JHK’s Three-Act Play
Nations go crazy. It’s terrifying when it happens, especially to a major nation with the ability to project its craziness outward. We look back on the psychotic break of Germany in 1933 and still wonder how the then-best-educated population in Europe could fall under the sway of a sociopathic political program. We behold the carnage and devastation left in the wake of that episode, and decades later you still can do little more than shake your head in bewilderment.
China had a psychotic break in the 1960s in its “cultural revolution,” provoked by the mad neo-emperor Mao. He sent cadres of Chinese baby boomer youths rampaging across the land, turned every institution upside down, and let millions starve. Mao’s China lacked the ability then to export this mischief, but enough of his own people suffered.
Cambodia was the next humdinger of a national nervous breakdown when the Paris-educated classic marxist Pol Pot decided to make the world’s biggest omelette by cracking a million eggs. He took everybody wearing eyeglasses, everybody who appeared to have a thought in his or her head, and sent them out to the bush to be worked to death, or shot in ditches, or disposed of otherwise. The mounds of skulls remain to tell the tale.
Lately we’ve had the Hutu-Tutsi genocides in Rwanda, the craziness in former Yugoslavia, the cruelty of Darfur, the international suicide-bomber craze (including today’s blasts in Moscow). Surely, I’ve left a few out… but these are minor episodes compared to what be coming next.
Am I the only one who senses it might be America’s turn to go nuts? I don’t mean a family squabble, like the Boomer-Hippie-Vietnam uproar that was essentially an adolescent rebellion against bad parenting in the national household. I mean a genuine descent into madness, with the very high probability of persecution, violence, murder, and mayhem — all more or less sponsored by various authorities and institutions.
The Republican Party is doing a great job in provoking such a dangerous episode by making consensual governance impossible in a time of awful practical problems and challenges. They’re in the process, right now, of transforming themselves from the party of “no” to the party of no decency, no common sense, no ideas, no conception of the public interest, and no respect for the traditions that they pretend to stand for, like due process of law. In the days since the passage of health care reform, they’ve gone as far as inciting mobs to violence against their fellow congressmen and senators — bricks thrown through windows, death threats made, coffins placed in the yards of their adversaries. One day soon, somebody with a gun or an explosive device, someone with a very sketchy sense-of-self, and perhaps a recent record of personal failure and humiliation, is going to sacrifice himself to become the Tea Party’s first martyr by shooting up a shopping mall in some blue district.
Republican leaders’ avidity to ally themselves with the followers of hate-monger entertainers like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and the Fox News gang is only the beginning of the process that will lead to a political convulsion possibly worse than the one that started at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, 1861. If it comes, it will certainly be a far more incoherent conflict. The guerilla forces of the radical right will not know whether they are fighting for WalMart, or the Financial Services arm of General Electric, or against abortions, or for bigger and better freeways, or the rights of thoracic surgeons to drive families into bankruptcy, or against the idea of climate change, or evolution, or Jews-in-the-media, or their neighbors having something they feel envious about….
In the background, of course, is an economy just barely holding together with political baling wire and duct tape. It has very poor prospects for continuing in the way it was designed to run, on cheap oil and revolving debt. The upshot is an economy now destined for permanent contraction, and nobody has a plan for managing that contraction — which will include awful failures in food production, in disintegrating water systems, electric grids, roadway systems, schools… really anything that requires ongoing public investment. It includes a financial system that cannot come up with capital deployable for productive purpose, or currencies that can be relied on to hold value, or markets that function without interference.
For its part, the Democratic Party has done a poor job of clearly articulating the realities of these things, and in actions like bailouts they’ve given the false impression that the nation can somehow engineer a return to the reckless hedonism of the late 20th century. My guess is that the situation is so desperate now that President Obama and his supporters can’t risk telling the truth about the comprehensive contraction we face.
The health care reform act was a tortured way of dealing with some of this indirectly. It will absolutely lead to a kind of health care “rationing,” but rationing is unavoidable in an economy where there is less of everything that people need, and fewer resources to spread around. The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Republicans would prefer to see the rationing accomplished by money-grubbing health insurance companies denying coverage to policy-holders who get sick, or by the bankrupting of households (i.e. losers who deserve to die anyway), while the Democrats want to at least try to distribute what we can a little more fairly. The larger failure of both factions to emulate better systems running in sister societies like Canada and France is something that history will judge.
I was in favor of the health care reform act for the reason of that basic difference between the Right and the Left. For all its flaws — and perhaps even the prospect that we are too far gone in national bankruptcy to ever get all its provisions running — I believe it was necessary for our national morale to pass the bill, to prove that we could do something besides remain stuck in paralysis and bickering indefinitely. And it was necessary to smack down the Party of Cruelty, to inform ourselves that we are not quite ready to go completely crazy.
Whatever his flaws, omissions, and failures, I’m impressed with President Obama’s ability to conduct himself like an adult, like a good father, in the face of the most unseemly provocations by his red-faced adversaries John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, and all the other apoplectic opportunists trying so desperately to turn the United States into a high-definition Jesus tele-theocracy of Perpetual NASCAR. As economic conditions worsen — I believe they will — I hope Mr. Obama can discipline these maniacs. I would like to see him start by instructing his attorney general to look into the connection between Republican officials (including staff members) and the threats of violence and murder that were made last week around the country.
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My novel, The Witch of Hebron, a sequel to World Made By Hand, will be published in September by The Atlantic Monthly Press.
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
New Paintings from the 2022 Season
Barrel Racers, Cambridge, NY
Just Out! The whole shootin’ match going back to 1987!
For autographed copies:
Battenkill Books, Cambridge, NY
Also at: Amazon, Barnes & Nobel
The Jeff Greenaway series of novellas. These rollicking, short books depict the misadventures of an eleven-year-old boy growing up in New York City in the early 1960s
Other Books by JHK
The World Made By Hand Series:
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I had the impression America went nuts long ago.
I think you’re right the US may lurch even further to the right as the economy gets worse and people rally behind a leader willing to take anything from the rest of the world needed to maintain their bloated standard of living.
The solution to this won’t come from within the US, it will come when the rest of the world, especially the third world, finally says NO, and stops providing resources and cheap labour to the US.
http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/12/beyond-copenhagen.html
Jim, what you said. “President Obama and his supporters can’t risk telling the truth about the comprehensive contraction we face”. We can only hope that the increasing popularity of a blog such as this tells us that more and more people are facing the facts, even though the cover-up is ongoing. I hear so much new interest by really smart folks, in preparedness for these contractions as they worsen.
Lynn
http://www.10in10diet.com/
Diet for a small footprint and a small grocery bill.
Well, the center cannot hold, or not fully. We can be pretty sure of that. So it remains for us to strengthen those gossamer threads of local community provision. It will call on the best in us as we take the challenges to heart and remember what we can do with friends. Focusing on the gathering mob doesn’t work so well – just leaves the field to them.
http://www.RadicalRelocalization.com
“They’ll never see us coming.”
When we get low on energy we can print more money to buy more… DUH!
I’ll try and rehash some comments into a poem later…
The phone is ringing for solar today!
With warnings like these it’s time to for people to start building resilience in their communities and making themselves more independent. We have the technologies to be more independent, we just need to start taking personal responsibility to not be as plugged into a system that may be going off the rails.
We can all list the many commonsense measures that would, at least, mitigate the economic situation. However, if I’m reading Jim correctly, the mass psychosis that is afflicting the “American personality” makes it impossible for most people to comprehend the magnitude of the real problem, much less deal with it in Reality. We are, alas, a nation of overfed, infantile, clowns, who have already (in the first ten years of the 21st century) demonstrated their ability to permit and encourage mass murder in response to their irrational fear.
Ah Jim, predictions are always tough, but of one thing we can be sure about activist government: There will be plenty of Unintended Consequences. See one of the happier ones at http://www.thenothingstore.com
The truth is out there somewhere and it is so hazy that most Americans are utterly confused about reality. The key reality of a bankrupt economic model founded on unsustainable energy supplies escapes far too many.
We so badly need a middle party that focuses on the needs of Middle Class Americans, and not the extremes of left or right. our current system of Democrats and Republicans is like a giant leech that hinders any positive change. A center party would force them to cater to average American, and not the parasites on the extreme left, or the ultra religious on the right.
Don’t worry, Obama’s crew will round up all of the “crazies” who lash out against the government. Just look at the FBI raids going on against the Huttarees this morning.
A good time to re-read The Fourth Turning. No guarantees that it will end well. There is really no way to tell when you are in the middle of it. Perhaps the crisis is some years away. Remember Timothy McVeigh? At the time there were all kinds of folks flirting with the militia movement. Once that Oklahoma City happened, people recoiled and backed away from that stuff hard and fast. Hopefully, people will come to their senses. It does make one wonder how gracefully people will handle peak oil though.
The most interesting point is how the GOP gets the public to vote and act against their own self interest. Our Tea Bagger friends are angry–they just aren’t sure why, who, or what. Big government and an “elitest” (insert intelligent President) leader make an easy target.
How do we educate the public? They are blind and lost.
DR
These media hatemongers are like the mullahs that send out suicide bombers. Notice that they won’t personally shoot off their own weapons. They’ll just tell others to do it and suffer the consequences.
Been reading Kunstler for a long time, and our brains seem to be wired pretty much the same. Today’s piece is right on, as usual. For a lot of folks in our Great Land, the time’s long overdue for a re-boot to our Glorious Red-WHITE-and-Blue Past. For them, the Civil War isn’t over, there are too damned many foreigner’s walkin’ the streets, and in general all our problems are everybody’s fault but our own. I was chatting to a Union checker in our local Safeway yesterday, and he was spouting all the current “it’s their fault” stuff.” He’s been a Safeway union employee for over 30 years, and he told they’re working hard to get rid of all of the old “overpaid” and over-benefited emplyees. He seemed to think the major problem was immigrant workers, though. I tried to point out that the major problem was corporate greed. He’s a nice guy, really, but with just the right leadership (which is out there waiting for the main chance), he’d be out on the road with a pitchfork and flaming torch lookin’ for the enemy. Scary stuff, but if it doesn’t happen, it’ll be a miracle. I have a “funny” last name, so I’ve always slept with one eye open…
Your concerns are absolutely valid, Mr Kunstler. I worry about what governments might do when they perceive that they are about to lose their ability to retain their employees, which is what happens when governments lose their buying power.
http://www.goldsubject.com/collapse-perspectives-celente-kunstler-orlov-and-schiff/
Jim writes: “It will absolutely lead to a kind of health care ‘rationing,’ but rationing is unavoidable in an economy where there is less of everything that people need, and fewer resources to spread around.”
Boys and girls, can you say “death panels.” Good. I thought you could. Sarah would be proud.
So we go from the R&D leader for the world in medicine, with facilities and physicians unequaled anywhere, to rationing health care. Do I give up my cancer medicine and go ahead and die so that someone younger can receive elective surgery? Is that some fixed amount of health care lying around that has to be distributed?
We have many nursing school graduates today who cannot find employment, just has we have thousands of lawyers unemployed. If we are serious about social justice rather than big government, why not subsidize those people to provide services to those who cannot afford them? The lack of access to legal services can be as serious as lack of access to health care, particularly if someone is 18 years old and trapped in poverty.
No, that’s too hard. Let’s just keep trashing people who don’t agree with us, demonize them, slime their families, use them as fodder for late night comedy shows. As Congressman Alan Grayson said so gracefully, “Republicans just want to kill people.” Pot, meet kettle.
‘why is the Dark Night of Fascism always falling over America and landing on Europe?’
As long as we follow the Constitution, there will be no descent into madness. We will be protected from some temporary fad, some dangerous cult of personality.
But if we sway….
JHK, gotta ask, how is it you are so doooowwwwn in the dumps after HCR just passed? So the Repubs didnt go along with it, so what? Your side won anyway. Pour yourself a bourbon and smile for an hour or two.
As a black parent of an adult son and teen daughter, I have been alarmed for a long time at the trend of violence. It began when Obama was running for office and the fake news folks made it their business to mis-educate young whites: any blacks who addressed racism were labeled racist and whites who did were demonized as loony liberals. I think this is why Obama let it go as he has and rarely if ever utters that word.
But African Americans, Native Americans, Jews and other minorities know better. We know how this nation has been “psycho” before – on us, throughout slavery, Jim Crow laws, ignoring the Holocaust longer than necessary, rampant discrimination, privatizing prisons while tightening laws against non-violent offenders (the impoverished black or Latino kid caught with a dime bag of weed), leaving us to suffer and die during the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, and hating on Muslims or anyone who looks like an Arab or Persian and making them the new target of bigotry.
Yes Jim, we’ve seen the psycho side hidden from the mainstream for a very long time. They’re shocked, we aren’t, and we know a lot of those guns and ammo were purchased with the hope that one of them assassinates the President so riots will ensue, and then they can have open season on us, vigilante style. No doubt Fox News will leave a lot out on the cutting room floor and fan the flames of hate further by labeling us as looters and rioters who’ve gone psycho, when they and their ilk have spawned the madness.
Jim –
Though I feel that I’ve lost the ability be shocked by the statements and actions of most pols, John McCain’s “We’re not going to work on anything together” truly did make me shake my head.
For this supposed “hero,” (Not my words. I don’t think getting shot down instantly makes you so…) to act in such an infantile manner is just amazing. More amazing is that he clearly knew it would resonate with his “base” and would allow him to keep his whiny ass little face on the national stage for just one more news cycle.
The violence is coming and people like McCain and all the others you mentioned are indeed fomenting it.
I think, if there is any hope of diffusing it, that Obama needs to “man up” and take the lead. He needs to call the leadership of the House and the Senate (both parties) into the White House and (excuse the in-apt metaphor) “read them the riot act.”
JHK,
I am as joyously misanthropic and pessimistic as they come, but I wonder if you are underestimating the fierce desire of people with children to ensure that their children’s world, i.e., for our purposes, the United States, is a safe place. I cannot see the vast majority of parents, conservative or liberal, allowing the extremists to take over.
Anyway, I hope not.
Very accurate analysis. I love Jim’s Monday morning essays.
On how to deal with this reality in a rational way?
This past week I found some solace in a Chris Hedges’ article (can’t remember which) about the point of resistance because it’s the right thing to do regardless of whether it stands a chance of succeeding or not.
It’s a soaking wet Monday morning in Portland, Oregon, but I’m hopeful for a positive future as I consider the luck of having a strong immediate family unit (wife and a young adult daughter, and teen son). We’re all on the same page of the reality of collapse.
Beyond that, we have some work to do to link up with others in our local community.
Those are prospects I can still believe in. Beyond that, it’s a crap shoot at best.
Jim – I wish you were wrong but alas I fear your future vision are right on. Those who have shifted from “no” to “Hell no!” are less than useless because they offer nothing and attempt to stop everything. I fear there will be fiddlers as Rome burns and crumbles at our feet. Bring on the Witch of Hebron… September seems so far away.
Chris, you say we need to stop consuming. Then you finish your post with a warning against our manufacturing base going over seas (historical note, the U.S. produces more now than it ever has).
Anyhoo, why do we need manufacturing, if we shouldnt consume anything?
How interesting that Jim starts off lamenting the rise of Naziism in 1930s Germany and all the death and suffering that followed, and then concludes this week’s CFN with his plainly stated hopes that Obama as president will play the role of the “stern father” who will “discipline” political dissenters. Memo to Jim: This is the sort of thinking that has lead to the rise of some of the most authoritarian despots of the not so distant past.
This nation has certainly had its bouts of bouts of lunacy before. Boomers like Jim usually make poor historians because their perspective is always centered on the right here and right now. You only need to look back to the WW I era and the years of anarchist bombs going off in US cities, “Palmer Raids”, warfare between armed strikers and companies’ hired militias, and thats just a few examples. Just look to the 1960s when riots engulfed the streets of American cities from coast to coast and the army had to intervene in many civil disturbances. Some loud mouth tea party buffoons breaking windows and making threats PALE IN COMPARISON to what has gone before in the US during times of crisis. (And before turning this into a partisan issue, ie: Democrats = nice, good, while Republicans = mean, bad, –lets not forget the violence and vandalism directed against the Republicans at the last RNC convention. I mean the whole pot and kettle thing, you know).
Rather than worrying about a few instances of boorish trash talk by some nut cases probably reveling in their 15 mins of fame, how about worrying about the mountains of new debt being piled on as the “something for nothing” gravy train keeps a’ rollin….
Kit,
Welcome, thank you, and amen!
Thing is…. these attacks you are forecasting have already happened (are happening)! Just last year some guy went into a Unitarian Church down south somewhere and killed two “liberals”…. Fox and friends distanced themselves and blamed the gunman. Then of course there was Dr Tiller “The Baby Killer” just last year…. this time there was embrace while distancing themselves (a neat trick to be sure)…. the world does not break down when this happens…. and it is reported as “random acts of craziness”, not some national plague.
We don’t have the SLA kidnapping Paris Hilton and turning her into a bank robber, there are no protests, or mobs (unless someone wins the Superbowl, and even that hasn’t happened since 9/11) They haven’t murdered anyone high up in Government since Congressman Ryan in the late 70’s. They don’t kill civil rights workers…
…. the FBI could give a flying fuck if Lady Gaga is a commie, or a tranny, or anything else because all our stars are marketed, and the music is no longer “subversive” because it is marketed too…
It makes a small plane being crashed into the IRS building in Texas seem tame in comparison…
Militias spring up every time the Dems are in the White House…nothing new. What is new is that we live in “a post 9/11 world” and our government is more powerful than ever.
The times they are done changing… Kim Jong Ill has proven that you can run a hell of a police state, on very little gas, you can bet our military has taken notes.
