Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on October 19, 2015
Kunstler: Can’t Anyone Fix This?
The legacy mainstream media has a collective brain like dog’s — it exists in an eternal present, so that whatever’s happening right now is all there is. Thus, Hillary’s performance in the first Democratic debate, being as bad but not worse than her competitors’, means she has a lock on the nomination for president. The better part of a year lies between now and the convention, and time would be on the side of whatever force or figure rises to oppose the woman whose “turn” in power rides a myth of inevitability.
What perhaps ought to be more alarming is the way that the two major parties are lining up to be a men’s party and a woman’s party, a perfect acting-out of psychological archetypes in a society churning out millions of lost souls year-by-year. The American people apparently want a Daddy to fix all the broken systems and they want a Mommy to reassure them that everything will be all right. Hillary, of course, wants to be both, but her problem is that a lot of voters won’t accept her as either.
Her record doesn’t suggest she’s much good at fixing anything. That’s why the Benghazi affair is such a good stick to beat on her with. That was a moment when America needed a Daddy with a toilet plunger or a screw gun and all they got were cables from the home office saying everything was going to be all right. Mommy couldn’t save the Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans slaughtered there. The big pretense, of course, is the idea that congress holds hearings “so something like this will never happen again.”
It’s an interesting neurosis we’ve developed since the heyday of the assassinations in the late 1960s, this continuing promise to abolish the unforeseeable. Of course new atrocities happen all the time despite these ritual committee inquiries — these days, the mass murder of strangers is more in fashion than targeted political slayings — and there’s always another incident, and it ought to be obvious by now that we’re not so good at making sure that bad things don’t happen.
But that’s the Republican-controlled Benghazi Committee’s mission: to demonstrate that Mommy can’t fix stuff. It will be easily left to Hillary herself to prove that she’s not much good in the Mommy role either — reassuring the multitudes that everything’s going to be all right. Instead, Hillary falls back on an obsessive-compulsive pander tic, kind of an incessant hash-tag jabber of promises to the familiar cast of supplicants. Give it twelve months and see how sick of it the voters will get.
To see how much the Democrats have become the woman’s party, just consider the men candidates up on the debate stage: all pitiful archetypes. Bernie Sanders plays the meshugganah grandpa role reserved, on the screen, for Larry David or Alan Arkin. He’s always worked up about something that nobody else can really get worked up about, always raising his voice and stabbing his finger in the air in imitation of Yahweh. There’s Jim Webb, a bobblehead rattling off long legalistic disquisitions that never get to whether he can fix something or not. There’s Martin O’Malley, known primarily for his “six-pack” and “guns,” but with the persona of a frightened seven-year-old who doesn’t want to rile the teacher. And Lincoln Chaffee, a dizzy neighbor like Kramer in Seinfeld, butting in with cockamamie schemes that demonstrate he can’t fix anything.
Is it not amazing that the Democratic Party could not grudge up one figure really worth taking seriously? To me, this is truly symptomatic of how bereft of significance the party is? I’m not so sure the party will survive this election cycle. But the disorder across the gradient is equally impressive. The large Republican field of professional politician candidates is held in such bad odor as far as being able to fix anything, that the sinister clown Trump is able to put over his idiotic act of being a Daddy who can fix everything and anything, just by blustering. I suspect he’ll wear out his welcome — but if he doesn’t the Grand Old Party is showing serious signs of a serious crack-up.
Whoever get elected inn 2016 is going to face a crisis every bit as terrible as the crisis of 1860, only this time when the country blows it could come from a dozen different directions and be a lot harder to fix than the secession of Dixieland.
20 Comments on "Kunstler: Can’t Anyone Fix This?"
onlooker on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 9:27 am
Kunstler is funny he is a good write and thoroughly dissects the different neurosis and psychosis of the American people. I say it is humorous because they different caricatures of personality profiles is almost like some cartoon or animation. I suspect deep down Kunstler does this because he is very disturbed by the state of the world especially American society. But you know what i think this is the way to accept all this with a grain of salt as we will soon enough discard our mortal loins and leave this wacky world.
