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Guest Post: On These Strange Years Of Suspended Consequence
Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com,
Well, at least the poobahs cleared a path to the annual orgy of Christmas, which, along with the S & P 500, have become proxies for the American economy. Lately, the Christmas season starts directly after Halloween, so, the whole fourth quarter of the year becomes a circus of ceremonial distractions. In the background, though, the nation grinds toward anguish, measured in soiled Justin Bieber dolls deposited in the landfills.
Historians who look back on these strange years of suspended consequence will marvel at how this empire of grift kept its wheels turning after its engine died. Being on the downhill slope is often enough to keep anything going. One might think the young people of this land would be seething at the eclipse of their futures, but it seems they have been successfully lobotomized with cell phones — when the endorphin hits lag between text messages, they can watch sitcoms, or porn.
You can be sure there will be a snapback from all this drift and anomie, and when it comes, the snap will be savage. Like the US economy, the Republican Party is dead but hasn’t gotten the news. It killed itself just as the Whigs did in the years before the Civil War, by splitting up into factions — one faction of “know-nothings” preoccupied with scape-goats opposed to a faction of sclerotic parasitical fat-cats too timid and greedy to engage in the emergencies of the day.
The Tea Party faction should change its name to the Cracker Party because it represents the interests of white southerners who are too dumb to know what these emergencies amount to. They are really more comfortable with the supernatural, hence their fondness for religions based on snake-handling, visitations of the dead, and motor sports. Personally, I believe they will eventually contrive to form their own break-away Cracker Republic and attempt to re-enact the Civil War. They will fail, and starve, and find themselves back in an even worse long-term depression than Dixieland experienced from 1860 to 1960, in a de-suburbanized wasteland of bare subsistence farming. Their highest art will be soup-making.
The non-Tea Party Republicans will just shrivel and vanish out of sheer irrelevance. This leaves the Democrats to become the focus of intense ire as they attempt to ‘splain why the nation’s affairs went to shit on their watch. A lot of them will end up being executed and plundered by the new kid on the block, the Savior Party, led by some charismatic character willing to ignore procedural protocols to clear away the debris left by his-or-her predecessors. Alas, the juice will not be there to permit the Savior to really control a territory as large as the continental USA. By juice, I mean money and oil. Thus, the nation enters its new dark age.
Who knows when that will get underway in earnest, though I think the folks who say 2014 are onto something. If you believe in cycles, which I tend to, then it rhymes nicely with 1814 and 1914, two watersheds when one epoch ended and another truly began. 2014 would logically be the year that China tells America to go piss up a rope. The message would be sent on the back of the envelope containing $2.7 trillion in official American debt paper. As Ole Blue Eyes used to say, this could be the start of something big.
Sentient observers of the current scene are clearly frustrated by the remarkable homeostasis that seems to rule the scene, these horse-latitudes of history where the air is still and nothing moves and the mind is exhausted by watchful waiting. Things will get lively, soon enough, so enjoy the holiday quarter of the year which is so soon upon us. Gorge on candy corn. When you recover from that, roast a turkey. Then make a nice figgy pudding. Then pop some bubbly and salute your loved ones. Then gird your loins for the new age of consequence.
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Candy corn makes me puke.
This article is dumb & stooopid because central banks just have to use wildly imaginative monetary policy in order to keep stock market indexes from falling (aka in a state of suspended dis-reality) & the economy will eventually get really strong...
...this is the only thing that matters, period...
...& everyone knows this is true...
...so I am not listening to you...
{sticks fingers in ears & sings}
... La la la la la la la la la la...
In the Game of Red versus Blue, good citizens of the Tea party have been hijacked by the likes of Ted Cruz.
It is good stategy to infiltrate, takeover a righteous group then destroy it from within.
Ted Cruz is suspect not the Tea Party.
I myself gave up on the Red/Blue game years ago... this Game is entertainment for the Plebeians.
"Tea Party" - What the fuck is the Tea Party?
There's no website, there is no mailing address, no Tea Party pleas for money in my mailbox.
The Tea Party is some ephemeral fog of deception, a miasma of controlled opposition, a heat sink for genuine anger that has no real appendages that can carry out function.
Enough with this Tea Party shit, get a real third party going or drop it.
Haven't you heard, Al Kyeduh is the leading Tea Party candidate for 2016 - well that's what Chris Mathews told me.
Reminder: skip the "guest posts" by this guy.
Tea Party is the tool of the corporations who run America. They bought it with cash the minute it appeared on the scene as a revolt against Banker Bailouts. How long did that last? 2 fucking seconds, it was purchased with money and now serves as a cats paw for the corporations, hedge funds and bankers to not only run America, but to run the soo called opposition party. Too fucking funny. They bought congress and they bought the opposition to congress! Ha! Ha! the Joke is on us.
Now seriously, the Tea Party acts as an agent to attract the popular right wing man on the street and to bring him over to work for the goals of Banks, Corporations and the Military Industrial complex. The American ultra right winger does tend to be white and christian fundamentalist, they are from the poorest of the poor, all the way up to the White Elite Bankers, many of whom are not fundamentalist christian, but Jewish. These two get along very well, as they share a common religion based around Israel and the USA as an agent of god.
So what do we get in the end? We get Congress and the President both purchased by bribes to keep the military industrial complex going, to keep the empire growing, to use the Fed to feed Wall-Street and the Banks, to seek austerity for the old and lower classes, to off shore the last American job in the interests of corporate profits, and to manipulate the markets for the benefit of the 1%. All this happens with the broad support of everyone from AIPAC, to Wall-Street to the run down back woods fundamentalist hill billy church. They are all allied in this money printing imperial war monger spy state we live in.
