Slip of the Tongue by James Howard Kunstler

[robertpaulsen]

Slip of the Tongue

Barack Obama caught hell last week for daring to tell the truth about the ragged thing that the American spirit has become. He said that small-town Pennsylvania voters, bitter over their economic circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” to work out their negative emotions. He might have added that the Pope wears a funny hat (see for yourself this week), and that bears shit in the woods (something rural Pennsylvanians probably know). Nevertheless, in the manner lately prescribed for those who slip up and speak truthfully in public (and in contradiction to the reigning delusions), Obama was pressured to apologize for his statements.

The evermore loathsome and odious Hillary Clinton, co-owner of a $100 million personal wealth portfolio, seized the moment to remind voters what a normal, everyday gal she is -- who would never look down on the small-town folk of Pennsylvania the way her "elitist" opponent had -- forgetting, apparently, that the Clinton family's consigliere, James Carville, famously described the Keystone State as a kind of redneck sandwich with Pittsburgh and Philadelphia as the bread, and Alabama as the lunch meat in between.

As I mull over all this, I begin to think that Hillary is exactly what the USA deserves and, that should she manage to winkle away the nomination and get elected president, the outcome would be instructive and salutary. For one thing, she will be buried under an avalanche of political woe, beginning with the basic financial insolvency of everything in the nation except the Clinton family. Then she would proceed straight into an oil-and-gas clusterfuck that could take this society back to the eighteenth century economically.

This would have the positive effect of forcing the American public to look elsewhere for governance than the usual parties in Washington, D.C. It's time for a national purgative, anyway. In fact, it's way overdue. Are the Democratic and Republican parties anymore necessary than the Whigs? Neither of them can really articulate the problems we face (and when their honchos slip up and come close to the truth, they're persecuted for it).

more...

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/

[Me.]

1. K

& R

[nashville_brook]

2. must read the whole piece -- damn i love kunstler! -- here's a couple more snippets...

more selections from the blog...

A President Hillary will also go a long way to defeating the popular delusion that a world ruled by female humans would be heaven-on-earth.

I'm a woman and a feminist, and he's spot-on here. Anyone remember Golda Mier?

I'm very sorry that Barack Obama apologized for his remarks. It compromised his authority. They were truthful and correct. He might have added that the anxious and bitter lower classes were also neurotically hung-up on cars, and that his first act as president would be to shut down the Nascar tracks by executive order in the interest of national energy security.

As a car enthusiast I can totally appreciate this. There's absolutely no reason to spend $10,000 to modify a Civic so that it can theoretically go faster than other Civics. Also, spinners are stupid.

Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd have been putting together mortgage rescue schemes that are gut-bustingly hilarious because they don't seem to take into account the basic fact that nobody knows who the lending parties to all those distressed mortgages really are. (Hint: they're not the "servicing" companies who send out the default notices.) So when they say that the government will "negotiate down" the principal owed on a house hemorrhaging dollar value, who exactly did they have in mind as the negotiating partner?

These are issues that would, in a more mentally-healthy republic, occupy center stage of the political conversation -- not whether a cohort of Cheez Doodle addicted rural Pennsylvania morons prays out loud for God to shoot all the Mexicans.

:rofl:

[tom_paine]

5. The whole page is chock full of excellent and informative essays.

However, speaking as a Cheez Doodle addicted-Pennsylvanian, myself, not all of us dream about having God shoot the Mexicans (or eviscerate them by the millions witha s ingle gesture opening them up from neck to pubis in a bloody, yet sanctified and Godly, spectacle).

Most of us? Yeah, probably. All of us? No.

[DrZeeLit]

3. I love it.... yep... The Clinton Clusterfuck... exactly. n/t

[Paranoid Pessimist]

4. Kunstler is the only person with a public forum more pessimistic that me

I still have occasional twinges of "we can pull it out" hope. I see television documentaries on hydrogen-powered cars, shows that actually address the issue of how an infrastructure to support such vehicles could be put together -- and I think maybe the "Happy Motoring" lifestyle that Kunstler writes with such amusing hauteur about (only Gore Vidal has ever affected that tone better) could be partially saved. Maybe wind and solar power could keep the air conditioners in Phoenix, Las Vegas, and L.A. working so you won't have former megacities full of heat-rotting dead former residents.

Unfortunately, I am also an amateur historian and am constantly amazed at what a huge percentage of human ingenuity has been spent devising newer better ways to torture, maim, and kill our fellow folks.

Mr. Kunstler was kind enough to be an email pen pal with me a few times just after The Long Emergency came out. The Long Emergency should be required reading for anyone who wants to know just how bad things are likely to get (in the foolish hopes of being "prepared"). If knowledge really is power, book and column should be high octane stuff.

[nichomachus]

6. Huzzah!

[smiley_glad_hands]

7. The tree of liberty must ferilized with the blood of tyrants and patriots every so often. eom