Lunacy seems to be the handmaiden of America’s idealization of rugged individuality, no? The rising hysteria and mob frenzy incited by the backers of the Tea Party remind me of the French revolution, which also had its monied aristo backers who hoped to improve their own bets by creating chaos. and history shows how that turned out for them in the The Terror that followed.
The US has been here before, think of the McCarthy witch hunts, etc. I see a ray of hope though in the fact that so many members of today’s “mob” calling for blood are themselves recipients of social security, medicare, unemployment, etc.
Repubs will be in charge eventually when people get fed up. Then the Dems will be in charge again when people fed up again. Wash rinse repeat. It’s the ebb and flow of the political arena. No politician will save us before they save themselves and their corporate backed financiers. I’ve pretty much lost hope in the US and am planning my escape.
JK; I strongly suspect you’ve have a working knowledge of the Howe and Strauss theories of Generations and Turnings, as described in the book “The Fourth Turning-1997”. So you might realize that TODAY is approximately the cusp between a 3rd and 4th turning. The 3rd turning is the time of continuing destruction of order. The 4th turning is the period when a Crisis occurs. There has always, since the War of the Roses, been a Great War during the Crisis. Great War only appear in the 4th turning. The Spanish Armada War, The Early Indian/French Wars, The American Revolution, The Civil War, WWII, and ??, but down worry anytime now we’ll find out what’s next on the agenda. This is all in Strauss and Howe.
The thing that jives well with your fears is that it turns out that a bit more that half of the Great Wars that occurred in the past are Civil Wars or Rebellions. Which surprised me when I checked into it this weekend. Civil Wars are the worst wars. Even a success for one side is a failure for the nation as a whole. I suggest it would be a good idea to err to the side of not doing things to avoid the wheels coming off from Civil War Zealots acting like its again 1860, One or both sides can trigger such a conflict. Scale UP the Civil Casualties by 10x (population difference from then to NOW and you can appreciate how much we could loose. 7 million casualties would be a good minimum guess. I actually think it would be much higher, because we exist so far from the basic farming and surviving that was amply expressed in 1865,
DJL
When the end comes for species, they tend to find ever new ways to self-destruct their civilization.
We’ve reached the ecological end of our rope, the rest is just procedure.
http://hurricanekatrinakaif.com
I can’t help but feel Americans are basically decent people (I’m English, living in Canada, so this isn’t flag waving) – more politically uninformed, perhaps politically naiive, than anything else.
And as for Obama keeping things at arm’s length? It’s a political maxim to not comment on your foes when they are in freefall. You don’t have to. Let them destroy themselves.
America’s problem – if I can say that, as an outsider – is its media. Unable and unwilling to question anything, to give people something to think about.
To that I’d add a flaky education system that seems designed to keep the majority stoopid and poor, and a health system designed to favour the educated and the wealthy.
Americans aren’t the new Nazis – you are the new Victorians.
“these are minor episodes compared to what be coming next”
=====================
After much consideration Jim has apparently given his okay to the use of ebonics.
Jim,
Your true colors have really shown in the last few weeks. The shrillness of you and your commentors have finally overtaken the quality of your writing.
It’s paternalistic societies that eventually go mad. Once people become accustomed to the nanny state it’s a short trip to the demagogue. National Socialism is the best example. Mao, Pol Pot and Al-Qeda sprung out of traditional paternalistic societies. You should be happy there is an opposition party. Without it, our Democratic party is only a stones throw from Socalism and eventual National Socialism.
Goodbye, Jim. You may not have a flaming tattoo on your neck but you have one on your heart.
Brilliant column. Equal in lucidity to John Stewart’s biting Glenn Beck re-do last Thursday.
My first husband went stark raving mad. He’s bi-polar with a schizoaffective disorder and I spent several years in the trenches of his madness, facing it, learning to cope, seeing it firsthand. At first I was unsympathetic and resentful, as I was the one left holding the bag, and then raising two kids alone with no help. That I ever developed compassion about his condition I reckon to an act of God’s grace. It is still hard at times to do it all alone, but I can see now that he can really do nothing about it, all my well intentioned ideas about food and exercise and positive thinking notwithstanding.
The Right’s collective madness then, is a bit troubling to me. Should I be compassionate? I think not. If they are truly insane, I should be. But all the evidence points to a willful and concerted effort to obfuscate, mislead, and do the evil, evil shilling of either their own misunderstood demons, or the work of some corporate overlord for whom they are more than willing to shyster. That they are creating a tinderbox set for an explosive collective break into madness I fully concur. There’s the real danger, it is words and intentions out of control, gaining a life of their own in an endless echo chamber. But this is the party of so-called self-responsibility, eh? Then they know exactly what they are doing. Its tragic in the face of the myriad challenges we face as a nation, and what it will cause. But it may be beyond our stopping.
One final note. I can take it, but, its less than desirable that Kunstler paints all Christians with the same brush when making broadside attacks. There are many, many of us out there, very devoted Christians, with a very differnt purpose to the Right, who can find nothing in common with those who use and abuse Jesus, Christ, Chritianity et al in the pursuit of their spurious objectives. Modifyig the attack to a more precise target wouldn’t be bad.
Truly up is down.
Another well-thought out post from Mr. Kunstler.
I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Mr. Kunstler bring his message to a meeting of business people and public sector officials in downtown Baltimore, MD last week. It seemed to me that the baffled audience was somewhere between total denial and collective cognitive dissonance.
Mr. K was the keynote speaker for an organization called Downtown Partnership. The audience was composed, for the most part, of a collection (about a 120 or so) of lawyers, real estate types, business proprietors, media types, PR people,local government executives, etc. The official purpose of this breakfast meeting was billed as “The State of Baltimore” Annual Report.
During the presentation you could hear a pin drop
(for a newspaper account of the meeting click on
http://mddailyrecord.com/2010/03/23/urban-development-author-skyscrapers-are-over/ ).
Because of the informal setting I had an opportunity to introduce myself to Mr. Kunstler prior to his presentation. He struck me as completely approachable and even friendly. I commentented that the audience he was about to address were completely unaware of Mr. K’s works, what his message would be about, or even who he was. Undismayed, Mr. K commented something to the effect that they were then in for an unwelcome awakening. He did not disappoint. He layed the audience out and did not bother to mitigate or in any way tailor his message to appease his audience.
I had informally polled the crowd and not one person had any idea who Mr. Kunstler was or read any of his works. Strangely enough, I sat next to the CEO of my company, Visit Baltimore. He also had no notion of who Mr K was. After the presentation he was asking me to recommend which books of Mr K’s he should read first.
Ozone,
You asked me in your recent post why my concerns about “culture” were relevant to the long emergency. I think Mr K touched on a lot of it in this week’s post.
I think, like Mr K, that N. America is unravelling economically but is also unravelling socially and culturally. I think that for the sake of peace, order and good government in the newly evolving society we need people in general agreement on how we live together and treat one another. What you don’t want is the “descent into madness” with factions slugging it out, neoNazis incinerating city blocks with truck bombs or Muslim fanatics decapitating people that offend their sense of propriety.
I think a huge achievement of western civilization is the idea that the individual is invaluable and irreplaceable. To Christians and Jews that means that in God’s eyes the life of the most wretched beggar has the same value as the life of the wealthiest businessman or most powerful CEO. I think that however the new society evolves economically, that this idea should be central in how it evolves socially. I think this is where the idea of individual civil rights comes from and the civil rights movement in the last century. As shitty as some people like Asoka think that white people are, there is a core of us that thinks that unequal treatment based on race is evil.
Hi. My main point was that without all the imports of oil and other resources, the US would be forced to cut carbon emissions. Whether or not the US wants to rebuild local manufacturing, I really don’t care.
“Be ye angry, and sin not” We have our emtions for good reasons. We should be angry about what has been done to our nation. But we should not sin in correcting it. We must hold our representatives accountable for not following the Constitution, and the rule of Law, but we must also hold ourselves accountable for not monitoring the situation better and for asking the government to do things for us that we would not or could not do for ourselves. If you would not hold a gun on your neighbor to take “taxes” from him for your needs or wants, why would you ask the government {the people we allow to run things for us} to do it on your behalf?
Sorry JHK but as a phlegmocrat-regressive-gliberal apologist you’re part of the problem. And as someone who voted for the monster, Status Quobama, you have a lot to answer for.
You have only yourself to blame.
But, as a repentant phlegmocrat-regressive-gliberal, I know how hard it is to take that long-hard-look in the mirror. It’s much easier to cast these kinds of clueless, counterproductive aspersions.
Speaking of adults in a sea of children, Chris Hedges sums it up nicely this morning:
“The language of violence always presages violence. I watched it in war after war from Latin America to the Balkans. The impoverishment of a working class and the snuffing out of hope and opportunity always produce angry mobs ready to kill and be killed. A bankrupt, liberal elite, which proves ineffectual against the rich and the criminal, always gets swept aside, in times of economic collapse, before thugs and demagogues emerge to play to the passions of the crowd. I have seen this drama. I know each act. I know how it ends. I have heard it in other tongues in other lands. I recognize the same stock characters, the buffoons, charlatans and fools, the same confused crowds and the same impotent and despised liberal class that deserves the hatred it engenders.”
[…]
“We are bound to a party that has betrayed every principle we claim to espouse, from universal health care to an end to our permanent war economy, to a demand for quality and affordable public education, to a concern for the jobs of the working class. And the hatred expressed within right-wing movements for the college-educated elite, who created or at least did nothing to halt the financial debacle, is not misplaced. Our educated elite, wallowing in self-righteousness, wasted its time in the boutique activism of political correctness as tens of millions of workers lost their jobs. The shouting of racist and bigoted words at black and gay members of Congress, the spitting on a black member of the House, the tossing of bricks through the windows of legislators’ offices, are part of the language of rebellion. It is as much a revolt against the educated elite as it is against the government. The blame lies with us. We created the monster.”
Which does not mean that Hedges supports the nascent fascism percolating on the Right. To the contrary, he understands that apologizing for and supporting the “impotent and despised liberal class” — like this impoverished, elitist JHK rant — only fans the flames:
“Left unchecked, the hatred for radical Islam will transform itself into a hatred for Muslims. The hatred for undocumented workers will become a hatred for Mexicans and Central Americans. The hatred for those not defined by this largely white movement as American patriots will become a hatred for African-Americans. The hatred for liberals will morph into a hatred for all democratic institutions, from universities to government agencies to the press. Our continued impotence and cowardice, our refusal to articulate this anger and stand up in open defiance to the Democrats and the Republicans, will see us swept aside for an age of terror and blood.”
As for Wealth Care Reform (d/b/a Health Care Reform) Hedges nailed the blatantly obvious a week ago:
“Take a look at the health care debacle in Massachusetts, a model for what we will get nationwide. One in six people there who have the mandated insurance say they cannot afford care, and tens of thousands of people have been evicted from the state program because of budget cuts. The 45,000 Americans who die each year because they cannot afford coverage will not be saved under the federal legislation. Half of all personal bankruptcies will still be caused by an inability to pay astronomical medical bills. The only good news is that health care stocks and bonuses for the heads of these corporations are shooting upward. Chalk this up as yet another victory for our feudal overlords and a defeat for the serfs.”
[…]
“This bill is not about fiscal responsibility or the common good. The bill is about increasing corporate profit at taxpayer expense. It is the health care industry’s version of the Wall Street bailout. It lavishes hundreds of billions in government subsidies on insurance and drug companies. The some 3,000 health care lobbyists in Washington, whose dirty little hands are all over the bill, have once more betrayed the American people for money. The bill is another example of why change will never come from within the Democratic Party. The party is owned and managed by corporations.”
You must be so very proud JHK: you’ve reaped what you’ve sowed.
Sadly, the jobs that have been exported overseas to China, India & elsewhere are gone for good, never to return.
The only thing we make domestically now are armaments for the so-called ‘defense’ dept, and in fact, that is one of our major exports too.
The only thing left are the service jobs precisely because they can’t be exported, at least until Japan makes a perfect house-cleaner & Gardner robot.
Until then, those jobs will go to the illegal immigrants because they will take all the shit we throw at them and they won’t complain, and will work under the table for less than minimum wage and no benefits of any kind.
So, what to do with all the unemployed? I think that this part wasn’t thought through completely, but they are working on it. Besides the Army & Prison, there is always Soylent Green.
I’ll break ranks and make a strange suggestion: what if it was the mindless consumption that’s holding the US together?
What if that’s the only commonality in a deeply divided country set on the notion of rugged individualism? I’ve been reading a lot of Joe Bageant recently, my favourite commentator on America’s underbelly, who writes that the only difference between the dirt poor working class in a Southern backwater and the liberal urbanized elite is how they spend.
I guess that’s why the rest of the world would move to the US tomorrow, if it could get in. And why they live in peace when they do – too busy shopping to maintain their ethnic wars. Seriously, if you want to solve the Middle East problem, given ’em greencards. They will line up happily alongside each other in Wall*Mart.
I can’t see Obama wanting to change a thing. Look at the last president to talk about peace, cutting energy use and starvation elsewhere in the world, Carter. You hated him for being weak, didn’t you?
Personally, I think it’s TV that keeps everyone fat, dumb and happy.
My blog: http://peakgeneration.blogspot.com
“The thing that jives well …”
====================
Turning Schmurning ……. it ain’t gonna happen.
And BTW, it’s jibes not jives.
Carolyn Myss (Anatomy of the Spirit, Sacred Contracts) has a dead on column in Huffington Post stating what someone should be saying out loud, that the behavior of some Republican Party leaders last week amounts to sedition, and should be treated as such.
The only thing we make domestically now are armaments for the so-called ‘defense’ dept, and in fact, that is one of our major exports too.
__________________
The US makes decent quality trash cans and um…
Thanks for the call out of looneybin politician Michelle Bachmann in the last paragraph, Jimbo.
http://dumpbachmann.blogspot.com
Kit, I think you’re right on target and hopefully some cover action is ensuing by infiltrating some of these hate groups to at least lessen the chances of the spark and conflagration you refer to. I’m a scholar of relocalization but just can’t seem to get over the dilemma of relocalizing a community which may lead to a reversion back to a social era none of us wants to see again. Maybe the country needs some geographic redistribution to keep us apart from each other and see how that experiment works…
Chris R.
The Localizer Blog
From the Wilderness comes Mike Ruppert, saying screw retirement and telling us to dig in for WWIII (US/Israel vs. Iran and everybody else with loose munitions handy). Ruppert claims 80% accuracy, not sure how that divides up the “everybody with loose munitions handy”. I tried to quote Mike 80% correctly…
Thinking about the Tea Party, I visited a local organizer here in Placer County, Ca., found a sincere and exceedingly focused lady who knew little or nothing of Peak Oil. Eyes glazed over when we got into talking about what motor fuel rationing is going to do to the US Constitution. I left copy of Lionel Badal’s Dissertation with her, asked for her to spend some time with the references, and share with other Tea Party groups.
Back home, her terse e-mail “wishing me luck” in “my endeavor”… -was in the queue already. Ignorance in the defense of the Constitution is no vice! She refused to share Peak Oil report with other members or Tea Party leadership because “that is not our mission”.
Oil supply fears are in process of de-stabilizing world powers, their actions are going to be less rational, affecting one & all. Compare with persons who have no regard for foreclosed neighbors: MY credit is exemplary, and theirs wasn’t, tough turkey. Empty house next door, smart people watch their property value skid, find it harder to sell nice house next to abandoned house.
Motor fuel rationing is the key to getting through the next 20 years while the rest of the world fights over the remaining oil. “Fortress America” to the extent we help our allies by reducing call on oil imports 10%/year with commensurate steps in conservation. Car pooling, railway line rebuilding, beginning with dormant branchlines on agricultural corridors, JHK’s usual remedies.
Pickens Plan for natural gas powered truck fleet are part of the solution, but more as fill-in for diesel, as trucking shiftes to existing rail trunk corridors. As dormant rail corridor comes back, through trucking pulls back on those routes, segment by segment. Natural gas from “fragging”, fracturing rock to release gas is a threat to ground water, and will not meet Picken’s Plan volumes. It comes back to railway expansion and extension.
Jan Lundberg is an avid supporter of the “Sail Network”, refusing to say much about railway network, except how bad AmTrack food is. Lundberg’s “Culture Change” website is well-read and it is unfortunate Jan is railway challenged when it comes to strategic logistics in the Oil Interregnum. Sail is more romantic, it seems.
Sail & mule-hauled barges were the way to go in the USA when the US Congress passed the “Post Roads Act” on July 10, 1838, declaring “All Railroads” to be in the definition of Post Roads as called for in the Bill of rights- “Guarantors of Societal & Commercial Cohesion”.
Gloom & Doom sells gold, guns and survival kits. Roving brigands will be lighter on their feet than the bunker bunch, so they will consume some of the stored bounty. The gold will be gone, because the Feds will call it in like Roosevelt did, to maintain backing for foreign exchange. To pay for oil… This presents an interesting scenario, motor fuel rationing as a means of forestalling call-up of gold & silver bullion & coins? What say the Tea Party gang about this view of rationing?
Placer County had a railway line running from Colfax to Grass Valley, in Nevada County. Agricultural products were important on this route. Trucks took over in 1942. Another rr line ran from Truckee to Tahoe city, lasting until 1945. I consider these mentioned rail lines very useful in the political process, because of the type of people currently residing in the proximity of the two legacy rail lines.
Nevada County is an upscale area, many transplants from Silicone Valley, etc. Well educated and erudite. Many commuters to jobs down I-80, as far as Sacramento. Over at the Placer County end, more the rugged individualist, Tea Party country. Agriculture moves by truck, could go into refrigerated containers/rail again.
