Yes this is another perfect analysis. JHK your strength lies in taking the same theme and deconstructing it endlessly, because it is an endless deconstruction. Unwittingly I bought into cities are bad long before I had any experience in a city in order to know the belief I held. It was where crime happened, and for many years that was true. It wasn't until hippies started moving in and renovating, starting businesses a la hippie capitalism that I noticed things changed in Philadelphia. All of a sudden there were good restaurants springing up on a shoestring. Alas success was so quick on South Street that greed took over as the $9000 buildings started going for 100K and up into the millions. Now that wonderful street has crashed almost to where it was in the 50's when Philly had taken steps to condemn it, demolish it and put a beltway around the city there. Only hippies who had settled there, had a stake in the street, wanted to stay there, and so fought the good fight and won bringing city living into living trendy. And so painlessly I got out of the suburbs when I had no stake there.

But small town living as your novel suggests is a potentially horrible alternative. People in small towns have small minds, no culture, and are sheeple. Even though I can walk everywhere, the congenial cultural lifestyle I had in Philly is never going to be here in my neon red town.

Jim-you omitted Miracle on 34th Street (miracle being the suburban home wish) and Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream Home (where they can't move out of town fast enough). The suburbanization movement was aided and abetted by Hollywood as the glorious California terrain was bulldozed to build tracts of homes for folks to purchased under the GI Bill. To quote Joni "you don't know what you got til its gone."

I also think with the proper editing you have a gret book of essays on this theme to publish, go on talk shows with and just generally publicize the future to masses of people. Please think about this. You just have a way of constantly looking at another facet (Honeymooners)that brings it home in a different way to that someone that has not yet been reached on the coming paradigm change.

And I am glad you brought up the straw manof capitalism. Ayn Rand said in 1960 when Goldwater fever was upon us that if he managed to win and if his ideas would infiltrate government, that they would fail because of internal philosophical contradictions and that capitalism would take the hit.

Not exactly her words, but definitely her intent. and to think her trusted acolyte Alan Greenspan would be the catalyst.

Americans may have been powerfully vested emotionally in the idealization of quasi-rural life, but even with quantities of cheap oil and cheap land available in the post WW2 era, we could not have managed the utter destruction of our cities and the buildout of suburbia along the lines it took, without government policy and without the unlimited taxing authority of the federal government, as well as the authority of local and state governments to misallocate tax receipts at the state and local level, and to zone city life out of existence.

The outward flow of the population would have been held in some check by natural constraints, which would be the inability to finance the mega highways and other necessary infrastructure. People could dream of houses and cars in the distant hinterlands all they wanted, but a far smaller fraction would have been able to afford them, and only an equally small fraction would have even wanted to leave their city neighborhoods. A certain number would have been driven beyong the city limits by the high prices of the cities, but there would never have been the wholesale rush to the suburbs had it not been rendered cheap by low-downpayment or no-downpayment home loans made available by the FHA and VA, and the willingness of GNMA, FNMA, and the other GSAs to buy loans that the lenders otherwise would never have touched. The FHA helped things along considerably by "red-lining" property in perfectly stable, desirable city neighborhoods, thus assuring their destruction.

To be sure, our authorities could never have done all this without the urging and applause of the population. Kunstler is correct in that this was the general thrust of the era, and there would have been suburban development and more car ownership no matter what.

But it took far-reaching policies backed by unlimited taxing authority to amplify popular sentiments and cultural biases into a sweeping wave that took out everything and everyone in front of it, to the point where by 1965 you really had no choice to move. We were watching St. Louis, the city my family settled in circa 1790 (before it was even an American town) be systemically destroyed. By 1970, the schools were being gutted, a process hastened by busing to achieve a specious social integration, which was the last nail in the coffin. The last resisters, the people who loved the cozy neighborhoods in which their families had dwelled for many generations, often clear back to the early 19th century, were at last forced out for fear of their lives. You got out while your house could still bring any money at all. The forced clearance of the slum area that encircled downtown and its replacement by the Pruitt- Igoe housing projects as well as other projects just like them, was the opening salvo of the Federal war on the cities, and it triggered a wave of disinvestment. The construction of these types of projects in almost every city destroyed our communities and cities in numerous ways. First, they destroyed the tightly knit networks of cooperation and association that poor people build over time in their neighborhoods and that help them maintain a certain level of civilization in the absence of the props that the rest of us can afford. Then, these presence of these projects in otherwise intact neighborhoods triggered flight out of them.

So, while the confluence of cultural trends- the idealization of country life in conjunction with modernist architecture and urban planning- was certainly unfavorable to urban life, it took government policy and billions and billions of tax payer dollars to translate these trends into reality.

And it was NOT done in innocence. It's not as though we did not know better. Suburban sprawl was identified as an immense problem as early as 1950. And, worse, our government policy makers knew as the rest of the population did not, how finite our petroleum supplies were. Admiral Rickover as well as Hubbert predicted our current predicament, and other policy makers echoed them.
That's right, we did what we knew better than to do just like we are now.

Jim,

Years ago, my reading of "Geography of Nowhere" influenced us to consider, and later move to Portland, Oregon.

Happily, we've found a lifestyle here that is less car-dependent, connected with local food production, and richly walkable.

But go out in the Portland suburbs and it's a strip mall and McMansion landscape like most other big American cities.

So even here, the work to be done is enormous to extricate ourselves from the McMansion American Dream psychological rut.

My business of carpet cleaning has afforded me access to many a suburban McMansion in the Portland area.

Economic conditions during the past year have wiped away most of my younger customers, leaving the wealthier customers, and leisure retirees still able to afford to have their carpet cleaned.

A silver lining in all of this is I've noticed in our suburbs a huge uptick in hobbies such as home canning, and vegetable gardening.

Just to note another TV-antecedent. At one point, Lucy and Ricky did a series of shows in the idealized "Colonial" house in Connecticut. It was clearly a nod to the viewers who were also being told that leaving the dirty city for the leafy suburbs was the was to do.

As to small-town living versus big-city living? Abbeysbooks, I can't agree. While perhaps not possessing theater or opera and sometimes small-minded, there are also trade-offs in larger urbanized settings. I don't personally feel that we all need to have art galleries and haute cuisine within easy reach to make our lives whole...

One thing you miss out on all this talk on Suburbia: People were scared about what might happen with the end of World War II. After all, we'd just gone through twelve years of depression in various levels, followed by four years of rationing and enforced full employment through military service and military production. People were afraid of going back to the struggles of the thirties (Who would consume what the industries could make? And why would they?), and the constant building of Suburbia was the perfect antidote to the people's fears.

Everything comes from that. Since the cities were crowded and sickly, the best thing for them was to recreate space in them...hence Pruitt-Igoe and all the other Projects (interesting fact: Pruitt-Igoe was supposed to be surrounded by factories, shopping and neighborhoods; by the time it was built all that surrounding stuff was either torn down, or abandoned). Parking in the city became a pain in the ass and expensive besides, from that we get strip malls, then the enclosed malls that became America's de facto downtown, then Wal-Mart. Soon the factories got old, from that we get the Southern Strategy and eventually China. And during all this...constant spending, constant buying, constant consuming; all to keep the American contented with the idea that they lived in a consumer's paradise.

What we have developing now (the death of consumer culture) was, in many ways, the disaster that Suburban Sprawl was intended to stave off. And it worked, in various ways, for fifty-plus years, even with its well-known problems and increasing costs. It's just now that we've learned the costs are more than the benefits...and that it's been this way for a while now.

One thing you miss out on all this talk on Suburbia: People were scared about what might happen with the end of World War II. After all, we'd just gone through twelve years of depression in various levels, followed by four years of rationing and enforced full employment through military service and military production. People were afraid of going back to the struggles of the thirties (Who would consume what the industries could make? And why would they?), and the constant building of Suburbia was the perfect antidote to the people's fears.

Everything comes from that. Since the cities were crowded and sickly, the best thing for them was to recreate space in them...hence Pruitt-Igoe and all the other Projects (interesting fact: Pruitt-Igoe was supposed to be surrounded by factories, shopping and neighborhoods; by the time it was built all that surrounding stuff was either torn down, or abandoned). Parking in the city became a pain in the ass and expensive besides, from that we get strip malls, then the enclosed malls that became America's de facto downtown, then Wal-Mart. Soon the factories got old, from that we get the Southern Strategy and eventually China. And during all this...constant spending, constant buying, constant consuming; all to keep the American contented with the idea that they lived in a consumer's paradise.

What we have developing now (the death of consumer culture) was, in many ways, the disaster that Suburban Sprawl was intended to stave off. And it worked, in various ways, for fifty-plus years, even with its well-known problems and increasing costs. It's just now that we've learned the costs are more than the benefits...and that it's been this way for a while now.

It is true that the built environment is wasteful and expensive, but that is not what is doing us in as a people and as a population on this limited planet. Globally the rest of the world wants to be like us_ rich and with lives full of stuff. The world wants to be stylish, able to go anywhere at anytime, as well as feel physically safe and secure in the future. The cost of all this grasping for comfort and security is in the natural world. The oceans are fished out. The last great resource, the high arctic, will be harvested as the ice retreats. We really have no idea of carrying capacity.
We have no, zero, humility as a people. Humility is conflated with weakness. As a result we are unable to have a coherent and meaningful conversation about limits. Look at the hysteria generated around insurance reform. It is a perfect storm of media, limited attention, crisis and paralysis. It will be interesting.
Our garden has had its first frost and is being put to bed for the winter. We would be very very thin if we had to live off what it produces. It is the collapse of the natural systems of water, air, forest and fisheries that will do us in, regardless of how our cities and suburbs are designed.

Almost all of our leaders have bought into the system, despite obvious, persistent signals that something else is going on.

This discrepancy between their position and reality is why so many people question the legitimacy of authorities.

Other "leaders" like Bush and Cheney, by design or incompetence or both, undermined the legitimacy of leadership by their multiple disastrous actions.

Blogs and "opinion" have become so popular because people no longer trust what "leaders" have to say.

"People in small towns have small minds, no culture, and are sheeple."

Excepting you?

It's possible to overthink this issue. People wanted more space, nice stuff, cars and the whole catastrophe. Unfortunately, we had the means to cater to these desires cheaply and quickly.

