Scary People, Scary Times (James Howard Kunstler)

[Tace]

James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

Sept. 13, 2010 -- In that order.

The scary people have already started coming out of the woodwork. The times lately have been mostly uncertain, but soon they'll turn scary, too, as it becomes clearer that the people running things in the USA have no idea what's going on or what they're going to do about it -- and what's going on is an involuntary permanent re-set of the terms of everyday life, from a wet-dream robotic "consumer" techtopia to something more like the first chapter of Tobacco Road, with a family of half-wits reduced by hard times to fighting over a sack of turnips in a roadside ditch. That's the story-arc anyway, and lots of people won't like it. But the theme of dwindling resources is not a pretty one.

The most striking feature of the current scene is the absence of a coherent vision of our multiple related predicaments and how they add up to a valid picture of reality. To be precise, I mean our predicaments of 1.) energy resources, 2.) vanishing capital, and 3.) ecocide. This inability to decode the clear and present dangers to civilized life is a failure of leadership and authority without precedent in the American story.

On the eve of the only other comparable national convulsion -- the lead-up to the Civil War -- a strenuous public debate was able to focus on the salient question of the day, namely whether human slavery would continue in this country. Lincoln and Douglas parried for hours in the hot sun, arguing unscripted in complete sentences without the aid of teleprompters or offstage spin doctors. Yet no one above age of nine failed to understand what was at issue.

Note the diminishing returns of technology at work in our time, making it impossible for us to think straight, despite the proliferation of snazzy devices, programs, networks, blog-clouds, and the pervasive, non-stop spewage of so-called information all intended to enhance communication. What did Lincoln have to work with? A pencil.

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[Demeter]

1. The Scary People Came out with the ERA in the 70's

and they've been breeding ever since. It's just that it's not only the women for equality they are coming after.

Reagan gave them a big boost and subsidy. And it's been like an avalanche ever since.

[pscot]

2. Good rant by Kunstler

Thanks for posting.

[Moostache]

3. REDACTED BY AUTHOR - NOT NECESSARY

REDACTED - NEVER MIND, NOT A FIGHT I WANT TO START OR PARTAKE IN...