The Tea Party is nothing to me, but more people being used to keep the money flowing to the top. They were agianst the bank bailouts for about 3 hours, then the big money and the official republican party stepped in and bought the Tea Baggers and now Tea Party is just another Republican pressure group. Sadly this is so!
Well said, JB. I note, with pride, all the down arrows, you hit the nail on the head.
All my retarded friends, associates, and family members (apologies to true retards) still believe one of the 2 sides will save us if only the other would stop the hate. When I laugh, the whispers start. Fuckheads, all.
Junk at will...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_Caucus
"The caucus was approved as an official congressional member organization by the House Administration Committee on July 19, 2010"
"As of October 2013, the Tea Party Caucus and the similar Liberty Caucus are practically defunct."
defunct = broken coccyx?
Thanks, Cunt-slur
I have an idea for your next article. Take out your writing paper, write down all the names of the groups who want this banana republic government to show even the slightest bit of restraint, place the paper on the floor, drop your fetid drawers, squat down, stick out your bony, ill-wiped ass, and take a giant shit.
Never mind, that would be redundant.
"It is good stategy to infiltrate, takeover a righteous group then destroy it from within."
Bing badda bang Ying.
Division has always been used as one of the easiest tools to play by the lazy who do the dirtiness of evil behind the scenes of the public view. It is all done for manipulation and control of the masses. Were they ALL ever to unite world wide, the evil would be vanquished over night.
We must all KNOW that DIVISION is a DIS-EASE of man, not God the Creator. We were all created equal and as one family of man in the beginning. Remember? This destructive divide and conquer tool is used religiously in todays america by the babylonians that spend billions of dollars trying to master this horrid game of keeping people at each others throats, and squandering in the school yard like a bunch of brain washed kids. All the while, standing back and laughing at them all for being so darn stoopid and foolish to keep playing the centuries old games. Take that false flag trick for instance. Talk about stoopid. Look at those who actually believe this fiction and carry it to the next level of insanity with a government about to declare war on it's own people. The same people who paid their hard earned tax dollars to manifest this evil mercenary army and military hardware aligned against them. Hi...can we buy the gun for you to shoot and murder us with?
How does it feel America to have fallen to this low? How does it feel to be like the poor innocent dumb animals in the line headed towards the slaughter houses, instead of into the new age of truth and dawn of the greatest Renaissance in history? How does it feel to be this darn stooooooopid?
It continues day after day because the people actually would rather fight and dicker amongst each other, rather than realize we are ALL ONE world-wide. They are conditioned to be more comfortable hiding from their neighbors and creating differences, than having massive block parties that are a lot more fun than killing each other for those banksters and their satanic/luciferic garbage agenda that profits from all the murdering and carnage of division among those that keep bumping heads.
All this is no less than egos bouncing around on the courts of imbalance, and distractionary horsewash. Gawd, the lies and phony-baloney lame stream media barrages of pure puke are getting horrendously sickening. The lies of the head puppet and assorted blabber-mouths that are supposed to be leaders is just gut wrenching ugly muck sickening and gross, you could not feed it to a hungry starving pig.
By the way, big giant kudos to the Grand Tyler who wrote this article. Stars and Bars. Telling it like it is is the first step towards solving the problems. If one sees what is wrong and where the train is headed off the cliff, perhaps a more proper decision to change it all can still be made. People have to pick a side NOW and we all pray every soul on board makes the right decisions in the days, and months to come. God knows there are plenty of answers to solve these ginormous world problems, and it starts with these corrupted criminals and their mind-controlled minions. The right up and proper way has been shown and talked about many times. People actually made it happen this year.
It is time for America to WAKE UP...GET OFF THE COUCH...and go out and recall these senate toads, and congress critters NOW! The time is right to pull the rug out from all the warmongering for the foreign banks, and population control freaks. It is past time to bring ALL our troops home. It is past time to stop all monies that are being sent to other countries for ANY reason at all. It is past time we keep borrowing paper that is called money that is not money from private foreign bankster families, while they charge us interest to use it. We in America have the law and constitution that says the treasury can print it's own money and let the people use if for free, thus not paying the foreign banksters to use their paper. What sane soul can continue to watch the country being bleed dry to pay these asshats to use the paper god-money they print? Here is what you need to know.:
PROJECT: RECALL THEM ALL!
http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/recall96.pdf
So, there is a little to ponder. Do some research, start up groups to get petitions signed, and have block parties while you can. Impeach and recall and banish the criminal tyrants from your towns and states NOW! Doing this immediately will stop the insanity. If this country had a majority that really CARED, really loved their families, their country, the ship could be turned into the wind to face the real incoming threats to the planet. We could all make it through the impending earth changes. It can only be done utilizing all the mental energy of every soul on board. This was the fault of other past civilizations that perished, and do you want to know why? Division! They could not all get it together to be the one they, we all are. Here we go again. Do ya think the civilization can get it right this time? Will this be the epoch of real change, or will ego have it's way again? We have all the answers. We might still be collectively smart enough to learn from history still. Basically, it is as easy as THIS:
WORLD-WIDE...
United We Stand...Divide We Fall...
FAMILY and Community...will Save us ALL!
There is no other Way.
Have an awesome Day!
:)
"What sane soul can continue to watch the country being bled dry to pay these asshats to use the paper god-money they print?"
Yet sadly you all will....you are I belive doomed and have been since you espoused this....
"Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of you teaming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Well you got the refuse that's for sure, the culmination of this imported poison it coming to pass. The American ricktus will likely be viscous and spew over onto other countries.
"What sane soul can continue to watch the country being bled dry to pay these asshats to use the paper god-money they print?"
Yet sadly you all will....you are I belive doomed and have been since you espoused this....
"Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of you teaming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Well you got the refuse that's for sure, the culmination of this imported poison it coming to pass. The American ricktus will likely be viscous and spew over onto other shores.
