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Page added on November 14, 2016
Kunstler: What Now?
Not to put too fine a point on it, America coughed up Hillary Clinton like a hairball last week — the catch being it then had to swallow the Cheeto-colored bolus called Donald Trump. It was worth it to see the fog of Hillary-smuggery lift across the cable TV networks since the “I’m With Her / It’s Her Turn” fog was a cover for the looting operation that the permanent Washington DC establishment had turned into, including the Clinton Foundation.
Obviously, the nation is reeling from this emetic, struggling to process the meaning of it all. The big “tell” for me came at a moment in last week’s Slate Political Gabfest, a leftish-oriented podcast, when moderator David Plotz asked his sidekicks John Dickerson (of CBS News) and Emily Bazelon (of The NY Times) what the Democratic Party might do to regain legitimacy after this electoral disaster. Dead silence on the air. Nothing came to mind.
Something came to my mind as a long-time disaffected (registered) Democrat: jettison the stupid identity politics and get back to reality. Alas, that may be too much to ask. For now, the party lies in ruins without a single figure of stature to represent a coherent set of ideas other than boosting the self-esteem of its favor-seeking constituent groups. Here’s my idea: how about forming a credible opposition to the so-called Deep State, the matrix of racketeering and empire-building that has drained the life out of this polity. That was impossible with the racketeer-in-chief leading the blue electoral ticket, but now the dynamic stands naked and obvious, answering the question: what to do next?
Another catch, of course, is that opposing the Deep State of Rackets is pretty much what Mr. Trump has promised to do, if “draining the swamp” means anything. He never quite articulated it clearly beyond that metaphor, but you can bet that’s what the DC establishment is so alarmed about. Trump’s behavior on the campaign trail is now being hailed in the media as a kind of genius. To me, it still seems oafish to an extreme, and it remains to be seen how such a blunderer might finesse our escape from the empire of rackets and the racket of empire. He begins to look like a man in a tunnel staring down the harsh light of the onrushing gravy train.
Mr. Trump might not know it yet, but his chief task will be managing contraction. It would appear to be problematic, since his chief promise — “to make America great again” — is based on restarting the epic expansions of the 19th and 20th centuries. Well, things have changed. This is no longer a virgin continent filled with motherlodes, untapped oil bonanzas, and fabulous soils begging to be exploited. In fact, we’re close to being played out where those resources are concerned. And the techno-industrial economy engineered out of those assets is wobbling badly.
There is a Great Wish that this system might be replaced just-in-time with some as-yet-unrealized Green Alt Economy of solar-charged driverless electric cars — but, of course, the unchallenged pathetic idiocy of the assumed car dependence at the center of this fantasy ought to tell you how exactly unreal it is. The contraction we face has mandates of its own, and it doesn’t include the continuation of Happy Motoring on any terms. I’m quite certain that the Trump forces haven’t even imagined it.
I would propose three meta-matters in consideration of how America might survive the disorders of the Long Emergency: the financialization of the economy, the burdens of empire, and the fiasco of our suburban living arrangement.
The financialization of the economy is already playing into its disastrous climax as I write, with bond markets tanking all over the planet. What this means is that the long-ignored chickens of risk associated with debt are coming home to roost. As they do, they are going to shit over everything on the financial landscape. Industrial societies have been borrowing from the future to a grotesque degree for decades, pretending that these debts were assets rather than liabilities. That perception is about to change, and with it an enormous amount of presumed notional wealth is going to disappear. That will manifest in rising bond yields (and falling bond values), cratering currencies, panicked capital flows, banking emergencies, and weird action in markets. If that seems too metaphysical, you can also think of it as contracting economies and the withering of global trade relations. There’s also the chance it will express itself in kinetic conflict, i.e. war.
My sense of things is that this meta-predicament alone could overwhelm the Trump government from the very start. We could have problems with money orders of magnitude worse than anything FDR faced in 1933, with bank closures, the seizing of accounts, and the paralysis of everyday business. That would easily lead to civil disorders, a breakdown in law, and the immiseration of most Americans. It could also lead to previously-unimagined political outcomes, such as a discontinuity of government. This is connected with the second meta-problem, the burdens of empire.
The USA is squandering its vitality trying to maintain a half-assed global empire of supposed interests, economic, ideological, and existential. Lately, this hapless project has only resulted in wars with no end in places we don’t belong. It includes reckless experiments such as the promotion of regime change (Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Egypt, Syria), and senseless, provocative exercises such as the use of NATO forces to run war games near Russia’s border. The monetary cost of all this is off the hook, of course, redounding to the financial mess. Reigning in these imperial impulses could be on the Trump agenda, but his own gold-plated imperial pretensions suggest that he might actually make the situation worse by conflating a reduction of our empire with a loss of the very “greatness” he wants to reclaim. As it happens, America may be forced by economic circumstances to yield the burdens of empire. The world is about to become a bigger place again as globalism winds down and the larger nations establish more realistic spheres of influence. We better get with the program.
