Event Horizon by Jim Kunstler July 14, 2008

[bronxiteforever]

With the death of the IndyMac Bank last week, and the GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac laying side-by-side in the EMT van on IV drips, headed for the Federal Reserve's ever more crowded intensive care unit, there was a sense of the American Dream having passed through the event horizon that denotes the opening of a black hole.

Meanwhile, the foreign holders of those decrepitating dollars might not rush to the redemption window, but they certainly would use them to buy up every oil futures contract on God's not-so-green Earth as fast as possible -- they'd be dumb not to -- which would leave American Happy Motorists with gasoline prices north of $5 a gallon, and possibly north of $10. (In that case, say goodbye to the airlines. In fact, say goodbye to what passes for the rest of the US economy, including especially the vaunted retail sector that supposedly counts for 70 percent of the action.)

This process is really out of control now. The bottom line is the comprehensive bankruptcy of the United States. The Republican Party under George Bush will be known as the party that wrecked America (release 2.0). Painful as it is, Americans had better get a new "Dream" and fast. It better be a dream based on the way the universe actually works, which is to say an operating procedure run on earnest effort and truthfulness rather than merely trying to get something for nothing and wishing on stars. We might begin symbolically by evacuating Las Vegas and calling in an air strike on the loathsome place -- to register our new reality-based attitude adjustment.

After that, we've got to get to work re-tooling all the everyday activities of life, including the way we grow our food, the way we raise and deploy capital, the way we do trade and manufacturing, the way we go from point A to point B, the way we educate children, the way we stay healthy, and the way we occupy the landscape. I know, it sounds like a lot, maybe too much. But grok this: we don't have any choice if we want a plausible future on this portion of the North American continent.

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/

[pscot]

1. Kunstler has a gift for understatement

"The result, pretty soon into that process, will be social breakdown and political upheaval. Every tattoo freak out there who has been prepping for his own starring role in some kind of comic book armageddon will finally get his chance to shine. Lots of people will get hurt and starve. Property will change hands in a disorderly way. And at the end of this process an American corn-pone Hitler may be waiting to set everything and everyone straight."

:popcorn:

[Joe Bacon]

5. We've had a "corn-pone" Hitler for the past 8 years!

Nobody has done more to trash the Constitution and the Bill of Rights than Bush. It will take a generation to wash his skid marks off of the flag!

[orwell]

2. I gave up...

..on Kunstler after reading his pro Iraq war screed about a month ago. I used to read him religiously every Monday but I can't stomach him anymore after that pro-war rant.

Another thing that bothers me about him is that for someone who keeps yelling about peak oil, he sure likes to fly alot.

Thnaks for posting anyway...the 4 paragraphs were fun.

[Miss Authoritiva]

3. Continuing...

This directly follows the last excerpted paragraph above:

Of course, none of that is likely to happen. Instead, and under the worst imaginable economic conditions, we'll probably embark on a campaign to prop up the un-prop-up-able and sustain the unsustainable -- that is, defend every status quo habit and behavior that we're used to, whether it can be salvaged or not. Of course, this would be a fatal squandering of our dwindling resources, but it it tends, historically, to be the last act of the melodrama in any faltering empire.

I wonder: In all of recorded history, have the citizens of a faltering empire ever been able to pull back their leaders and their country from the abyss? Or is the momentum too much to overcome?

[depakid]

4. Byzantium in the 7th Century

See: https://campus.fsu.edu/bbcswebdav/users/jastallins/public_htm/courses/complexity/readings/Tainter.pdf

[Kweli4Real]

6. For those Religious folks ...

What he described is pretty much the Biblical Book of Revelations. Scary, huh?