Funny how a rising number of dudes like you is turning bullish....thats exactly what D.C wants and it even seems to work....
Watch your step the day it turns....
This period in history, will become remembered for the Zombies that took over the world's economies , finances and markets. A time when all logic and wisdom was forgotten and abandoned.
Re; A time when all logic and wisdom was forgotten and abandoned.
I suspect that was said in 1929 and at various time in the 1800's.
The world has always been going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket.
I'm sure, if things here get really bad, some sociopaths will step up and lead the dumbasses to their glory and destruction while the smart-n-savvy people watch from the sidelines and laugh all the way to the next bank.
We've been here before, many times.
A classic for good reason:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
Everyone gets caught up in the hype of the moment, and "this is the worst _____________ ever". History is important, if for no other reason than to put supposed grave issues in context.
Kunstler is right on some things but his hatred of white southerners is extreme and vile. He can't seem to write more than three paragraphs without committing a hate crime. He might want to look in the mirror, and his address book, to see where so much of the real problem lies.
I agree! And why have the Tyler's bolded that line?
Why have the Tylers even posted this vapid yet hateful rant here in ZH?
What useful analysis or information did it provide?
I'm surprised that it did not end with "Get the Hell offa my lawn!".
Page hits
Sometimes I wonder if Kunstler really exists, or if it's just a computer programmed to write the same thing every Monday, just rotating the metaphors and seasonal references. Doom is just around the corner, always. Not sure when the world ends, but probably 201_.
I agree. Kunstler is half-right on many things, but he lets his prejudices and romantic ideas cloud his judgement. He hates the South, and thinks that all conservatives are either evil or stupid. He also has this romantic illusion that we're all going to become 1820's era subsistence farmers singing songs around our wood burning stoves. And his economic predictions are crap because every year he predicts that next year is when it all falls apart.
I bet the little nerd had to read walden in high school and actually fucking believed that shit. He could have turned out different, if his folks would have just let him get that camaro. Then he could have played stink finger in the back seat and grown up normal.
one year, though, he will be right.
dup
I wish the owner of this site would reconsider letting that fool post his dumbass opinions on here. Kunstler really isn't worth our time and here's why: Every once in awhile he nails some meme pretty well, but he always mistakes the underlying causes due to his own biases. And worse, he offers no solutions to anything, just more doom and gloom and that really isn't helpful at all.
Also, everything he writes about is rehashed over and over. We already know, end of Happy Motoring, end of your much-hated Generica Suburban lifestyle (which has treated me pretty damn well, btw you ass).
Mr. Kunstler, go play with a Luger, you're not helping anything by writing this garbage.
If some guy walks up and says I am the leader of the Tea Party, does that make it so? If a bunch of other guys poured some money into the campaigns of some guys who said they represented the Tea Party, does that mean they have bought the party? Just because Karl Denninger , one of the original founders thinks the Tea Party has abandoned its ideals, does that make it so? Do the people on this board who have opinions about the Tea Party personally know anybody in the Tea Party? I know a few. They are mostly middle aged white folks that really don’t like the way their government is going. They tend to see the Constitution as a bastion between civil liberty and tyranny. It generally pisses them off that John McCain had the gall to run for president as the last best hope of the Republicans only to collaborate with his fellow Democrats and co-write the Nation Defense Authorization Act of 2012. Most of them are equally disturbed about the bank bailout and the FSA. They think entitlements are out of control. They believe the Leviathan has to be reined in, and they see a tax revolt as a mechanism to shrink government, ergo the term Tea Party. Crackers, what the hell is it with crackers? I was born in Florida; my mother was born in Florida. Her parents were born in Florida and their parents were born in Florida. I am a cracker. Am I ignorant? Certainly. Any man who says he is not ignorant simply cannot fathom what he does not know. Mr. Kunstler exhibits the worst kind of prejudice. He hates us without even knowing us.
I have to admit, nobody can preach gloom-and-doom with the aplomb of Kunstler.
Re: I have to admit, nobody can preach gloom-and-doom with the aplomb of Kunstler.
HA! So, true.
You can almost feel the hopium of the various political true-beliving dumbasses being drained from the site.
I salute his negativity and cynicism.
Hello Bam_Man! I read Kunstler, he does hate the South and he is very pro Israel as his posts sometimes make clear. Kunstler is liberal in a way that he sees the south as his natural enemy. I give him credit, he lives up north where the culture suits him, just as I do. I think the history of the South leading up to the civil war is very much like today. The south really seeks to return to it's roots, and they are so fare removed from the North that only two nations will ever solve the problem. Though the South is increasingly Black and Hispanic and that presents a hell of a problem for Southern culture. Right now the ability to reduce the vote and to make special white congressional districts has kept southern white power, but that can only work for so long, as the south is by nature going to be majority black and hispanic, that is a fact.
Bam_Man, just a question. You have the _ between your first and last name, just as someone has for James_Cole. I used to be James Cole over on Mish. But here on ZH someone appreared and used James Cole, but like you added the _. So are you the real Bam Man, or a clone like my former screen name James Cole?
Not a clone - the same Bam_Man. I still read Mish's blog, but rarely comment there anymore because his comments forum has been totally hijacked by a handful of nut jobs.
Yes, Me too Bam Man. I was amazed at how his comments section went from the best around, to being peopled by wack jobs and the FOX TV crowd. At least ZH offers a home of sorts. Still I would like to know who stole my James Cole screen name. I had a lot invested in that name, now I limp around as Jack Burton.
All but a handful of states "is by nature going to be majority black and hispanic, that is a fact."
True enough Almost Solvent. This fact is taking place much faster than the right wing had inteneded. In fact, California is by far a minority state for whites. They are the minority there, and always will be, and by ever increasing numbers. Mexico can not help but be owner of California again in a young persons life time.