At Truckee-Tahoe City: tourism, getaway homes, summer and winter recreation, lots of day visits from Sacramento and Bay Area. Little freight potential except victuals for the consuming public. A modern railway would move people mostly, through Truckee to Reno, or down the hill to Sacramento. There is now on the web a railway site: “Suntrain Transportation Corporation”, including some graphics on the Grass Valley & Tahoe railway lines. Renewable energy based railways, freight & passenger.
It seems these two California railway corridors could be significant test beds for determining how well railway mode would enable a somewhat seamless transition through tha Oil Interregnum. “ELECTRIC WATER” is a book along the lines of the technology seen at the “Suntrain” website. Timing is everything. IF the country can produce enough people, a few hundred who are rail savvy and able to determine a work plan for dormant rail corridor in their respective area of residence, then we can make the shift from oil-based rubber tire mobility. Over a period of ten years, aiming to rail based mobility/distribution linked to renewable and domestic power of various sources.
Source for extant & dormant rail corridor is spv.co.uk -get US Rail Map Volumes for your respective locale. Of course, all Army/guard office adjutants will have copy as they reform the Railroad Operating/Maintenance Battalions for prioritizing the branch line rehab program.
A ten year annual diminished decrease of imported oil would be difficult, but not as severe as a disaster-induced cold turkey cut-off from imports. Rationing would not be necessary, along with certain-day pump sales, based on last license plate digit through the first year or two. As we cut deeper into the import number, rationing would be the rule. This is not a happy picture but it is a PLAN where none seems to be forthcoming. Bus and streetcar lines would need to expand into suburbs where cars only were the rule. That, or simply plow the land back to food production.
Military alliance with allies would require understanding that US military role pulls back commensurate with US reduced call on oil supply, that is the quid pro quo. US foreign trade becomes a Canada-Central American formula based on reach of the railways, already defined. Monroe Doctrine enforced as before the Panama Canal giveaway. Too many details for now, just think “Parallel Bar Therapy”…
Dittos Dark Fired Tobacco and Monkey Muffins.
While I generally agree with JHK on matters of national and global state of affairs and future prospects and things that could and/or should be done but are not, I think your political views are insanely backward, short sighted, narrow minded, highly opinionated, and several other descriptive adjectives.
There was no coffin left on anyone’s yard. That lie was debunked last week by the congressman himself. But you choose to exacerbate that lie by repeating it. Shame on you.
I agree there are some “crazies”………on both sides……… I consider you one of them on the left side because of some of your “crazy” writings and opinions.
I also consider you an out right hypocrite because you accuse the TEA party folks of “hate” and the Repubs of “the party of cruelty” etc. and then you write such crap as this:
“I kept wishing that President Obama would reach under the table for a fungo bat every time the miserable Mr. Boehner opened his Midwestern pie-hole to drone out a new lie, and split his fucking head open like a Crenshaw melon …..”
As James Howard Kunstler wrote on blog titled Winter Mind Games, end of third paragraph, dated March 1, 2010, found here: http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/03/winter-mind-games.html or in the archives on his website.
Nobody on the right condones, or is “inciting” violence. That is just stupid. That is just a load of B…S… construed by the media to direct “blame” at the right.
And you forgot to mention the media making every effort to depict Palin as “inciting” violence because of her website with the little target shaped icons indicating the states where voters should (in her opinion) unseat incumbents. I guess she should have used icons shaped like little flowers instead. Would that have less offensive for the whiney media cry babies? Or maybe it may have been more appropriate to have used icons shaped like little asses. Not donkeys. Asses.
I’ve long been fascinated and horrified about the conditions and processes that somehow transforms nations and highly civilized people into inhuman beings possessed by total madness. Jim, your mention of Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”, and Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields are spot on as examples of how evil can quickly be spread throughout a society by a powerful “leader” sociopath with a political agenda, as crazy as it may be.
An America under great stress could and probably will once again descend into madness. I say once again as we have been there before. Our Civil war is a good example of that as is the mass bombing of heavily populated civilian centers in Germany and Japan in World War Two. Some bombing runs against city centers were terrorist attacks in the sense that they were designed to terrorize the population for a political end, not to destroy military targets. Fighting evil by becoming evil may be effective but hardly keeps one on firm moral ground. The madness of killing hundreds of thousands of civilians was opposed by few Americans or Brits. The total fire storm destruction of major cities was actually celebrated.
As standards of living fall in America the hate filled dialog of even one media savvy sociopathic “leader” could easily tip the nation’s social mood into complete madness. We are already experiencing early signs of this.
Those who think that a private horde of guns, ammo, water, and food will save them from national madness are dreaming unless they are completely hidden away far off the radar. In fact, anyone who is thought by the raving fired up mobs to possess anything of value or thought to be somehow “un-American” will soon come under repeated attack until the mob gets whatever it wants.
As resources become ever more scarce and the “leader’s” voice becomes louder the descent into madness may come faster than anyone now thinks. Who in the civilized Germany that existed prior to Hitler could envision the madness that would soon follow?
Considering the outsourcing production for “consumer goods” to China and elsewhere, why would we want to bring the production of cheap plastic crap back to the US? Don’t we have too much of that garbage already? Wouldn’t we do better to make less crap and more useful commodities? Like stuff that lasts, can be repaired, handed down to generations to come? Something of value besides the latest fashion statement or media trend? Something you save up to buy rather than whip out the VISA and pay yet more in interest? Something that contributes to the basics of staying warm, fed, healthy, and connected? Connected as in to the people you live near and not some pop music prancer?
Asoka, my reply to your question about “crankass” is near the end of last week’s thread.
“We need to stop Consuming! We don’t need anymore electronic toys.”
America is going through the same as Europe.
The only way to stop consuming electronic toys is to produce them again in our countries.
No more Chinese stuff.
Things will cost more, because the cost of work is higher, because the cost of living is higher, but we will again have jobs and factories running.
Globalization is OK if countries fight with the same weapons, but how can Europe and USA compete with China now and Africa, South America in the next future?
There people work 20 hours a day, Saturdays and Sundays included, they work for peanuts because the cost of living is very low and their standards are low too.
No more investments overseas (nice to produce for nothing and charge ten times more).
What is produced in China has to be sold there.
This is the only way to save our economies.
People won’t be able to afford what they can now, they will have to deal with one only cell phone and may be they won’t be able to change it so soon, but people will have to work and will have to produce again…nice to go back in the past…
“Nations go crazy.”
I think Erich Fromm said it: If individuals behaved like nations they would be locked up as hopelessly insane.
I’ve come here because he has generally taken the long view. But, the attacks on Republicans are childish in a post-party, resource-limited world.
P.S. – it’s Health insurance reform; not health care reform, which would have done more to address the still unresolved problem: Skyrocketing costs. Sure the hyper-complex bill has good points but, in aggregate it will speed up another soon-to-be cliché we should get comfortable with – “peak debt” i.e.: We will not be able to service these social contracts anyway. When we can’t meet our obligations in 5-to-10 years who will get health care? My guess? The wealthy.
This gentleman likes to bring up the evils of Nazism in his essays but, then writes this:
“…ability to conduct himself like an adult, like a good father, in the face of the most unseemly provocations by his red-faced adversaries…”
I’m sure most Germans after having lost WW1 then suffering through a shit decade, saw Hitler as a “good father” too. Be happy there is an opposing view. It’s a historical rarity.
What is so strange about the Nazis is how many rational, ordinary people joined up simply because they had no choice. Take Albert Speer, for example. He is one of the greatest and most talented architects of the 20th century, celebrated by critics such as Leon Krier and even liked by Joseph Stalin. He came from a multi-generation family of great architects. (His son in fact did the master plan for the Beijing Olympics.) Well Speer in the early 1930’s couldn’t even feed his family. He had to take money from his father.
What choice did he have other to join up with a criminal organization, the Nazi Party? Anecdotes of him going into blood-splattered offices he was tasked with redecorating and simply telling people to avoid the rooms with the blood tell the whole story.
There’s no political party in America that has the organization and sheer mystique of the Nazi party. However, there are lots and lots of gangs that have infiltrated the state at every level. (Remember gang tags in Baghdad?) Pretty soon it won’t be just ghetto hoodlums that join gangs, it will be respectable professionals who don’t have any choice in order to survive. These professionals are much smarter than the usual ghetto hoodlum, and with their leadership the gangs are going to overwhelm the state.
The barbarians are at the gates and the gates are wide open. The smart people are going to join the barbarians.
More on this subject: http://globalsovereignty.wordpress.com/global-sovereignty-and-the-future-state/
REallly? Where have you seen a trash can that was NOT Made In China?
And Gregg, I wasn’t takling about making more “consumer crap”, I was talking about the heavy industry to make the machines that make the products. We have outsourced all of that too.
Go to any machine shop, look at the manufacutrer of the lathe, milling machine, etc. If it doesn’t say Made in Japan, I’ll “eat my shorts”, so to speak, (after fully laundering them). Oh, and ask the machine shop if they make auto parts or “defense” parts.
The point is that we don’t even have the heavy industry anymore to make anything besides military products.
D Jones I
Thank you, Qshtik. I read your reply. You indicate that Safire commented on the word, as part of his column on words.
But Safire never actually used the word in one of his essays. To do so would be to engage in an ad hominem attack (given the definition of the word) beneath the dignity of Mr. Safire.
Rubbermade trash cans are made in the US.
I usually agree with Jim, but I think he underestimates the ability of the nation to recoil from domestic terror, which is what a Timothy McVeigh brings. I like what norlight wrote:
“Remember Timothy McVeigh? At the time there were all kinds of folks flirting with the militia movement. Once that Oklahoma City happened, people recoiled and backed away from that stuff hard and fast.”
The moment the Tea Party finds a suicide-bomber martyr or mass killer, you’ll see their property-owning supporters back off the incendiary rhetoric and go back to collecting guns and doing home-improvement projects. Then the Tea Party would only have demagogues on the radio or TV, some right-wing loons in Congress, and a bunch of what Marx calls the lumpenproletariat–the Wayne Karps of World Made by Hand.
That holds as long as the economy does not do a second swan-dive. In a time of privation and massive suffering, however, all bets would be off.
Jim is so fond of Nazi analogies that he misses the analogy I find most applies to the theocratic wing of the GOP: Franco’s Falange.
Spain was deeply divided ideologically, but after a period of civil strife, assassinations, other political murders, labor actions, and arrests, the army divided. The ultra-nationalists and conservative Catholics joined Franco when he brought his troops into Spain from North Africa.
Right now, the US military swears an oath to defend the Constitution. The moment some pudgy hick in a militia movement gets other hicks to rebel, they’ll be squashed like the bugs they are.
On the other hand, Franco was considered a Gallego hick (and got pudgy later in life).
Let’s hope that America’s neo-secessionists and theocrats don’t find a pint-sized caudillo with cred in the US military to lead them against forces of “anarchy and socialism undermining the US Constitution” if shooting ever starts or–shudder–if momentum builds on the right for calling a Constitutional Convention.
If our economy does recover temporarily, and before Peak Oil leads to a permanent contraction in what Americans consider their God-given lifestyle, it’s time to go back to look what happened in Spain in the 30s.
It will be up to sensible well read folks–and the youngsters who are not yet engaged in this right-wing foolishness–to stop the morons Jim so rightly blasts here.
Trash Cans Made in USA
http://trashcansunlimited.com/nhl_waste_bins.html
“The best trash cans at the best price”
The best price would be a higher price, one that provides Americans with a living wage.
Jim – your attacks towards the Republicans/conservatives sounds just like Hitler’s propaganda against the Jews. You are trying to create hatred and fear toward a class of people. Why? Both the Repubs and Dems have got us to this terrible fiscal hole. But you are starting to sound delusional/rabid. We have to try and refocus on economic reform. What are the true reasons for the collapsing economy? What would truly help.
Obama and CONgress lied to us about how the health care bill will lower the deficit. And please no CBO quotes please. It will raise the deficit. Maybe it WILL insure more people and benefit some that need better health care. But why do they lie to us about what it does fiscally? Why? Just to get it passed? Does the end justify the means?
Is the whole country just melting down into a delusional slumber, willing to believe whatever fairly tale our leaders tell us?
We – us – the people – can’t fall prey to the distractions and attacks. We need to educate ourselves about economics enough to make the right choices. Please read Thomas Sowell’s books. He is black which makes it OK for him to talk about how the various government programs to help whatever group, usually makes things worse.
Actually, most Americans really don’t agree with most of us on this blog. They continue on believing the end never will come. They don’t even know who Kunsler is!
The end, as we have known it, is coming and nothing will stop it–especially not the Democrats who really are no better than the Republicans.
“…if momentum builds on the right for calling a Constitutional Convention.”
Constitutional Convention? Can you say sore losers?
We did have an election in Nov. 2008. Obama did win that election by millions of votes.
Sedition, treason, and violence are not what is called for because we have a constitutional scholar as president, not a tyrant.
Even Sarah Palin says violence is not the way. Nonviolent political involvement and voting is the way.
“Republican leaders’ avidity to ally themselves with the followers of hate-monger entertainers like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and the Fox News gang is only the beginning of the process that will lead to a political convulsion…”
My, what a short and lopsided memory you have:
http://www.poorandstupid.com/images/20031118kuk.jpg
A lot of people are confused by the theater.
If you watch a cop show, you don’t really think that the good cop has a different goal than the bad cop, do you? Because when you watch Obama and the Congress, the Dems are the good cops and the Repubs are the bad cops, but their goal is the same.
The Health Insurance bill was written by the insurance industry, and it delivers massive profits to them. The rhetoric of “helping Americans” really shouldn’t confuse anyone.
As Edwin Meese advised “Watch what we do, not what we say”.
Then IndyAmerican calls for more growth and exports, while at the same time calling for a reduction of consumption and a realization of Peak Oil.
You can’t have growth and decreased consumption. You can’t have increased production and exports without cheap energy.
Americans are very capable of understanding reality, if it is fed to them in a easily digested medium, and repeated constantly. If they can believe lies fed to them like this, they can understand the truth. But fat chance that the corporate media will do that.
Instead of listening to Obama’s lies, reread FDRs speeches. He welcomed the hatred of the “economic royalty”. Obama feels that no bonus is too much for the hard working executives of Wall Street.
Carter was not hated for calling for energy self-sufficiency. His ratings were very high the day after his sweater speech.
The corporate media preferred Reagan and ridiculed Carter mercilessly, as they did Gore 20 years later. Day after day, the news media announced the tally of the Iran hostages, while ignoring the Reagan deal with the ayatollahs to keep them until after the election.
Yes, Americans, like any other people, can be worked up into a mob frenzy that can, and probably will, kill a lot of people.
It all depends on the economy. I know a lot of people who are heavily armed and waiting. If they keep their jobs, the guns stay locked up. If they lose their jobs, the guns will come out.
We don’t need a growing economy, we need a sustainable one. We don’t need more, we need enough. We don’t need to export, we need to produce for our own use.
If we can’t do that, we’ll have a civil war.
But participating in the hatefest will not be helpful.
And, finally, instead of reading The Fourth Turning and submitting to fatalism, try reading The Great Turning, by David Korten, for a dose of hope. (Real hope, not the fake Obama kind)
Again. Thank you, Mr. K. You’ve been in full stride the last two weeks.
Jared Diamond talked about the need to expand sympathy and empathy between people–above and beyond “blood” and tribal ties–in order to build a nation state. Otherwise you wind up with the situation of the pair from differing tribes running into each other, trying to discover points of kinship and commonality so that they don’t have a reason to murder one another.
That is very much the situation we find ourselves in today in America. We very much need to re-discover our common humanity. Otherwise we are going to tear ourselves apart.
I don’t want every business enterprise run by the government. That would be complete insanity. On the other hand, the business community has to realize that any business exists because it serves some need of the community as a whole, not just the individual owners. There has to be a sane and sensible balance between owners and the common good. Ideology and Ayn Rand be damned!
Finding that balance is an ugly, complicated business, but an absolute necessity. So be it.
We’re drawing to the close of a petroleum and computer-fueled revolution in agriculture, manufacturing and transportation that has seen producers removed further and further their markets. That has to end. We have to begin re-localizing, moving the two closer to one another. The myth of eternal growth and ever-expanding prosperity is becoming more and more obviously fatuous.
We can’t spare time or attention for people who foster hate and division. We have to learn to live together, to rub elbows.
The alternative is really too horrible.
“Let us not talk falsely now. The hour is getting late.”
I sense something’s in the wind. Fox News, Limbaugh, Beck, et. al. are acting as agents provacateurs in my view. The Tea Party folks are giving themselves over to talk of violence. Democrats seem unable to roll back what Bush-Cheney did regarding Patriot Act, posse comitatus, telecom immunity, and our police continue to militarize. The elderly are tasered. (the purpose of the police is to protect the people, the purpose of the army is to protect the state. When the police and military merge, the people tend to become the enemy of the state) In Rwanda, talk radio fanned the flames of violence.
So I agree on a basic level with Jim—something’s in the wind, the weather is changing.
Come on Soak, wake up! The whole thing is a joke. Safire never discussed “crankass.” I’m just pulling your leg because you were obviously not yourself yesterday. I think you’ve gone off the deep end and I was wondering what all-of-a-sudden pushed you over the edge.
http://www.wdbj7.com/Global/story.asp?S=12210454
Republican HQ vandalized.
Jim, I expect a column on this next week.
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/man-charged-with-threatening-eric-cantor.php
Republican Congressman’s life threatened.
Jim, you can write about this Shocking and Troubling Incident in your column about violent left-wingers next week. We look forward to it.
Thanks for another fine essay, Jim. My husband and I both are looking forward to The Witch of Hebron. You’re such a dang good writer.