Thirdly comes the question of how Americans inhabit the terrain: the suburban fiasco and all its accessories and furnishings. You can just stick a fork in that. The great project awaiting this country is how we might redistribute our people into re-scaled walkable communities with re-localized economies, including re-scaled agriculture. It’s going to happen whether we like it or not. It’s only a matter of how disorderly the process may be. Obviously all the suburban crapola out there also represents a tremendous load of presumed wealth. The vested “value” in suburban houses alone is the underlayment of structured finance. There is almost no conscious political awareness in any party — including the Greens — as to how we might attempt to work this out.
But, for example, and for a start, Mr. Trump might consider the effect that national chain “Big Box” shopping has had on Main Street America. It literally destroyed local commercial economies all over the land, and with it numberless vocational niches and social roles in communities. He can’t sign an edict against the Big Box empire, but his people might start imagining the process of rebuilding local networks of commerce and actively de-incentivizing the Big Box business model. That model has many other ways to fail, incidentally, and already is failing to some degree between the impoverishment of its customers and the growing problems with global supply lines. But anything that might lubricate the transition would be better than the stark collapse of the current arrangement.
The chatter this week has been all about the upcoming “infrastructure” orgy that Trump will undertake. That depends first of all on how badly the financial sector cracks up. I hope we do not squander more of our dwindling capital on the accessories of car dependence, because that addiction is on the way out. One thing Mr. Trump might get behind is restoring the passenger railroads of America so that we can at least get around the continental nation when the Happy Motoring fiesta grinds to a halt. It would put an awful lot of people to work on something with real long-term benefit — it ties into the restoration of Main Street towns and their economies — and it is a do-able project that might give us the needed encouragement to get on with the many other necessary projects awaiting our attention.
In case you were wondering, I was not jumping up and down cheering the Trump victory, amazing as it was. I figured the good news was that Hillary lost and the bad news was that Trump won. Now, we just have to roll with it.
30 Comments on "Kunstler: What Now?"
makati1 on Mon, 14th Nov 2016 6:15 pm
A very accurate picture of America, as usual for JHK. He is correct in what is needed, but he is also correct in that it will not happen until it is forced by reality. And the ‘transition’ will be very painful. The pain is already beginning. Are YOU prepared?
jedrider on Mon, 14th Nov 2016 6:32 pm
Trump is some of that PAIN, so I’m afraid it’s already started.
Sissyfuss on Mon, 14th Nov 2016 7:33 pm
Trump is further proof that we are lost as a nation, a position that is getting very popular on the planet.
makati1 on Mon, 14th Nov 2016 8:09 pm
Sissy, you are correct. The real America is now exposed for all to see. Thanks to the ‘election’ and all the events happening now. And about time!
Dooma on Mon, 14th Nov 2016 8:25 pm
Trump is a living, breathing protest vote. I am going to love watching him bring in protectionism. So, people are going to pay double for the shit they buy from Walmart? Or are Americans going to be paid less to keep prices down? Should become quite interesting in the next few years.
Boat on Mon, 14th Nov 2016 8:37 pm
Dooma,
The rise of the robot will make a lot of trade unnecessary in the future. Walmart will be fine.
makati1 on Mon, 14th Nov 2016 8:44 pm
Boat, IF robots replace people (and paychecks) Who is going to buy the shit they make? No Jobs. No paychecks. No taxes paid to fund the welfare/warfare state. Again, your lack of intelligence is showing.
makati1 on Mon, 14th Nov 2016 8:56 pm
BTW: Forget about the SCS. There is a new seaway opening up for use by Russia’s friends. The NSR.
http://journal-neo.org/2016/11/14/the-northern-sea-route-new-prospects-for-the-pacific-rim/
“It is worth mentioning that the NSR runs through Russian territorial waters, which means that the countries looking to use it have to build rapport with Russia. This circumstance might play an important role in the development of Russian international relations.”
Might? WILL! And the Empire knows it. lol
Plantagenet on Mon, 14th Nov 2016 8:58 pm
Obama promised high speed rail and didn’t build it. It seems unlikely that Trump will build it either
Anonymous on Mon, 14th Nov 2016 9:20 pm
When did this ‘obama’ specifically promise high-speed rail moron? Did he have the authority to authorize such an undertaking or could he allocate funds and personnel for such a project in his capacity and teleprompter-reader-in-chief? He may have talked about it on occasion, but ‘obama’ talked about a lot of other things during hsi ceremonial role as ‘president’. But it meant little, few took him seriously, and most of what he said, was odds at reality. But still, where and when, did he ‘promise’ high-speed rail. As opposed to just making general statements on the topic?
