Clusterfuck Nation

Clusterfuck Nation

Home
Notes
Contact / Bio
Eyesore of the Month
Podcast
Paintings by JHK
Books by JHK
Forecast
Archive
About

Share this post

Clusterfuck Nation
Clusterfuck Nation
Russia Attacked Us
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
User's avatar
Discover more from Clusterfuck Nation
James Howard Kunstler’s Clusterfuck Nation blog is updated Mondays and Fridays. The KunstlerCast podcast and Eyesore of the Month are monthly features. Read & comment here.
Over 30,000 subscribers
Already have an account? Sign in

Russia Attacked Us

James Howard Kunstler's avatar
James Howard Kunstler
Jul 23, 2018

Share this post

Clusterfuck Nation
Clusterfuck Nation
Russia Attacked Us
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
Share

Clusterfuck Nation
For your reading pleasure Mondays and Fridays

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page


This idiotic fantasy congealed in the political matrix last week as everyone across the spectrum of parties and factions scrambled for patriotism brownie points in what is shaping up as an epic game of Capture-the-Flag for the mid-term elections. Listen to me for a moment, as our arch-nemesis Vlad the Putin said to Fox News knucklehead Chris Wallace in an interview aired Sunday Night — when Wallace interrupted Mr. Putin for perhaps the fourth time, saying, “I don’t want to interrupt you, sir, but….”

“Listen to me. Be patient,” Mr. Putin repeated dolefully, like a second-grade teacher struggling with an ADD kid.

The interview was trying my Christian patience, too. And my own personal fantasy was that Mr. Putin would whip out 30 inches of rebar and whap Chris Wallace upside the head with it. But he only repeated, “Be patient….”

So, listen to me: Russia did not “attack” us. Trolling on Facebook is not an attack on the nation. The allegation that Russia “hacked” Hillary’s email and the DNC server is so far without evidence, and computer forensics strongly suggests that the information was transferred onto a flash-drive on its journey to Wikileaks. And, of course, the information itself, concerning embarrassing unethical hijinks among Democratic Party officials, was genuine and truthful — they “meddled” in their own primary elections.

This lingering Russia hysteria got a big re-boot last week following Mr. Trump’s impressively awkward performance onstage with the nimble Mr. Putin, whose self-possession only reinforced Mr. Trump’s lumbering oafishness and amazing verbal incoherence. It’s hard enough for Americans to understand what the Golden Golem of Greatness is trying to say; imagine the torment of the translators untangling his tortured utterances!

I daresay that some of the American observers secretly wished that we could swap over Mr. Trump for Mr. Putin so as to have a national leader with some decorum and poise, but alas…. And one can’t help but wonder how Mr. Putin sizes up POTUS among his intimates inside the Kremlin. I’d love to be a fly on that wall.

The Helsinki summit meeting has the look of a turning point in Mr. Trump’s political fortunes. One irony is that he may escape his enemies’ efforts to nail him on any Russia “collusion” rap only to be sandbagged by financial turmoil as the dog days of summer turn nervously toward autumn. Events will cancel the myth that his actions as president have produced a booming economy. If anything, the activities that make up our economy have only become more vicious rackets, especially the war industries, with all their inducements to counter the imagined Russia threat.

The financial markets are the pillars of the fantasy that the US economy is roaring triumphantly. The markets are so fundamentally disabled by ten years of central bank interventions that they don’t express the actual value of any asset, whether stocks, or bonds, or gold, oil, labor, currencies, or the folly known as crypto-currency. We await the fabled “moment of truth” when the avenging angel of price discovery returns and shatters the illusion that accounting fraud equals prosperity.

The revelation that Mr. Trump is not an economic genius will spur a deeper dive by chimerical Democrats into nanny state quicksand. They will make the new fad of a Guaranteed Basic Income the centerpiece of the midterm election — even though many Democrats will not really believe in it. They are pretending not to notice how broke the USA actually is, and how spavined by unpayable debt. The lurking suspicion of all this is surely behind fantasies such as Russia attacked us, the displacement of abstruse and impalpable fear onto something simple and cartoonish, like the President of the United States.

Just Out! Previously Unpublished!
Number 5 in the Jeff Greenaway Series

Something Strange is going on at Camp Timahoe
in Lost Indian, Vermont, summer of 1962
“Rollicking fun”
$7.50 — Cheap! Buy!

(Read Excerpt)

Great Summer Reading… JHK’s Hippie Novel!

“Simply the best novel about the 1960s.”

Read the first chapter here (click) on Patreon
Buy the book at Amazon or click on the cover below
or get autographed copies from Battenkill Books


Now in Paperback !
Only Seven Bucks!

JHK’s Three-Act Play
A log mansion in the Adirondack Mountains…
A big family on the run…
A nation in peril…


Other Books by JHK
The World Made By Hand Series:

Book 1:

World Made by Hand

Book 2:

The Witch of Hebron
Buy World Made By Hand Signed and local from Battenkill Books
Buy World Made By Hand on Amazon
Buy World Made By Hand at Northshire Books
Buy The Witch of Hebron signed and local from Battenkill Books
Buy The Witch of Hebron on Amazon
Buy The Witch of Hebron at Northshire Books

Book 3:

A History of the Future


Book 4:

Harrows of Spring
Signed and local from Battenkill Books
Available on Amazon
Available at Northshire Books
Signed and local from Battenkill Books
Available on Amazon
Available at Northshire Books
Geography of Nowhere
The Long Emergency
Available on Kindle
Buy The Long Emergency signed and local from Battenkill Books
Buy The Long Emergency on Amazon
Buy The Long Emergency at Northshire Books

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page


Subscribe to Clusterfuck Nation

By James Howard Kunstler · Thousands of paid subscribers
James Howard Kunstler’s Clusterfuck Nation blog is updated Mondays and Fridays. The KunstlerCast podcast and Eyesore of the Month are monthly features. Read & comment here.

Share this post

Clusterfuck Nation
Clusterfuck Nation
Russia Attacked Us
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
Share

Discussion about this post

User's avatar
The Great 'Splainin' Cometh
The meltdown has gotten so heavy liberal bureaucrats are ready to form antigovernment militias and fretting about black helicopters —Max Blumenthal
Nov 15, 2024 • 
James Howard Kunstler
1,062

Share this post

Clusterfuck Nation
Clusterfuck Nation
The Great 'Splainin' Cometh
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
725
How It Worked
"They never prepared for algorithms that could map everything. For personnel pre-positioned everywhere. For a president who counts every week like it's…
Feb 7 • 
James Howard Kunstler
825

Share this post

Clusterfuck Nation
Clusterfuck Nation
How It Worked
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
767
Kamala Unwinding
“. . . we are facing a catastrophic collapse of governance. With democracy reduced to a tragedy or a farce (probably both things). . . ." — Ugo Bardi
Oct 11, 2024 • 
James Howard Kunstler
970

Share this post

Clusterfuck Nation
Clusterfuck Nation
Kamala Unwinding
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
697

Ready for more?

© 2025 James Howard Kunstler
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share

Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More

Create your profile

User's avatar

Only paid subscribers can comment on this post

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in

Check your email

For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.

Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.