Also, I second the comment above that said it’s time to read The Fourth Turning again. It’s a great book. And FYI here’s a great blog (www.thedragontalking.blogspot.com)by a regular poster on The Fourth Turning Forums. His name is Brian Rush and his latest entry “This Is No Time For Compromise” describes America’s previous 4th Turnings really well.
See, that’s what I mean by falling for the theater.
Democrats “seem unable” to roll back the Patriot Ace, the Military Commissions Act, the telecom immunity, etc.?
That’s because they SUPPORTED it!
Including Obama, except the Military Commissions, and I just found out that he would have supported that if his vote was needed.
Do you not remember that Obama pledged to filibuster to stop the retroactive making lawful of lawbreaking by the telecoms, and then voted FOR it?
This is a farce and a travesty. Either we get beyond tweedledum and tweedledee, or we descend into the madness that Jim warns of.
The health care reform bill showed how much the Regressive Party has control even though they are the minority. The Democrats could have had a much better bill had the cowardly Democrats been supportive and really wanted a bill that would make a difference in health care delivery, cost, and transportability.
The Party of Regressiveness does not want an American worker to earn higher wages, have health care transportability, savings, or economic stability. Most of them hate working Americans.
Obama stood honorable before those who wore transparent hoods inside the Regressive Party. He did the best he could. The Regressive Klansmen and women really want to bring the nation toward fascism. The heck with a crumbling national infrastructure, those with the money must continue to make more at the Wall Street casino tables.
Yet this president must take action and bring indictments against Dick Fuld and company, as well as others involved in the economic jihad. In addition, investigations must go forward against those who are fueling the hate message, and stirring violence against the democratic process.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
“A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday took a look at the Tea Party members and found them to be just as anachronistic to the direction of the country’s demographics as the Republican Party.
For instance, they were disproportionately white, evangelical Christian and “less educated … than the average Joe and Jane Six-Pack.” This at a time when the country is becoming more diverse (some demographers believe that 2010 could be the first year that most children born in the country will be nonwhite), less doctrinally dogmatic, and college enrollment is through the roof. The Tea Party, my friends, is not the future. [emphasis added by Asoka]
You may want “your country back,” but you can’t have it. That sound you hear is the relentless, irrepressible march of change. Welcome to America: The Remix.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/opinion/27blow.html
Whose Country Is It? by Charles M. Blow, March 26, 2010 New York Times editorial
As dark as the future is, I manage to find little sources of amusement, especially watching the crowds of slope-headed Tea Bag cretins doing their little monkey dance as they demonstrate against
their own best interests. One can only imagine how many of them are just getting by on their “big gummint” unemployment checks or social security or how many owe their very lives to “socialistic” medicare. They’re pathetic and dismally stupid but not, I feel, really dangerous. It’s the neo-Nazis behind them who must be exposed and controlled. When that happens, the poor deluded fools can go home and wait for the next clarion call the save America from God knows what…Blacks, Mexicans, Gays, Martians, Jay Leno, whatever.
Jim: love your work, but I’m more worried about you going nuts, or at least succumbing to Boomer nostalgia syndrome. Why not commit an act of journalism and actually go to a Tea Party rally? From what I hear, the incidence of violence is rather low, perhaps disappointingly so for someone who lived through the ’60s. I think you’re ethically bound to tell us what meets the threshold in your apocalyptic scenario. For convenience, use Bernardine Dohrn’s life as a reference point. Then, with a straight face, estimate how long until some right-wing perpetrator gets hired by a top law firm, gets tenure, or gets profiled in the NYT style section for their baking skills. [Light years are an acceptable unit of measure.]
Kit, I’ve been moderating at two firearms websites since 1999. About 30,000 active members in those sites. The political views are mostly small-c conservative. I state positively that the vast majority objects to Obama because of policy issues, not race. I say “majority” because there are idiots in any group, be it based on politics, race or personal interest.
I have no doubt that there are idiots among the people who support the Tea Party ideas. That does not obviate the fact that the primary concerns are wasteful governmental spending and excessive restrictions on business as well as overly-high rates of taxation on the productive sector of our society.
The predominant history in the US of violence for political purposes has come from the Left. Whether it was the Weathermen, the EarthFirst, the Black Panthers or Prof. Ayers and Ms Dohrn, the violent action has come from the Left. Ask the folks in Seattle at GATT, and certainly it was not the KKK at Chicago in 1968. We now have the intimidation tactics of either violence or threatened violence by SEIA and the Neo-Panthers.
Rhetoric? At the national convention of the Democratic Party around 1980 or 1984, a primary speaker alleged that Republicans wanted poor people’s babies to starve. I thus find myself underwhelmed by accusations toward Republicans for inflammatory rhetoric.
‘Rat
“- We need to stop fighting our enemies with politically correct ideas and strategies. No Quarter. No Mercy. Annihilate them, and leave.” — IndyAmerican.
This, I submit, IS the craziness that Kunstler is talking about.
As the first poster said, America has been crazy for a long time — probably from its inception. Don’t believe it? Read The Shock Doctrine, or anything by Derrick Jensen. We’ve been too long too strong for anyone to question our sanity. Asking, “Are you crazy?” of a crazy person isn’t usually the best policy.
I’ve been a big fan of Jim’s for a long time now but I don’t quite feel the same pessimism that he does about our society. As a life long resident of the deep south I know only too well how state and local governments just manage to muddle through while the more energetic and creative forces actually do the heavy lifting of change. I tend to see our present crises as being merely larger examples of this phenomenon; in the near term we’ll manage to put together enough fixes to see us through the worst until some better and more comprehensive approach arises. As Jim says, we can’t really think right now about high speed rail a la France & Japan – we should concentrate on refurbishing existing rail lines for such use.
As for Jim’s perpetual worries about the potential rise of domestic fascism in the US due to ever mounting social & economic pressures, let me say once again as a native southerner that the vast majority of the Tea Party cracker types are basically loudmouths with no real coherent ideology or plan of action; they’re weak, impotent and disorganized and without cable news(mainly Fox) you would’nt have even heard of them.
Watching the bonehead intransigence of the Republican Party right now is kind of like seeing someone performing auto-erotic asphyxiation- it apparently feels good to them but they’re turning blue in the face and before long someone’s going to find them hanging in their closets. I personally think it’s wonderful that they are self destructing. The so called conservatism of the last 30 years is dead and needs to be replaced. In the meantime a revived Democratic Party is the ONLY real present solution for our worst problems right now.
MD, so you want Jim to compare isolated incidents with a trend sparked by crazy movements? Perhaps you want him to compile a list of a attacks and threats made to every politicians from 1776 to 2010 to be “fair”? But it’s not fair to just signal out threats and acts of violence made against politicians. We must point out all threats and attacks made against celebrities too, it’s only fair.
JHK,
Listening to Tom Ashbrook’s “On Point” discussion of the repusifican, so called leadership’s, role in the current race toward anarchy within the US this morning I was struck by the same similarity to Germany in the 1930’s as were you. Additionally I was reminded of a recent article about a French TV program which utilized methods similar to the famous (infamous perhaps) Milgram pseudo-learning experiments utilizing pseudo-electric shock and pseudo-professional supervision to entice pseudo-intelligent humans to perform pseudo-inhumanities. (An aside; five pseudos in one sentence to entice Qshtik to become pseudo-apoplectic about the repeated use)
Whilst stationed at the now defunct McClellan AFB, CA from the late 60’s to the mid 70’s I watched the PBS broadcasts of the Milgram experiments. While regaling some of the aircraft mechanics/electricians preparing our test birds I discovered that one of them was watching the Milgram programs as a course assignment for a physiology course he was taking at UC Sacramento. For those who contend that the current diatribe from FOX and the repusifican conservatives is just talk keep on reading.
A couple of weeks later I was talking with the electrician about the Milgram experiments and he related the following:
After discussing the Milgram expeiments in class a comfortable consensus among those in the class was that they would not have fallen for such duplicitous words and actions and been led to perform such inhumanities upon fellow humans as had the subjects of the Milram experiments and the German people in the 1930’s. Then one night they were in class awaiting the Prof who arrived a bit tardily. The prof walked briskly to the front of class turned and threw out a question which fell on deaf ears; the class had no idea about what he was asking. He was calling for a response for anyone and everyone was hunkered down with down cast eyes so as to avoid eye contact with the prof. With no volunteer the prof called on Mary (I know not her real name, never did). Mary stuttered and stammered and tried to profess no knowledge of what he was asking. At this point the prof became enraged; he verbally tore into Mary slandering her intelligence and cursing at her. She began to cry; the rest of the class to a man and woman was studiously studying desk tops and open books with bowed heads and averted eyes. Then just as suddenly as it started the tirade was ended with these simple words “SEE HOW EASY IT WAS”.
A group of continuing education adult college students, whom had been discussing the very effects they fell subject to for weeks, were bamboozled by an unfortunately all too human psychological propensity to defer to a pseudo-authority figure.
Any similarity between this real life episode and what is taking place in the conservative hinterlands of the US is only coincidental.
SNAFU
Crazy can come on on fast or slow, but sure as hell, it will arrive. I grew up in an aerospace town with many families who had escaped Nazi Germany with Von Braun after the war. My lovely piano teacher’s charming husband had been a Brownshirt. His jolly next-door neigbor had launched V2 rockets into London. For my part, after protesting the war in Viet Nam I went to work in the defense business like thousands of young people hungry for our slice of the American dream. With rare exception it’s too late once we recognize that madness has overtaken us, especially when it’s so well dressed.
“Jim, you can write about this Shocking and Troubling Incident in your column about violent left-wingers next week.”
“Left-wingers”? What evidence is there?
Could have been fiscal conservatives, libertarians, or anyone under the delusion of “true patriotism” who thinks “throw all the bums out” (Cantor included) is the answer.
“The predominant history in the US of violence for political purposes has come from the Left. …and certainly it was not the KKK at Chicago in 1968.
No. It was the police.
It’s spring, ‘rat. Pull thy head out from whence the sun shineth not, neither doth it rain.
What, you mean the Democrats are holier than thou?
I had no idea. There doesn’t seem to be much of a line between being a “hate monger” and commenting about the loss of freedom, personal responsibility and free choice anymore. I can’t fault anybody that has an opinion whether they agree with me or not. At least they are using their neurons for more than watching “American Idol” and other brain dead pap that passes for entertainment these days. Someone wants to march or trash talk on the radio, well go ahead. Since when did “nuts” require any stirring up. That professor in Huntsville allegedly killed three people, so what was her political motivation? Reverand Right had some things to say about America too, so Jim, both ends of the political spectrum are chock full of the less than rational. Oh, and lest we forget that little fat Dixie Chick. She had a lot to say about everything. Of course, folks stopped buying her records and she has been pretty quiet of late. Maybe her mouth has been full.
When Obama said change, I didn’t know he was going to force me to be a socialist. I guess if I wanted to be of that particular political persuasion, I could have moved to France. Of course, I am too old to learn a new language. If you think the health care bill will provide more healthcare, more equitably and reduce the deficit then you are as delusional as the folks that think they are providing leadership in Washington.
America is polaried. I can only hope peak oil arrives in our face in a meaningful way soon or the economy finally implodes. Maybe we will get both at the same time. I say that, because then maybe America won’t tear itself apart if we are all more interested in just obtaining our daily calories. Or maybe we will be like the Hindus and Muslims when Indian and Pakistan was partitioned. We could have thirty-one political favors and everyone could switch houses and jobs to get to the right region.
Jim, in any case, our government is broken. Democrats or Republicans – no real leadership from any quarter much less any truth. Heck, they have even taken to bribing each other. You yourself said that government will increasing become dysfunctional. Why should any of us be surprised?
Jim: WOW are you a lefty hack or what?!? Come on! the article started out great until you talk about the “crazies on the right??” The was NOT ONE incidence of violence with the Tea parties. Not one single account that was proven…just lies…like usual, from the left. You want violence, look at Bill Ayers and your ilk from the 60’s. How about E.L.F.?? Yup, more from the left. G-20 riots…LEFT! Even Joe Stack, if you read his manifesto, I would say is more left than right, yet,lefty hacks such as yourself, lie and misrepresent what is the reality. I fear for what you have stated could happen in America, but PUH-LEEZE! The radicals, the violence, the lies, the misinformation and the taxing and Big Govt cradle to grave ideology is all from the left. Although I’m not too hot in Lindsay Gramnesty and Up-chuck Schumer’s national ID plan to turn us all into slaves. Actually, the Tea Party people are on the left, right and middle. Go see for yourself, instead of watching morons on MSDNC and see what really going on. The President is a Communist. Not his fault, he was raised by them and that’s what he grew up around… Here’s a link for Jimmy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAYFFFmw72s
Please take the liberal cock out of your mouth and be honest!
“how long until some right-wing perpetrator …
[Light years are an acceptable unit of measure.]”
======================
This line would be funnier if light years were a measure of time rather than distance.
If Obama continues to make inroads, and their helpless rage mounts, expect serious incidents of real violence, not just name-calling, brick-throwing, and Parliamentary obstructionism.
Planes crashing into IRS buildings are just a warm-up. As are wild-eyed SUV-driving TeaKlanners ramming parents driving their children home from school, who happen to have an Obama sticker on their car.
(See: http://www.wkrn.com/global/story.asp?s=12208009)
As the Red States mount up their challenges to the Soshulist nightmare they’ve conjured in their febrile imaginations, why don’t we grant them their wish: we Yankees / “leftists” / educated elitists should ENCOURAGE the secessionists in Texas and other former Confederate states to depart from our Union.
Excise the Senators & Congressmen from the former Confederate states and the US would suddenly become one of the enlightened countries of the planet, instead of the international embarrassment we are today. They are net takers from the federal pie. They don’t want to be part of our United States, and we don’t want them either. So, sayonara ignoramuses. Enjoy shooting each other celebrating your Second Amendment rights in Jesusland. The rest of us can get on with enacting sensible health insurance reform, global climate change legislation, sensible gun control laws, death penalty repeal, et al.
The blacks, Hispanics, and liberals left behind could be offered generous immigration policies to encourage them to come to the Enlightened States of America. No doubt President Palin of the Union of Confederate States would bid them a not-so-fond farewell, since they’re not, after all, Real Americans.
Secession of the 13 former Confederate states, including the border states of KY and MO, would eliminate 19 Republican Senators of the 41 currently seated. Just looking at the Senate, think of all that the remaining 37 States could accomplish without this list of drawling, backwards, Creationist Republican knuckle-draggers:
South Carolina: Jim DeMint & Lindsey Graham
Mississippi: Thad Cochran & Roger Wicker
Florida: George LeMieux & Bill Nelson
Alabama: Jeff Sessions & Richard Shelby
Georgia: Saxby Chambliss & Johnny Isakson
Louisiana: David Vitter
Texas: John Cornyn & Kay Bailey Hutchison
North Carolina: Richard Burr
Tennessee: Lamar Alexander & Bob Corker
Kentucky: Jim Bunning & Mitch McConnell
Missouri: Christopher Bond
Throw in Oklahama’s Tom Coburn & James “Global-Warming-Is-A-Hoax” Inhofe and America would have cast off the bulk of it’s most idiotic political ballast. The remaining Republicans would be a powerless rump party that would either have to cast off their demagoguery and join the modern world, or be forever consigned to well-deserved political oblivion.
Re Brian Rush and his Thedragontalking blog: I was a regular reader of and poster on The Fourth Turning forums from 2000-2008 before I decided to spend that time on Daily Kos. I was wondering what Brian had been doing lately. He and I didn’t always get along (I blame that on his ex-girlfriend, who eventually annoyed me enough that I drifted away from the forums), but he was always smart, fierce, and an original thinker. I’ll make a point of going over there to read his posts.
Also, let me join the chorus of those who recommend that Jim read Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning, as well as its predecessor Generations. I’m of the opinion that the Fourth Turning AKA the Secular Crisis is well upon us, and has been possibly as early as September 11, 2001, but definitely by September 15, 2008. Being familiar with Strauss and Howe’s concepts of history has given me much better understanding of how and why current events have unfolded.
Welcome to the Crisis Era, which, if Jim is right, will merely be the first act of The Long Emergency.
Mina said:
Ummm, how soon we forget. The “folks” were stirred up by right wing talk radio, the records were burned in public rallies, and she was never quiet in her opposition to Bush’s policies, you know the policies that created our deficit through two unnecessary wars and a giant tax break for the rich.
Bush may be gone from the scene, but the Dixie Chicks are going strong. On tour this summer with the Eagles.
http://www.dixiechicks.com/splash.html
As insightful as Kunstler is on many a subject (his column and podcast are on my “must” list every week), it’s also apparent that he keeps his blinders on in a big way.
I’m not a Tea Partier (or Bagger, if you prefer), and I certainly don’t believe that they understand the fundamental problems that face us. Is there a lot of ignorance out there? You bet. I’m also not a Republican, but a screed against them will have to wait for another day. Right now, it’s the so called progressives who need to be ridiculed and mocked.
In that spirit, let’s look at the situation from the point of view of the typical white American (who may or may not be a Bagger).
What is the track record of government? Let’s see, we have a government that massively discriminates against white citizens as a matter of offical policy. And yet these same white citizens are supposed to be thrilled at the idea of increased government power over medical rationing? Rationed on what basis? Now it’s literally a matter of life and death.
Hard to support government having that sort of power when it, officially and with no shame, discriminates against you. How can such a person be confident that the government genuinely has his best interests at heart? Short answer: he can’t, because it doesn’t.
Now let’s look at this conception of the public good. People look around and see that racial integration, social engineering, and “progressive” policies have effectively ruined the typical public school. Prior to the triumph of modern progressivism, our public schools were generally quite good. No more.
So people are supposed to be thrilled for the federal government to have ever more power over their lives, even with its track record of destroying or degrading the civic insitutions upon which the typical person most relies? Come on. You really don’t see the problem?