Hello on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 9:30 am
For once I have to agree with Kunstler.
A nation of 400M can’ muster a decent president. That is pretty pathetic.
ghung on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 9:41 am
“…can’t fix anything.”
Since most things that ail industrial-age-in-overshoot societies CAN’T BE FIXED, and American’s will never elect a President who points this out, it all seems pretty pointless. Whoever gets up there and says they’ll do their best to not make things worse will have a chance of getting my vote. The rest are just play-acting.
Davy on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 10:02 am
Hello, hello, we are 319MIL not 400MIL
Hello on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 10:05 am
Thanks, Davy. Still overpopulated by about 200M.
onlooker on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 10:12 am
Hello, so is pretty much every country, overpopulated that is.
BobInget on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 10:34 am
Things will get fixed, one funeral at a time.
efarmer on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 10:52 am
Let’s see, we have the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and The Judicial Branch. Executive and Judicial are making decisions, like them or not. The Legislative branch is horribly dysfunctional. We are led to believe the correct Executive can somehow fix the publicly elected, and special interest funded Legislative branch, and then do great things with cooperation and consensus. Sort of like putting a fresh head on a cadaver to see if it will make it dance and sing again.
Plantagenet on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 11:02 am
Kunstler is right on with this one. I went with friends to a bar to watch the D debate. It was very much like a Seinfeld episode. I never laughed so hard in my life. It was very much like a Seinfeld episode. I especially liked it when Bernie said “the American people are sick and tired of Hillary’s emails” and Hillary rushed over to shake his hand and laugh in his face. At least Hillary restrained herself from painting an “L” on Bernie’s forehead.
Cheers!
efarmer on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 11:30 am
Hercules had to clean out the horse stables of King Augeus, which hadn’t been cleaned in years and were all full of horse poop. It seemed like it would take forever, but Hercules found a river nearby and dammed it up so it ran right through the stables and washed them all clean.
So we have a job definition at least. But we need a Hercules type.
Hillary – give Bill a swiffer and tell him to clean it out, except the corner where the email server is buried. Are your sure it is really that bad, and not something brought up to damage me with?
Donald – get it declared a Superfund site and clean it out with government subsidy, lose the horses, and make it into the Trump Equestrian Casino and Resort.
Bernie – create a public funded work project with thousand of people with shovels, and add horses so it is a reliable source of long term employment.
Carly – buy out a large sewage corporation to acquire the expertise to process the manure better via the economy of scale.
Jeb – Were this stable in Florida instead of Washington, the increased ambient temperature would promote faster conversion of the manure into highly prized organic fertilizer.
Rodster on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 11:44 am
The two party system has been transformed into Diet Coke vs Diet Pepsi and offering up losers I wouldn’t hire to run a corner 7-11 store.
The political process is even worse as it’s become American Idol.
The two party political system has a lot in common with Vince McMahon’s WWE/WWF. The winner has already been declared before the voting even starts. It’s all a sideshow in presenting the illusion that you the populace will make a difference. We are LONG past that time.
We are living in The Truman Show.
BC on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 12:06 pm
Kunstler is still a 1960s Boomer idealist underneath his surly, curmudgeonly exterior. He seems to still believe that we have a representative republic or some semblance of “democracy”, which we don’t, of course.
We have no representation without taxation and the best gov’t the top 0.001% can buy. To think for 13.1 msec that the interests of the peasant masses in the bottom 90%+ are represented by the political system beyond the village/town/city of 10,000-100,000 is naive and silly.
The US is a militarist-imperialist, rentier-socialist corporate-state, a club of which the vast majority of us are not members, as George Carlin correctly said.
Moreover, the rentier Power Elite top 0.001% do not want a popular CEO of the corporate-state; rather, they want a narcissistic, sociopathic, overly ambitious, self-delusional person with a fatal conceit and thus fatally flawed and easy to blackmail, bribe, and use to further the objectives of the owners of the imperial corporate-state.