Thus we have the voter suppression drive. I laugh at that, it works, sure does. But it can't work much longer, there simply are so many balcks and hispancis that no amount of white districts and laws to vote are gonna stop it. The Republicans are in termoil for just this reason. The Southern White Male is not going to be an election winner much longer. Simply can't go on. Hispancis want hispanic leaders, the party that delivers Hispanic candidates, real Hispanics, is going to win elections. That simple.
My old man lives in Lauderdale. South Florida might as well be part of the Bahamas or Cuba. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
But it is a waste of time to read about it.
Somebody needs a nap........
The article reads like something out of a Science Fiction story.
As compared to the coherent, sensible, level headed info we get from the government, big business and main stream media?
Some actual fiction:
http://madscienceunlimited.com/fiction/actsOfCharity.html
Wake up and smell the insanity. She's hungry extinction sleeping at the bottom Kunstler's bleak entropic well. Touch her and die.
Kunstler had some interesting observations on american highway culture but I think he's gone off the deep end. He's letting his partisan imagination fuel wild fantasies like the Tea Party leading the south to magical secession. Tone down the hyperbole bro
I hope he does not break his ankle later when he is walking with his flask under the overpass and trips over Mark Grant.
The "white southerners" are going to starve (the black southerners won't)? The same people (black and white) who still garden, can, and hunt? These people will starve as opposed to the folks in Cleaveland, Cincinnatti, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Jew York, Boston, Philly etc. etc.
Right, Good luck with that logic.
Hillbillies knuckle under last, if at all.
The masses in Atlanta Dallas and Miami will starve just as fast as their northern city dwellers in a JIT system.
The real problem here is a city vs. rural outlook on where things really come from and how they got there.
But the underlying assumption is that JIT systems will collapse and that's is far from a foregone conclusion.
I agree, it will likely be a slow drawn out clusterfuck, kinda like we're seeing now.
Unless or until some major shock hits the system.
I just don't see how city dwellers - north south east or west - would survive long without the JIT system, whereas rural folks (sometimes only an hour outside the city) could and would survive without the JIT system.
Don't forget JIT is BI-DIRECTIONAL... no sewage and no solid waste disposal can kill just as quickly as starvation in a population as dense as a modern city.
(neither a rooftop garden, nor a shit-bucket actually address that issue)
As a sidenote, I think you underestimate the resiliance of a city. My family lived through the Siege of Madrid, in the spanish civil war, a city of one million souls at that time. Three years, and the supplies to the city gone to crap, of course. They told me that is wasn't so bad; somehow people manage, if there is enough country around to take the place of more structurated commerce. It worked then, and I think it would work now, somehow. Of course, this is Europe, not USA, but you have a lot more real state around your cities than we have, so it's even better.
At the end of the day, it looks like, if everything goes to the crapper, the near rural population makes their day selling to the city.
Of course, that was a day and an age where the city also produced a lot of things. I'm not sure is like that anymore...
They can be made to collapse, either from above, or below, and it doesn't take much more than real knowledge.
How did I get here?? (to be read with the same inflections as David Byrne in song - Once in a lifetime)
You hammered that one Almost Solvent. That's the real issue, one I've been working with for a lot of years. Sad that it took me till I was almost 30 (about 30 years ago) to move out of that corrupt den and out to my mostly-self-sufficient homestead, with my community that as a whole IS self sufficient. You city boys...hell, some of you couldn't find this place with a map - we're not really worried about the zombies - they simply won't make it here or find us. If they happen to, hell, the neighbors will pick off most of 'em and give me plenty of warning to boot.
The unarmed metrosexual wimps who don't know where food comes from or which end of the gun is louder are going to take over and dominate the barbarian hinterlands. Yeah, really... just as has always happened. In Kunstler's head.
Comparisons to Rome are getting cliche, but he might want to see how it worked out then. I don't seem to remember the urbane Roman citizens doing that well against the crude barbarians c. AD 400.
Re: I don't seem to remember the urbane Roman citizens doing that well against the crude barbarians
The smart-n-savvy Romans moved to Tuscany and rebanded themselves as Italians. The dumbasses never noticed. Same thing will happen this time.
The dumbasses will kill each other, the Medici's will build some towers on the hills and laugh.
indeed. but in today's global marketplace of 7+ billion (and growing) where will they go? Mars? Well, one can always hope.
Re: where will they go?
I donno, that's a good question. But, if the power families of Nazi Germany managed to keep their wealth and life-styles I suspect the smart-n-savvy people accumulating most of the loot now will have the social-skills necessary to disappear into the great void.
The dumbasses spend most of the time killing each other (of course, being dumbasses). The winners who actually did all the looting usually go unnoticed.
The crackers are too upset about gay marriage and abortion to notice that their country has been looted.
Re: to notice that their country has been looted.
Oh, they noticed alright, but they are so stupid they think "those people" are getting it all.
Big-MIC not socialism, it's protectin' r freedums from them thar turbine wearin' muslims sneek-in-rrr crosser boarders!
Yup, yup, yup, yup. All we have to do is to remember to the final months and weeks of the Roman Empire, when the Barbaric (gold & silver-loving) Hordes were camped around Rome.
When Rome was cut off from its Aqueducts and no food coming in, how long did the crumbling Empire last, before the Elite and Senators were just as filthy and desperate as their servants?
And what cities in the US are today's "Rome"? And how critically are these cities tied to their JIT supply lines? You and what EBT Army? [Columbo pause] You know, the last time I checked, I recall the US Military being populated with the rural and "gullible, malleable farm boys" -- not slicksters from Academia, DC, Wall St or Stink-Tanks.