I love the idea of walkable communities, electric tram systems, and a beautiful and accessible public realm. But how in the world do we get that when “progressive” social policies fill this public realm with winos, gangbangers, or just plain rude people who are not the least bit civic minded? Why support the extension of public transit, when you have every reason to believe that destructive people will be shipped in as part of the bargain?
What I’ve written above is just a miniscule sampling of what has been done to white Americans. The broader reality is far, far worse. But the bottom line is that many whites are incredibly demoralized at the prospect of more government action and centralized power. They have every reason to be.
So when Kunstler talks about their hostility to the common good or the public interest, I have to laugh. What common good? What public interest?
Progressives have pursued policies that have fundamentally undermined the public trust. People don’t trust government, and they don’t trust each other. This is not irrational, it is rational. And it’s not a great recipe for the common good.
Another choice bit: the Democrats are “for” the common good. LOL! Give me a break.
Democrats are for rewarding their target constituencies at the expense of Republican constituencies. That’s not the common good, that’s just politics as usual. You can dress up a pig, but…
The reality is that neither the Right nor the Left, Democrats or Republicans, have a friggin clue about the problems that ail us. They are bankrupt, intellectually and morally. Their moral and intellectual bankruptcy is finally leading to the inevitable result: literal bankruptcy.
I know Indiana voted for Obama, but you really should let them go, too, along with the other states. Most Hoosiers are big into “Second Amendment rights in Jesusland”
I suppose trying to change a cemented mind is a futile endeavor but here are a few opinions from someone one the so called “right”.
Passing the healthcare bill that will morph into something everyone will curse in the generations to come just so Obama can pass something is a foolish comment. To bust your arm patting yourself on the back because you perceive yourself as compassionate because of your support of a bill you believe will help the unfortunate is delusional. Pull out your own check book or bank statement and PROVE your compassion by what YOU are giving. What you are willing to steal from others through taxes and have passed on to those in need points only to your personal bankruptcy. (Get a copy of “Who Really Cares” by Arthur C. Brooks).
And to honestly believe that any republican leader is provoking violence towards those who pass bills they oppose is shameful. I’m amazed at the disconnect. On the one hand JHK fills his fancy with the thoughts of using a bat to someone’s melon head yet wants a government investigation to look into bricks thrown through windows. Do you do any vetting of your information or care to be accurate or are you in fact just interested in provoking violence.
Calling Obama a “good” father in light of his willingness to escort his daughter to the abortion clinic in the event they had an unwanted pregnancy is a reflection of someone who lives in an upside down world. It makes him neither a good father or grandfather it make him the grim reaper. Had I had that kind of a parent I would have never seen the light of day. I marvel at the list of atrocities listed by JHK and yet 4,000 abortions per day just in America doesn’t. Interesting how it’s only an atrocity in hind sight or if it doesn’t agree with you political leaning. Someday the elephant in the room you are choosing to ignore will be looking to sit down and I hope you’re not in the wrong place when it happens..
And finally, what is up with bashing the transportation system and the sprawl and the waste of modern jet travel and then using that same “cursed” infrastructure for your book tours, etc. Why not be true to your message and ride old paint.
“Interesting how it’s only an atrocity in hind sight or if it doesn’t agree with you political leaning.”
Right back at ya… interesting how it was “treason” to criticize Bush during a time of war.
But undermining Commander-in-Chief Obama through Tea Party activities, complete with signs saying the “The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants,” is not treason?
Guess it depends on your “political leaning” whether an action is seditious or not.
Have to agree with you here Jim.
Just as Wall Street Banks had devised the idea of sub-prime mortgages that they could repackage and sell to unwitting victims only to turn around and end up owning their own garbage when the music stopped. I now see the extreme right has gone from misleading the sheeple for profit to believing their own rhetoric, a classic descent into insanity.
Once all logic is lost the future becomes unpredictable and certainly unstable. God help us all.
“Right back at ya… interesting how it was “treason” to criticize Bush during a time of war.”
=======================
“treason” to criticize? Not even 70 and my memory is already fading.
What I recall is an unrelenting 8-year free-for-all/ open season on Bush-the-idiot.
Christ.
These apocalyptic scenarios get more and more far fetched as time goes by.
You would think the author would grow tired of being wrong.
Thanks Asoka for your comment. I would not classify either one of those comments as treason. If we do not have free speech and are not able to question EVERYTHING our government does then we are not fulfilling the design of the Founding Fathers. Just from limited little corner. I do not personally know anyone who is or ever has promoted violence towards are government or it leaders. So are there kooks out there. Yes and I suppose there always will be but a couple hand held signs don’t make a serious threat any more then JHK or Alec Baldwin wanting to take a baseball bat to those they oppose. I just don’t think you should call for a government investigation on the one if you don’t want the Gov breathing down your back. JHK was relishing on our commander and chief spliting open the head of another elected offical. Perhaps the Fed should take a look into that.
Jim, I am certainly of the opinion that something big is going to happen soon. The good guys in this second revolution will be on the offense this time however, looking to get back what this party of thieves has stolen. Perhaps a good replacement for the original order “don’t shoot until you see the white of their eyes” could be “don’t shoot till you see the green of their wallets.”
CF Nation is not going to be worth reading if it remains this partisan bullshit and Obama worship.
I mean, this is utterly ridiculous.
You’re celebrating an Industry-written bill because it was passed by your favored party.
Want to know how Germany had that “psychotic break” in 1933? They got really tired of bullshit from your clan, Jim.
Your writing no longer even hints at consensus. It race-baits. You call everyone stupid who disagrees with your Party Affiliation. This is YOUR psychotic break.
The way you talk and demagogue invites an ass kicking.
I don’t think consensus can be achieved with idiots like “progressives.”
Nathan, you are missing the origin of “sub prime” mortages with your comment, “Just as Wall Street Banks had devised the idea of sub-prime mortgages that they could repackage and sell to unwitting victims.”
It began in 1977 with the Community Development Act, requireing banks to make a percentage of their home loans as “sub prime”. After that, aside from the usual suspects such as the investment banksters (who are Obama’s chief advisors on monetary policy), you can add the FRB and Greenspan’s policies on interest rates.
Ryder, you’re spot-on. I thought about just this sort of thing, back when “The Fourth Turning” was first published.
I don’t think Jim has written about anything which wasn’t covered to some extent by Allen Drury’s first novels or by what was patently obvius by the late 1980s…
For those who think Obama represents change and openness in government, check out WikiLeak and the Salon article about it.
‘Rat
Sorry Mr. Knustler I greatly respect your work, especially the long emergency, but IMO the poor disenfranchised American citizens in the tea parties are not our enemies,t he real enemies are those corporate profiteers who are inflaming hatred between tea partiers and Dim party supporting liberals who are just as much to blame as Republicans for this mess as he Democratic party has replicated the politics of Republicans verbatim. IMO we need to point our fingers at the people making the money from this confusion concentrated wealth and power and stop blaming the manipulated dupes who are being set up with scripted lines on the stage of this political theater.
Note I don’t say this as a conservative, but a direct action leftist has been arrested for Earth First! activism in northern California and peper sprayed protesting Bush;s inauguration in 2005.
Also I think so called health care (really health insurance reform) “reform” is a scam to transfer money in a captive market from poor Americans to rich unaccountable crony capitalist insurance companies. Articles like this fail to address the root problem and are too focused on the epiphenomena of tea partier vs. Dim party loyalist IMO.
Hint Dim party loyalists can bit every bit as pro police state as any foul supporter of Bush’s war crimes. The feverent applause by many liberals of the huge police stat style crackdown on militias in several states is troubling to me as someone who strongly supports the 1st amendment right of free association.
http://detnews.com/article/20100328/METRO/3280313/Seven-arrested-in-FBI-raids-linked-to-Christian-militia-group
Where to begin…
Passage of the Health Control bill has certainly not improved my morale. I am so disgusted words fail me. Haven’t spoken to anyone yet who supported it. Consensual? I don’t think so.
Washington is full of idiots. Remove the labels; they’re really not necessary. You can’t tell one from the other anymore. There are no adults in charge, not even Obama. He’s just a puppet doing the bidding of those behind the curtain.
And finally, before we get around to investigating those “threats”, how about we get the attorney general to investigate the crimes that have already been committed against the taxpayers of this country.
Hope? I have none.
Change? Where?…
More lies, fraud, theft? Coming right up!
Greetings,
I watched an excellent lecture on youtube from some law professor that dated from the mid ’90’s. His lecture went something like this:
Imagine that two people inhabit a house and that house has two bathrooms. Each person can, without harming the other, claim exclusive use of a bathroom. Over time, the two inhabitants of this house may decide that their right to a bathroom should be written in law and they may even write a “Constitution” to forever enshrine their right to exclusive use of a bathroom.
This works well until a 3rd person moves in. Then what? How about if 10 people move in? They may be able to add another bathroom or two but if every person had their own bathroom, soon the house would be nothing but bathrooms.
They may decide to put bathrooms outside in the yard or alley and they may even decide that this “separate but equal” fix is just fine unless you are the one that has to go outside in the rain or snow.
Get the picture?
Anyway, we are in the same situation. This is not 1803 with free land as far as the eye can see (as long as you do not mind a little genocide to remove a few dark skinned inferiors) but, instead, we are now in the situation where we have 12 people living in a large house and some are claiming an exclusive God given “right” to hog the bathrooms.
Needless to say, the household members that are having to use outhouses or go in the alley way are a bit tired of listening to the same worn out old arguments.
Like a 16 year old girl being told that her time in the bathroom is up, the wacky right is throwing a hissy fit because someone other than themselves might get to tap into the earth’s resources.
Their temper tantrum risks shredding whatever is left of the Social Contract that we all live under. They forget that Democracy is The Rule of All by All and this willful desire to forget that fact may bring us, instead, an “every man for himself” war of All against All.
“We need to stop fighting our enemies with politically correct ideas and strategies. No Quarter. No Mercy. Annihilate them, and leave.”
I’m sorry, what?
Are you prepared to get your hands dirty against Pakistan? Or maybe you want to attack Iran and distrupt oil flows through Hormuz?
Asoka I marched against Bush’s illegal immoral criminal war against Iraq and torture, and I oppose Obama’s continuation of those wars and his support of *Bush’s* TARP bailout and the essence bailiout of the insurance industry by creating a captive market ,instead of enacting single payer like Canada where they spend a little more than half percentage wise of their GDP compared to the U.S. for coverage of all citizens and longer life expectancy. Not all opposition to Obama is from the right or “racist” and to assume it is, a smear of the worst sortIMO. IMO the elite are playing the politics of divide and conquer to a tee. 🙁
The only actual quasi fascist police station action I have seen recently is the huge multi state crackdown on the militias who while I disagree strongly with most of what they believe I also believe they have the right to be left alone by a nascent government initiated police state. “Mainstream” center right by world standards “liberals” (as opposed to true left activists) can be very bit as much a tool of a potential police state as tea baggers IMO, and probably more so than Ron Paul supporters who are anti state as a whole.
IMO those of us aware that industrial society is on it’s last legs are making poor choices if we believe pro centralis,t pro crony capitalist Democrats (who are just like Republicans) are somehow good allies. 🙁
More garden planting by lefty direct action green co-op supporters like myself and survivalist alike, less demoniozation and fanning MSM created flames of hysteria please, thanks!
Do you think Asoka’s views are unusual? Many if not most Blacks share them. Underneath all the happy talk about multi this and mult that, they want Whites to pay – in both senses of the word. And once the White Beast of Burden falls, who will pay for all their social entitlements, the Hispanics? And who will pay for the Hispanics, the Blacks? No, America stands or falls by the White Man and none other. Your unwillingness to see this makes you vulnerable to arguments like those of Ozone. Face it, they aren’t going to acculturate – who is going to make them? Previous immigrant groups, who were much closer culturally to begin with, were forced to acculturate. And it wasn’t easy either. To expect the same now when conditions have completely changed is hoping for a miracle.
Thanks for you answer Sunday about the possible break up of Canada – exciting news indeed. Perhaps Canada will lead America in this great and necessary venture.
Demonizing African Americans also sucks Vlad. We need to get over these petty culture war squabbles on both establishment manufactured sides IMO and unite against oligarchy and empire.
Ah, a rare soul – one who knows what Americans have not been allowed to know – that Communism was propagated and lead by the Jews. Those stupid Germans, they didn’t want to be starved to death like the people of the Ukraine.
Was just reading Alan Dershowitz’s intellectual biography, “Chutzpah”. He is very bitter that the Marshall Plan was instituted instead of the Morgenthau Plan. The Morgenthau Plan would have made Germany into an “Agricultural State” – no aid; tens of millions of Germans would have starved to death.
The Communists had already made a move in Bavaria, but it was premature. It was crushed by the Free Corps – WW1 vets organized into a militia. Needless to say, they weren’t about to give up – Marx has prophesized that Germany was supposed to have been the first Communist State. They intended to fufill that even though the schedule was off.
Reading for the last two years-agree with Kustler’s ideas about sustainable living.
Posting for the first time since I am greatly disturbed by the partisan tone of the last two pieces. Someone like James should be above the petty crat-lican eral-ative rhetoric.
How another this thought: Politicians do neither good nor bad. The net effect is nil-or shoonya as per Hindu philosophy. Bush neither harmed the nation nor made it better. Obama will neither fix anything nor will he break anything. They just take care of themselves.
And so should we.
Kalki
Well said Mr. Raven.
The coming struggle is not about not left vs. right, it’s about top vs. bottom.
Those on top know it, and they’re trying to keep the pot all stirred up so it doesn’t boil over & they can keep their lid on it.
I sure as hell have more common ground with other people down here in the working class, regardless of skin color or political affiliation, than I do with any of those scumballs of either party in Washington.
I stand corrected. But my point remains that the people selling the repackaged garbage got caught up in the buying like they had amnesia and ended up loosing trillions, hence the bailouts. Fox and followers have spun so much for so long all have become believers, extraordinary. I also saw a Harris poll last week of Tea Party Members, the anti government bunch. Seems a majority of them receive federal dollars for Social Security and extended unemployment benefits. As a die hard capitalist (which I am)I would start another business and get back to work before I spent anytime trying to get anyone else, including a government to do anything for me. My business is booming so I am not in that position, but I have been. That’s where this business I have now came from.
I also agree with Kalki re the politicization of this site. Over the past couple weeks,it’s been turning into the Huffington Post.
“…the huge police stat style crackdown on militias in several states is troubling to me as someone who strongly supports the 1st amendment right of free association.”
Have you read the indictment? The militia members were associating in order to develop IED’s to blow up the funeral procession at a policeman’s funeral, in the hope of killing more police.
I’m not sure if the 1st amendment covers that. I think that is called criminal conspiracy to commit murder, which is usually frowned upon regardless of who is president.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/03/29/hutaree.militia.plans/?hpt=Sbin
Vlad, do you have any idea at all of the immense cost of the White man’s military empire?
You ask: “And once the White Beast of Burden falls, who will pay for all their social entitlements, the Hispanics?”
We will dismantle the empire and turn the defense welfare payments for developing weapons to social welfare, education, employment, health, etc.
There is plenty of money. At least I have not heard anyone worried that the Defense Dept. is about to go bankrupt.
ALLEGEDLY associating, asoka.
Officials in a police state always have a press release pre-printed to cover their ass, well in advance of kicking down somebody’s door. It was the same in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, et al.
What we know about them is only what the government’s telling us.
They could easily write an indictment of you for supporting the “dismantling of the empire.”
You make sounds like a black supremacist. Do you think the government’s really on your side?
Asoka: “Have you read the indictment? The militia members were associating in order to develop IED’s to blow up the funeral procession at a policeman’s funeral, in the hope of killing more police.”
Let’s assume that this is true, even though in today’s world one can’t trust the media for anything resembling accuracy in reporting. Let’s also put conspiracy theories and speculation about black ops aside and, again, just assume it’s true as written.
The disturbing thing is that there ARE a lot of crazy nutjobs out there. It MIGHT well be true. It’s at least plausible.
Now, I’m not advocating anything, merely engaging in a discussion of hypotheticals. Let’s say that one was legitimately inclined toward armed revolution. Can one think of a worse way to inspire an uprising than to kill a bunch of policeman at a funeral as one’s first act? WTF? Is there anything less likely to encourage sympathy for your cause and inspire others to take up arms with you?
What the hell is wrong with these people? How in the world does that inspire a revolution?
Same with McVeigh. There must be literally thousands of targets out there better than one involving the deaths of a bunch of administrative assistants, children, and average joes living their workaday lives.
Yet what targets do these loons pick?
Our culture has declined to the point where even wannabe revolutionaries couldn’t pick a decent target if it bit them on the ass.
Allegedly? You think the “police state” got up this morning and said “let’s allege something and take down those pesky militias”?
It doesn’t work that way. There was a grand jury that did the alleging and they don’t do that lightly.
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether there is enough evidence for a trial. Grand juries carry out this duty by examining evidence presented to them by a prosecutor and issuing indictments.
A little different from just randomly “alleging”
“They could easily write an indictment of you for supporting the “dismantling of the empire.”
Bring it on!
Human needs come before corrupt defense contractors. That will be my defense. I will accept the verdict.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/28/AR2010032802971.html
Asoka who has murdered hundreds of thousands of people of color the U.S. government under both parties or our fellow disenfranchised citizens?
Lets keep focused on the true criminals the suits in the suites the loons in the sticks are drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of murder the government commits under both parties and regardless of the ethnicity of the commander in chief.
And note I say this a lefty who went to a p ace march last weekend and who believes in single payer health care not a regressive.