I was in Nuremberg last summer and wondered aloud how a city that had been completely destroyed 60 some years ago would be in this country its most stunning jewel. Who exactly won World War II? Still, even in Europe, suburbanization is a powerful force. It won't dstroy Europe like it's killing us but it does show how ubiquitous these toxic dreams are.

The worst thing to consider is how unforgiving our suburban template is. Everything we'll do will revolve around propping it up simply because the retrofit appears too expensive. Yes, we'll see some "green shoots" in underutilitzed urban cores. But we're stuck with this mess for the rest of our lives and probably our grandkids' as well.

Jim, you wrote...

"Suburbia was engineered as the antidote to the Kramden's apartment: country-living-for-everybody. The evacuation of the cities to the new outlands proceeded as relentlessly as the landings at Normandy."

I'd add that a key post-war driver to building the suburbs was the Bomb. There was a widespread public belief, reinforced by the government, that the way to avoid being blown away in World War III was to move out of the cities.

Escaping urban Armageddon was a deep-seated psychological justification for building suburbs. It also helped when the time came for COngress to enable construction of the means to commute to & fro, via the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways (the proper name of out national transport grid).

The US experience of World War II -- bombing the crap out of European and Asian cities, culminating in nuking Japan -- left much legacy on the home front.

Though ethnic vanilla despised ethnic strawberry, 1950s people were fundmentally ethical. People exercised committment to themselves, to their children, and to their country. Civil rights of the 70s cherished a slave class with no limit to cost. Empowerments of the 80s ended ethics, with no limit to cost. Massive importation of a massively reproductive second slave class into the 21st century is a bottomless wallet of accommodation. The mythos of America was shaved then skinned alive. Those who paid drowned in debt to survive one more year while supporting two other "families" who needed only to threaten.

Compare the volume of common vs. statutary law in 1959 versus 2009. Ethics is dead. 80% of a privileged minority are born out of wedlock. Productive adults are ground into a hamburger and Gifted children are flensed. Scholarship has been shriven into rights.

America is nation of virulent parasites by legislated confiscation gushing successive middens of morons to manage the next cycle. Capitalism amortizes debt through inflation, forever pushing reckoning into the next quarter. We have legislated a compassionate miracle! We pushed so hard tomorrow arrived last Tuesday - and it is not going away.

As someone who spent my early years in both the city of St. Louis and across the river in East St. Louis I recall vividly the processes which brought about the near collapse of St. Louis and the complete collapse of East St. Louis. Although I am sure the interstate highway system and tax policy both played an important part in the equation what I personally witnessed was something different.

For perspective let me state that virtually every one of my various relatives all owned homes throughout both cities. My maternal grandparents owned a magnificent grand old home in East St. Louis near 10th and Pennsylvania next to what was known as the “sunken gardens” - a gorgeous assemblage of formal parterre gardens amidst fountains. And just a few blocks away my favorite playground known as Jones Park, one of the most beautiful Victorian walking parks in the country, featured exotic park pavilions, more formal gardens and meandering canals where Venetian gondolas could be rented by the hour. Everywhere, brick paved streets were filled with towering old sidewalk trees with a nearby high school that looked like a “palace of education”, unlike school buildings today that mostly resemble factories for making widgets. The homes where impressively built and designed to last for centuries. Today that world is almost entirely lost. Only a few isolated homes survive and these are nearly all in some level of advanced decay. The sunken gardens are now a trash-filled weed patch, the park is nearly entirely overgrown and the high school was torn down several years ago. Hardly a single sidewalk tree exists anywhere for blocks on end. The whole area looks like Dresden or Berlin, Germany right at the end of World War II. To this day I miss the pleasant walks with either my paternal or maternal grandparents to the corner grocery store, the rides on the street trolleys and those magical experiences every Saturday at one of the city’s grand old movie palaces.

But as I recall the key to the abandonment (and disinvestment) of our cities had less to do with highways or taxation, but rather premeditated policies put in place by our banking, insurance and real estate interests. Not a single one of my relatives ever wanted to leave either St. Louis or East St. Louis. But one by one they gave up their beautiful homes and the neighborhoods they had come to love and cherish primarily because no one could get a home loan for the most basic repairs, insurance policies were systematically cancelled and real estate agents were forever coming to their doors encouraging them to sell (block busting) warning of blacks moving into the neighborhood.

By 1968 all had left and moved out into the distant country or suburbs where easy credit and bank loans could be had. Without exception everyone regretted leaving and loosing that sense of neighborhood and community. My maternal grandmother lamented her fate to the very end.

After college I returned to St. Louis and spent the next thirty-plus years restoring my own historic home and creating extensive gardens, but even decades later I was constantly dealing with the difficulties in getting home improvement loans, reasonable insurance rates, etc., even having been shot once, stabbed twice and nearly beaten to death with a two by four in three separate home burglary attempts. Although I now live in the country in a small, quiet rural town to this day I miss the city and urban life, despite all of the trials and tribulations associated with it.

"Tell this to the multimillionaire rap artists."
-------------------------------

Abbey,

I'd rather tell it to the average unemployed black person who, after prodigious effort, lands a first hurdle phone interview and lets slip axst instead of asked, wif instead of with, or dat instead of that.

The polite HR rep thanks the hapless interviewee, moves on to the next desperate soul on her list, and never even bothers to call back with a "Sorry, but we've selected another candidate who we believe more fully meets our needs." Nothing; no explanation; just silence.

For you to have advised young blacks otherwise is a crying shame.

P.S. Rico/Zzz delendus est.

What effect, if any, might the constant threat of nuclear annihilation have had on the desire to leave the cities? Even though a nuclear exchange would have obliterated America as it was, surely it would be preferable to not be at ground zero, even with the dangers of fallout and other horrors post-nuclear holocaust. Even today, scare-mongering about dirty bombs and other terrorist attacks inevitably focus on centres of concentrated population.

Just another facet out of dozens that make up the general fear of urban life that remains in the latter days of a colonial nation.

Although, you have to wonder if part of the problem of American cities is simply that they grew too quickly and in the wrong ways to have ever established themselves as healthy communities, aside from exceptions like New York and San Francisco, where money keeps them on perpetual life support.

I, too, have mixed feelings about small towns. I prefer small/medium cities, with populations from half a million to a million, ideally with two or three high-density areas (not just one), with neighbourhoods of assorted densities in and around them. I think if a city has well-defined neighbourhoods, it has much better cohesion. Maybe this has to do with being Canadian, or my nostalgia for an idealized version of historical European cities pre-industrialization.

"By the way using the phrase “typical white person” is not a demeaning characterization..."

What is typical of white people? "Typical", suggests a boilerplate set of actions or reactions. It is an attempt to characterize an entire set or subset of people. In that it is racist. Of course I wouldn't expect a TYPICAL FUCKTARD to typically get it.

Hey Jim,

You comment that this article missed the core, but you too are still a few levels too high.

Charles Eisenstein takes if a few levels deeper here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/money_and_crisis_civilization

I think you would really enjoy Eisenstein’s essay. I worry about you sometimes because there's really not much we can do, you know. Perhaps there’s some that Obama could be doing that he’s not, but as Audre Lord put it, “the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house.” Obama is as trapped by the system as we are, and we can’t do anything today. You still drive your Tacoma, I still drive my Dakota, because we don’t have the money to completely rearrange our lives as thoroughly as the times truly require because it takes much more than money to do that. We won’t be able to create the new world until the old one falls. It takes the full cooperation of the whole community to rearrange everything about the way we live, but the majority of our community doesn’t yet think we are on the brink of collapse. This is OK, this isn’t cause for panic, people will come around when their personal worlds start falling apart, which it already is for millions of people. We will come together soon. Today it seems that there is cause for despair because we are so individuated and feel so helpless and powerless as individuals, but that’s just a outgrowth of the structure of our society after our growth economy has driven us apart by having us pay for everything that we used to do communally. As long as the “growth” based money system is standing we will stay separated and divided. Once it falls we will come together and allow reality to seep back in. It will be a beautiful time, albeit some strife initially, but with some positive work we can come back together create a more beautiful world.

We are currently in a national state of denial, and rightfully so. We can’t allow ourselves to stop doing what we’ve been doing because subconsciously we sense the abject poverty of our souls and we can’t let that enter into consciousness falling into an unbelievable despair. The Suburbs are a result of this. We fill the hole in our center with the appearance of wealth, success, beauty, and opulence to hide the inner poverty, failure, loneliness, and despair. The problems we face don’t start with physical or economic mistakes, but with our spiritual bankruptcy, with the bankruptcy of any meaningful purpose for our lives other than buying. You are advocating the death of more than just a sickly economy here, you are advocating taking away our very reason for living in America. This can’t and shouldn’t be done by any human, it must come from the death of the sickly system that created us in it’s image. Take heart, with the fall of the system that has so deeply impoverished all of us on a spiritual level will come a period of reintegration with our larger ecological selves, which will usher in a new era of beauty and true wealth beyond our wildest dreams.

General Aviation the canary in our coal mine?
http://www.suburbanempire.com

I grew up in southern CT when it was more town than suburb. By the 80's, density had brought with it traffic and the attendant problems. Suddenly I was living with all the inconvenience of a large city and none of the amenities. Didn't seem like a good deal. I moved.

http://maureenholland.wordpress.com/

"More precisely, a group of similar perceptions and views, based on shared or similar culture and background. "

Oh you mean like "catfish lovin', watermelon eating negroes"?
Or "money grubbing" Jews? Or perhaps, "red neck, racist, Nascar attending, Southerners?

I could go on (making certain that I politically, correctly, insult every sub-set, so as to "equally offend" one and all) but I will not. When the word "typical" is aimed at a specific group it is never used in a positive mode. It always attempts to associate a negative action to the entire sub-set. In that it is racist, ageist or sexist. Obama's example was racist as he used the term, "typical white person".

Now shut the fuck up dale, because you are beginning to look even more stupid than usual and that is not an easy thing to do.

I have an example of how this insidious suburban world view has contaminated government's view of "development:" I have a farm in a very rural part of Virginia -- our county has a population just shy of 13,000. The largest of the incorporated towns has a population of about 800. There are no traffic signals (clearly there is no need!)

Nearly all of the existing towns (with the exception of the county seat) developed around railroad terminals that were used in the 19th and early 20th centuries to move produce and tobacco to urban markets. The line in the largest town continues to operate, but the railroads have essentially vanished, the track even having been removed. Those towns continue to decline, lacking a clear purpose or business to sustain them.

