James Howard Kunstler: Scary People, Scary Times -- Where Is This Country Going?

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Kunstler.com / By James Howard Kunstler

Scary People, Scary Times -- Where Is This Country Going?
Te inability to decode the clear and present dangers to civilized life is a failure of leadership and authority without precedent in the American story.


September 15, 2010 | Scary times, scary people. 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. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/148170/scary_people%2C_scary_times_--_where_is_this_country_going_/

[grasswire]

1. I can't open page 2 of this

anyone else having trouble?


This line: "that America has imploded like a weevil-infested hubbard squash in a back pantry" made me stop cold. It's almost Garrison Keillor.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. Here's the direct link

:)
http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/09/scary-people-scary-times.html#more

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. He has a wicked tongue! That first paragraph - 'fighting over a sack of turnips'

had me in stitches. Not that we won't end up in such a plight, but I'm laughing while I can.

[QC]

4. Read Tobacco Road--it's an excellent book! n/t

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. Thanks. I hope to get round to it.

[mix]

6. The ruling elites, from the White House to Congress, from the ivory tower to

the boardroom, have no solutions to our country's problems.

Poverty and war, the new normal.

[cognoscere]

7. The ruling elites ARE the problem. Their unbridled lust

for more money and power and their willingness to do ANYTHING to get more is plunging America down the crapper.

[Hestia]

8. And the Tea Party aims to fix all this, to make things right again. I listen to their blather about

And the Tea Party aims to fix all this, to make things right again. I listen to their blather about "freedom" and all I can imagine is the sound of boots outside the door, and men in badly-fitted camo uniforms and buzzcut hair commanding me to accept John Boehner as my personal savior. Pardon me, but I don't see how this will really improve anybody's lot in life.

[Hestia]

9. The comments are great - sounds like DU is posting over there :o)

[Overseas]

10. Excellent. Beautifully written. //nt

[Demeter]

11. To Hell in a Handbasket

If we don't take a left turn pretty soon, it's French Revolution time.