Anf\d whoopy doo black supremacist is just as fucking stupid as the demonzation coming from the MSM we are being played like fiddles to hate on each other, for the fun and profit of tthe chosen few, cut it out!
We be takin’ over the government, Mr. Whoopdy Do. Ain’t you done seen who won the election?
A grand jury can indict a ham sandwich
Thanks alot for endangering my keyboard with spewed coffee.
“Watching the bonehead intransigence of the Republican Party right now is kind of like seeing someone performing auto-erotic asphyxiation- it apparently feels good to them but they’re turning blue in the face and before long someone’s going to find them hanging in their closets.”
Choking the chicken as political theater.
Raven, I was using the term sarcastically to make the point that those on top could accuse asoka of it (or anyone of anything) to justify a takedown.
Take a breath, brother, I’m on your side.
I’ve had go-rounds with asoka before. He likes to get people riled up.
JKH–
You said Obama can’t risk telling the truth about the contraction we face.
What kind of leadership it that?
More bs with a nice suite and in an articulate manner.
Pathetic.
Nobody cares about your idiotic corrections. If more people like you would use their time and energy for good instead of trying to make themselves feel better we might get somewhere.
“Our culture has declined to the point where even wannabe revolutionaries couldn’t pick a decent target if it bit them on the ass.”
There are no “decent targets” … all human beings deserve to live (though some, like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, should live behind bars as war criminals).
Be pro-life. Embrace nonviolence.
You go at the establishment with guns and all you will discover is that you are out-gunned.
“A grand jury can indict a ham sandwich.”
Absolutely. Asoka, you’re dreaming if you think otherwise. The grand jury is not like a trial jury, it only gets the information that the authorities give them. The opposing story is not presented at all. Therefore, it almost always returns a true bill.
Having said that, I’ll repeat what I posted above: our culture has declined to the point where even wannabe revolutionaries couldn’t pick a decent target if it bit them on the ass.
You guys illustrate my point in a nutshell.
Raven, the lefty against the “suits in the suites.”
Asoka, who’s for “dismantling the empire.”
Ryder, who carefully does not advocate revolution but thinks the revolutionaries could be doing a better job.
Me, who has a deep distrust of all things government
We’re coming at the problem from different angles, but if we could just quit trying to piss each other off we’d see that we all have the same solution.
Asoka: “Be pro-life. Embrace nonviolence.”
Asoka misses the point by a mile. I wasn’t advocating anything, the post wasn’t about me.
Instead, I was simply pointing out that wannabe revolutionaries in this day and age always seem to go for the target that is most likely to turn every person against them, as opposed to one that would win at least some measure of public sympathy. If we assume that these aren’t black ops meant to mislead, and instead that they are actual targets of actual wannabe revolutionaries, that’s saying something.
“Absolutely. Asoka, you’re dreaming if you think otherwise.”
OK, you are correct. I am a dreamer. Always have been.
Like Martin Luther King said: “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”
And in closing, I wish this blog ran the other way so the newest comments were at the top. Scrolling down every time is going to give me carpal tunnel.
Oh, wait, I have Obamacare! I’m covered!
“We’re coming at the problem from different angles, but if we could just quit trying to piss each other off we’d see that we all have the same solution.”
We all have something to contribute to get to the solution.
JHK says today: “My guess is that the situation is so desperate now that President Obama and his supporters can’t risk telling the truth about the comprehensive contraction we face.”
Maybe saying words are not what is needed. Maybe actually showing by example would be more effective. And that is what the Obama family is doing:
http://www.mnn.com/food/organic-farming/blogs/white-house-kitchen-garden-goes-year-round
Asoka: “Like Martin Luther King said: “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”
I have a dream too. It involves not having huge numbers of innocent people raped and murdered as a direct result of the policies that you advocate. Dream on!
“I wish this blog ran the other way so the newest comments were at the top.”
I second this suggestion. Or, perhaps, a sort button that would allow sorting in chronological order, reverse chronicle order, by name of poster, or by likelihood of post resulting in an indictment.
Ryder: “I have a dream too. It involves not having huge numbers of innocent people raped and murdered as a direct result of the policies that you advocate. Dream on!”
You mean we should INCREASE defense spending, build more military bases, occupy more countries, build up our nuclear arsenal, and destroy all our enemies so at last we will be safe? Dream on!
Well said, Indyamerican. I think that you see things with an unprejudiced eye. Regards to you.
Working people of America–black, white , hispanic,asian–we have become indentured servants to big government. Some people buy into the stupid lie that somebody else “government” will take care of them. 12 trillion in debt, and 50 trillion in unfunded social programs. Military nightmare waste and abuse. Both parties are rearranging deck chairs on the titantic. We are broke.
People in American have just become to weak and wimpy to look at all the opportunity and wealth they live in. Our poorest live like kings compared to 95% of the planet. We may join the other 95% with the terrible leadership in both parties.
The two party system tag teams the average person with promises, lies, and bs.
Wake up– Obama– is as lame as Bush.
Whoopdy Do: “A grand jury can indict a ham sandwich”
Are you exaggerating? How would you serve a ham sandwich? A ham sandwich is an inanimate object.
Nonetheless, did you ever stop to consider there might be good cause to indict a ham sandwich? Especially, those ham sandwiches that cause death.
The World Cancer Research Fund warned in 2009 against parents feeding their children too many ham sandwiches, due to the risk of bowel cancer from the processed meat.
A ham sandwich was suspected of causing an outbreak of swine fever in the UK in 2000.
Just come across an interesting item on energybulletin.net about the “hyperbole and vitriol” that has followed the healthcare debate.
“And don’t fool yourself in thinking that this is all just uncontrolled, and unorganized, populist rage. When nested fears meet vested interests, a cloud of discontent can turn into a raging storm. It’s instructive to look at the role that corporate-minded special interest groups like Americans for Prosperity have played in the healthcare debate.”
It features the role of a group formed by David Koch, who’s made an estimated $14 billion from the oil and gas business. (In fairness, rent-a-crowd allegations at Capitol Hill last November, not of violence.)
It suggests “If Koch and others are feeding fear to protect the profits of health insurers, just imagine the kind of fomenting we’ll see when the stakes are even higher—when the energy and climate crises come front and center in the national debate.”
(On the other hand, if Americans can’t turn up to a protest without buses and donuts being provided, does Obama have anything to fear?)
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/52167
“Some people buy into the stupid lie that somebody else “government” will take care of them. 12 trillion in debt, and 50 trillion in unfunded social programs.”
When the USA wanted to build an interstate highway system, it was the government that got the job done.
When the USA wanted to accomplish rural electrification, it was the government that got the job done.
Big jobs that will benefit everyone require big government programs that will benefit everyone.
You are talking about an abstract concept called “debt” in trillions of dollars.
How can I as an individual address that? If I oppose Obama, will that shrink the debt? If I support Ron Paul (Dr. No), will that help? What do you personally suggest? Do you really believe that replacing every member of Congress up for re-election will reduce the debt?
What practical strategy do you propose that will affect “50 trillion in unfunded social programs”? (programs which are needed so the Tea Baggers can get their monthly checks)
Ashoka>> Embrace nonviolence
Those who are against Obamacare need to heed to ashok’s advice. There are non-violent ways of bringing down a repressive system.
For eg: don’t buyor even cancel your health insurance. Then leave a voicemail to one of the health insurance companies that lasts at least a minute. Yank off the answering machine for a month or so. If the insurance company calls, do not pick up. Preserve that month’s phone bill carefully. In the spirit of Gandhian non-cooperation, do not pay the penalty to the IRS.
Only in the rare case you are audited will the Irs question you as to why you did not pay the penalty. Show them the phone bill saying that you did call the company but they never responded. It will also hold good in court.
Meanwhile, if you fall sick, buy insurance and then after the cure, cancel it. Rinse and repeat.
They will close this loophole eventually in a decade or two with a public option. Then, stress the system. Keep making appointment with doctors, ER etc with fake illnesses. The small copayment will be worth it. Keep asking for medicines, tests ec. Just throw the pills away. There are fifty two weeks in a year, and even if you spend six weekends stressing the system and even if 20% of healthy people do this for a couple of years, the system will be on it’s knees.
There are many such ways. Break the system. But never ever use violence.
Kalki
Don’t get crucified at the gas station.
I don’t recall anyone commenting on global warming for a while.
We used to argue about it here, and whether it is real or hype from the liberal Al Gore camp.
Well, now global warming has caused sea levels to rise and cover an island. So, I guess global warming is real and Al Gore was right.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0324/Global-warming-as-peacemaker-Disputed-island-disappears-under-rising-sea.
Asoka>When the USA wanted to build an interstate highway system, it was the government that got the job done.
That’s what caused the downfall of trains, public transport, dependance on foreign oil, global warming due to suburban car travel etc etc that Kunstler has mentioned so many times. Thank you US government for the biggest mal-investment of taxpayer money in the history of mankind.
Kalki
Kalki, here are some more nonviolent suggestions related to health:
Healthy, “Wealthy,” & Wise: Aging & War Tax Resistance
http://www.nwtrcc.org/practical7.html
Yeah, JHK regularly goes after investing in road construction. But there is another side to the story.
The interstate highway system has enriched the quality of life for virtually every American. It has saved the lives of at least 187,000 people and has prevented injuries to nearly 12 million people.
The interstate system has returned more than $6 in economic productivity for each $1 it cost and has positioned the nation for improved international competitiveness.
And, yes, it has permitted the Tea Bagger’s cherished freedom of personal mobility to flourish (and has enhanced international security)
http://www.publicpurpose.com/freewaypdf.pdf
Unfortunately, we all have been influenced by the likes of Saul Alinsky, Karl Marx, John Dewey, John Maynard Keynes, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Margaret Sanger, William James, Alice Baily Helen Schueman, Sigmand Freud, Alfred Kinsey, Benjamin Bloom, B.F. Skinner, Soren Kierkegaard, Julius Wellhausen, Betty Friedan and Roger Baldwin and their disciples for the last 100 years. None of whom have any regard for the Founding Fathers, Christianity, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. All of these people favor socialism or communism as the government of choice.
So, it shouldn’t surprise us that today there are 143 members of the House of Representatives who are declared socialists who belong to either the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus or the Progressive Democrats of America.
Now, if you prefer a socialist government – to which we are headed which will eventually lead to a dictatorship – that is your choice. But as for those who are making a meek attempt to restore our nation back to Constitutional principles (a Republic), they should be given the chance (instead of a Democracy).
Regardless of any ill feelings you have about your fellow countrymen, all they really are tellilng us is that they prefer their freedom and not have their lives dictated to by those who prefer the redistribution of wealth. It was Karl Marx who said, “From those who have the ability; to those who are in need”.
I prefer to help those in need who really need it, not pot-heads whose brains have been fried. Instead, the “guv-ment” wants me to give the idiots a monthly allowance to buy even more drugs.
But, this is what the mush heads attending our schools are being taught: “It is the government’s job to take care of us”.
God help us!
>>The interstate highway system has enriched the quality of life for virtually every American….
….at a collosal cost on the environment.
Kalki
Isn’t that refreshing. Racism. Straight up. No chaser.
Yesterday Asoka said:
“Whites are morally inferior, retarded actually … etc.
White morality is so impoverished … etc.
… whites use their technological knowledge to develop weapons intentionally designed to murder civilians … etc.”
But today Asoka makes Martin Luther King’s dream his own saying:
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”
Why on earth would Asoka want his people to sit down together with these revolting white people?
It is impossible to take Asoka seriously. He has no consistency and believes that is OK because he “is large” and he “contains multitudes” (an incomprehensible line from Walt Whitman).
Long ago and not so far away:
you called him on his endless prattle, eh?
asohk is a cornucopean [?]..and a jingoist.
They got us right where they want us. We are too busy being fixated on Real Housewives, American Idol, the Final Four and God knows what else, to do anything about our situation.
Nine months and counting of unemployment and all I can manage is a cynical blog. http://www.aimlow.com
Aimlow Joe
Yes Asoka Climate change is real. Gore and those like him with the huge mansions and the private jets do way more than the common man to pollute.
pay attention to how they live not what they say when the tv cameras pointed at them.
once pj o rourke met a young al gore in dc. much later in one of his books he said:
[ i didnt like gore] ‘ he seemed like an ingratiating yuppie.
you cant stop progress, can you?
“Why on earth would Asoka want his people to sit down together with these revolting white people”
Qshtik, nice try. Morally inferior does not equal “revolting white people”.
Whites have committed atrocities, but I would like to sit down with them precisely because they need lifting up, they need forgiveness, they need humanizing. They are not lost forever, nor should they be shunned or treated badly (that would be to stoop to their level). They need our love.
Asoka I propose the federal government stops growing now. It is an out of control and wasteful.
Do you have a credit card Asoka, do you spend more money than you have?
Does that make for prosperity and stability?
Spend tax dollars wisely. Is that hard?
*Strong military-that doesn’t waste money-and try to police the world.
*Training for young americans in more manual labor.
We don’t build useful products, most of that is done in China these days.
*I would like to see more localized food production, starting with each american starting a garden. This leads to respect for the land, creates a self-sufficient skill, and leads to better health.
*Honesty from our leaders. Don’t tell people they can have everything, deserve everything, and you are entitled.
History has many plots to support your view. This week, I saw on PBS: American Experience, the crash of 1929 from Nova productions. The same games that you mention today, where being played out in the 1920’s. The other interesting point the crash took time to trickle down to the mass. Many in the peak oil online sites are waiting a spectular bust, but like you said before we are in the long emergency. The Oath keepers of the right scare me more, they are current military, police and other right wing office holders. The warnings from that old fat Greek guy from 2000 years ago come to mind:”The most feared and persecuted people in the world, are those that ask questions”.
Does anyone really care what politicians or their cheerleaders say anymore? How about 99% of what’s reported in popular media, does it matter if it’s designed to promote divisiveness and create straw men. Anything to keep the focus off the impending collapse of our currency and society along with it. I know lots of Republicans and a lot of Democrats, none that I know are crazy or even unreasonable. What they have in common is anger, their respective parties have sold their friends and families futures away. Faith, trust and confidence in many public and private institutions has eroded to the point of no return. Obama represented a last chance for some honesty, from my perspective a real Hail Mary, yet a better bet than McCain. Unfortunately it didn’t pan out.
Right on the money, Jim! There’s not a lot of choices in direction the U.S. can take to ameliorate the slow-motion collapse, especially with the moral compass being out-of-whack for such a long time.
The passage of the health bill was a positive gesture, even if it turns out to be only a gesture. Adversity likes company and spreading the pain lessens the pain, probably lessening panic in times of immediate crisis as well. Unfortunately, when systems start to break down in the very final stages, scapegoats are going to be political and ideological, which will pit every minority against every other minority – keep in mind we all belong to a minority of one kind or another.
The nasty Republicans seem to be drowning in their own nastiness and will only act as disruptors in the final scenarios. The appeal of having harsh leaders is that many prefer to have what they believe are brutal representatives looking after their own better interests, the attitude that spread U.S. world hegemony in the first place. Without the cheap energy to project control over such a vast economic dominion, a better world standing in the moral arena will aid America in it’s external and internal national security. If voting constituents in allied nations decide they don’t want to help an America that’s become a pariah state, you can be sure the decline will be far more severe.
By the way, has anyone noticed that John Boehner looks like the archetype of a “bad guy”? The only thing missing is a black Stetson! Raymond Burr, at the height of his career as a movie bad guy didn’t look as cruel. I’m waiting for Whoopi Goldberg to do a “Bush” number on “Boehner”. Something like “What do you usually get after you see a Boehner?”.. “Shafted, of course!”
An interesting, informative and compelling post this week here, as usual. However, I’d like to point out that history does not always repeat or even “rhyme”, and often unfolds in slow and indirect ways that are difficult to identify even much later. 1930s Germany, 1960s China, and 1970s Cambodia were societies that had never been functioning liberal democratic capitalist rule-of-law nation-states, and their respective madnesses developed over time, not overnight. During the generation preceding Hitler’s seizure of power, for example, Germany had suffered defeat in Great War, followed by Great Hyperinflation followed by Great Depression. The road ahead for America is long and difficult to foresee.
Most of you people worry too much like Kunstler. The only thing I am stressing over is whether to ride the bike, golf, or start on the garden this weekend. Happy Easter to all and no I am not religious so don’t start crying over that too. I do go to church with my wife (female) on Easter and Christmas though and I really enjoy the people enjoying church.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKLVPp7epC8
I have heard this a lot over the decades: “The government is too damn big”
And, now workingman1 is saying it again: “Stop the growth of the government”
We even elected Republicans back in 2000 and the federal government kept getting bigger. Supposedly Republicans are for smaller government, but that wasn’t the case with Bush’s administration.
You say stop the growth of the federal government. Do you also want to reduce the number of employees working for government-funded contractors and for organizations that receive government grants?
It’s easy to say “No!” to big government, since the government now employs about 15 million people. But exactly where are you wanting to cut? In the 625,000 Postal workers? (already down from 663,000 in 2008). The 1.5 million military personnel? The 848,000 military reserves? What about cutting the 7 million contractors, most of whom serve the military? Or the 3 million grantees? Or the 2 million civil servant positions?
Just who, specifically, is going to be cut to reduce the size of government? And who decides?
Asoka sounds to me hate filled. He is an admitted racist. We know where racism leads.
Asoka goes on about crimes committed by white civilization, ignoring the equally heinous crimes committed by non whites. Slavery? Practised by whites but also others. Empires? He talks about the whites’ military empires ignoring that non whites have had their own.
So is Vlad a racist. I think is mistaken. But with Vlad you can argue/discuss and he listens and responds to what is actually written, not what he wishes was written.