Here is the folly: the county government created a suburban style "office park" in an attempt to attract businesses to the region. One forlorn building stands there among building sites for a half dozen more. I wonder what these people do for lunch; the nearest town is a 15-minute drive away. Northeast of this "office park" is the industrial corridor, where there are a handful of factories that employ most of the town's residents. You would think they would encourage development in the towns, but no. Apparently this is the "successful" model to emulate.

Another town is pushing hard to have the state build a prison, which would bring jobs. The previous big employer was a textile mill, long since closed. So much for producing things of lasting value.

"On the other hand, I would not do that, because I have little use for either party or their bullshit political tripe."

Hardly. You have no use for the truth, is what you have no use for. You got all "blue in the face" (or is it red?...I get all confused with the red state/ blue state bullshit) because Beck interpreted Obama's statement to be racist. Then your silly little attempt to defend the word, "typical" in the sense that Obama used the term turns out to be indefensible (that is if one has more than two synapses firing at the same time which you, quite clearly, do not).

Then little dale-eee, whale-ee wants to run away when his "bullshit political tripe" folds like a cardboard suitcase. What-fuckin'-evah. (Puss.)

"Total bullshit really, if the shoe were on the other foot and some R had used the term "typical black person" you would be beside yourself defending his honor...."

Now here is some brilliant "dale logic." You just said there is nothing wrong using the word "typical" regarding a set of people. So why would I have to defend the honor of some Fucktard that used this term if there is nothing wrong with the term? Sweet hay-sus you are a rather dull blade, young laddie.

And by-the-by I don't know if Obama is a racist or not . I suspect he is not but that is a gut level feeling. However, I can see how someone may get the feeling, from some of the things he has said and written, that he may be.

Mr. Obama said he noted the trend. "I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding," the President said
-----------------------
While Obama's presidency has been a disappointment to me thus far, this statement is something which should get more play, and why I mentioned last week that cable "news" is not news at all, but just political shouting.

"As a final comment to this spitfest. It should be revealing to everyone that our resident Nazi has made common cause with you, if that doesn't tell you where the canard of "Obama as racist" is coming from, nothing will."

Hmmmm. Now it comes down to guilt by non association as the only time I ever responded to anything our "resident Nazi" said was to tell him to shut the fuck up.

Hey dale, I understand the child rapist that lives next door to you likes the type of lawn fertilizer you use. Uh, oh....that would make you a...ummm, I just decided I better not talk to you, you are a little peculiar. (FUCKING MORON.)

I grew up in post WWII suburbia (outside of Philadelphia PA)and our walkable community had corner grocery stores, cleaners, and pharmacies.

Many were in the two story buildings that allowed the owner to either live where he worked or realize extra income from the rent he collected. People still worked and shopped in the city and had either buses, streeet cars, or commuter rail to take them back and forth.

Schools were within walking distance and it was possible for a man with a high school education to get a job that allowed him to support a wife and family and have a hope for a retirement pension, social security, and the chance for his kids to attend college or receive advanced training is some trade.

In addition to all the financial flim-flammery that has happened in the past 40-50 years the deindustrialization of the United States and the increased outsourcing of good paying jobs to other countries (India, Phillipines, Malaysia for instance)where the people are just as smart and willing to work for 2/3 to 1/2 the pay of US workers has destroyed and is destroying the US.

This has led to a bankrupt elite leadership and a work force exhausted by having to work multiple jobs and go into increasing debt to maintain the lifestyle to which popular media has conditioned them.

Cities, suburbs, exurbs, and automobiles are morally neutral--it is the use to which they have been put that has made them such a cultural poison.

When our epitaph is written it may read: "They sat in a TV induced stupid daze as their tormentors stole everything from them while they paying them to do so."

"and why I mentioned last week that cable "news" is not news at all, but just political shouting."

Yeah like that non-ACORN story that all the major networks were finally forced to weigh in on for fear of looking even more corrupt than they already are. That was one of the more interesting "non-news" news events that I have ever read. Followed by the non-march on Washington on 9/12. All those non-people were really non-newsworthy. (I'm the fucking parrot? What a maroon.)

"If I were like many here, I would immediately jump on you for your apparent change in attitude..."

I have had no change in attitude. I never said I thought Obama was a racist. You are a moron.

Once again the Kunstler canard that capitalism is akin to the laws of physics rears its absurd, ugly and counterproductive head.

For an adult discussion about the myth of capitalism, I'll take Chomsky over Kunstler any day of the week.

I assume Kunstler doesn't like Chomsky because of his principled stance on Israel (which would, according to Kunstler's warped logic, make Chomsky an antisemite).

All of which is to say, Kunstler's bubble of consensus trance is no less debilitating and detrimental than the one he rails against.

"I know how easy it is to make people like that look like the fools that they are..."

No shit. You have been on the receiving end of looking foolish so many times you have a PHD in stoopid.

"immulate???"

Zikes, I don't know if you think I should set Beck on fire or if I should marry him? Immulate? You really are a FUCKTARD.

No...actually you think you WANT to marry Tom Sizemore.

dale,

Why no comment on following:

"Now here is some brilliant "dale logic." You just said there is nothing wrong using the word "typical" regarding a set of people. So why would I have to defend the honor of some Fucktard that used this term if there is nothing wrong with the term?"

You really are a bit of a dullard. You say silly shit, get called out on it and then run away from your stupidity. Wait a minute...if I said the stupid things you do, I'd run away too. Never mind.

Immulate? And you continue to post your wisdom here? Whatever.

"That's true, you've just waxed on and on about what a genius Glenn Beck is, who called Obama a racist who "had a deep seated hatred of white people" Then you defended Beck ad nauseum."

Ummm. Lets try and stay on subject dale. You were congratulating me on having changed my mind. What is it that I changed my mind from and what did I change it to? You really have an attention deficit challenge don't you?

"You are gay aren't you?"

What would be wrong with that?

"Just today you've tied yourself into such a complete rhetorical knot you would logically have to check into a chiropactic hospital to get untied."

Really? Well I challenge you to make your case. Explain just how I did that.

"Seriously man.... be yourself.....whatever that is. It sure isn't what you are masquerading as on this blog."

And I would be masquerading as...?

"I'm the one who told you how important the Acorn story was."

You haven't "told" me a single thing I didn't know long before the thought entered your silly head. Now shut the fuck up because you are the KING of fucktards. That is all.

Jim,

This is a reasonable narrative, as far as it goes, but it leaves out an essential piece. We are just like any organism, consuming all resources we can, as long as we can. And the reason we can do this is because of our impressive military strength, itself an overgrown and significant element of the emergent property you're referring to: suburban life in modern USA.

The defense industry still plays a critical role in keeping this whole thing running. The problem is, (almost) everyone still working in USA is employed in one of the essential elements ("suburbia++", "defense", finance, politics,) of the corrupt system, so you'll have to pry it from their cold, dead hands to change anything.

dale,

You are kind of funny (in a pathetic way). You are so certain of your brilliance and "rightness" that when challenged, you so crumble in your house of cards philosophy that you run from the room. Stick to your guns laddie (though they be pop-guns). Eventually you will be able to engage in an intellectual argument...even though, invariably, you will always be on the incorrect, politically correct side.

"want to immulate. In mine....it does...and that's one of the many differences between you and I"
--------------------------

1. It's emulate, not immulate.

2. If you're in a quandry as to whether you and I vs you and me is approprite ... if it comes at the end of a sentence the answer is almost always you and me. In terms of grammar I can't explain why this is so but the ear in my brain tells me it is.

P.S. Rico/Zzz delendus est.

"I have gay friends..."

Yeah but are they special, special friends? I mean like share their Barbie kind of friends?

Be honest dale, do you think of them at the same time as you imagine Tom Sizemore and me being married? Hey, what did Tom and I wear to your imaginary wedding? Were we stunning? What kind of a cake did we have in your fantasy?

"1. It's emulate, not immulate."

No fucking shit, sherlock. I would assume (makes an ass out of you...not me) that little dale already took his whipped ass to the dictionary woodshed. Why not just can the schoolmarm shit, missy. Its boring.

"I have a deep need."

I wish I had not written that.

We are doing comments on a blog. There are other blogs, but I do not read them.

If you get mail from me, Steve Billinghurst, Jim, all it is is a 1948 railroad atlas and a San Diego Reader with a "Kunstler-influenced" (mentions New Urbanism)cover story. You should enjoy-don't dunk it in water.

Other people using the same style I use, that of getting ideas down on paper with the word "because", well, in short: they're wrong. You cannot ascribe your pet causation to the dogshit you happen to get on your shoes. Who does that?

I have to dump this first:

QUOTE
It wasn't until the program was well underway that the self-destructive essence of it became obvious -- that every new housing subdivision killed the original rural character of the land, with the result that suburban life quickly became a cartoon of country living in a cartoon of a country house in a cartoon of the country.
UNQUOTE

My space bar is driving me crazy. It sticks. I'm not even funny at nine a.m. Hey, when I say crazy, I go crazy. I have impulses coming out of me now like the snakes coming out of the Gorgon Medusa's head.

QUOTE
So many of those suburban homes city-dwellers escaped to had bomb shelters built in the backyard as well, because the fear of a nuclear holocaust was so palpable.
UNQUOTE

No, PeakOilLori. Kunstler doesn't use a "because" today. He uses a "became". Your because is lame. They built bomb shelters, period. I shudder to think that these people represent the reasoning process that will pull us out of this recession. We are commenting on a blog, like I said. Don't ride the author's coattails. He is not easing up on the fat, broke American. He is catching his breath.

Now to comment on my first quotation I have to put it side by side with this fuckin thing, from 1962:
QUOTE (SONG)

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.
UNQUOTE

The one said suburbia killed the rural character of the land, and the other, actual, contemporary critical lyrics, and it was well-underway (1962-1946=16 years), and it was similar because it was also, umm, UNAMERICAN. Yes, I am going to go with unamerican. If "Clusterfuck Nation", as a phrase, does not sound unamerican to you, you are laboring under a delusion. My point is that Kunstler is a chameleon. Not every title is like this. Some are merely critical of housing. But Kunstler is a Commie, and Malvina was a Commie rat, and "all the same" is code for the PEOPLE being all the same. Read between the lines, you poor saps!

http://sbillinghurst.wordpress.com

(Shhh! This is telling you how to manufacture speed, brother.)

