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The Situation That Smoldered For Decades Is Now Exploding
Submitted by James H Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
The desperate wish in what is loosely called the West to at least appear morally correct is unfortunately over-matched by the desperation of people fleeing unstable, overpopulated places outside the West, and it is a fiasco beyond even the events of the moment.
The refugee / immigrant crisis around the Mediterranean is a preview of a horror show to which there is no end in sight, and is certain to escalate. So anyone who indulges in fantasies about organizing an orderly, rational distribution of displaced persons for the current wave, is badly missing the point. Wave beyond wave awaits after the this one. And then what will the well-intentioned sentimentalists say? We wanted to do the right thing… we meant well… we cried when we saw the little boy dead on the beach….
Yes, the tragic intrusions of the US military in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and elsewhere have been reckless and stupid. But that is not the whole story. The desert nations of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have populations abnormally swollen by a century of oil-and-gas-based agriculture, really by the benefits of Modernity in general. Now that the oil age is chugging to an unruly crack-up, and Modernity with it, and the earth’s climate is doing wonky things, and the rich nations to the north have faked their finances to the point of bankruptcy, well, circumstances have changed.
In the years ahead, populations will be fleeing and shifting from many more unfavorable corners of the world. The pressures are mounting all over. Alas, the richer nations in which the fleeing poor aspire to gain a foothold, will also be contending with the disabling effects of a universal economic contraction — the winding down of the techno-industrial system and the global economy with it. That process has the potential to shatter political unions, overthrow established social orders, and provoke wars between the demoralized countries who still possess dangerous military hardware. At the least, it will produce economic conditions in Europe and North America probably worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s.
So, the idea that the nations currently bethinking themselves “rich” can take in, shelter, and employ the masses fleeing MENA (and elsewhere) is absurd. Somehow the people in charge, plus the intellectual classes who shape opinion and consensus, are going to have to arrive at some clear notion of limits and boundaries. It is actually happening in parts of Europe right now, extempore, where the immediate crisis is worst, for the moment in Italy, Greece, and Hungary — which first interned the refugees and then let them loose on the road to Vienna, probably only a way-station to Germany. Soon all nations across Europe will be agonizing, shucking, jiving, or improvising some sort of desperate response.
Among other confusions of policy and intention, the public “debate” so far does not make any distinction between true political refugees fleeing for their lives or economic migrants seeking to improve their prospects elsewhere. It is surely easy to empathize with both categories of persons, but that doesn’t mean you give up the control of your borders just to make yourself feel better. That is pretty much what has happened in the USA, where the Left, for political expediency, has deemed it indecent to call “illegal” immigrants what they are, and the Right has just been pusillanimous and hypocritical about it. Hence the unfiltered persona of Trump who, for all his titanic shortcomings, has at least managed to make his rivals look like the craven midgets they are.
Likewise, the rise of Marine LePen in France, Geert Wilders in Holland, and other parties seeking limits to immigration, perhaps even deportations. Personally, I reject the idea that it’s “racist” to want to preserve one’s national culture and character (especially in language), or to favor bona fide citizens for gainful employment. Europe has the additional obvious problem of an immigrant Islamic population overtly hostile to European culture and tradition. Why is it morally imperative for Europeans to countenance what amounts to low-grade warfare?
The situation that smoldered for decades is now exploding. Don’t expect to see any end to desperation and instability in MENA, but do expect new demographic crises out of other regions: Indonesia, Ukraine, Pakistan, West Africa, and Brazil, with its cratering economy. It’s not inconceivable that China might bust apart politically, with centrifugal consequences. The global economy is contracting. We have indeed attained the limits to growth. Cheap oil is bygone and the capital infrastructure we have won’t run on expensive oil — including the oil industry itself. New technology or further central bank legerdemain is not going to fix that. We’re in population overshoot and a scramble is underway to bail on the places that just can’t support the people who live there. National boundaries will be defended. Sentimentalists will have to step aside. History is not a bedtime story about bunnies and kittens.
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You're a complete bloody moron Kunstler, and unfortunately there is no cure to brain necrosis.
I find something to be optimistic about in the fact that even JHK has now become a race-realist and talks like paleocon about nationalism. Given his strong original leftward bias, this is quite a transition to make and it indicates that he values facts over ideology even if he struggles with it sometimes. If a critical mass of others can follow his lead, there will yet be hope for the West.
Where are King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella when we really need them?
I wonder if we can get Germany to take some mexcans.
Mass migration is part of the globalisation agenda and its intention is to do away with national identity.
I think.
Transients have been weaponized to invade and destroy organized western Europe. Same for illegals invading from Mexico.
The invaded countries are weakened. The cheapest warfare imaginable.