ROTF, LMAO. LoP nailed it. Again.
did he say what his EOY S&P forecast was?
lol
The Cracker Party? Oh, that is Ripe! Why hold back? Label them the "Crack Jack Party" with a surprise in every box---or am I dating myself too mutt? Hitler needed socialized medicine and the outlawing of guns to complete his grasp of the power reins. The ravages of hyperinflation, control of the media, etc were alreaud in place. Then he unleashed Krupps, IG Farben, Ford and IBM to do the rest. I used to think that USA was about 1934, but no more. We're at about 1938.....
If 9/11 was our Reichstag fire we are way past 1938. Try 1984.
"...change its name to the Cracker Party because it represents the interests of white southerners..."
Doesn't this violate the zh "notice on racial discrimination"?
Naw, its our fault our white ancestors beat the piss out of all those filthy little brown people. Now we have to pay the tab, you know.
No no no, you see, it's only racist if you use certain swear words, but actually writing down and enforcing racial policy which disenfranchises one group for anothers gain is justice, not discrimination.
Re; but actually writing down and enforcing racial policy which disenfranchises one group for anothers gain is justice
Especially if it's healthcare exclusively for OldFarts.
Git your socialist hands off my Medicare Motorscooter, I'm ENTITLED to that scooter you goddamn hippy. Why don't you get a job instead of demanding free shit from the government!
"white southerners who are too dumb"
Not dumb enough to detect the fact your entire post here could be plagiarized from past ZH articles.
Thanks for the checklist Mr. K, but us ignernt rednex can navagait th innrnet jus finonheer.
I'm not from the South!
Wow! Poor Kunstler was not held enough when he was a baby... Such anger and vitriol!...
He was weaned on a dill pickle
LOL!
I love the dig at Tea Party. You know, them evangelical crackas that don't do nothin but shag their cousins and swill moonshine.
And do all the actual fucking work that keeps this country stumbling down the road for a little while longer.
I guess Kuntstler has all the answers. After all, he did do at least one TED talk, which according to the hipster douches nearest me can solve ALL the worlds problems in just a hour and half of your precious time. And what is J Howard K's big fucking solution?
A more agrarian society, to counter the suburbian hell holes we have erected. Right. Upon your massive, beta male shoulders Howard will the labor flow to ensure self sufficient foodstuffs for every rooftop and window box garden. Illuminated by nourishing light, reflected from your fucking benedictine hairline.
Work is easy stuff, so long as your're only talking about it.
And in closing, there was this fucking idiot about 70 years ago that was wishing for a more "agrarian" society. Like our boy here, he was drab, unassuming underachieving little man, name of Heinrich Himmler. His ideas didn't work out so good when all those cracka, proto tea party types from flyover country broke up his little party.
Eat shit little man. The reckoning is at hand and you're not wired for it. Beta tapes = beta males.
There is no "Tea Party", not really. Having been to several gatherings in DC I can say with some authority: Lots of small groups of (typically) similarly pissed off middle class middle age working folks who know that debt is bad, and more debt is worse, and that gun control is a short path to slavery. The OP, very lazily, chooses to lump all together and dismiss as "the old Confederacy". Moron.
2014 would logically be the year that China tells America to go piss up a rope.
At least he got one thing right.
Re: and more debt is worse
But the debt used to pay for their hip replacement surguries and motor scooters was perfectly ok.
Everybody loves the socialist scam they are living off of.
There is no "Tea Party", not really. Having been to several gatherings in DC I can say with some authority: Lots of small groups of (typically) similarly pissed off middle class middle age working folks who know that debt is bad, and more debt is worse, and that gun control is a short path to slavery. The OP, very lazily, chooses to lump all together and dismiss as "the old Confederacy". Moron.
2014 would logically be the year that China tells America to go piss up a rope.
At least he got one thing right.
-----
Actually that is probably the one thing he got the most wrong. There is no possible way China is going to tell America to piss up a rope:
1. They need a market for their manufacturing
2. They need the Yuan to stay low against the dollar
Thus there is no way they are going to risk losing their biggest market or fuck up the Yuan's exchange rate, both of which would occur if they told America to piss up a rope. China is just as locked into this unholy banking fiat currency alliance as the rest of the world.
Sharon loves zeroheadge
Take a Minute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUcGcGFCcqk …
This has to be the worst post on ZH I've ever read.
Agreed man. At least with Simon Blacks earlier, unbearable shit there was still a little of the "Colonel McBragg". This Kuntstler guy, I bet he reviews and re-publishes his fucking neighborhood convenent tri-annually.
What a goddamn toothache in human form.
Re: This has to be the worst post on ZH I've ever read.
End the fed.
I agree, It surpasses even my more pointless drunken rants (deleated before posting blessedly)
Well, there's still the citizenism diatribes of AnAnonymous ....
Make me laugh.
good call!
i love it when Chindit takes a wire brush to ORI's ass, too. Lulz a palooza.
I doubt this article will be received too well on this site. I liked it.
Not sure if 2014 is the year (at least not enough to buy any more LEAPS) but it was a good read.
The winning political party will be the loser and the losers will complain that they lost?/???
Not sure I agree with Kunstler, but at least he's got the balls to make a stand with dates.
On the other hand -- thumb and four fingers -- I like to think back to 1914, rather than 1814: When the Aristocrats and their Bankers needed to "reset" on their dying and lost empires, they started a major war. Enter Exhibits, 1-3: (1) IRS in 1913, (2) The Fed in 1913, (3) WW1 in 1914. Now fast-forward to 2013: QE3, NSA, Obamacare, Debtfinity...
So it shall be when the terminal cancer of their fiat-Ponzi becomes plainly visible for all to see... they will invent a global and epic crisis to reboot their Perpetual Debt, perpetual Motion Machine. They'll do ANYTHING to keep the GRC status for the USD. Either that, or to have the USD be the corner-stone for IMF's SDR. Mark my words!