You know, and I hate that DEA. They colluded with Hollywood to make "Breaking Bad", and flat-out advertised the usage of HF, but the story I lived did not quite go that way. We don't dissolve bodies in the shit and accidentally pour it into a china bathtub and see the whole mess eating a hole in the floor. We attempt to obtain HI through (evidently) compromised sources and are delivered of a plastic jug with an iodine-stained label which gives off suspicious white fumes when you open it. But, it is mislabeled. HF is $10, HI is $300. I poured it into my expensive laboratory flask and it ate right through the flask and the heating mantle, ruining $200 worth of equipment. At least we saved the ten pounds of ephedrine.

The DEA is conducting too much surveillance, they pull dirty tricks, and there are Communists in the DOJ.

Today's concept is EMERGENT PROPERTIES Kunstler's, not mine, and that adds to COGNITIVE DISSONANCE and TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS, and these things are real learning, not just vocabulary. Kunstler actually has strict boundaries, dictated by you recommending the blog to others,such that any given post will be roughly thematic and you can count on anyone not comingback at you and saying, "Man, that blog you told me to read was wack. It was live streaming video of UFO abduction graphics fully cutting away to anal probes. Don't you ever speak to me about the economy again."

I have Steven Millhauser's book, "Martin Dressler". Listen to what it says: He teaches at Skidmore College and lives with his wife and two children in SARATOGA SPRINGS, New York. Obviously, if you throw a rock in that town you will hit a Communist intellectual, propaganda branch. QED.

"No, that is an image I prefer to leave to you."

Really? Well you brought it up so it is your image. That thought/image emanated in your addled brain. I'm surmising it gave you some sort of pleasure. Whatever.

So......are you admitting you are gay? Are you also a virgin? It's OK man...we understand. It explains a lot of things.

"I know how easy it is to make people like that look like the fools that they are, but I should not make it my job to do it."--dale

Why stop now, you're doing such a great job!

To Abbeys Books

I,too, live just outside of Philadelphia.I did a fast internet search on a popular search engine to browse through real estate listings in the city. There are plenty of listings for housing and empty lots in the city, and many are well under 100K. They are not in the chi-chi areas of the city, but usually within the gritter parts. I believe that white yuppie families would be quite a minority in such areas. It is sad to say that, and I am not trying to start a war of words here. I just don't think average suburbanite whites will come running back to such areas any time soon, and when they do they will probably not feel welcome.Nor will they like their new surroundings much. Sad, because the city has much to offer, really.

The great tragedy of suburbanization is that in the process of disinvestment that took place in Cleveland, St. Louis or Hamilton, Ontario, we left the suburbanites with nothing to move back to once the ever-expanding ring of suburbia began to fail and economic conditions forced people to move back to the same neighborhoods that their grandparents had fled from after World War Two. The modern conservative movement made matters worse by declaring government the source of all evil and convincing people that they'd be better off living under corporate colonialism.

As ever JHK, you have a true knack for the appropriate metaphor. In keeping with the spirit of your most recent, as Kramden might have put it, " One day Uncle Sam [Alice], POW! Right in the kisser!"

Oh, great. I see lil Stink Eye Open is back to his favorite hobby, trolling JHK's blog.

Dale,

Stink Eye has other friends here besides Jagoff and Bambi, like, um, Dr. Dumb, for instance.

And a bunch of other not moronic, not stupid, non-f*cktard posters, too.

By the 70's the white, working-class Kramdens had moved out to be replaced on television by the Evans (of "Good Times" fame), a struggling, African-American family who lived in an inner-city Chicago housing project. So many films and televisions shows from that period (from "Taxi Driver" and "Dirty Harry," to "Starsky and Hutch" and "Barretta") portray cities as decaying, crime-ridden, and impoverished. I give credit to MTM Productions for setting many (if not most) of their series in major cities (Mary Tyler Moore in Minneapolis, Bob Newhart's first show in Chicago). The shows depicted urban life as desirable and showed city dwellers as likeable, middle-American, professional people. I will grant that these shows generally lacked realistically diverse characters in terms of race, ethnicity and socio-economic status (a la "Friends"), but at least they portrayed city life favorably when much of the popular culture did not.

I think this negative view of cities in popular culture trickled-down from the conscience-raising efforts of many activists, writers, artists and documentarians of the 60's and 70's. In their attempts to expose the grim realities of urban poverty, they unintentionally reinforced a more generalized bleak view of city life. Even Elvis sang about life "In the Ghetto."

I used to live in Chicago and work in St. Charles, Illinois--some 30 miles from the city. My suburban co-workers were convinced I lived in a dangerous, crime-ridden neighborhood because I lacked the money to live elsewhere. In fact, the entire city and surrounding Cook County were, by their definition, dangerous and crime-ridden. To understand their attitudes, I started watching the local television news with the perspective of a collar-county suburbanite. I quickly saw why my co-workers feared the city; every night was the same litany of shootings, hit-and-run accidents, fires in dilapidated houses and apartments, government corruption--all taking place within the city or inner suburbs. Chicago's outer suburbs have their share of crime, calamity and even poverty, but it's all so dispersed. While in the relatively compact city a shooting and a house fire may take place within a few miles of one another, two similar events in the suburbs might be 50 miles apart. It's easy to see that TV news directors with a limited number of reporters and remote crews are going to assign the stories that require the least amount of travel, so events in the city are given priority. This geographic bias in reporting, coupled with the fact that misfortune tends to strike disproportionately the urban poor (many of whom are people of color), gives a skewed perspective on the racial, ethnic and socio-economic profile of city dwellers. As a result, the people who neither live nor work in the city have a distorted view of the quality of life in city and the people who live there.

Mr. Kunstler,

Excellent post, back to basics with a bang.

Oh yick...it just occurred to me. dale is not only asking if I'm gay but also wants to know if I'm a virgin. Is this a fucking preamble to a request for a date? Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Hooo, hooo...dale is fucking doing a different "kind" of trolling on this blog. dale, you old fucking cad, you. (You little scamp!)

The demise of General Aviation a canery in our coal mine of American Empire?

http://www.suburbanempire.com

Jaego,

I really do not believe it was “black barbarism” that has created most of our problems within our urban centers. However, that said, I do understand much of your reasoning, how you have arrived at your varied conclusions and will go so far as to admit the black underclass has greatly exacerbated the process.

Within my own sphere of experience most of our urban problems have been the result of financial greed and a most undisciplined form of capitalism thrust upon us by powerful Wall Street business interests over the past six decades. As I see it, it has been essentially our rampant and undisciplined economic form of capitalism that has gotten us into the mess we are in and brought about our nation having some of the ugliest and most depressing urban centers in the industrialized “first world”.

Capitalism is like a wild stallion. It will do neither of us any good until it is effectively “broken”. In other words, trained. Only then can you properly ride it and have it work for your benefit. Remember, raw capitalism does not believe in or thrive on stability, community and all those wonderful qualities that characterize a stable and healthy world. By its very nature it demands chaos, for how else can you continually encourage people to abandon their homes and community and move on to the next development. Much, if not all, of our suburban growth has been based on this need to “force” people out of stable communities into ever new developments that benefit the banks, insurance companies and real estate interests. Government, pretty much owned by these three basic interests has encouraged this via enumerable policies. Think of it this way: There is no real “profit” or “growth potential” to business interests when communities remain healthy, stable and comfortable. Corporate interests and persons who make their living through financial speculation would affectively starve. They and their group live in their own private little parasitic worlds and care nothing for the larger picture or the true good of the nation. Like a cancer, it will grow until it consumes its host. What is good for them is all that matters. This is why it is so important that capitalism always have a “social” element and be disciplined by government intervention whereby the greater good of the community is what is served. Obviously this has not often worked as envisioned. Perhaps if we still taught ethics in our schools as they did when I was young we would never have witnessed the hideous folly that has befallen us via Wall Street (and its political surrogates) over the past decade, culminating in the current economic crises. The people who have gotten us into the present mess are supposedly some of our nation’s most intelligent and “educated” persons and that, alone, speaks volumes and leaves me deeply sullen with regards to the future of our country.

As for “black barbarism” no doubt the black underclass has played a tragic role in the devolution of our urban centers and the problems currently upon us. They are not so much the cause of the problem, but rather, just one of many tragic outgrowths of it. I am inclined to believe they have been played for suckers like most of the rest of America in this unfolding drama that we have called “suburbanization”.

Finally, our deteriorating manmade environments and the social, cultural and economic quagmire that have grown out of them were decades in the making. To focus on the details by blaming urban blacks is both wasteful and pointless as we really should be trying to gain perspective of the larger picture and work to find solutions that will allow us to transition into a more graceful, caring, respectful, sustainable and beautiful world.

JIM K

' The banking fiasco' IS ONLY BEGINNING!

I'm going to try to add something fresh to the discussion, and break up the Zzzz/Asoka/Dale triptych that seems to span this public space from wall to wall.

From an ecological perspective, the suburbs represent an ecotone, or the overlapping area of two distinct ecosystems along their common border. And here's where Jim's sometimes monotonous railings against suburbia come up wanting:

Ecotones are the most productive part of any ecosystem.

The desire to live in the urban/rural interface is not only natural, it's actually the smartest choice for biodiversity and energy flow. Access to both urban and rural resources is (theoretically) within arms' reach.

Problem is, a whole lot of people had this natural draw to the ecotone, and as one wave of suburbanization replaced the prior, the former ecotone just got swallowed up in the urban maelstrom. That's why older, inner suburbs get such a bad rap. They're not urban, they're not rural, hell, they're not even suburban! They're just kind of lost, and usually outdated.

Humans are animals, and no matter how far we try to remove ourselves from nature, there is still something inside us that feels it, that wants to be there. Reacquainting yourself with how nature functions makes this once in a lifetime OPPORTUNITY we call Peak Oil a whole lot easier to understand. And embrace.

" Zzz thinks "moron" and "fucktard" put an end to all further debate..."

Obviously not...FUCKTARD!

zzzzzz, thanks for helping my previous point out. The posters I listed were oddly absent from this particular page...

The big difference between 1950 and today is that Big Gov't didn't have all the social programs to "help" the poor, unemployed, underemployed, etc.

Today, if you can't or don't want to work, someone will pick up your tab. Back in 1950, you had to work.

