved us well over the edge of our cherished expectations. One way out, then, is to simply refuse to remain in thrall to officialdom and the manufactured bullshit that is its only product.
We are lately in thrall to the melodrama in Ukraine, largely engineered by figures and forces in our own government and for their own ends, which look suspiciously at odds with the nation’s actual interests (the nation being us, its people). Perhaps this illustrates the widening gulf between the slouching beast government has become and the people trying to operate their lives and destinies under it. No food for you, no fertilizers for future food for you, no spare parts for you, no free speech for you, no social or economic role for you, no health for you, and (watch it, now!) soon no life for you.
Collectively going crazy has been a luxury we can’t afford anymore. You fell for RussiaGate and it kept you in thrall for years. You fell for the Adam Schiff orchestrated Ukraine phone call impeachment gambit. You fell for the Covid scare and the dangerously defective vaccines forced on you. You fell for the fraud-drenched election of the empty vessel known as “Joe Biden.” Don’t fall for the invitation to World War Three.
Russia means business in its historic sphere of influence. It’s none of our business, and we’re only making it worse for the Ukrainian people by pretending it’s our business with the false promise of our support. The only thing that matters to us about Ukraine just now is that we’re standing in the way of useful negotiations to end the conflict there and egging on various other countries in Europe to aggravate the situation.
It’s been a fine distraction from everything else that is slipping away in our own country, including the loss of liberty, the right to a livelihood, the need for legitimate meaning, the value of our money, our respect for the law, the ability to speak our minds, and our duty and obligations to each other. Our government is not interested in supporting any of that, and we might doubt that it even could anymore if it wanted to. It only wants to keep you in a state of abject thrall while it fritters away our posterity.
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“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”
— Henry Kissinger
“Let them eat cake.”
Cults as irrational nutters collecting the gullible, and an example for the left today.
“We must treat social justice leftists with the same uncompromising attitude, because if we do not our culture will die from a lack of reason and the spiraling collapse into hell will be complete.”
16,800 cram in Joel Olsteen church every week to listen to his prosperity bullshit. You remember what that fine Christian did after Hurricane Katrina, don’t you? HE CLOSED THE CHURCH DOORS TO THE PEOPLE NEEDING SHELTER! But, the peeps just loooove him.
Point is, the huge majority of Americans (thankfully hardly ever on TPB) are the most gullible fools in the history of humanity. You could probably list a dozen things off the top of your head regarding all the Stupid Shit Americans fall for.
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The man is either suffering from Cognitive Dissonance, or he is an Eternal Optimist.
It’s a nice hope. But, good luck wif dat! Not making this up … the Sunday Shit Ledger showed the results of a Quinnipac (sp?) Poll taken earlier in the week ===> 67% of Americans felt that America has a MORAL OBLIGATION to assist Ukraine. I’d say we are well on the way to falling for the WWIII bullshit.
Dont EVEN refer to that (((creep))) olsteen as a Christian.
From previous posts, I think you actually know better, but seem to enjoy taking shots at Christianity. Interesting given your avatar pic…
And yes, the author is an optimist – people – especially the droids in most of the US – are not smart enough to see thru it all.
I bet most of that 67% are ignorant of most of the reality revealed daily here and on Warroom and the people and articles appearing regularly which we have vetted over the past two years. They haven’t read dozens of scientific claims or papers or followed economics or anything else. Like all the folks who said that if they had heard about Hunter’s laptop they would not have voted for “the empty vessel.” Doubtful if any of the 67% ever heard of the 14 violations of treaties with Ukraine, Russia, NATO that are being violated by NATO and Ukraine. None know of the “genocide” of Russian speakers in Donbas and border areas since 2014 by actual fuqueing old school “Nazis” with the approval of the so-called government. They are the cannon fodder.
Like everything else, they really don’t give a shit about the truth. Again, they tend to live and vote far too long, IMHO.
What does “assist” mean exactly? So far, all I’ve heard is bluster about war crimes, sending arms, and encouraging Ukrainians to fight to the last man to defend their country. A more meaningful poll would ask how many people want American boots on the ground.
At least half I’d say. Mainly Democrats, who are just itching to get even with Vladimir Putin and his “interference with American elections”. Since most live in nice juicy target big cities, they may all die within minutes of one another some day.
Even after all of the adultery scandals? and overt Satanism? Well, I never thought a congregation over a hundred was worth a damn, and even then it is probably 1 out of a hundred of those, in this wicked generation.
If that 67% get their way and we go to war, they will some day become crispy critters, with their shadows being burnt into concrete. Maybe there will be justice some day in my belief that stupid people shouldn’t live too long
The USA is a disgusting ZOG Economic System. Way to many urban Rich people Thrive off the labors of others flying from place to place enjoying the luxury life as Exploitors; others live as Parasites collecting Welfare, especially by falsely claiming to be handicapped or having a handicapped kid. There are 330 million Americans but there is a huge shortage of people working to do all the things needed to support these non-workers. It angers me to see all the passenger jets wasting fuel on the rich knowing that soon starving Americans will wish it had been Conserved for use in tractors to grow food instead. When TSHTF, 100s of millions of Urbanites will resort to violence rather than work. When normalcy returns and the Meek have inherited the Earth as Jesus said, the toilers in the soil and keepers of livestock will be the happy survivors.
Yeah and them urbanites won’t survive the reality called rural America. We play for keeps when we’re threatened.
Not sure if you grok the meek inheriting the earth comment.
From my experience the meek always inherit the earth.
When their reeking corpses are tilled into it.
The history of our intellectual-class and the modern usage of the phrase, time and time again, reveals how useful the lie of meekness has been to those who still espouse it. Jordan Peterson, despite his controversial views on other topics, was right in pointing this out. In Jordan Peterson’s explanation, meek referred to a man with a sword and the training to use it when needed. Chögyam Trungpa expounded upon meekness further in his book Shambhala, describing that meekness is one of the essential faces of the warrior, “The warrior of meek: kind and mercy to others.”
In all cases, control is the root of meekness, not weakness. A strong man who is capable of violence and knows the power of his own hands, but sheathes his weapons when they are not needed, is in control of himself. Nietzsche himself commented that most cowards are moral, not because they are moral at their root, but because they use it as a disguise to hide their weakness. Therefore, their benevolence is less a product of their moral integrity, but their inability to harm in the first place. The blessed meek in the Sermon on the Mount were not flabby soyboys crying about chads taking their women or a poltroon justifying that he’ll “be the bigger man” when he should be defending his woman against slander. Meekness is control, not wimpish inaction.
Weak people are rightly lower in naturally ordered hierarchies, especially when they have no other redeemable qualities to raise their status. Claiming that “The meek shall inherit the Earth” is merely the peacocks tail for these frail creatures who cannot compare to the hawks or eagles above them. This is not to say that strength is the only value, or that the mighty should rule, but you must have some sort of strength or value. Strength is not limited to the physical. We often see that idiots are the first to flap their gums about topics in which they believe they’ve learned. Meanwhile, real experts are controlled and measured when they reveal the depths of their understanding. Control is a value on parity with strength and intelligence.
Cultivate strength and control in everything you do. And, become someone who deserves their inheritance due to the blessed meek.
Only thing coming out from under dead leaves around here are ticks carrying Lyme Disease.
We are determined to run this planet, at least our leadership class is. Firing a shot at Russia in anger will finally set events in motion that should disabuse the elites of that notion. Unfortunately we will be doing the fighting and the dying.