You know, little of what obama says was of any importance, and was often at odds with reality. Kind of like…..almost everything you post.
Plantatard……I have to ask, you aren’t Brak obama are you?
dooma on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 2:57 am
Boat, what about all of these American steel workers that Trump promised to get back to work? No robots there!
He quite skilfully tapped into the fears and anxieties of the shrinking middle-class of your nation.
How are you going to make steel when it is not economically viable to do so?
There is a big reason that there is a rust belt in America. Same as the mining boom that has busted in my country.
The good times are over. And they are never coming back.
dooma on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 3:01 am
And just to clarify, that grinning slag was no better and I loved to see the smile wiped from her face.
But you have just had a heap of angry Americans vote for a slogan with no real substance to it.
How apt for America to go out with a climate denier at the wheel.
Davy on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 6:12 am
Many voted against criminality and the establishment which is real and significant “substance”. Some hardcore angry white men voted for an empty slogan and an ideal but they voted and they voted hard. The snowflake liberals failed because they were way too sure of themselves. They cheated and thought they had it in the bag. Pride does these things. Pride makes people lazy and this is why a small army can crush a big army. Putin making efforts to engage Trump is substance. I can assure you not much would have been said if Hillary was elected. Europe and China are all hot and bothered about what Trump might do. The markets are gyrating and uncertain. So talk of “no substance” is way off the mark.
Trump may not get much done but he did the necessary first step of cracking the mold in the process of breaking the mold. The hyper-capitalism and liberal democratic trends of the last 20 years are a failure. Not all of it but the extremes that have developed in what we have today. This has culminated in moral hazard and criminality of the elite. We see the hypocrisy of political correctness. We see the fake talk of human rights when people are bombed in their living room. We are in a great game of brinkmanship when we need to be facing a great danger of collapse. The US is the main reason for this. It is the hijacking of the US that is the reason for this. Trump supporters who were not benefiting from this hijacking said no. The establishment is not gone but it has been checked.
Trump will oversee the dismantling of the last vestiges of the American empire and along with it globalism. He may not do it but he started the process. It will not be only Trump and he did not start this. It started with Putin and his rejection of American and western world domination militarily and economically. Brexit was the first western effort at this shift. Trump is adding the necessary American element. Globalism will not go quickly but it has begun the process of being dismantled. Globalism is dated anyway. In a world of limits and diminishing returns the necessary growth required for globalism to work is stalling. We see this with debt and lower growth rates. The end of the Chinese economic revolution is the primary reason it lasted this long. China is done growing as it once did. We do not have a big enough earth to allow China to grow much more. This game is nearly over and who knows what is next. Trump is just the latest expression of destructive change to globalism.
Yorchichan on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 7:17 am
@makati
Are YOU prepared?
I’m not getting at you, but how do you prepare for the collapse of industrial civilization and the death of most if not all? I’ll grant that due to climate the Philippines is a better place to be than northern Europe where I live, but I’ve checked and your population has increased from 22M in 1955 to over 100M now. This increase is due in large part to the green revolution, so what’s gonna happen when fossil fuels go away? Will the locals leave you alone when they are starving themselves?
Davy on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 7:56 am
“due to climate the Philippines is a better place to be than northern Europe” The P’s are ranked in the top 5 of those countries facing the worst of the destructive effects of climate change. Add to the climate change issue the fact that the P’s are one of the worst countries in the world considering overpopulation. Manila, where Makati lives, has one of the highest population densities in the world. Manila’s greater population region is a mega population center of 20MIL destine to self-destruct like any other mega population centers. The P’s forest and ocean ecosystems are failing. Soil is eroding and salt water is encroaching on urban water supplies. The P’s are not the “Club Med” Makati wants everyone to believe.
http://web.unep.org/geo/resources/assessment-findings
Cloggie on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 8:52 am
Makati always has the option of flying home into relative safety of the Mid-West and perhaps rent a room in Davy’s house.lol
He has been talking about some mysterious farm for five years now, but apparently he still lives in a high-rise building in Manila. Makati will be fine, real climate change is unlikely going to kick in any time soon. And a US-Chinese war over the South China Sea seems to have been called off, thanks to the Donald. If Trump is smart (and I think he is), he withdraws his fleet to Hawaii and leave the SCS to the surrounding states to bitch over. He can easily reach agreement with China about naval spheres of influence half-way the Pacific (exception: war over Japan and Taiwan). But perhaps Trump doesn’t even care about these as well.