Also, look at the photo, I don't see two cars, three phones, two cell phones, a big screen TV, computers, microwave ovens, etc. Our standard of living has "improved" but we still owe for all the things we have.

ZZZZZ,
Congratulations, you now have the complete list of Fascist posters here on your side; Jaego the Nazi, Bhami the Redneck, and Asia the Retard. I'm sure they see you as someone with true potential. It must make you so proud to see your ideas admired.

I have to admit I was curious about that myself...

I resent the snide remarks about people who live in small towns. le dumb dumb red staters! I think the people are great, even the nazcar idiots. They got used to suburbia. It's a habit. All habits take time to over come.

I dislike leftard liberals. The education system is geared toward dumbing down people and turning them into sheeple. It's no surprise that the more "education" some has the more liberal they are. That's called indoctrination.

The liberal mindset is expensive,and guess what? WE don't have the money anymore to take care of everyone's illegitimate kids and drug habits.

For example, I am all for making all drugs legal. However, if a person gets on drugs, the government will not use my money to get them off of it. The druggies can just go to the local 12 step program. If the druggy get drugged and pass out in their own vomit, they will stay that way. Liberal Free lunch is over.

There is no need to live in a big-city if you and your family does not have to. Especially at tense moments in history (such as the current one) we should wholeheartedly resist the primitive urge to huddle and crowd together like stunned rats in order to satisfy our irrational urge for mass-safety. It's clear that the last place a sane person would want to be when and if TSHTF is in a big-city.

In the future, in terms of the mass-proliferation of high-speed internet, telecommuting, working and learning from home, and so on, we are likely to see even more spreading out (suburbanization) and thus even more urban depopulation. Similar to Russia, the USA is decidedly not a very urban-oriented nation -- it is very decentralized and has an inherent deep-rooted anti-urban bias, and for historical as well as geographical reasons the people of Russia and the USA generally prefer small-town, medium-sized town, and/or rural living over the cramped, dirty, gray, impersonal, and generally 'paved over' milieu of modern cities. Remember that the USA was originally founded as an 'agrarian republic,' and that Russia was also overwhelmingly agrarian/rural during its entire history too. In terms of comparisons between the USA and Russia, it's also very interesting to note that one of the ways which the Soviets forced independent Russian farmer-peasants ('kulaks' they called them) to submit to the Communist system was by forcibly urbanizing tens of millions of them (i.e., herding them in to cities) rapidly and taking over their ancestral lands for various 'collective' purposes, in effect turning them all in to highly dependent slavish urbanites who could no longer survive without The System...the hyperindustrial urban/internationalist-oriented Soviet bureaucracy based in Moscow called it 'dekulakization.' Could there be similar plans afoot in the modern USA?

If you really think about it, cities in general are huge parasites, i.e. they use up in many-many more resources than they actually produce. Where does all the food which cities consume come from? Where does the water of cities come from? And their fuel? And their building materials: either wood or metal? The answer to all: ALL of the necessities of life which keep cities functioning come from various rural and/or suburban areas...meanwhile the only things modern cities export in large amounts are mass quantities of sewage, air pollution, trash, and so on -- not to mention trashy forms of 'entertainment' and lots of white-collar criminal rip-off artists. Factories aren't even in many American cities nowadays (they've mostly moved to the suburbs) since so many are now very yuppiefied sand faux-santized, nor are any other truly productive facilities...you cannot grow or raise any food in cities obviously, all water is piped in from afar, and most of what goes on in America's cities today is just worthless paper-shuffling, various forms of debauchery, white-collar scheming, and anti-cultural forms of 'entertainment' which is exported to the hinterlands. In suburbia though there are many factories AND also farms and pastureland and orchards and gardens, and decently-priced housing, and low-crime (usually), and so on. All trucked-in foodstuffs and water also pass through suburbia before they reach the cities...so if anything the big-cities are going to have their necessities cut-off first during a possible upheaval, since the supply-chains for cities pass through suburbia. It's also better to raise children in less crowded areas where they can explore nature and stretch their legs so to speak, which they are of course unable to do in crowded dirty cities.

Most Americans just don't like cities; they prefer open spaces, trees, grass, and greenery over endless concrete and gray steel. There will always be a bit of the 'pioneer' or 'frontiersman' in the personality of most Americans because that is the mythos upon which the USA was settled, founded, and slowly built over the last few centuries. If you want real city livin', the overcrowded, gray, and dirty megalopoli of Europe and/or Asia await you. But again, we more provincial-minded Americans and Russians will always wonder: why live like crammed dirty rats stacked on top of one another if you do not have to?

I agree with Mr Kunstler that small towns are generally the best set-up in terms of maximizing human happiness and raising a family, or even smaller ruralish suburban 'hamlets' with good access to farmland, pastureland, orchards, forests, rivers, lakes, and of course a few decent roads.

From a Facebook log:

Friday, August 14, 2009 at 1:08am
This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly, Jackson EMC, regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration – the Weather Channel.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on I-85, built by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and read on Fox News about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

bambi,

You need to seek the help of a qualified mental health professional.

I haven't finished Jim's article and I felt I must comment on the use of the word "capital". First off, capital is a commodity that can be valorized. Yes, read your Marx. That is, it is capable of transforming or being transformed by labor into a commodity for sale. Until a resource or commodity has been transformed by labor, it has no added value. Capital in the form of purchased labor, tooling, energy, resources is the means of that transformation. All value flows from that. So, is suburban tract housing a form of capital? No. If anything it is anti-capital. It continues to consume energy, labor, and material resources and returns nothing but phony baloney capital gains or a tax write-off until the inevitable bursting of the bubble. The suburbs do not in themselves produce real wealth. They only consume it. One one figures in the other losses of wasted land, fuel, time, materials, social degradation, suburban sprawl has been a collosal failure. There is one exception. The corporations that sold and financed all that crap have made out like bandits. Yes, their profligate ways have punched a hole in the capital markets, but Bernake and Obama have a big box of band-aids for them. Likely the cost of that will come out of your pensions and savings in the form of inflating them into oblivion. Have a ball. You've earned it.

I think you're underestimating the extent to which technology may reduce the need for capital, and undermine the whole rationale for the existing capitalist model. Indeed one of the central causes of corporate capitalism's crisis tendencies is the vast surplus of investment capital with no productive outlet, and its exacerbation by the imploding cost of capital outlays needed to undertake production.

This has already occurred in the information and culture industries, with the desktop and network revolution lowering capital outlays for publishing, software and music by two orders of magnitude. The minimum cost of a hub in the old broadcast culture, typically, was hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the new network culture, it's fallen to a few hundred or at most a few thousands. The old saying was that freedom of the press was great, if you could afford to buy a printing press. Toward the end of the 20th century, the minimum capital outlay for a conventional newspaper was several hundred thousand $$. The desktop/Internet revolution lowered the cost of a "printing press" to $1000 or so.

Douglass Rushkoff remarked that this had led to the tech industry destroying the California economy. The amount of capital required to fund a tech startup fell by 90% or more, leaving venture capitalists with lots of money and nowhere to spend it.

The very same process is about to be reenacted in the realm of physical production, via the revolution in distributed, open-source manufacturing in small shops using cheap CNC machinery. See, for example, the recent 100kGarages initiative of ShopBot and Ponoko.

As important as Peak Oil is by itself, it's exacerbated by another phenomenon at least as important: the inability of old, centralized, capital-intensive industry to survive in the face of the exploding informal and household economy.

SEB I've read all your correspondence with Abbey up through comment 154 and must confess ... you've lost me. You're way to nuanced for my small mind.

I gotta quexion for ya. I just want to get one thing straight. Do you feel I made a valid point about Abbey's teaching of English to black kids? Namely, that advising them to retain black vernacular, as though it were a legitimate second language, was a bad idea?

P.S. Rico/Zzz delendus est.

I grew up in the 'burbs, a small, rural town really that had some new houses, but not many, so it retained much of the small town character. If you think this was a peaceful, idyllic place you are only partly correct. There was rape,disrespect, drugs,inter-personal violence, crime, muggings, attacks,break-ins and puh-lenty of ethnic strife. Not that you would know it by the look of the place!! It looked like a Norman Rockwell postcard of a New England town in Autumn.
The ethnic hatreds has always struck me as odd. This was white European group against other white Euro groups! Odd, because it was a fairly homogenous place (100% white, mostly WASP or Irish) with some Poles, Italians, Portuguese and French, some Germans.I should say Americans whose grandparents or great grandparents were those ethnicities. One would think that the people, including the children in the schools who mimicked the hatreds of their parents, were living in some teeming,swarmy, 19th century urban immigrant ghetto hell,judging from the comments. Let's not forget the schools.They were horrible, lots of violence and drugs and so bad some kids graduated only functionally literate.

My point is racial homogenity and a rural environment do not always make for a safer, better place to live for anyone of any race or background.

"It must make you so proud to see your ideas admired."

No, dale, not really. I like it when they are reviled. Especially by a Fucktard such as yourself. That assures me that I'm on the right path.

"Of course I understand, I'm a liberal who dislikes both parties, I wish everyone the freedom to be themselves."

Then why would you dislike both parties? They are being themselves. You really are an idiot dale. These inane statements just multiply as the day continues.

abbey-shakes sez:

"You people, and yes I meant you people, canot get over the fact that a nigger is in the white house. Get over it.

He is more educated, more elegant, more informed, more everything than we have had in decades."

Wow the "n" word. Zo-kay though because shakie is a lib and making a point to all the racists. (Not.)

Educated, elegant and informed does not make one immune to bad ideas and worse solutions. Sorry shakes, the race card failed. (See Carter, Jimmah). Back to square one.

" Do you feel I made a valid point about Abbey's teaching of English to black kids? Namely, that advising them to retain black vernacular..."

Sweet-dumb-dale you are a MORON. So black kids needed shakey to tell them to retain their vernacular? Has dale been blowing you lately or are you this stupid on your own?

@Q,
Yes, in my sober mind I do, because I am a racist. I am as racist as Bruce Willis. Some

thug said he wanted Bruce to scream in pain, and Bruce said, "Play some rap music."