What would Kunstler have to talk and write about if he grew up or “manned up” and conceded this? It’s so easy to pretend that our interests “should” be represented and that thus the system exists to achieve that, and then bitch and moan that it often appears dysfunctional in achieving same.
However, if the likes of influentials such as Kunstler were to publicly admit how the system ACTUALLY functions and for whose benefit, they would have to concede that they had been duped their entire adult lives; that their interests are not represented by the top 0.001% and their operatives; and that the vast majority of Americans of all colors, creeds, IQs, etc., have overwhelmingly more in common with one another and need solidarity with one another than self-identifying with one out of 100 or thousands of the “winners” who enjoy their status from preying on the masses.
idontknowmyself on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 12:16 pm
I really have the feeling that intelligent and talented people are bailing of this society as much as they can. The political and economical structure is now manly made of stupid, greedy, sociopathic people that only care about themself.
This is exmaple of an old man trying to baillout of this society:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-MHnw-Yv2SQzOncKpXWHXw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3abNEeH7P3w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3abNEeH7P3w
Sane people are trying to bailout of this society to keep there sanity.
GregT on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 12:48 pm
“they want a narcissistic, sociopathic, overly ambitious, self-delusional person with a fatal conceit”
Sounds sadly familiar…………
Baptised on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 1:07 pm
Watching Saturday Night Live, SNL. In the opening sketch, the actress playing Hillary say’s, ” The Clintons are back” and the crowd roared. Kunstler missed it on this article. Most that vote for Hillary will be voting for Bill.
BC on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 1:31 pm
MrNo, I suspect many are bailing. I have gone Gault, boycotted, or dropped out in varying degrees myself, not that I’m an exemplar or that such a thing can be done successfully unless one is rather securely financially independent (if there is such a condition at this point), which I am not by any objective standard.
Being sane in an insane world is arguably a handicap depending upon geographical locale, socioeconomic status, and one’s occupation and composition of one’s social network.
I know many peak Boomer wealthy and nearly wealthy who have been quietly and steadily disengaging from productive economic activity, civic participation and sense of obligation, and politics, and focusing more time on rediscovering or reinforcing personal family relationships and friendships, downsizing their domiciles and spending, and generally slowing down and smelling a few more roses.
This is a natural demographic transition, to be sure, but I suspect there are many positives that will accrue to individuals, households, and society at large from this process.
peakyeast on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 2:41 pm
@Davy: Is that figure of 319m including all the illegal immigrants? Otherwise perhaps it is closer to 400m? 🙂
BC on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 3:33 pm
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_17_4/tsc_17_4_briggs.shtml
http://cis.org/
http://americanhumanist.org/HNN/details/2012-07-limit-and-regulate-immigration
For peakyeast and anyone else interested.
At some point, the cumulative structural effects from Peak Oil, overshoot, resource depletion per capita, fiscal constraints, decelerating productivity and real GDP per capita, extreme inequality, etc., create the imperative for self-preservation and economic, social, and political stability.
The increasingly detached elite top 0.001-1%, their Establishment intelligentsia and mass-media influentials, and a majority of the professional middle class (next 9% below the top 1%) enjoy the privilege of not having to compete with desperate Third World migrants or even highly skilled migrants from developing countries; therefore, the top 10% do not experience the anxiety, concern, fear, and loss of opportunity, income, and occupational and social status from mass human ape migration.
In fact, many professions and industries benefit because the increase in immigration creates customers and a Marxian reserve army of (slave) labor to perpetually suppress working-class wages that encourages politically marginalizing the working-class masses, permitting the elite top 0.001% and professional middle class (next 9% below the top 1%) to enjoy their status, privilege, and power AT THE INCREASING EXPENSE TO the bottom 90%+.
The Europeans are going to once again discover the imperative for self-preservation of their culture, political economy, and way of life.
idontknowmyself on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 3:45 pm
It is nice to see that some young people are doing something and try to disconnect themself from the shitty system
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGLs0OnBeJE
makati1 on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 8:48 pm
Cannot add anything to the above comments. Well done!