It’s nice to read something fresh, from a voice that has a strong and determined POV that is divorced from the standard party line you’re bad/y’ll would be even worse that graces us this election cycle. Never have I been so happy to have a TiVO – and I was reminded of that fact when I visited my parents in Wisconsin last week, and was bombarded by the nasty, incessant political ads (WI is a "battleground state" and thus both parties are pouring in the cash … must be a good day to be the ad manager of good ol’ WEAU-13 in Eau Claire).
But Jim Kunstler on the aptly named "Clusterfuck Nation" writes with rather disturbing confidence in the convergence of a bunch of really bad trends in the next
couple of decades:
A hundred and fifty years (roughly) after the civil war, the United
States faces another possible political convulsion. The earlier one was over slavery, a moral contradiction so stark and awful that an emerging
modern industrial polity could no longer ignore it. The coming convulsion we face in the 21st century is not so much moral but no less stark: the collapse of a faltering industrial polity in the face of
depleting energy supplies. Like the earlier dilemma of slavery, our national leaders refuse to face it.
He goes on to write about the parallels between Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln in a way that I find rather uncanny – and which make me rather sympathetic to Barack, in that if this is the fate that awaits him, my impulse would be to shout at him to run for his goddam life!
A President Obama would also very probably face a geopolitical crisis as the US, China, Russia, Japan, Europe, and the Islamic nations jockey desperately over energy resources while their own populations grow
restive, desperate, angry, and possibly aggressive. In other words, a President Obama would possibly face a world war, a civil war, and a great depression all at once. This is not a happy fate for any leader,
and so perhaps in the public perception of Barack Obama, in the rising of his star, so to speak, the public apprehends the outlines of tragedy, just as the historical Lincoln is an incomplete picture without the tragedy of his murder a few days after the resolution of
the terrible war he presided over.
Yikes.
Anyone else feel like suddenly digging a root cellar and stocking it to the brim with canned goods and pump shotgun ammo? I disagree with the predictions for a civil war – if for no other reason that we just aren’t that homogenous and cohesive a society anymore. There are too many red state rednecks in the midst of Blue States … and vice-versa. Makes it hard to prosecute a war in the sense of a conflict with clearly defined borders when you’re spending all your time internally trying to rid yourself of all those goddam infidels.
In that light, the current events in Iraq can perhaps be taken by us The Shape of Things to Come: substitute Democrat and Republican for Sunni and Shiite and hey, welcome to Sadr City. Could there be a future where in Georgia and Alabama, there are internment camps for those who are insufficiently patriotic or who dare to voice an anti-Jeesus opinion? Where anyone with a sex toy or "alternate lifestyle choice" would, for the protection of devout and decent society, would be sent to a "deprogramming" facility run by Opus Dei, the Family Decency Council and the Southern Baptist Minister’s Coalition?
Could the English and Philosophy Department Faculty Senates at Berkeley and Oregon State stage show trials at which the drivers and sympathizers with former drivers of Humvees were made to stand on a stage before a hooting, jeering crowd and acknowledge the error of their ways, before being sent to re-learn the value of peasant labor in the organic soybean fields?
Even the recent upward swings in the stock markets are taken as portents of Evil On the Way:
To me, the Fall 2006 Euphoria only underscores how divorced the
financial sector is from real life. Day by day, thousands of grifters
are making huge digital dollar profits on abstract financial plays in a
global virtual casino. None of these plays has much to do with anything
of real and enduring value. They’re just scoring points on
consolidations of ailing industries, on turns of the interest and
currency differentials wheel-of-fortune, abstruse shorting strategies,
and similar non-productive shenanigans. While these thousands of playas
party hearty, millions of non-playa middle-American shlubs are
underwater with their mortgage payments or real estate taxes, going
bankrupt from their child’s emergency apendectomy, or desperately
seeking parking places where the re-po man won’t find their Ford
Expedition on which they failed to make payments numbers thirty-eight
through forty-four after being laid off by the Uniwanker Corporation.
This guy’s essays are certainly bracing – in a way that makes you wonder why you haven’t sold the homestead and beat feet to a lamb ranch outside of Christchurch, NZ. I am, however, unimpressed by the lack of any kind of a prescription for avoiding (and not just "Hey, let’s everyone start living like Hobbits!" crunchy granola&Phish impractical utopianism) this ugly future?