Re: but at least he's got the balls to make a stand with dates
Yeah, but he's been saying the same damn thing for 5 years now (kinda like that guy in the mirror I see every morning).
Actually Edmund de Rothschild has stated that there will be an international currency within 5 years - though "how it will happen is a matter for the powers that be":
http://xrepublic.tv/node/72
The U.S. dollar is toast.
Thx for the link. Clearly he is bullish on China and its RMB.
Note his comment at 0:55-1:02 "When the RMB becomes convertible is obviously a matter for TPTB”. Given that he is TPTB...
He can do more than tell "whether". He can now tell "weather" in China and elsewhere: "You pay, or we fuck with your micro-climate! Ni hao." Does "doing God's work" now involve messing with local and regional climates -- to let the mortals know who'd in charge and to keep them in line in their "Maximum Debtitude"?
From your lips to God's ear. The only thing more useless than a Democrat is a Republican.
Real sign:
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/photos-NM-Misc/Truth%20Consequences-500.jpg
Reminds me of better times when people would have the certitude and purpose to name their girls after vitues (Charity, Hope, etc.)
Hmm, so "Miley" is not a virtue? Whocouldanode?
Learn your history Kuntsler!
It was not a 'Civil War' where two sides fight for centralized power. The confederates were fighting for independence from the Union.
The War of Southern Indepence, or The War of Northern Aggression.
The rest of the article was pure shite also...
The Confederacy had independence. Then they attacked the Union at Fort Sumpter. Even then they held the upper hand for at least 2 years and could have ended the war any time they wanted.
I rated this article a 1 because I am with Mark Levin, a tea party supporter. We are not stupid about any of the details of our collapse.
"...The Tea Party faction should change its name to the Cracker Party because it represents the interests of white southerners who are too dumb to know what these emergencies amount to...."
Those dumb Southerners! They are so dumb! I guess that's why the only people I know who have stocked up on guns, ammo, freeze dried food and gold are Southerners.
How about we call the entire Democrat Party the Communist Party? In the interest of truth in advertising, of course.
"The Tea Party faction should change its name to the Cracker Party because it represents the interests of white southerners who are too dumb to know what these emergencies amount to. They are really more comfortable with the supernatural, hence their fondness for religions based on snake-handling, visitations of the dead, and motor sports. Personally, I believe they will eventually contrive to form their own break-away Cracker Republic and attempt to re-enact the Civil War. They will fail, and starve, and find themselves back in an even worse long-term depression than Dixieland experienced from 1860 to 1960, in a de-suburbanized wasteland of bare subsistence farming. Their highest art will be soup-making."
This pile of Northern B.S. is self-indicting. Their inability to control themselves, along with an unstoppable busy-body tendency to mind everyone else's business and tell them how to live, led them to invade the southern states on multiple occasions, slaughter civilians, burn crops and cities, destroy shipping and factories and in general obliterate all resistance to tyranny as practiced by another group of states. Not satisfied with imposing income taxes in wartime on themselves and carpetbaggers on their defeated opponents, they then created the Federal Reserve to impose the income tax in peacetime on everyone. Then they compounded their foolishness with more socialism in the form of social security (a generational Ponzi scheme run by the government), Medicare and Medicaid (more unsustainable socialism, applied to medicine) and finally ObamaCare (to ensure no solvency would remain in the nation).
HOW did Northerners manage to convince themselves of their superiority despite such evidence? Their thinking skills must have atrophied even further as their food stamps, welfare and junk food corroded minds deteriorated from poor nutrition ... evidence of that can be seen in this entire article.
FAIL.
Whether or not you agree with Kunstler's more dire predictions or his views on Tea Party/South/ect.... this last part perfectly summarizes where I think most ZH'ers minds are after watching this dark comedy closely for the past 4+years wondering how it can all possibly still be going....
"these horse-latitudes of history where the air is still and nothing moves and the mind is exhausted by watchful waiting"
The "Death" of the Republican party is a liberal/progressive wet dream. I think the more likely scenario is a re-emergence of the Tea Party when the shit of QE/deficit spending hits the fan and it turns out the Tea Party was right all along. The Democratic Party is like a cheating husband who lies to his spouse. At first the lies seem to work, and his cheating lifestyle can continue. Eventually, the lies become harder and harder to maintain and the whole thing breaks down.
What passes for a liberal/progressive is most often dumber than what passes for a conservative/libertarian (or freak from another universe in my case).
The death of the Republican Party is the death the 2-Party Farce, the point at which the useless eaters who self-describe as liberal/progressive become a balance sheet liability that can no longer generate revenue, and which will be disposed of in the normal fashion for such "assets"
It's in TPTBs best interests that a VIABLE pseudo-opposition exists or rises quickly from the ashes, lest legitimate opposition coalesce.
You'd think with the BS poli-sci BS's floating around amongst the progressive "intelligentsia" that such knowledge would be second nature, or do they not actually teach political science to poli-sci stuppets anymore?
Fuck You James "Kunt"stler
What a stupid, ranting article. Does the man say anything useful?
I've noticed how the focus of our talking point has shifted: From core* issues to red-herring and false-flag issues and carnival shows, which are all designed to (a) Stigmatize and (b) Marginalize any potential for significant, organized resistance to the next stage in their Statist, Globalist agenda.
And I'm not even a TEA party-er or from the 'South'.
* The real core issues:
1. Fatally-flawed Currency, Monstrous and growing Debt, Asymmetric Taxation & Asymmetric Benefits**
2. Shrinking rate of REAL GDP and declining VoM.
** Benefits to the (a) Central Banks and its Shareholders and (b) the US Gov (and be its Beneficiaries in the Bureaucracy, Entitlements and MIC).