This is all by design.
As I wrote somewhere before: Beach a container ship with 10,000 illegals in Long Island Sound see what chaos erupts.
Too many wabbits, each thinking he, she, or it are "special" in the universe.
Throughout history, civilizations have failed.
Of course, ”it will be different this time". Different perhaps in the conversion of approximately 8 Billion humans into fertilizer.
Ugly is not coming, it is already here, festering and growing. Turn off the TV, go outside and explore our non-productive debt-fueled, micro-managed fantasy gulag for yourself.
Oh goodie! It's the end of the world!
Finally all the prepping will pay off!
I can't wait until everyone else dies and I'M ON TOP!!!
The Malthusians have always been wrong, and will always continue to be wrong.
OTOH, classical colonialism was far better for MENA (and South America, and China, and everywhere else) than the modern colonialism, which is done via finance, and via "coitus interruptus" wars like the ones waged in Iraq, Afghanistan etc. in recent decades.
The West should ally with BRIC and divide up the remainder of the world. Who's going to stop such an alliance? Divide up the ME and Africa (basically, anywhere there are moslims, since that seems to be the last bastion of medievalism on the planet) and rule them for the next 100-200 years the way that Britain ruled India. It would be far cheaper and easier than our current approach of on-again, off-again interventionalism.
It's all because of free money, healthcare, housing and food. Word got around from their cousins in Germany that Germany gives you all this free shit. The big difference between Germany now and the US in the early 20th century is huge so don't show me that school house rock bullshit. My ancestors on my father's side came to this country in the early 1900's before welfare. So once you got off the boat you better work or you are homeless. No free welfare, food and housing then. I guarantee you that if Germany didn't give all this free shit away no immigrants would want to go there. These people want to go to Germany sit around drink tea and talk about how evil the west is whild getting all their free shit from the insane German government. If they cut off all the free shit they would be migrating back to Syria. All just a bunch of freeloading parasites.
It's all because of free money, healthcare, housing and food. Word got around from their cousins in Germany that Germany gives you all this free shit. The big difference between Germany now and the US in the early 20th century is huge so don't show me that school house rock bullshit. My ancestors on my father's side came to this country in the early 1900's before welfare. So once you got off the boat you better work or you are homeless. No free welfare, food and housing then. I guarantee you that if Germany didn't give all this free shit away no immigrants would want to go there. These people want to go to Germany sit around drink tea and talk about how evil the west is whild getting all their free shit from the insane German government. If they cut off all the free shit they would be migrating back to Syria. All just a bunch of freeloading parasites.
Bring them to the US maybe they'll smuggle weapons in or get them from Rumsfeld and fight the banksters.
The world needs an extreme global culling.
I think that was the subtext of the original post. That, and said culling is already in process.
Ah, so you do realize Kunstsler is just a dead-end doomer ... but you also seem to be having your period today. ;-)
It appears to be a work in progress.
That became painfully obvious to me when I was about 14 years old, about 50 years ago, when I first recognized that the civilization I had been born into was based on endless exponential growth backed by weapons of mass destruction. Since then, I have always found that the more I learned, the worse it got, because the clearer it became that the world was controlled by integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, in which context rational evidence and logical arguments were deliberately ignored (except to the degree those could facilitate becoming better at backing dishonesty with violence.)
Most of my thinking for the last Half Century has been focused on attempts to understand the deeper reasons for how and why civilization operated according the principles and methods of organized crime, while the excessive successfulness of that had driven civilization towards becoming runaway criminal insanities.
The degree to which we are living inside of a Wonderland Matrix Bizarro World is that not only does civilization operate according to the methods of organized crime, but also the central core organized crime groups are surrounded by controlled opposition groups. Therefore, within the public spaces, almost everything there is dominated by the best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, which includes not only those inside the established systems, but also those inside the controlled opposition groups.
Given that, not only is is CORRECT that we are looking at a global situation which is "a horror show to which there is no end in sight, and is certain to escalate," but also pretty well ALL the bogus "solutions" to those problems are based on the same bullshit world view that created those problems, because those "solutions" stay within the same frame of reference.
History is primarily the combination of the history of the death control systems, plus the history of science. So far, there are NOT any rational connections being made between those, and indeed, neither the established systems, nor their controlled opposition groups, want to draw any more rational and logical connections between those. Instead, social pyramid systems based on being able to back up lies with violence are headed towards series of psychotic breakdowns.
+1. This is going to be a challenging semester!
" History is not a bedtime story about bunnies and kittens."
Au contraire. Every cat I've ever discussed the matter with considers freshly-killed bunnies to be the finest meal they've ever eaten. I think that accords rather well with human history.