But, there's a caveat: I am not at all sane. I am waiting for that to make a difference to

someone, but so far no luck. maybe I "aged out" of stark, raving lunacy, maybe the sexual

repression in our society has made everyone who is not shank-sharpening Charlie-Manson

veinous mahar ("Have a Nagila (monster))'museum of yardbird reflexes' ("Still Life With

Woodpecker")kind of a guy too wrapped up in their own neuroses to notice, or, perhaps I died

on my feet at some point and am still falling to the floor like "An Occurrence at Owl Creek

Bridge". I am a playing-card, not smooth seamless and natural moving in time, but a

flickering reflection on next universe's dirty screen, like oil pollution becoming a rainbow

on the water. I could be stuck in a frame of the film, the last Steve Billinghurst in the

deck, alias Miff-I am miffed I can't fuck my time off any longer and I killed it all,. It

was easy being young. I drew short straw; future's up.

No, I don't mind Ebonics. They named it after me. I'm SEB. It's really Sebonics.

What do I care what is taught outside physical science courses? It's all basketweaving. My

school, UCSD, eventually tired of calling Psych underwater basketweaving, and now you can

get THE class of Underwater Basketweaving on your transcript. You sit down there in SCUBA

gear.
QUOTE
By a fortuitous coincidence, the revolution in COMPUTERS enabled Wall Street bankers to

concoct abstruse new species of tradable paper securities based on bundles of debt that

seemed to produce miraculous earnings. It had the added advantage of being inscrutable.
UNQUOTE

Notice 'computers' (emphasis added). What did they do? They enabled. Enabling is not

always a bad thing. Co-dependencies suck, but WHEELS "enabled" my PLANE to land, okay?

Eventually (whip out your Bible), the "babble" of different languages will be BANISHED. We

need black dialect redounded into the language just now.

Q, Dale or somebody axst you what would be "affective" and if it was wrong. Since the word

is "effective" and it can't be right, that fixes it to easily-answered in the affirmative.

I can't go on record verbally gutting poor dear Abby without remorse, but she invariably

toots her horn and lives in an ivory tower. I am stalling and I won't remember, but there

is a relevant prejudice in one of her arguments.

She's a jewel and so are you. It is late here, it has to be late there.

I logged back in and I swear I stepped on a wooden block and it gouged the bottom of my foot. I am in quite a bit of pain. Ha ha, I'm joking. I threw a cinder block through a car window and caused another crash at the same intersection and I'm feeling guilty.

It's as clear as new-mown hay. You gotta know how to read. Let's swing. Who's up for a Crisco party. It's emblematic of today's problems. It's just the flux of current events, not the current events themselves. They are mere window-dressing for a pogrom. Smoke weed. Kristalnacht. Yellow Journalism. Close as you'll ever get to the Pacific Ocean. You got cities like that? You guys got worked. I want pins in my face, Q.

MessianicDruid said: "Seems rather convenient that "we" only get two choices."

I'm sorry, perhaps you are not from the USA or don't know about its process. There are actually more than a dozen presidential candidates. They engage in debates and have conventions. The parties choose their candidate.

Here is a list of the major USA parties, i.e., those with candidates who qualified for a minimum 270 electoral votes

Constitution Party
Green Party
Libertarian Party
Independent Party

Then there are other candidates from minor parties.

Boston Tea Party
New American Independent Party
Party for Socialism and Liberation
Prohibition Party
Reform Party
Socialist Party USA
Socialist Workers Party
Independents Party

If you do some research on the party platforms, you can probably find someone to vote for who comes close to your political views.

Oh, and I almost forgot, there is also a Democratic and Republican party.

Wow, Scabby Abbey said, regarding Obama: "He is more educated, more elegant, more informed, more everything than we have had in decades."

First off, I hated -- let me repeat, hated -- Bush, he made me want to vomit with every appearance. But be that as it may, Obama's refusal to use his inherent executive powers to bust trusts and go after the big bankers who defrauded tens --nay hundreds -- of millions of people has made me sick. And I voted for the guy.

To say all criticism of Obama is racist (though some of it undoubtedly is) is pure apologetic bullshit. Am I racist because I think we should get out of Afghanistan and Iraq or prosecute corporate crooks? Give me a fuckin' break.

This is the Great Unwinding, as JHK has pointed out numerous times on this site, and if we want to get out of it in an orderly manner we'll say "fuck you" to the corporate powers that be that want to loot this once-great system before it collapses. And if Obama can't tell them "fuck you," I say fuck Obama. And if he were white, I would be even more prone to say that.

Which brings me to another point: If we had some old, lame white guy in office who failed to bust trusts and implement radical reforms during this trying time, the public would know they were being fucked over, and, hence, they might react. But Obama is too smooth. Surely a hip minority president would never sell out to corporations and big banks, would he?

By the way, the G-20 protests next week in Pittsburgh will be interesting. If protesters show up en masse, I'll have some faith that progressive change is possible. If not, we are flat-out fucked by the big corporate schlong.

This recent quote from progressive author Chris Hedges says it all: "Unless we on the left move quickly, this rage will be captured by a virulent and racist right wing, one that seeks a disturbing proto-fascism.Every day counts. Every deferral of protest hurts. We should, if we have the time and the ability, make our way to Pittsburgh for the meeting of the G-20 this week rather than do what the power elite is hoping we will do -- stay home. Complacency comes at a horrible price."

In other words, get your asses out there so-called progressives. When the shit goes down, the Glen Becks of the world will be like "hey we were saying something," even though that something was corporate cheerleading.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/20090921_globalization_goes_bankrupt/

Another good quote, from Larry Holmes (not the boxer): “The best thing that happened to the Establishment is the election of a black president. It will contain people for a given period of time, but time is running out. Suppose something else happens? Suppose another straw breaks? What happens when there is a credit card crisis or a collapse in commercial real estate? The financial system is very, very fragile. The legs are being kicked out from underneath it.

“Obama is in trouble,” Holmes went on. “The economic crisis is a structural crisis. The recovery is only a recovery for Wall Street. It can’t be sustained, and Obama will be blamed for it. He is doing everything Wall Street demands. But this will be a dead end. It is a prescription for disaster.

So, progessives, stop mocking the town hallers and become one of them (though with a different message of course).

A good piece, but I'm afraid James, the problem really is with 'capital-ism' itself: there has been a crisis in the ability of capitalists to accumulate the surplus since the late 1960's. This was compounded by the "oil shock" of 1973 and the 1980's solutions - sending the factories and the jobs to low-wage third-world countries; and lending the money to the Western working class to keep them consuming (compensatory borrowing), both of which have hit the rocks. No one can afford to borrow any more and the banks are too scared to lend as people can't pay back what they owe now. Add to this an unfolding environmental crisis of Biblical proportions, various resource crises (oil, minerals, food, water) and a political crisis of representation in which the far right have taken control of the old center right - in New Zealand we have the pro-business National Party, Labour, the "Greens" - who now absurdly support free-market solutions to global warming, and the Maori Party who were suckered into supporting the pollution market in exchange for some notional support for "poor people" in the discussion surrounding the climate change bill, which of course vanished in the final document. We won't mention ACT (The Association of Consumers and Taxpayers), an Ayn Rand-ian 1%-of-the-vote collection of libertarians and neo-fascists.
In the US you have "a single ruling party, with two right wings" to paraphrase Gore Vidal.
Change will come when people find themselves unable to carry on life in the old way, which will probably correspond with the growing inability of the tiny financial and political elite being unable to run things in the old way. Accumulated capital will be meaningless when there is no food on the shelves, no food-ships in the harbors and no cheap oil to fuel your car to collect all this stuff.

As a former resident of Center City Philadelphia and a frequent visitor to Philadelphia and the surrounding area, I'm interested to see it being discussed at length in this forum.

Despite all the economic, governmental and civic obstacles that face it, the city of Philadelphia seems to be doing pretty well lately. It has lost much of its industrial base and population in recent years, but it hasn't experienced a total meltdown, either. It still has a strong oil and chemical industry, a very strong hospital industry that is in very little danger of decamping to the suburbs, and many strong small business communities.

Thankfully, it hasn't fallen for the Potemkin Village model of urban economic development that has hindered so many struggling industrial cities, including Camden and Baltimore. This model is basically one of putting some trendy tourist traps on the waterfront (or otherwise just downtown), while the rest of the city is allowed to violently decay. Philadelphia officials have certainly established some dubious economic development programs, but overall they've taken a more balanced approach than officials in Baltimore and an entirely more balanced approach than officials in Camden.

Part of Philadelphia's success can be attributed to its having a critical mass of decent neighborhoods and useful, functional businesses. I've heard plausible claims that Baltimore is reaching such a critical mass and that things there have improved in the past decade, but I've also heard stories of pervasive violence and disorder in Baltimore worse than anything I've heard from or personally observed in Philadelphia. If Baltimore is making real progress towards civil society, I wouldn't say that it's definitive. On the other hand, Camden is definitively stuck in a Third World managerial style, with Third World results.

Philadelphia has retained its critical mass of civil society in large part because of its size. By Pennsylvania standards, it is an enormous municipality, the largest by population and one of the largest by area. It is also the only PA municipality that is also a county. The safer parts of Philadelphia have not been allowed to secede (nor, to my knowledge, has there been any serious secession movement), so they do much to support the city as a whole, including the run-down, violent neighborhoods. Camden suffers from the opposite municipal structure: the worst neighborhoods in the state within a radius of nearly thirty miles are incorporated in a single demoralized municipality that receives negligible support from its county and feels compelled to grovel to the state government for basic services (including patrols by the State Police).

Philadelphia is often described as a "city of neighborhoods," a phrase that is trite but apt. Many parts of the city have a very strong neighborhood identity and stronger neighborhood institutions than citywide institutions. Semi-official tallies of the number of neighborhoods in Philadelphia usually count about 108. Of these, I'd say offhand that between one and two dozen are truly violent. These neighborhoods are West Philly, Mantua, a few other neighborhoods in the West and South, and the "Badlands," stretching from around Strawberry Mansion in the Northwest to around Kensington in the Northeast. Again offhand, I'd say that fewer than a dozen other neighborhoods are marginally violent, including Parkside, Frankford and Germantown. I feel confident saying that the remainder of the city, possibly covering the majority of its land area and housing a majority of its residents, is basically safe.

Blaming Philadelphia's problems on its black underclass may in some cases be reasonable insofar as much violence and other deviant behavior occurs among blacks in black neighborhoods, but it misses the salient points.