Chomsky has been talking for a while now about ‘real grievances’ and our not-close-yet resemblance to the Weimar Republic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MHEuudJ-o0
It is disheartening to read Mr. Kunstler run a tirade against Republicans only given that the Democrats continue a war in Afghanistan. Both parties are a pox on the nation and have been from inception. Both parties have allowed the bankers to ruin the country’s economy and its citizens. Both parties have failed the citizens of this nation and continue to do so.
Spot on, Kalki. Your comment was aimed like a rifle shot. Civil disobidience was good enough for Gandhi and King- should be good enough for us. The medical system is bloated and incredibly complex- bleed it! It will fail.
Oh, and Asoka- he gigged you pretty good, didn’t he? Took you back a bit.
One other thing- JHK continues to marginalize himself. I started reading him because he was one of the few writers cynical enough to suit me. He’s starting to contradict himself badly. Keep it simple Jim, the way you used to.
Cash: “But with Vlad you can argue/discuss and he listens and responds to what is actually written, not what he wishes was written.”
I don’t like to argue, Cash. I prefer to respond by sharing my point of view.
Last week you asked me when I became a racist and I gave you an honest answer: during my childhood as a result of Jim Crow segregation I experienced personally.
Now, this week you hit me over the head with “an admitted racist” as if “once a racist, always a racist” without admitting the possibility of redemption or personal transformation.
Further, it seems odd to say I do not discuss since that is what we are doing. Who has posted more responses today than Asoka?
If you don’t like me, fine. If I seem full of hate to you, there is nothing I can do about that. That is your right. But you needn’t invent falsehoods or engage in personal attack.
Hello Jim.
I don’t think the Reps. could light a fire to save their life! As for our time? No one has been doing their JOB in DC for 30 years!Maybe longer?
The system needs a ReBOOT!! Some things will be lost but that will be the price for doing nothing!
Good name for your next book? The Big Reboot!
As for the KID in the White House, D-. So far.
I will give him one thing,after 30 years he has nothing to work with!
Happy Easter, Mook. I don’t go in for Christian or pagan celebrations, but it’s good you enjoy Easter.
That what don’t kill you will make you stronger. So say they in the land of the Marooned.
Say some good things about the world why don’t ya?
* Crime has held to lower levels for the past two years. Even if it skyrockets tomorrow, the American People have been patient and orderly.
* One reason crime has held lower in this financial crisis is because the social programs, however painfully flawed, are better than they ever have been. They are more generous and more demanding and that is a good thing.
* Republican leadership has disavowed racisim. For all of the “coded” racism that is mentioned, overt racism is out and that is much better than 1964.
* Racism is on the wane. Obama’s election proves it to The Nation as well as every race.
* While folks complain about the gaps in medical coverage, we can thank our lucky stars we are not in Old Communist Russia, Communist China, nor Communist North Korea. Because the Commuinist version of healthcare is deadly and cruel to the n-th degree.
* Earthquake and tsunami survivors get rescues from a different country that makes a goodwill effort to aid those in need.
* The USA is so rich it can lose half it’s wealth and still provide plenty for all of it’s citizens.
* The BRIC countries have the great challenge — to move closer to US levels of quality, fairness, strength, and openness. The world will be better for their struggle to compete.
* The last time there was a bigger economic crisis, the recovery resulted in much spilt blood but many old restrictions and ways gone to the wayside. In the follow-on Cold War, the USA skyrocketed in power with open and liberally applied democracy. What will the current challenge bring us to?
* Kids are much better educated.
The positivist list could just keep on going.
There is no dispute that we are in dangerous times. We are always in dangerous times.
I read Kunstler not because is has everything right but because he has many criticisms that could make our country better.
Even so, he sells the dark all is lost story, and it is fun watching him jump off of one ‘noir’ lily pad to another as each one sinks.
He is dropping the ‘peak oil’ apocalypse as we learn about ‘peak demand’ and how huge fields of methane crystals can be harvested from the ocean floor for fuel once the oil and the oil shale, and the oil sands give out, until we get to cheap solar, nuclear, and fuel cell sources.
He doesn’t talk about the many jillions of things that have been cleaned up in this country and will eventually be cleaned up in the developing nations.
Yes, we’re hanging by the slenderest of threads. On the bright side — this is what gives me confidence that our international creditors will think long and hard before tanking the dollar, as by all rights they should. They know we have this massive arsenal and are crazy enough to use it in any circumstances. A U.S. unraveling even faster than it has been in recent decades is a major threat to world peace. Pushed against the wall, we’ll come out firing randomly. Blessed reassurance.
For a free download of Kunstlerian-style invective — Words that Draw Blood — go to http://www.lost-vocabulary.com.
“Whites have committed atrocities, but I would like to sit down with them precisely because they need lifting up, they need forgiveness, they need humanizing. They are not lost forever, nor should they be shunned or treated badly (that would be to stoop to their level). They need our love.”
======================
Safire had a name for your verbiage above: He called it Happy Horseshit.
Money Muffins, while I don’t share your deep sense of pessimism, I do have some healthy skepticism about the new health deal, and just who the real winners really are. In a nutshell, to use the old tired expression, Mr. Obama protested too much about the insurers.
Funny enough, the very day after the health “reform” was approved by Congress. my TD Waterhouse daily financial news proclaimed that most health business stocks they analyzed would be looking stronger, and they boosted their forward earnings estimates on the majority of health business (or is now an industry?) stocks.
The oldest political trick is to castigate the same people you are setting out to assist. And, then deeply cover your tracks in a wordy document that nobody can actually digest.
I agree that civil society is quickly falling apart. Mr. Kunstler describes the process colorfully and accurately. But it is time we go
beyond describing and deploring the unfolding breakdown of our society. It’s time to organize!
Here in Seattle, in the Upper Left Hand Corner, the sustainability movement is growing like the number of abandoned houses in Michigan.
We are focused on preparing for the effects of peak oil, climate change and (some of us believe) the eventual collapse of our financial system. Most of us are involved in urban agriculture, rain-harvesting, perma-culture and alternative transportation (not the scame of “alternative fuels) We can ride our bikes here year-round.
It’s amazing how much food you can grow in two
8 X 8 foot raised beds!
Those in the sustainability groups know when the shit hits the fan we an only count on each other. Long ago, most of us gave up trying to influence state and federal government officials.
Politically, we are progressive and cooperative. We work in small, decentralized community groups.
I was active in helping to stop the war in Viet Nam. This is the biggest grass-roots movement I’ve seen since the early 1970s. At first it was mostly us Boomers and 20-somethings, but people of all ages are getting involved – in the cities the burbs, the ex-urbs and small towns.
We are not survivalists and few of us have guns. We aim to build self-sufficient communities. Many of us are learning skills like food canning that our Depression-era grandparents knew. Some of us are forming informal under-the-table barter systems, including swapping apples for tomatoes; canned goods for eggs; carpentering for housing.
Living in the US is like living with an alcoholic
spouse, which I did for a long time. You can’t change the sick person; the only person you can change is yourself.
Check out http://scallopswa.org/ for more information. SCALLOPS stands for Sustainable Communities All Over Puget Sound.
What’s happening where you live? I’ve heard there are sustainable communities all over the US, but I’d like to know more.
Poor JHK. His prognoses and forecasts for the impending downfall of energy-dependent U.S. society are basically correct, but he’s about 10-20 years ahead of reality. Which makes regular people dismiss him, not surprisingly though a bit unfairly, as Chicken Little.
JHK has been predicting Dow 4000 for about seven consecutive years now. Aand about seven times he has been wrong … but, dammit, one of these days he’s bound to be right. But unfortunately (for his sake) it won’t be this year. Or the next. Nor the year after. Mark my words.
Why? Because fossil energy is still relatively cheap and abundant. Natural gas in North America, for example, is as cheap as it’s been for the last six years, and they keeep finding more of the damn stuff. Of course we’ll see a peak in nat-gas production, someday, but it won’t be soon.
In the meantime, America can, somewhat pathetically, re-embark on its unsustainable energy-intensive, sprawling “lifestyle” … for a little while. The shit will hit the fan in 10 or 15 years. But, in the meantime, I do plan to make tidy profits by scooping up natural gas stocks at their current bargain prices. While JHK braces for the shit to hit the fan, I continue to invest in the fans.
Another pseudo Safire post?
Nietzsche. Socialist? God, you people are nucking futs.
I’m not sure I can recall a single country that has prospered under any of the utopian models. Regardless of how much you or I might like to spread fairness around like pixie dust, there’s just not enough of other people’s money to make it sustainable.
Has there ever been a peaceful country/society that has survived its own compassion and civility? I’m not picking a fight, it’s a legitimate question.
“Nations go crazy.”
Apparently, some bloggers do also.
D.
What do you think – a little condescending, huh? Just a little! Really makes you want to have a tea party with Asoka, doesn’t it. This guy is like something out of a Black version of Alice and Wonderland. But if you guys think that his attitude is rare, then you have another thing coming. You’re rubes and virgins. Unfortunately for believers in Utopia (means nowhere) his attitude is all too common. Wage would happily sit down with the likes of him and be humiliated. She would feel uncomfortable without knowing that she was being savaged.
Asoka plays his part in the PC Religion to the hilt. He is not only a sacred cow but a little savior. Obama who both Divine (Black) and fallen (White or human) is the perfect Christ figure in this Cult. He’s the Main Man. And his disciple Asoka believes in Him – despite his evil White Blood. Note the lack of subtlety here – not that Whites have a bad culture. No, they are bad, bad to the bone. Bad blood. Exactly what I say about Blacks! One of us is right and the other wrong. Or we’re both crazy and you guys are right. But the evidence is in my favor.
“Another pseudo Safire post?”
=======================
Yes. If I define a word or phrase and believe in my heart that Safire would agree I go right and attribute it to him. I think he would be pleased that he lives on vividly in memory.
Mr. Kunstler, please allow me to extend your comparison a bit: we are now at some point in the 1930s, the US is Germany, and we are all Jews …
Actually, not *all* of us are Jews. Just the ones with brains, education and whose minds aren’t held captive by a fundamentalist ideology so primitive that it would make a Taleban mullah proud. So maybe your comparison with the Khmer Rouge is indeed more apt.
Anyway, whatever the historical analogy, some truly rough times are slouching towards us.
Many European Jews saw an apocalypse approaching, but few took action. For example, relatively few left Germany itself, even if they had the means. Why? Well, I guess simple human inertia played a role, as did the human tendency to ignore bad trends and expect the best. I wonder if they time to second-guess that decision when they discovered that the “soap” was actually a rock and that their “shower” was actually a gas chamber.
After observing these trends (and watching some of my crazed relatives start gathering weapons and muttering about cleansing the country) I took action. Over a year ago I relocated myself and family to New Zealand. No place is perfect and no place is safe, but NZ seemed to be the best bet. We’ll watch future developments from here, thank you.
I suggest others consider similar actions. If you really believe that things could come undone, then you owe it to yourself and your families to prepare as best as you can (and posting on a blog isn’t preparation).
Asoka: “You mean we should INCREASE defense spending, build more military bases, occupy more countries, build up our nuclear arsenal, and destroy all our enemies so at last we will be safe? Dream on!”
Um…dude? Where in the world did you get that idea from? My opposition to foreign intervention is of longstanding.
In fact, my comment had nothing to do with foreign policy at all, but rather pointed out the horrible domestic reality that is so often hidden by your type of cheap sloganeering. Our situation is too grim for mere slogans, we must instead address reality.
lpat: “Isn’t that refreshing. Racism. Straight up. No chaser.”
Racism is a smear term, typically used to impute negative characteristics to an opponent, whether he actually has those negative characteristics or not. It is, in this sense at least, an inherently dishonest term to throw about.
It is quite true that I care about race. I don’t pretend otherwise. It is not at all true that I am *hateful, bigoted, ignorant* or any of the other smears that the term racism seeks to pin on people. I’m interested in the truth as best I can determine it, and prefer to deal with reality, not smears and cheap slogans.
Ryder: “Our situation is too grim for mere slogans, we must instead address reality.”
So, the problem is really a metaphysical one?
Whose reality and who gets to decide what reality is?
Reality includes everything that is, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible.
Reality includes being and sometimes is considered to include nothingness, as well.
Or did you mean only a part of reality? Who decides what part of reality to focus on?
Does it matter whether or not we address reality? How do we know whether it matters?
Does reality care what we do in relation to reality?
What did you mean by “we must instead address reality”?
I sometimes inject some “reality” into CFN, only to have it denied, denounced, or re-interpreted so as to completely negate its importance. For example:
Evidence of the reality of an economic recovery with data showing increased economic growth for five months in a row. Yet many CFNers cannot accept the reality of that data, because it might mean Obama is doing something right… going against the doomer narrative.
Things are not supposed to be getting better with Obama. Things are supposed to be getting worse … so data is cherry-picked to support a worst-case scenario.
Here’s this week’s story from This American Life about Nummi, Toyota’s first plant in the USA and the challenges they had trying to get GM to change. You can make the connections to what’s happening in the USA right now…
http://www.thisamericanlife.org
Religious fanaticism has always existed in one way or another. Just remember that these people in the USA are no different from the Taliban in wanting to impose their will upon everyone else. They want to bring things down, because they believe in the Rapture, and that they can somehow play some catalytic role. So, conflict, violence, and destruction are the final solution. But…what if there are no angels with trumpets, and no 80,000 servants and no 72 virgins in Paradise?
You notice I said a strong military that doesn’t waste.
Every pick up an everyday household item Asoka and look at the lable. 90% of the time it is made in China. While American’s have “productive” government jobs…What kind of bullshit jobs are all of these government workers performing, filling out forms, emailing their co-workers, counting the days to Friday. The monster is so big now that it feeds off WE THE PEOPLE and makes for stupid non-self sufficient weaklings…
Bush was a terrible president, and the republicans did nothing but increase the burden on generations of future taxpayers.
People just are not discplined and can’t handle the truth. We have just become too ignorant a Nation to realize that old fashion thrift, self-sufficiency, and discpline lead to a better and happier life. Socialism just makes people lazy.
A man with a skill and a piece of land has pride and doesn’t depend on an institution to make his life better.
As individuals we are responsible for our health, wealth, family and neighbors. Government should play a very small role, otherwise we become the weak losers that we have become.
JHK,
Don’t quite know how to tell you this – but there is something terribly contradictory is your applauding of Obama’s or the Democratic health reform act.
You see, much of the perceived “mess” we are in is derivative of the concepts of these massive interdependent systems.
Just as the status quo and change represent opposite poles of philosophy, so too do any acts of Federal government and any local communities ability to develop independent health support systems.
This is another sojourn into a “too big to fail” type of social entity that simply has little if any chance of being managed without massive fraud, an innately systemically flawed monster of social plan that leads our social well being into yet deeper, ever more danger interdependence.
I ask you James – what happened to think locally?
Bring on the Witch of Hebron
Pour yourself a bourbon
and smile for an hour or two.
The violence is coming
Those who have shifted from “no” to “Hell no!”
are less than useless
the ebb and flow of the political arena
A grand jury can indict a ham sandwich
misleading the sheeple for profit
something big is going to happen soon
angry mobs ready to kill and be killed
gangs are going to overwhelm the state
blood-splattered offices
without cable news (mainly Fox)
you would’nt have even heard of them
which books of Mr K’s he should read first
-Status Quobama MonkeyMuffins
-Gloom & Doom sells gold, guns and survival kits
-the luck of having a strong immediate family unit
disaster-induced cold turkey
cut-off from imports
you can run a hell of a police state,
on very little gas
joyously misanthropic and pessimistic as they come
an exceedingly focused lady
who knew little or nothing of Peak Oil
Eyes glazed over when we got into talking
about what motor fuel rationing is going to do
Japan makes a perfect house-cleaner & Gardner robot
there is always Soylent Green
insanely backward, short sighted,
narrow minded, highly opinionated,
and several other descriptive adjectives.
opposition to Bush’s policies,
that created our deficit
through two unnecessary wars
12 trillion in debt
50 trillion in unfunded social programs
don’t shoot till you see the green of their wallets
Politicians do neither good nor bad.
The net effect is nil-or shoonya
as per Hindu philosophy
An island disputed by both India and Bangladesh
has been claimed instead by the ocean
Take a breath, brother, I’m on your side.
JHK MD piltdownman MDG Unconventional Ideas Zev Paiss suburbanempire ThomasMann tubular1 DeeJones ASPO Article 1037 CowboyJack mhelie cato5555 asoka Nathan The Mook Kalki Whoopdy Do Workingman1
PUSH ON. DO GOOD. KEEP SMILING.
“The predominant history in the US of violence for political purposes has come from the Left. Whether it was the Weathermen, the EarthFirst, the Black Panthers or Prof. Ayers and Ms Dohrn, the violent action has come from the Left. Ask the folks in Seattle at GATT, and certainly it was not the KKK at Chicago in 1968. We now have the intimidation tactics of either violence or threatened violence by SEIA and the Neo-Panthers.
Rhetoric? At the national convention of the Democratic Party around 1980 or 1984, a primary speaker alleged that Republicans wanted poor people’s babies to starve. I thus find myself underwhelmed by accusations toward Republicans for inflammatory rhetoric.” -‘Rat
Rat: You had to go that far back to find a single comment. Hmmmm.
Oh, and did you forget Tim McVeigh? He did more damage with a single van than all the prior damage you cited above.
And I don’t think Lil’ Timmie was an Earth Firster,eh?
If it moves, shoot. If it shoots, move.
There you go again…
I detailed the nature of the government workforce with numbers (to inject some reality here) and most are military or military reserves or military contractors or research grantees working on military projects.
Once again, I ask you: who are you specifically going to cut? Which “bullshit” jobs?