Couldn't you like launch a photon torpedo into D.C.? Or, just sell me one, no questions asked?
So the Chinese plan is:
1.) Run up gigantic $2.7 trillion trade surplus with US.
2.) Build dozens of empty cities in the desert.
3.) (Send a ) message on the back of the envelope containing $2.7 trillion in official American debt paper. The message is apparently that the dollar is worthless.
4.) ????????
5.) Dominate the world.
The whole "China is going to take over the world" thing is such a load of crap. The new reserve currency? They're increasing M2 money supply by something like 15% a year. Does that sound like a country who would be a responsible steward of the world's new reserve currency? Their economic statistics are goal-seeking, fraudulent bullshit. They are literally poisoning their own people with pollution levels 3 times higher than what is considered hazardous. Etc, etc, etc.
you just don't understand the personal energies to be tapped in powdered tiger scrote dissolved in amnionic fluid. Dragon bone power!
Center of the Heavens, an' shit.
Will the Chinese invite Americans to populate those ghost cities for when TSHTF, so that Innovators and Doers can bug out and populate "Chi-Merika"?
"Give us your poor overt-taxed, and over regulated masses..."
"You can even keep your guns, cause we got bigger ones and more of them. And you bring and keep all the gold & silver you want, as this only helps support our currency as the next GRC."
;-) ;-)
Where I live, every single day there are more local markets, more solar panels, more windmills, more backyard gardens, more fuel-efficient cars, more LED lightbulbs, more "ton of books in one Kindle." All of these "dampen the discontinuity" that Kunstler wishes for with every fiber of his being. Dude's got a decent vocabulary, but it masks a highly simplified view of the world in which everything suddenly goes to hell and no one but Kunstler knows what to do about it.
Seven billion people - each the terminus of two million years of selected-for-survival humans - will and are proving more adaptable than Kunstler can imagine. There will be problems. There are always problems. But seven billion minds applied to those problems are a force Kunstler can't come close to grasping. Neither can I, but I admit it.
Re: Dude's got a decent vocabulary, but it masks a highly simplified view of the world in which everything suddenly goes to hell and no one but Kunstler knows what to do about it.
Yeah, but he's just another variation of the survivalists. If you buy enough guns-n-gold, when TSHTF you'll: buy all the stocks in the world with your gold in the biggest BTFD that ever happened (Google at 10cents), march into the board rooms of every corporation that you own and throw-out the "pretenders", make Ayn Rand required reading and ensure the righteous sword of Libtertarian justice rules the land, purge society of all the sociopaths (and anybody who disagrees with you), and then - finally - you'll have access to the females with be largest teeth instead of the assholes who get them all now.
LOL - accusing others of simplification, but then listing solar panels (I assume you mean the PV type), more fuel-efficient cars (I assume you mean electric and hybrid ones), and Kindles as the things that will save us!!
PV: sure nice if you have lots of excess money, but not cost efficient enough to save us
Electric cars: sure and where does the electricity come from
Hybrid cars: sure efficient when driving lots in stop-and-go conditions (hint: WTF are you regularly moving around 2000 pounds to transport you in those conditions), but when it comes to real *driving* turbo-diesels are much more effective (especially overall: heating+A/C included and manufacturing cost [batteries])
Kindle: enjoy when Amazon remotely deletes your books (or maybe even just "updates" the facts)
What is strange is, it seems almost no one understood the article to caught up in the "It's about me". The article is about the last days of free oil, debt explosion, zero job growth, massive military spending. That is the article! If you are on this site he is NOT talking about you. He understands the effort of this site and the people that follow it. Wasting your time about who is what party or color is the trap O'Bummer and Bernanke have set for you. Think past the smallness of general statements. We all know people that surround us in every community North, South, black or white, red or blue that will not survive the shit storm that's coming and SOON as Kunstler states.
One gets the sense that the bankers and their political servants have made several choices over the years in an attempt to maintain their personal comfort and power. Going back t0 1973 they suspended the redemption of gold, then with Reagan they fully opened up the fiat printing press, then it was the repeal of Glass-Steagall and relaesing the derivatives monster with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000... and lastly QE, QE, QE and QE.
Along there way there has been real development and growth:
1. The computer boom
2. The telecommunication boom
3. Internet boom
There have also been false booms:
4. Internationalization to capture labor arbitrage
5. The housing/real estate boom
6. The "War on Terror" boom
... and somewhere along the way they decided to flip the population control switch from hope to fear with the series of false flags, surveillanc and constand war. And with the wars and false booms came a bunch of misallocation of resources.
It did not have to be ... if those managing the economy were competent and cared about the US.
Re: if those managing the economy were competent and cared about the US.
Yup, we could have prefect Libertarian or Socialism if ONLY most people weren't self-serving sociopathic assholes.
Oh well, looks like we're stuck with ScrewISM until humans evolve into something else.
I'm not an expert but my guess is that the pain and other consequences have been buffered in the derivatives market.
The system has been in a gradual descent for years as the amount of real wealth has been 'owned' by an expanding paper market. An example is gold. For every ounce owned in the market place there are 50 plus claims against it. Everyone is happy and satisfied that some counter party is promising them that ounce when they want it. Only one will get that ounce though and the rest will getcash, probably at a time when they would rather have gold.
Lots of other real things are promised to those who are content, for now, to hold a promise of delivery in the future.
These promises are complex and leveraged. The counterparties are often not in great shape and hide rot on a balance sheet that is not real, not marked to market.
One day something will change and the desire for thing now will increase and the failure of the system to deliver will happen. At that time the closer one is to real things and the less dependent one is upon the promises to deliver by a damaged system the happier one will be.