First, the serious trouble is contained within very well-defined neighborhoods that the police and other social services recognize for what they are. The challenge in these places in marshaling enough cops and fellow-travelers to clean up Dodge; Chief Ramsey is forcing the PPD to pacify some of the worst neighborhoods, sometimes in fits and starts, but there remain serious institutional obstacles within the PPD and tremendous neighborhood problems.

Second, Philadelphia's black population is by no means entirely segregated in the bad parts of town. There are some de facto segregated neighborhoods, but also some mixed-race neighborhoods with low rates of violence (the latter is true in many suburbs, too). It should also go without saying that there are many normative people in the bad neighborhoods who aren't readily noticed in the midst of sensationalized crime.

True, the most violent neighborhoods in Philadelphia are black neighborhoods, but the cause isn't that blacks have a predilection to violence; it's that these neighborhoods have been allowed to revert to the lowest common denominator of human evil. Sometimes, all it takes to prevent violence is a police presence: I've personally seen plenty of thugs in Philadelphia who don't respect the police but who fear them enough to be peaceable whenever they think that cops might be nearby. This basic fear of the law can serve as a tipping point towards public order.

As I mentioned, the violent parts of Philadelphia are fairly small and well-defined. Much of the rest of the city is in great shape, with a strong civic fabric, race relations that in my experience are as good as they get anywhere, and excellent public manners in most regards (these three, especially the last two, are closely related). Although the city as a whole continues to lose population, some of the better neighborhoods, including Center City, are gaining residents.

I argue that this is in spite of a largely dysfunctional city government. The police department, although improving, is mismanaged, corrupt and ill-disciplined. Saturation patrols are often conducted in safe areas while dangerous areas are left to fester. The 39th District in the Northwest is a byword for lax policing driven by conflicts of interest, and the residents of the district suffer for it. Most of the city's public schools are disastrous. Customer service levels in city government are generally poor. The Parking Authority is a byzantine maze and a corrupt money pit. SEPTA, the main transit system, generally provides inadequate service. Its regional rail system is a bottlenecked relic of the 1960s with an inscrutable fare schedule, and the subway and trolley systems haven't been renovated since about 1909. For all these problems, Philadelphians pay one of the highest local income tax rates in the state.

It's been amusing this week, watching the total confusion of Jaego the Nazi and his coterie of stormtroopers as they try to understand our poor confused progeny ZZZZ. They just can't figure it out?? After all, ZZZZ says all the right things; he harps about ACORN ad nauseum, does verbal prostrations to Glenn Beck nightly, why does he refuse to acknowledge his philosophical comrades?

Let me explain in to you Jaego. You and I, and most people here understand that ACORN isn't on RW radio and Fox News every night because it's “news”. Rush makes about as much in a week, as ACORN received in Federal subsidies in a year, so why would a big shot like him waste so much time talking about a third rate little organization like ACORN? It's out there because, when it is repeated often enough, it becomes a way of saying “lazy no-good blacks”

Like you Jaego, I understand history, while ZZZ was examining every frame of “Saving Private Ryan” we were reading about the rise of the Nazi's albeit, for different reasons. We both understand that the Right is powered by grievance, and grievance requires enemies,.... and scapegoats. Hitler would never have been appointed dog catcher of Munich without using the Jews as his “offering”. They were his offering to every twisted loser in Germany. By blaming the Jews his followers would have their “sins” absolved. They were still losers, to be sure, but after Hitler they became losers for a reason....because of the Jews.

Jaego, you and I both understand that ACORN is a RW dog whistle, used to power us that grievance and fury of the losers in America. As government has increasingly abandoned their cause in favor of tending to the wealthy, they are (and will) increasingly look for other outlets to explain their fate.

Unfortunately Jaego, ZZZZ is not one of you. For all of his chest thumping, he is politically, a babe in the woods. He actually believes that ACORN is important because of the money! Isn't that funny! He watches the likes of Beck and doesn't understand that Beck is an obvious Fascist who can't admit it because Fox would have to remove him from the air if he did, and that would effectively kill his golden goose. So, he continues to talk between the lines as much as possible while saying just enough keep the rabble out there sufficiently stirred up. He talks about the frosting, while the dark cake underneath is left to his followers to visualize.

Now, I'm not saying ZZZZ won't gravitate eventually to your level of emotionalism and irrationality, but he's not their yet, and there is always that chance that something good will happen in his life which will extinguish, or at least hold in check, his budding sense of grievance.

It is interesting "Condi lies alot " called slavery America's original sin. That one probably has as many claims to authenticity as the antichrist. I agree with another blogger who say you keep this interesting and I study your writing as to how you do it. I believe alot of it is the wonder of the disaster, The Hindenburg effect if you will how did we possiblty screw up this bad. In the end it's like child abuse or mountain climbing. Why did he do it? Becasue he could. I personally think it is more different and sinister than that and there are books that agree with me. Disaster capitalism. As a society progresses it becomes so refined and mechanized that it has to devolve to make business successful anynore, a sort of entropy capitalism. The more disorder, the more opportunity for large profits becasue well there are bullets flying, whose counting. That's why we will always have cash. They need the criminals. They want the criminals as surely as they want Al Queida or the Soviet Union or the Communist SaNDINISTAs. I think fundamentally all any of us can do anymore is entertain. It's down the tubes from here so let's have a laugh or two.

dumber-than-dale sez:

"...as they try to understand our poor confused progeny ZZZZ."

Ah, so I'm your progeny and you call me confused? Kay.

"We both understand that the Right is powered by grievance..."

So you and Jaego have come to an understanding? Cool. However, when the "left" was actively criticizing all things Bush was it not due to leftist "grievances"?

"He actually believes that ACORN is important because of the money!"

Nawwww. The money comes in a distant fourth, preceded by Voter Registration Fraud, Racketeering, and before they were given the keys to the kingdom( but have since been shown the door) Census Taking.

"Now, I'm not saying ZZZZ won't gravitate eventually to your level of emotionalism and irrationality..."

Not necessary. You are providing the entertainment value along those lines. Thanks for that. Its fun watching you consistently wet yourself.

Jagoff,

From what I remember of my American History classes, the black people in America are descendants of slaves who were brought here against their will and forced to work for no pay. Families were forcibly torn apart, and disobedient slaves were killed or received severe corporal punishment.

Then after the Civil War, they were discriminated against through Jim Crow laws and segregation. It wasn't until the Civil Rights Act that black people were no longer officially 2nd class citizens, though housing discrimination and other types of discrimination continue to this day.

Oh, and let's not forget the 1000's of lynchings that occurred in the South right up until the 1950's and beyond.

And yet somehow you've determined that black people are the ultimate villains destroying America.

So I'd encourage you to head over to the American History section of your local library or book store. You might actually learn something and perhaps gain some sorely needed compassion for other people that are difference from you. But I won't hold my breathe on that.

Anyone who continues to post on a blog from which they have been banned three times is obviously NOT a moron and definitely NOT a f*cktard.

OEO/zsazsa/zzzzzz/aszasz, or whatever your user name is this week, I hope you stick around and continue to show us all how NOT to be a stupid troll.

Thanks for everything.

"Thanks for everything."

You are welcome, turkey-lurky! Have a splendid day.

Some info from ACORN's site:

"ACORN is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in about 75 cities across the country."

Hmmm. 400,000 members, 75 cities. Insignificant. (According to dumber-than-dale)

"A recent study shows that our issue campaign victories have delivered approximately $15 billion in direct monetary benefits to our membership and constituency over the past 10 years."

Fifteen billion dollars? Come on guys, thats not all that much money. Not since a "trillion" entered the daily lexicon. Chump-fuckin' -change.

Very well said.

We will look back on this year's stimulus package someday and shake our heads - for it is being fed down to us through that same "machinery of culture and politics" that of course will make it "impossible to construct anything differently" with those funds.

If you expand this article into a book, I will certainly line up to purchase it.

By the way, I recall being personally repulsed as a child in the 1960's by the dark, drab ugliness of the Kramden apartment.

Haven't read other commenters, too angry at the rare lack of Kunstler insight. You neglect America's original sin--racism. Suburbs let White folk be with their own kind--Brown v Bd of Ed made this an imperative. I grew up in Brooklyn at the time--middle class not mingling with "coloreds."

Europe had no White flight--until Algerians and Turks and Jamaicans moved in. We had a head start, but their cities have also spread out--they taught us racism, and are being taught our reaction to same.

Nothing happens in the world that isn't affected by hatred of some fellow man. It's competitive nature's birth partner--our teams--my mom--is better than yours. We kept up with the White Jones' by moving out of the cities--leaving behind our 3/5 brothers and sisters.

"P.S. Effective immediately, I'm discontinuing my delendus shit list."

Well everybody cares so much. Thank you for informing one and all. (What an endless douche-bag.)

"The dirty secret all along was that by 2005 there was no economy left in the USA beyond the suburban sprawl economy..."

What about the software and pharmaceutical industries? I don't know how much of the GDP they consist of compared to sprawl building, but they've got to constitute a discernable slice of the pie, right? Or have they reached their respective breaking points since '05 as well?

Goldrodor,

The US is still in the top 10 exporting nations in the world. I think it may still be #1 or just behind China. We just import a lot more goods now than we export, so the balance of trade is negative. When JHK says there is "no economy" beyond suburban sprawl, well, I guess he's either using hyperbole or he doesn't know better.

Asia, what he said exactly was given in a newspaper interview of that same day. I wasn't going to interview him for the second time. I merely prepared the words mentally to question the conventional wisdom on this energy question. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. What if he'd already lied that day? You tell me how to give them a second chance to come clean. All I know is that, while difficult to put my finger on in this blog, Kunstler has repeatedly explained that technology does not substitute for energy. He says the huge societal blind spot extends to the otherwise intelligent, like Professor Hemmers. You can't be so naiive as to expect that Hemmers said anything. Kunstler has something on Las Vegas itself, the town where Hemmers' office is .......located. Why not just hit him on that for starters? Make him feel noticed. And notice how Harry Reid clusterfucks this whole thing. Do you expect any other chemistry to be accomplished at UNLV with the "Reid Center" in the limelight and Reid still humping his political agenda through the Senate? What could he gain from it? He's got a position. Somebody like me is a gnat. Hemmers is 300 lbs,BTW. I mean, there is only so much schnitzel in the world, and he had a smidge more than his allotment.

