In the same category

What’s Been and What’s Next

IMG Auteur
Published : April 21st, 2014
711 words - Reading time : 1 - 2 minutes
( 25 votes, 4/5 ) , 3 commentaries
Print article
  Article Comments Comment this article Rating All Articles  
0
Send
3
comment
Our Newsletter...
Category : Editorials

     The wonder is that more Americans are not ticked off about the state of our country than whatever is happening ten thousand miles away. For instance, how come the US Department of Justice is not as avid to prosecute the pervasive racketeering in the US economy as the State Department is for provoking unnecessary wars in foreign lands on the other side of the planet, over matters that have little bearing on life here? This racketeering, by the way, amounts to a war against American citizens.

     I’m speaking especially of the US military racket, the banking and finance rackets, the health care racket and the college loan racket, all of which have evolved insidiously and elegantly to swindle the public in order to support a claque of American oligarchs. In other civilized lands, health care and college are considered the highest priority public goods (i.e. responsibilities of government), and national resources are applied to support them under the theory that bankrupting people for an appendectomy or a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering is not in the public interest. In our land, that would be considered “socialism.” Instead, we “socialize” the costs of supporting Too Big To Fail banks — so their employees can drive Beemers to their Hamptons summer house parties — and a military machine that goes around the world wrecking one country after another to support a parasitical class of contractors, lobbyists, and bought-off politicians in their northern Virginia McMansions.

     Hence, the laughable conceit pinging through the news media lately that some dynastic grifter like Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton will slide into the White House in 2016 as easily as a watermelon seed popped into a shot glass. I don’t think it’s going to work out that way. The US political system needs to be turned upside down and inside out, and I expect that it will be. Either it happens within the bounds of electoral politics, or you’ll see it playing out in the streets and the windswept plains.

     Just a glance around the USA these days ought to nauseate the casual observer. We have an infrastructure for everyday life that is failing in every way imaginable. Are you disturbed by the asteroid belts of vacant strip malls outside your town? Or the empty store fronts along your Main Streets?  What do you suppose these places will be like in ten years when the mirage of shale oil dissolves in a mist of disappointment and political grievance? How are Americans going to feel, do you suppose, when gasoline just isn’t there at a price they can pay, and they are marooned in delaminating strand-board-and-vinyl houses 23 miles away from anything? Does the sheer immersive ugliness of the human imprint on the American landscape not give you the shivers?

      Look at the pathetic and disgusting appearance of our cities, which for the most part present themselves as demolition derby arenas or war zones — except the strongholds of the red-white-and-blue oligarchs: Washington, San Francisco, and especially New York, Financialization Central.

      What happens at the “magic moment” when Facebook stops being a narcissistic virtual playground for “selfies” and becomes a bulletin board for political revolution? Think that can’t happen here? And what if that revolution is a kind that doesn’t appeal to you — say, a revolution of race hatred, or fascist zealotry, or Marxist gangsterism of the type that took Russia hostage for 70 years?

     All this is happening, incidentally, because the supposed best minds in our nation are paying no attention whatsoever to the most important story of our lifetime: the winding down of the techno-industrial global economy. It doesn’t really matter anymore why they don’t get it. Hubris. Greed. Distraction. Denial. All that matters is that they can’t be depended on and when that happens authority loses legitimacy. And when it comes to that, all bets are off.

     The disintegration of Ukraine would be best understood by Americans as a mirror of ourselves and our sclerotic republic, poised to sink into poverty and disorder. Everything we do and say rings hollow now. What used to be called The Establishment has run out of ways to even pretend to save itself. We have no idea what’s next, but it’s not going to be more of what’s been. 

Data and Statistics for these countries : Russia | Ukraine | All
Gold and Silver Prices for these countries : Russia | Ukraine | All
<< Previous article
Rate : Average note :4 (25 votes)
>> Next article
James Howard Kunstler has worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone Magazine. In 1975, he dropped out to write books on a full-time basis. His nonfiction book, "The Long Emergency," describes the changes that American society faces in the 21st century. Discerning an imminent future of protracted socioeconomic crisis, Kunstler foresees the progressive dilapidation of subdivisions and strip malls, the depopulation of the American Southwest, and, amid a world at war over oil, military invasions of the West Coast; when the convulsion subsides, Americans will live in smaller places and eat locally grown food.
WebsiteSubscribe to his services
Comments closed
  All Favorites Best Rated  
Kunstler again expresses what many if not most Americans think. Wouldn't it be great if a real dialogue began over what the makeup of our government SHOULD be! First plan the improvement THEN vote them all out.
Rate :   4  1Rating :   3
EmailPermalink
This I believe to be a most informative article, of importance to all in the West. The author's insights may be disliked, but nevertheless true - and borne out by earlier works by Edward Gibbon in the 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', also Alfred Noyes - (The Edge of the Abyss, pub. 1942) - a particularly pertinent book that shows us to be at singular crossroads in our modern civilization. The old ploy of attacking the attorney, rather than the defendant only obscures the crucial events we all face.
Rate :   5  1Rating :   4
EmailPermalink
Kunstler's tirades against America, while trading on Obama's very real incompetence and Socialist agenda, serve his agenda of what appears to be the creation of a totalitarian state. What is Kunstler's agenda? This statement of his implies it: "Does the sheer immersive ugliness of the human imprint on the American landscape not give you the shivers?"

It is the "human imprint" on nature that Kunstler wishes to stamp out. It is ANYTHING that humans do, not approved by Kunstler and panel of elites, that is evil. Human creativity, industry, betterment. To that end he constantly harps on the ugliness of strip malls, vacant storefronts, the end of oil -- ignoring the fact that it is and has been the Socialist policies of innumerable politicians, both Democratic and Republican, that has created our current mess, and not the free enterprise system.

It you want to see Kunstler's idea of a perfect world watch an episode of the new reality show NAKED AND AFRAID. That is the end game of Kunstler's world made by hand.
Rate :   3  5Rating :   -2
EmailPermalink
Latest comment posted for this article
Kunstler again expresses what many if not most Americans think. Wouldn't it be great if a real dialogue began over what the makeup of our government SHOULD be! First plan the improvement THEN vote them all out. Read more
The Recusant - 4/22/2014 at 4:31 AM GMT
Rating :  4  1
Top articles
World PM Newsflow
ALL
GOLD
SILVER
PGM & DIAMONDS
OIL & GAS
OTHER METALS
Take advantage of rising gold stocks
  • Subscribe to our weekly mining market briefing.
  • Receive our research reports on junior mining companies
    with the strongest potential
  • Free service, your email is safe
  • Limited offer, register now !
Go to website.