For now the trillions that are exchanged daily in Forex and interest rate and bond derivatives are working. Everyone seems on track to get what they have been promised.
We live in Oregon and Washington now.....two beautiful states that are full of the Gimme Crowd. If things ever hit the fan and the country is splitting up I'll have no choice but to move back to tornado alley and hole up with people I can actually relate to and depend on in a crunch. Yea, I know I come from an area that everyone thinks is inhabited by mouthbreathers, meth cooks and guys banging their cousins but the truth is the South would fare a hell of a lot better than the Northwest (or any other part of the country) if things get really shitty. The South has warm waters full of fish, it has oil, it has farming and it has enough manufacturing to make it. The rif-raf would be cleaned out pronto and the locals would "make it" better than the rest of the country. The guy who wrote this article hasn't got a clue about what regions would be the worst off if/when the SHTF.
Tip: You simply need to move >60 miles East, and you'll get the same upside as "tornado alley", but w/o the tornadoes.
Central and Eastern OR and WA are among THE best places in the US. Hands down. All the benefits, w/o the notoriety.
And I'll take Willamette Valley over Central Valley any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
You make an excellent point. We've seen how different the people are when you get away from the urban centers in Washington and Oregon. However, the concern I would still have is the socialists in Salem and Seattle just won't lay down and take what they have coming. The bastards will tax and steal and regulate all the producers in Oregon and Washington into oblivion before they ever admit the solution should have been to make people get off their ass and go to work to support themselves. I am stunned, repeat stunned, at the work ethic around this part of the country. It is abysmal. I'm not sure I'd want to be here when the Gimme Crowd turns into an angry mob. But I would never be able to forget the beauty of this area if we ever had to leave. I'd hate to leave it.
Well, maybe a lucky thrift store shopper will enjoy my copy of your apocalypse porn.
And what high art that will be, as the urbanites develop elaborate methods of trapping cockroaches and rats for subsistence. I mean, they'll still have their iThings for enjoying art through music...errrr...nevermind.
Meanwhile, my cracker ass will be happily sitting on my cracker porch, playing my cracker banjo full tilt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-4edTX71fI
After you've enjoyed some Cracker Culture, learn more here:
http://www.amazon.com/Cracker-Culture-Celtic-Ways-South/dp/0817304584
Chump
Will you be down pickin' that banjo or doing all that new fancy finger work? Lester and Earl spoiled a completely fine instrument (even if it is the devil's instrument). I plan on finding Sally Goodin and settling down in Shady Grove myself.
God may forgive your blasphemy against Earl Eugene Scruggs, the Pearl, the Man Himself.
Search for Sally Goodwin, my good man, but Earl has already had his way with her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByYSkRGrMqw
But come, let us reason together. Old-time banjo alongside Scruggs-style is truly beautiful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgkvaBzyAXE
Weekly meetings at Cracker Jack or Cracker Barrel? I'm quite partial to the latter.
Tyler Durden: Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
I may add that we have now the great depression, and we don't have the jobs anymore.
Don't worry, we'll all be millionaires.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Mahatma Gandhi
This author's intellectual depth goes no deeper than the kiddie pool. Poorly written, not well presented, seems rather juvenile. The writer attempts to be cute and snarky, but fails.
I always enjoy reading his opinion. I am sure some of it is "tongue in cheek" . An effective way to undermine authority is to ridicule them. As for the Tea Party, after reading Kunstler, all i can say is where do I sign up to be a member ?
If you Texas oil men had not gone so hard on this pansy every time he made some stupid prediction about the future of oil, maybe he would not hate you so much. The day he finally get's something right will be when he realizes his error, disquises himself as a woman, and tries to sneak into the Cracker Republic. Too late when he discovers that he just compounded his error.
Ass Americana, bitchez.
Kunstler is the John the Baptist of the Latter Day Doomsters, and deserves respect wherever he wanders. Yes, he has funny biases, but these are just aspects of his hairshirt, which is scratchy at times.
JHK is going to be a lot of fun over these next two years.
Just another stupid liberal rant of no intellectual value. Why is the Tea Party demonized as being extremist when in fact the extremist positions are the ones liberals maintain i.e. more debt and deficit spending, more govt run programs that we cannot afford etc Kunt-sler is just another "useful idiot" with an ability to write bullsh+t.
Let me assure you that JHK is not a party-line liberal: he thinks your average progressive greenie is only slightly less deluded about a Green Energy Renaissance or the long-term prospects for Average City, USA than your run-of-the-mill bible-believing southerner or Idaho compound-dwelling faithhead. From what I've read, he doesn't consider any of these lines of magic-thinking to be helpful for the trouble ahead.
As for offering solutions -- not every problem has one. Not a good one, anyways.
Hey Now! You should replace motorsports with NASCAR, please!
I can never tell when this guy is kidding.
Why is it millions of New Yorkers want to live in the South, yet almost no Southerners want to live in that nasty, vile shit pit? Fuck you Cuntsler and all of you other welfare-loving wall street douchebags.
After perusing the comments I'm afraid that my first impression was correct. That is, not many people here would get what he was saying. Obviously, not too many people here follow the "clusterfuck nation" blog, nor have they read any of JHK's books. If you did, you'd appreciate his quite accurate descripton of the sheeple, and their belief systems, and why so many will be surprised when the bottom falls out.
Of course that doesn't apply to the fight club here at ZH
mistah kunstler,
the eye of janus is upon you; and it's cast an approving glance -- well, i do declare, looks like it just blinked a knowing wink (all quick-like, almost imperceptable).
you're not going to make a lot of friends with honesty and insight like that, but you do accrue the respect of men like janus (for whatever that's worth).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVqWS-cUKc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5JCrSXkJY
...battle lines bein drawn,
janus