Do not be fooled by things like "applied molecular and atomic spectroscopy". First thing, they'll make it an acronym, like NAMBLA. Then, people turn up in the Department you just never see, and instruments turn up in industry they never teach. The reason is that once somebody hits Niels Bohr status, a word from them kills the alternative theory, and money is pumped into Niels like a crime wave because you let $100,000,000 leave the country, so he travels. Medicine keeps him alive, how far past 65?

n. He was also part of the team of physicists working on the Manhattan Project. Bohr married Margrethe Nørlund in 1912, and one of their sons, Aage Niels Bohr, grew up to be an important physicist who in 1975 also received the Nobel prize. Bohr has been described as one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century.[

Notice that word "influential". Do you want that? Let me fuck with this: AND HE WAS ALSO PART OF THE TEAM OF PHYSICISTS WORKING ON THE MANHATTAN PROJECT!!! Bull everloving shit. 10-7-85 to 11-18-62 says he was 58 in 1943. They could barely get the atom bomb made with him around, security risk, kibitzing. He was 1920. "The Copenhagen Theory" meant Niels Bohr. This is Danish! They make ecstasy! Jews live ALL OVER. A criminal from Israel traffics in the drugs because whatever country he's run out of, the Jewish syndicate is a phone call away in the country he runs to. There's so much ecstasy they deforested Vietnam and Laos, and are now doing Cambodia.

The atomic and molecular spectroscopy is not spectroscopy at all. It is not just a spectroscope, a scope, an instrument. It is an esoteric mathematical treatment such that the theory explains the spectrographic lines you see in stars, and it starts slow and innocent, but instead of leading to electric power plants, it leads to a self-organizing, self-aggrandizing, runaway money sponge called quantum mechanics. Bohr was created to knock Einstein off his perch. That's all they care about, not you, not the "real world". That's what they called it. Abandon all hope of real solutions all ye who enter academia. They jealously guard their right to entertain only themselves and serve nothing. When the top 10,000 scientists have nothing to offer, they'll just say, "Well, it was you who fucked up. You trusted us."

The Hemmers guy equivalent at UCSD was Hans Osterreicher. The approachable chemist was Gerhard Schrauzer. He was a 13-year old German in Germany when all the trains stopped on the tracks, and he got an X-ray machine. He is not a Nazi since he was only 13 when the war ended. He has nerve gases for all occasions. The stumper of a problem of how to get a chemical to sterilize all the niggers has been worked on wrt AIDS prophylaxis, but it's going to be gene-specific. Notice there are always cover stories and always Copenhagens to carry out the dirty work, clean little towns like Irvine and Los Alamos.

Whenever a scientist works on evil mojo the evil gets to him and deranges him mentally. Watch any movie of it. In the groid sterilization project the Mormon genius must have thought he was the brains, but the business partner thought he was the brains,so, since genius is nest to insanty, the doctor tried to have the CEO killed. Now, I have a PDF called "Hitman" and I'd like to send that to you, Asia, so, say the word, but, although a chunk of the guy's jaw went flying, he survived. This is in Irvine. My memory's fogged. Dr. Mormon went home and put a bullet through his head, so the research had a setback. 92209

Another cinematic representation of the flight to suburbia was the movie Marty with Ernest Borgnine. Marty lived with his mother and other annoying family members and friends in the Bronx. Watch the movie and you can almost feel the stifling compression of their small city apartment and what must have been for many city-dwelling, inter-generational family members the desire to just get the hell out of there. Even today cities are no panacea. Marty finally meets his woman and takes off with her to the suburbs. The nuclear family, that is, the single-generational family, was just as much an ideal as suburbia itself.

And don't forget that during the wave of post-war suburbanization there was an equally strong critique against it and it Grey Flannel Suit breadwinners. Proto-Kunstler elitism was alive and well then, too.

This line interests me: "It will not destroy the function of capital -- no matter how many angry intellectuals inveigh against the straw man of capital-ism,..." I tend to think the function of capital is changing - it is shifting away from having a role in everything, at least if you define capital as money. Said differently, the constituency of capital is shifting to include more and more people as capital, community as capital, systems as capital, collaborative process as capital, new world views and values as capital (such as the Earth Charter) and remembering other modes of knowing as capital. What this means is, really, it isn't capitalism any more (and we're not in Kansas...). And, too, I disagree that capitalism is a straw man in the argument or effort to understand what is happening. To the significant extent that capitalism has supplied the abstraction (capital) to which we have exclusively focused while forgetting what is real, capitalism is the the red, round, bulbous nose on the face of our divorce from reality. Hence the allusions to awakening from a 'dream'. So, yea, the function of capital will continue to exist, but maybe we can find a better word when capitalism is dead and buried.

I never much cared for either Ralph Kramden or Jackie Gleason...rather unsavory people.

Jim & other peak oilers should read the latest TomDispatch (Tom Englehardt's blog) with its post by Michael Clare. He confirms your fears & spins out the results.

OK, let me try it by putting everything in a vertical column:

i
>
Q
S
H
T
I
K

/
i
>

Perfect. Now shove 'em up your silly ass.

Mr. Kunstler is so correct. The entire firestorm that melted down the economy came out of subdivision development with low interest rates, affordable mortgages allowing homeowners to use the structure as an ATM machine so as to increase their debt levels while accumulating stuff, vacations, and more.

That has ended. Now, those homes are becoming empty. New home construction has virtually stopped. ARM mortgages are coming due, and commercial real estate is finding itself in foreclosure.

The only way to teach Wall Street a big-time lesson would be to sell off your entire equities and bond portfolio. I am suggesting that this be done on October 23, 2009. Sell it all! Let them know that the manipulation of the market MUST end. Tell Geithner and Obama that the game is up and the working American will no longer play. Whatever you have left, move it into cash and money funds. Find a local or regional bank and stick your stock sell-off cash there. The market will drop 1000 to 2000 points in a day or two. The game is up Wall Street. later, you can buy low, yet Wall Street will never know when this sell off will happen again.

Make Youtube videos of this plan and let it go viral.

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

Brilliant plan....if your intent is to crash world markets and drive us into a world wide depression lasting years. Bravo, Jerry. A big hizzah to the ole Jer. (Not.)

Ask the leaders of twenty of the world's wealthiest and most powerful nations to hold an upcoming G20 Summit in Africa, to focus the world's attention on how Africa can and must be part of any successful economic recovery.

The nation that hosts a G20 summit helps set the agenda, and bringing the G20 to Africa would focus the world on this market of 1 billion people like never before. And, with world leaders headed to Pittsburgh for a summit September 24-25, now is the perfect time to ask them to look to Africa for one of their next meetings.

http://www.one.org/international/g20toafrica/index.html?rc=g20toafricataf

JS said: "...have proven to be a most potent weapon against the White Man and His Civilization."

Yes, "White Civilization" reached a peak in the 20th century. And the fruit of that "civilization" was state-organized genocides: Stalin's Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and Bosnia in the 1990s.

The world might be better with less "white civiization" ... the world was cheated of the potential contributions of millions who died horrific deaths.

"The Obama administration will announce a new policy Wednesday making it much more difficult for the government to claim that it is protecting state secrets when it hides details of sensitive national security strategies such as rendition and warrantless eavesdropping, according to two senior Justice Department officials."

So, Obama wants to make it more difficult for government to commit crimes and then hide the evidence by classifying it as a "state secret"

New boss. Not like the old boss.

zzzzz, great work. You're comments are always interesting.

...and I love the beat downs!

zzzzz, great work. Your comments are always interesting.

...and I love the beat downs!

On my way to our 170-acre ranch, I drive through McGregor, Texas, pop. about 4,000. Prominent on the door of a building with a Texas flag and a Don't tread on me flag is a weekly commentary of obnoxious right-wing nonsense. The latest is a picture of Obama, with the caption "Somewhere in Kenya or Indonesia, a village is missing it's (sic) idiot." This is one of the nicer things said. The comments are always racist, small-minded, angry, and treasonous. Whoever is responsible for these commentaries really needs to be tied to a post and whipped soundly. But this is small-town America. I prefer the isolation of our ranch (inherited) and the company of our two goats and five chickens (all pets). We are dependent on two vehicles for getting back and forth, but we have old, efficient vehicles and hope we can keep up our commuting. We also have a home in Austin. We can hold out longer than most. We both live on fixed incomes, but we live pretty well. I worry about our children and grandchildren. I'm not worried about the goats and chickens.

The truth about voter registration and ACORN

ACORN, as many groups do, paid individuals to man voter registration booths in some of the cities in which they have offices. The registrars got paid by the number of new registration forms brought in. When the forms were returned ACORN noticed some were filled out by false names...Daffy Duck....whatever. By law, ACORN is required to submit every filled out registration form they receive regardless of the names used. It should be obvious to everyone why that legal requirement exists.

ACORN submitted the forms, as required by law, but separated out some of the more obvious false registrations for the purpose of notification of the county offices involved. These false registrations were picked up by RW radio and inexplicably used to try and accuse ACORN of falsely registering voters. As if Daffy Duck was going to show up to vote!

ACORN employees about 700 people nationwide, most I'm sure are paid very low wages. Most of their work involves helping low income people find housing or secure mortgages, people who otherwise don't understand the borrowing process and have no experience with lending organizations. Most people here have no idea how inaccessible the mortgage market can seem, and how easily abused low income people can be by irresponsible lending officers

As I said before, I've never met an ACORN employee or seen an ACORN office. I really couldn't care less if they survive or not, I'm sure if they fail another organization will rise in their place to continue any good work they may have done.

What is also obvious is that in terms of threats to our society, a group of poorly funded community organizers is a strange place to focus ones rage on, how could that happen? How could it be that with the 100's of billions of dollars in graft and pork being misused each year out of public funds that this one little organization, with it's measly 2-3 million a year in public funding (now revoked) is receiving so much attention? Hummm......I wonder?

" The comments are always racist, small-minded, angry, and treasonous. Whoever is responsible for these commentaries really needs to be tied to a post and whipped soundly. "

The particular example you cite possibly represents small-mindedness and anger. However, it does not qualify as racist or treasonous. You wishing to whip the poster "soundly" represents anger and small mindedness. In that you tie in negative attributes. However, if the poster is of a different race or religion than you and you were prosecuted for actually whipping them you could also be tried for perpetrating a hate crime. That means you would be guilty of racism as well.

Gadzooks, you sound like you might be a small minded, angry person with possible racist tendencies.