Kunstler: Hunky Dory

…Too many disastrous things are lined up in the months ahead to insure that we’re entering a new phase of history: The Long Emergency.

Government at every level is worse than broke.

Our currency, the US dollar, is hemmorrhaging legitimacy.

Inability to service old debt at all levels or incur new debt.

Bad (toxic) debt lurking off balance sheets everywhere.

The housing bubble fiasco is far from over.

Unemployment rising implaccably.

So-called “consumers” unable to consume consumables.

Crucial energy import supply lines fragile.

Food supply subject to energy problems and climate abnormalities.

A world full of other societies who would enjoy watching us fail and suffer.

When The Long Emergency was published in 2005, I said then that the greatest danger this society faced would be its inclination to gear up a campaign to sustain the unsustainable at all costs — rather than face the need to make new arrangements for daily life. That appears to be exactly what has happened, and it didn’t happen under the rule of some backward-facing, right-wing, Jesus-haunted crypto-fascist, but rather a “progressive” party led by a dynamically affable young man unburdened by deep cultural allegiance to Wall Street. Barack Obama has been sucked in and suckered. “Change you can believe in” has morphed into “a status quo you will bend heaven and earth to hold onto.”

Kunstler.com