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American Anxiety

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Published : July 16th, 2013
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“The whole world was watching this case to see if everybody can get equal justice, not just certain people,” Benjamin Crump, the lawyer for Mr. Martin’s family, said on Sunday.
 The New York Times    

     I’m not so sure the whole world was watching. The rest of the world is quite preoccupied with countless other events careening toward criticality — civil war in the Middle East, bankruptcy all over Europe, riots in Brazil, the global bond market, a mystery epidemic in India, etc — and if they are watching, they must be mystified by what they see.

     What the Zimmerman trial showed me was a nation stuck in tired narratives about its racial predicament, and confusion about what the predicament even is. It doesn’t help that we stopped even pretending that something called common culture matters or even exists. By common culture I mean shared values and behavioral norms. The “multiculturalism” offered in place of it — at least among so-called progressives — hasn’t worked out too well either. On one side of the street you have Slate podcasters foolishly wringing their hands over “the N-word” while over on the other side Kanye West is making millions shouting “nigga, nigga, nigga.” We pretend to want to have a national conversation about race, but the truth is that it makes us too uncomfortable, so we retreat into platitudes and sentimentality.

      CNN covered the trial and its aftermath relentlessly — I saw a lot of it recovering from a Friday surgery — and the narrative there was a largely sentimental one about “a child” gunned down. Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon repeatedly omitted to mention that the six-foot-tall child was beating the smaller gunman’s head into the pavement in the minutes before he shot. Apparently the jury did notice this part of the story.

     The most uncomfortable part of the botched conversation is about behavior in general and the behavior of young black men in particular. The visible social failure is too gross and its implications are too scary, namely that we have more and more an oppositional culture saturated in violence that will never accommodate itself to any kind of a common culture. At this point that culture of young black men is oppositional to virtually every other group in America, white, Asian, Hispanic, et cetera, and the only response to it from the jittery “others” is a set of excuses for black opposition and failure.

     One excuse is that America’s drug laws have turned young black men into “political prisoners” in the world’s largest prison gulag. I’m sure that our drug laws are stupid and counter-productive, but I’m also sure that most of the young men caught in its web were doing something anti-social besides just holding, using, and selling.

     There are ways of understanding historically how we got to the current situation but they may not offer much consolation. The Civil Rights victories of 1964 and 1965 — the public accommodations act and voting rights act — created tremendous anxiety among African Americans about how they would fit into a desegregated society, so the rise of black separatism at exactly that moment of legislative triumph was not an accident. It offered a segment of the black population the choice of opting out of the new disposition of things. Opting out had consequences, and over several generations since then, the cohort of poorer black Americans has grown only more oppositional, antagonistic, and economically dysfunctional — with the sanction of America’s non-black “diversity” cheerleaders, who remain adamant in their own opposition to the idea of common culture.

     The economic challenges of the long emergency, with its desperate competition for the common resources of daily life — money, food, fuel — are liable to provoke new layers of desperate behavior, and new layers of opposition, antagonism, misunderstanding, tragedy, and failure. Do you argue that there are no “jobs” for young black men and nothing to absorb their energies? Increasingly there will be no “jobs” for anybody, except perhaps in local small scale farming. And these days that probably lacks the appeal of becoming a hip-hop star shouting “nigga, nigga, nigga.”

     What we “learned” from the Trayvon Martin case, so far, is exactly nothing.

 

 

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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.
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prljr, it would appear that Jim C didn't like your comment about his critical thinking abilities. I saw no problems with your post, you were correct in your analysis, far to many people are simply allowing themselves to be spoon fed whatever it is the government will dish out to them. CNBC now does all of their thinking for them.

It's also clear that Jim C will rail against JHK no matter what JHK has to say. It's odd that someone like Jim C who is a prepper takes such a contrary stance every time JHK even comes close to mentioning that people will need to go back, if only for a few years, to doing things by hand.

He states "What we learned from Kunstler's article is exactly nothing." So then why even comment unless the temptation to take another free shot with no chance of retaliation from JHK was to great to pass up.