Yorchichan on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 9:40 am
@Davy
Oh well, at least he’ll die warm. I used to have a vague notion I might fly to Thailand once I’d had enough of trying to keep warm under the duvet, but I hear they’re already full up too.
Ghung on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 9:45 am
Yorchichan, where most folks live, it’s harder to keep cool.
Ghung on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 9:49 am
Right, Clog, maybe Trump can get China to buy up the over $1 trillion in US debt that Japan is sitting on.
Boat on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 9:56 am
China and Japan use debt to by US debt. Must be the rich Jew deep state that set that up.
Jerome Purtzer on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 2:00 pm
I guess the big question will be is Trump going to be a Vampire or Zombie president. Like Goldman Sachs he loves money so he might suck the U.S. dry-or what’s left of it. But, on the other hand he lives in a fact free, non reality based world and he has appointed the head of Brietbart, to lead the way. Leaning towards a Zombie Presidency with a Reagan complete blank at the end.
Davy on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 2:22 pm
Jerome, Trump has money. This is not about money it is about winning. It may be about power. I don’t know Trump enough. I bet he is wondering WTF I won now WTF do I do.
Anonymous on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 3:11 pm
The lessor of two evils actually ‘won’. From what I understand, the trump is busy handing out govt positions to his family, and goldstein-sachs is busy filling all the top financial posts in washingdum with their people.
Rage and Change indeed!
Oh, Plantatard, where is that source for that ‘high-speed rail promise’ someone called ‘obama’ made, that you were working on getting for me? Hows that coming along?
Jerome Purtzer on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 5:10 pm
I’ve known many rich people over the years and they usually follow one of two templates. One is the super rich philanthropist a la Andrew Carnegie, like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. They divest themselves of the bulk of their fortune to help others less fortunate. The other template a la J.P Morgan and Diamond Jim Brady seems to be where The Donald was formed. To them, they always want one dollar more at the expense of everyone else,especially the less fortunate.
Anonymous on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 5:27 pm
ROLF!, philanthropists, seriously? Buffet and Gates?! Buffet, despite being a buzzard with one foot in the grave, keeps trying to grow his fortune, and will, right up until the minute he kicks off. Gates, despite his ‘do-gooder’ halo, runs around promoting neo-liberal for-profit education, nuclear power, and continues to be a ardent proponent of centralized, complex technologies (privately controlled of course) wherever he goes.
Needless to say, the ‘gates foundation’, is basically one gigantic tax-shelter.
Where does the ‘philanthropic’ part kick in with either of those two?
Apneaman on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 5:36 pm
“PHILANTHROPIST, n. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.”
Ambrose Bierce – The Devil’s Dictionary
Apneaman on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 7:40 pm
So This is How the US Revolution Will Unfold
“n late 2012, Peter Turchin, a professor at the University of Connecticut made a startling claim. Based on an analysis of revolutionary upheavals across history, he found that there were 3 social conditions in place shortly before all major outbreaks of social violence: an increase in the elite population; a decrease in the living standards of the masses; and huge levels of government indebtedness. The statistical model his team developed suggested that, on this basis, a major wave of social upheaval and revolutionary violence is set to take place in the US in 2020.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/15/so-this-is-how-the-us-revolution-will-unfold/
makati1 on Tue, 15th Nov 2016 8:58 pm
Ap, interesting date. The one I have been saying for the last few years. Between now and 2020, the world is going to change so drastically that it will all fall apart. I’ll read the article later. Going out for a walk to the mall for a few supplies and some exercise. Sun shining and 86F here today.
joe on Wed, 16th Nov 2016 12:05 am
To address the point about war games on
Russias borders. Elements of US power model themselves on the greatest failed empire in history, Rome. As if copying the example of a nation that exhausted itself by constant boarder wars was a good example to follow…
An empire that ultimately fell apart so badly it gave way to the rise of Islam (and not realising thats exactly what happened) is not the way to go.
Anonymous on Wed, 16th Nov 2016 12:48 am
Wow, joe, good job. amerikans, still the most ignorant species to ever exist.
“An empire that ultimately fell apart so badly it gave way to the rise of Islam (and not realising thats exactly what happened) is not the way to go.”
ROFL. Rome’s decline had nothing to do with the’rise of Islam’. The only thing Romes decline lead to was a over 1000 years of christian ignorance and barbarism-in the WEST. ‘Islam’ essentially laid at the edges of Roman power except maybe at its height, and Islam was going to rise, fall whatever, regardless what Rome did or didnt do. Nor did Romans, feel that they had some special mandate, or that it was a priority to ‘stop the spread of Islam’. Thats the ignorant amerikan in you projecting your own decaying empires priorities onto a people 2000 years gone.
Might as well have blamed the Romans for the rise of Communist China while you were at. Would have made just as much sense as that nonsense.