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A scarlet tinge
colors the Virginia creeper, the Canada geese grow restless out on the
fairways, an ominous canapé fatigue spreads through the Hamptons, and
cyclonic weather blobs march west across the Atlantic - you know that time of
the year has arrived. Fall approaches on busy feet. The name itself suggests
slippage. Though many government numbers lie, a dark reality still penetrates
the fog of econometrics. Visions of tumbling indexes wither the spinal fluxes
of nervous day traders praying to their little effigies of Jim Cramer that
it's all just in their heads. Sometimes it seems as though the universe
itself grows tired of suspense and yields to the zeitgeist. A cosmic groan
fills the air from sea to shining sea as all eyes turn skyward. Was that the sound of the economy rolling over?
Peak pretending now joins peak oil, peak credit, peak rare earths, and all
the other peaks visible to us humble valley dwellers. Pretending bought
America two years of respite from the ravages of fraud and mismanagement, but
now the true condition of this society reveals itself like the disfigured
ghoul in the sewer lowering his mask. Further pretending is unnecessary now.
We're even beyond the "modified limited hang-out" stance, as a long-ago
presidential counselor once put his PR strategy in the face of crumbling
public credulity. When nothing is believable, what's the point in even
pretending?
Here are some truths which I believe to be self-evident: that the USA has
been running on fumes since the beginning of the 21st century. That you can't
get something for nothing, and attempts to do so always end in tears. That massive expenditures of energy produce equivalent
globs of entropy - which you can translate to "bad ju-ju"
or the tendency of whatever can go wrong to go wrong. That because we're
unwilling to re-scale and reform the things we do, nature is about to do it
for us. That America has transformed itself from a nation of earnest,
muscular, upright citizens to a land of overfed barbarous morons ruled by grifters. That what has been economics is about to turn
dangerously political.
The greatest loss of the last decade was not in 401-Ks or manufacturing jobs
or foreclosed houses, but the rule of law. Without genuine rule of law,
anything goes and nothing matters. As a consequence of that, finally,
everything goes. The rule of law is what kept foreigners
buying our debt all these years (the fumes we've been running on). They kept
buying because they believed, when all was said and done, that Americans
would enforce contracts and regulate behavior in the direction of fair
dealing - not for its own sake but because it made things work better. But
when the rule of law goes here, the rest of the world will notice its
absence. They'll stop believing in our money and our future. They'll cash out
and we'll wash out. Then, as human tribes are wont, they may just turn around
and kick our ass because we're down.
The comprehensive failure of leadership deepens every week, as does the gulf
between what people like Barack Obama and Mitch McConnell say and what is
really happening on-the-ground in the arena of everyday life. Storyline: last
week, Mr. Obama hailed the revival of the automobile industry with the debut
of Chevrolet's new electric car, the Volt. Reality: at $41,000 retail, nobody
outside lower Manhattan, Hollywood, or K Street will have enough money to buy
one. Storyline: Mitch McConnell inveighs against a bill to require
corporations to take responsibility on camera for their political advertisements;
he says it will lead to job losses. Reality: the Senate Minority Leader
is shilling for corporations that want to run massive, unlimited ad campaigns
in support of corporate agendas - such as off-shoring jobs.
The
failure of leadership extends through government to the news media to
business to the universities to the courts. All authorities are suspect. All
are dishonest and cowardly. When the attempt to enforce some basic rules of
decency in banking ends up in legislation that runs two-thousand pages, the
rule of law is dishonored. Anyway, adding that much unneeded complexity to a
system that is already too excessively complex to function anymore must be an
obviously bad move. The Glass-Steagall act was
under forty pages. Why not just correct the mistake we made eleven years ago
and vote it back into existence? Somebody must know where it is - in some
back filing cabinet of the Library of Congress.
In
times like these politics gets very crazy. The public forgets how misled and
confused it is and develops vicious certainties that do not necessarily jibe
with reality. The public becomes a mob and democracy turns into a kangaroo
court, which is to say: a mockery of the rule of law. I suspect we'll see a
correlation of turbulence in politics and markets as the weeks
pound forward toward Halloween. By election day, democracy itself will be in
disrepute and the streets will run with mad dogs. When this sucker goes down
(to paraphrase a past president) it's going to be like a fire in a circus
tent. Don't expect much from the clowns' bucket brigade. We'll be lucky if
they don't toss gasoline into the grandstands.
I
doubt I'm the only one who senses something in the air - and not just the
impressive heat and humidity. Anyway, I'm going off for a few days' vacation
this week to do no more than walk around in the salt air beside the
ghost-filled ocean.
James Howard Kunstler
www.kunstler.com/
James Howard Kunstler’s
new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is
available at all booksellers.
James 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 latest 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.
You can purchase your own copy here
: The Long
Emergency .
You can get more from James Howard Kunstler - including
his artwork, information about his other novels, and his blog - at his Web
site : http://www.kunstler.com/
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