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Truth hurts thats why they make posting guidelines against it.
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"prljr, it would appear that Jim C didn't like your comment about his critical thinking abilities."

By this statement are you saying that Jim C. runs this website? It sounds like you are say Jim C. deleted prljr's comment. I don't know who runs this website but that would be funny to find out that Jim C. runs it.
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I very much doubt the admins spend any time going through the numerous messages. Any user can report a post as abuse, when this is done it uses a number of ###### to replace characters in the post and sends an alert to the admins. When they review the request to have the post removed and they feel there is no need to so they can put the post back up.

Nothing dramatic such as Jim C running the site.
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I started soldiering back in the late 60's and early 70's. Race relations in the US Army were not the best with racially motivated fights on post fairly common. In the late 70's and on, it wasn't so bad or noticeable. Though politicians were coming out about the percentage of minorities in the services were not in line with society in general aka higher percentage of minorities in the service. I called it politically motivated race baiting then and it still is. Witness Obama's, Sharpton's and Jackson's statements.

I fear that JHK has under-estimated just how much worse it will get.

We tend to forget that homo sapiens is first and foremost a social animal. We run in packs for protection and competition for resources. The progressives reject this notion. The conservatives claim religion has raised them above it. Any refusal to accept a fact does NOT negate the fact. Black, white, green or libertarian will run in packs with the most outspoken fairly high up in the pack hierarchy.

When competition for resources intensifies, the packs will hunt with deadly earnestness. For examples, look at all the riots over the last few decades where media was there to witness. Destruction of infrastructure and looting were the commonality among all of them.
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Jim C. you failed to note that all political parties use victim labeling as a vote capture device. Why do you think we have such a large military contingent supported by white republicans? Fear is a powerful motivator. Now couple that with urbanization and the consequent loss of the extended family structure. You have a society of alienated and fearful animals eager to join any group that gives them a sense of security and power.

Dude really. You carry on against JHK like he is a brother-in-law that refused to lend (give) you the money to buy a bass boat.
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Kunstler points to a problem, race relations in the United States, and then just shakes his head in mystification about what is to be done, or even how the current situation came to be. He might have said that the problem with race relations, especially with Afro-Americans, lies with their accepting the victim label handled out by the Democrats to win their vote and maintain power. Once the majority in any ethic group accepts that, and the subsequent handouts, the only road open leads downhill. Then, after the Zimmerman trial, the Democrats and fan that sense of victimhood by inflaming the situation.

Kunstler might have something like that but didn't. No, the world is doomed. Things are going to become worse,he says, because "The economic challenges of the long emergency, with its desperate competition for the common resources of daily life — money, food, fuel — are liable to provoke new layers of desperate behavior, and new layers of opposition, antagonism, misunderstanding, tragedy, and failure."

What we learned from Kunstler's article is exactly nothing.





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Well said. The challenge is how to change the mindset of those who feel alienated from mainstream society in the US (or who cling to it since it absolves them from having to make a success of their lives in the mainstream?). I would have thought that the symbolic value of having a black president would have been helpful in promoting a culture of acceptance but the races seem more polarized than ever, not least because of asinine comments from said president such as his kneejerk espousal of the young black man in the Zimmerman case, before justice had run its course. As an observor from outside of the US it seems to me that Americans are obsessed with race. The country, and indeed the whole world, is paying the price for the sins of the plantation owners.
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Americans are obsessed with anything unless its the truth. Oh and we really like fake reality shows,Watching overpaid athletes,movie stars and musicians is high on our list too.
What a great country our leaders have destroyed.
Math,Science,History it all started with the Big Bang but Americans ignore it all because our leaders like it that way.
Jim C is a prime example of why we are so screwed up. Has a brain but lost all critical thinking skills.
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Latest comment posted for this article
I very much doubt the admins spend any time going through the numerous messages. Any user can report a post as abuse, when this is done it uses a number of ###### to replace characters in the post and sends an alert to the admins. When they review the re  Read more
Hart - 7/20/2013 at 5:58 AM GMT
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