Today’s missive from my guru Mahesh reads as follows:
“As you would not bark back at a dog, do not waste your time arguing with foolish people.” —Sage Yogaswami (1869-1948)”
=======================
I choose to ignore that advice and will bark back at Asoka and other foolish people when I encounter them.
Thank you for injecting some words about the positive actions happening here in the Pacific Northwest.
Just reading CFN and other blogs gets people’s heads stuck on apocalypse. In the real world (outside of words on the internet) some people are actually doing. Thanks!
Cash,
Thank you for the reply. I hear you.
You nailed it:
“While JHK braces for the shit to hit the fan, I continue to invest in the fans.”
I believe in preparing, but am not counting on disaster to fulfill my choices. Many are going to be disappointed if collapse doesn’t happen soon — all dressed up and nowhere to go.
Prepare, yes, but go on living and enjoying.
Yes, Rockaway, there’s the rub:
“Regardless of how much you or I might like to spread fairness around like pixie dust, there’s just not enough of other people’s money to make it sustainable.”
The great flaw in Democracy: it’s always tempting to vote to spend other people’s money.
Wow. Who bought Kunstler?
Oh Dude, you can’t do that – it’s against all the standards of modern Western Scholarhsip. You just lost alot of credibility – and not only relative to Safire. Because if you’re willing to do it with him, who knows when you’re not doing it.
Rather than this, you should also say something like, “As I imagine Safire would agree” or something like that. Alas Babylon. Everywhere we see the dying of the light of civilization. And I think Safire would have agreed with me and not you.
Not that you don’t admire him – the ancients used to revere their teachers and as part of that – sign his name to their own commentaries. But over the ages it was seen that this leads to confusion – after all no two men are identical even when in substanial agreement.
Amazing. Asoka has actually lead to a clarification on something.
I have a cousin living up in Toronto who works in the IT field with her husband of twenty+ years. Both of her parents were well-educated professionals who belonged to the party and so were her in-laws. While the rest of Yugoslavia came apart after the death of the cult-like Tito, they continued to enjoy good times. While the average Yugoslav spent all day in long line-ups for food and gas, endured one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe and were faced with hyper-inflation, my cousin and her family lived a very Westernized lifestyle, with annual vacations to Europe’s top vacation destinations, expensive luxury cars and access to the latest Western fashions, They were so well insulated from the reality of life in Eastern Europe that when the wall came down and Yugoslavia descended into chaos, they were caught off guard and had to flee to America with little more than the clothes on their back. This kind of brain-drain was hardly unique to the former Yugoslavia and pretty soon professionals of every sort were fleeing the collapsing enconomies of the Soviet block for a better life in the West. Now it is the West’s turn to endure the hardships that plagued much of the old Communist-bloc in the early 90’s. Are we any better prepared for it?
I’ve heard they’re filling NZ up with Chinese. Like Australia, they’re “Asians” now too. And they mean to make reality fit their ideology. The Whites are too cowed to say anything – only the Maori are willing to speak up about the injustice of ethnic takeover. The Chief said that soon the Chinese will outnumber the Maori. The goverment responded that the Chinese don’t outnumber the Maori. The Chief replied if current rates of immigration continue, than soon they will. Only the Maori still have the right to ask the question, WHY? Whites are already outlaws in their own Countries.
Paul Craig Roberts has given up on America. There is no hope – nobody cares about the Truth just money, power, ethnic power, and of course, being right. And he doesn’t dismiss conspiracies such as 9/11. After all, imagination is the least appreciated part of a first rate mind. If you can’t imagine things beign different than the way they are, than you tend to be a slave to appearances – and to those who create and maintain those appearances.
Things were once very different. Where I’m sitting was once under a mile of ice. Things will be very different again in the future – maybe even the near future. If you can’t imagine such things, you are out of touch with reality. Paracelsus summed it up: a disordered imagination is the cornerstone of fools but a disciplined imagination is the doorway to the Truth. Einstein said something similar and imagination played a significant part in his discovery of Relativity. He would meditate on the nature of space using visual thought experiments. The mathematical models and physical experiments came later.
Anyway here is Paul Craig Roberts: http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03242010.html
Amazing. The evil militia was located in liberal land Michigan! Not inside a NASCAR track or a Wal-Mart parking lot in the south. Kunstler has morphed into Olberman and shows us how hate is done.I didnt see any posts about all the times libs and blacks have been caught staging their own threats against themselves. How about a post on the phony university nooses? Or the self inflicted swastikas? Or that the nut root professor in Alabama who shot up all those people was a big Obama lover? This blog is devolving into another useful tool page; it was far more interesting when it discussed possible outcomes for a crashing debtor nation.
OK, fine. I won’t engage in personal attacks. I understand your point of view if you were on the receiving end of whitey’s bullshit. But you frustrate me because I find myself defending myself for things I didn’t say. So it’s not that I don’t like you.
An anecdote on racism: I grew up near the US border. When I was about 11 years old I was in a restaurant with my father when a black family came in. The black man asked the manager, “do you serve black people”? The manager said yes, have a seat. The family looked relieved.
Small beer to you maybe but it wasn’t to me. It was the first time I had exposure to such stuff. I stood there with my mouth open. Maybe that family was from the southern states because I had rubbed shoulders many times with black people mostly from across the border and had never heard a question like it and I haven’t heard anything like it since.
I can understand bitterness if you have to live a lifetime of shittiness like being denied access to something as everyday as a restaurant. Maybe I need harder bark on me but one exposure just as a bystander was a bellyfull.
The reason I’m constantly beating the drum about culture is that culture is nothing more than learned behaviour. In my workplaces I’ve worked with people from many parts of the world of all races including blacks. In this city whites are a slim majority. It wasn’t always smooth, people being people. There were arguments and rivalries and politics and all the normal shit you see in offices. But it did work because the workplaces were meritocracies.
The execs (and they weren’t all white) were arrogant, demanding pricks and they crapped on everyone regardless of race (Monday morning meetings were generally more like beatings) and they did not give two shits what colour you were. You were judged and you progressed based on performance.
And everybody’s starting point was that they were unworthy of the enormous privilege of working at that particular company until they stocked their shelf with some achievements. Everybody, regardless of race, lived with their ass in a frying pan.
So Asoka what I’m trying to say is there is hope.
“Amazing. Asoka has actually lead to a clarification on something.”
=======================
Are you kidding me? At least half of what I write is one giant spoof. If you and Asoka actually believed I was quoting from Safire when I defined “crankass” or claimed that Safire had written about the proper usage of “Happy Horseshit” in his NYT column … well … I’m way more convincing than I ever imagined and you guys are way dumber than dirt. Pretending that I have Safire’s impramatur is all part of the spoof and should be obvious to any adult at CFN.
The important question for non-Chinese population of New Zealand is where the loyalty of New Zealand’s Chinese population lies. Do the Chinese in New Zealand view themselves first and foremost as Chinese or New Zealanders’? Japanese Americans had no problem fighting on the American side during World War Two because, for the vast majority, Japan was viewed as a hostile foreign nation while America was their home. One big reason Yugslavia fell apart was that the average Yugoslav continued to view themselves as Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes first and foremost. Ditto for Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Only the iron hand of the Communists kept the larger whole from fragmenting into smaller ethnic states. I personally have no doubt that America’s Hispanic population will one day demand their own homeland in the American Southwest.
Cash: “So Asoka what I’m trying to say is there is hope.”
Thanks, Cash, for sharing some of your life experience. Sorry if I jumped to conclusions or put words in your mouth. I am a great believer in meritocracy and appreciate that there is hope as I have seen great changes in sixty years. This story about an incident in Sidney Poitier’s life illustrates change:
Back then you could lose your life over something like delivering a package to the front door. We have seen a lot of positive change since those days of the USA reign of terror against Blacks.
Qshtik: “Pretending that I have Safire’s impramatur is all part of the spoof and should be obvious to any adult at CFN.”
Here you have committed two errors.
First, you have misspelled imprimatur.
Second, you have misused the word imprimatur. An external authority issues an imprimatur, not a dead man like Safire.
You are granting yourself license, but you cannot grant yourself an imprimatur, due to the meaning of the word. It is by definition an external endorsement.
An imprimatur (from Latin, “let it be printed”) is, in the proper sense, a declaration authorizing publication of a book, and you are posting to CFN, not publishing a book.
“Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.”
Its the blindness that stuns me James. We’ve escaped the depths of economic retreat that the U.S. has experienced but will follow. We are so inexplicably tied to the U.S. here in Canada that we’ll slip below the surface as well.
Another empire ends with a comparative whimper.
Looked out from our point of view, I think you Americans have gone totally out of your tree over
heath and medical legislation.
What we have here in Australia works reasonably well, but of course anything devised by humans will have its faults.
Insurance here is optional. We have public cover for all hospital and medical services.
We pay a Medicare charge based on our income and
paid at tax return time. If the income is below a certain level or you are in receipt of an old age pension you pay nothing.
If you want to use a private hospital, or a surgeon of your own choice then you can pay insurance, other wise the public hospitals are available at no cost except for some pharmaceuticals.
I pay insurance which costs about A$105 a month
and I can choose my surgeon and private hospital.
However all the main teaching hospitals and most
of the best hospitals are public. With insurance I also get dental cover and numerous other related benifits.
Being retired when I go to see the doctor I am not charged, as the doctor bulk bills the Medicare service. If I was working I would pay the doctor about A$40 and claim back from Medicare about A$30.
That is the sort of system you need not the madhouse that you seem to have there.
MORE PROOF OF GREEN SHOOTS
Some like to say there are no “green shoots” that will lead to an explosive economic bloom, that the USA manufacturing sector is DOA.
Sorry to inject more reality here, but reality says green shoots are happening and USA manufacturing is recovering, compared to other sectors of the energy industry:
The alternative energy industry’s lobbying expenditures have grown to 12 times from its 1998 level. In comparison, oil and gas spending and mining spending have grown less than three times their 1998 amount, and electric utility spending has grown to just twice its 1998 amount.
The American Wind Energy Association’s ranks grew by more than 1,000 new business members in 2009 alone, many of them “companies entering or seeking to enter the wind turbine supply chain.
Last year “was a record year for wind power in the U.S.,” Real de Azua said. “The industry installed 10,000 megawatts last year, enough to generate as much new electricity as three new nuclear plants.”
Hey! Being a tightass nitpicker is my schtick, not yours.
I used the word imprimatur in the following non-canonical sense per dictionary.com:
sanction or approval; support: Our plan has the company president’s imprimatur
as though Safire (prior to dying, of course) gave me permission to define words and claim that I had obtained those definitions from the master himself.
But all this is neither here nor there, and you know it. It’s all part of a big spoof in which I get to call you a “crankass” and label your writing “Happy Horseshit.”
Capeeesh?
Qshtik: “Capeeesh?”
You have made two errors here.
The word (from the Italian) is spelled capisce, not Capeeesh
An alternative spelling, which you apparently attempted,is capeesh.
You failed on both counts.
The first 30-40 comments about Mr. Kunstler’s
weekly article are usually germane and intelligent. Later, the commentary often degenerates into name-calling and personal attacks. Some writers sound like 12-year-old boys on a playground. In any moderated discussion, these comments would be deleted as tasteless and puerile.
In the coming “Long Emergency” so aptly described by Mr. Kunstler, we need to pull together and build community to survive.
Based on their long term record in Asia, the Chinese will not blend in but rather strive for dominance. After all, they view themselves as superior to all. Their dominance is such in Malaysia that it lead to massive riots by the native Malaysians and the institution of affirmative action for them. They needed it – the Chinese IQ is more than fifteen points higher than their’s. Whites are in danger because their natural vigilance has destoyed by the liberal media which states categorically that only Whites can be racist.
Even if I’m wrong about the blending in, the Chinese should still be stopped because they will change the face of New Zealand forever. Only We can be Us after all. Even when Blacks and Chinese dye their hair and take our jobs, they still aren’t White and cannot propagate Western Culture.
Ooops sorry – I’m not familiar with Safire and was just reacting to your comment. Yeah, you’re right come to think of it: NY Times would be unlikely to use a word like crankass. I have been slimed by the Evil Black Clown.
Jim, For the last two years I have been informed and persuaded by your analyses. However your last couple of postings have struck me as quite bizarre. It is abundantly clear that virtually all of the incitements to violence that prove to you the depravity of the Republicans have been manufactured by the left. A more interesting approach would be to consider what this shows about the mendacity of the left and the credulity of the commentators who accept these fables uncritically.
SunsetSu said: “In the coming “Long Emergency” so aptly described by Mr. Kunstler, we need to pull together and build community to survive.” ========================
Regarding the above excerpt from your post:
I can’t adequately thank you for this profound insight … and so beautifully expressed … a true pearl of wisdom for the ages. I especially like the image you evoke with the words “pulling together.” This is an idea I’ve yet to encounter in all my time following this blog.
And as to your other point (speaking now for all us regulars here at CFN)… we promise to take your admonition about our childishness to heart and do our best to straighten up and fly right in the future. With a little effort we’ll be able to maintain a polite atmosphere and stay on topic for an entire gull dern week.
Again, thank you for your input to this forum.
Sincerely, Q (aka the Evil Black Clown) ;o)
VOICES OF PROPAGANDA WHO PLAY CHECKERS WHILE OBAMA PLAYS CHESS
JAN. 17: ABC’s Klein:
JAN. 18: Fox News Krauthammer:
Fred Barnes:
JAN. 19, George Will:
JAN. 21: Sean Hannity:
JAN. 21: Newt Gingrich:
JAN. 21: Freddoso:
JAN. 28: Doocy:
JAN. 19: Varney:
JAN. 21: Fox Nation:
THESE VOICES OF PROPAGANDA WILL BE SAYING THE SAME ABOUT FINANCIAL REFORM, ABOUT ENERGY LEGISLATION, ETC.
DON’T BELIEVE THEM.
THEY ARE UNPATRIOTIC, THEY DO NOT WANT THE PRESIDENT TO SUCCEED. THEY CONTINUALLY UNDERESTIMATE AND LIE ABOUT OBAMA.
hitler was a progressive
also, only in a rigged election could obama carry indiana.
hitler was a progressive
also, only in a rigged election could obama carry indiana.
Hitler outlawed labor unions in Germany.
Progressives support labor unions.
Hitler used force or the the threat of force to dominate the rest of the world.
Progressives want to limit militarism, use cooperation and treaties, not force.
Indiana was won fair and square. Hoosiers love Obama, as do 90% of the American people. Nine out of ten Americans said they like Obama.
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/national_world&id=7357784
hitler was a progressive
also, only in a rigged election could obama carry indiana.
In a recent Associated Press-GfK poll, nine in 10 said they like Obama, including three of four Republicans, even including Hoosiers.
Turns out Obama is a Republican.
Obama To Reverse Moratorium, Allow Oil Drilling Along Vast Stretches Of American Coastline
MARCH 25: Dozens of House Republicans today implored the Obama administration not to shelve a Bush-era plan for new offshore drilling along the nation’s coastline.
MARCH 30: Obama adopts Republican plan for offshore drilling
I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow Republicans decide that they are now against drilling because Obama is for drilling.
I feel like I’m living in a giant mash-up where words and principles lose more meaning every day.
DRILL, BABY, DRILL!
And the saddest thing is it won’t make any difference in terms of dependency on foreign oil.
“Drill, baby, drill” is basically a “rape America first” strategy. It is shameful Obama has become a Republican.
“I feel like I’m living in a giant mash-up where words and principles lose more meaning every day.”
“The Democrats and their liberal apologists are so oblivious to the profound personal and economic despair sweeping through this country that they think offering unemployed people the right to keep their unemployed children on their nonexistent health care policies is a step forward. They think that passing a jobs bill that will give tax credits to corporations is a rational response to an unemployment rate that is, in real terms, close to 20 percent. They think that making ordinary Americans, one in eight of whom depends on food stamps to eat, fork over trillions in taxpayer dollars to pay for the crimes of Wall Street and war is acceptable. They think that the refusal to save the estimated 2.4 million people who will be forced out of their homes by foreclosure this year is justified by the bloodless language of fiscal austerity. The message is clear. Laws do not apply to the power elite. Our government does not work. And the longer we stand by and do nothing, the longer we refuse to embrace and recognize the legitimate rage of the working class, the faster we will see our anemic democracy die.”
The Republic died long ago, because fools wanted a democracy. What will they want next?
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/205773-Is-America-Yearning-for-Fascism-
Didn’t the idea of democracy, “no taxation without representation” come before the idea of republic in these United States of America?
Vlad, I can see the possibilities for inter-racial conflict. People are tribal by nature. This tendency is ingrained in our DNA. This is what worries me.
But we also have rational minds and this is reason to hope. I don’t think the spasms of lunacy like the various 20th Century holocausts are pre-ordained. Our minds and behaviours are enormously elastic and adaptable. Look at the huge variety of cultures and ways of life out there.
The key, as you say, is acculturation, or as LBJ said, it’s better to have people inside the tent pissing out. I’m more hopeful than you because I’ve seen it work and I’m no utopian or idealist.
But it won’t be easy or instantaneous and we have to accept that after 400 odd years of slavery and oppression black people are not going to like whitey. Blacks will self segregate and it’s going to take time. But in the end I trust our gonads to get us out of this. Blacks and whites and others will eventually intermarry and interbreed. How will this help? You don’t generally kill your own kin. Lust has it’s uses.
In any case Vlad, regardless of whether we like the racial mix we’ve got now we can’t unscramble the omelette so we have to be practical. This doesn’t mean surrendering everything we hold dear. So what to do? In my mind, try to preserve our Western/Christian/Anglo customs and culture and do what we can to bring people inside the tent.
“Drill, baby, drill” is basically a “rape America first” strategy. It is shameful Obama has become a Republican.
=====================
Asoka – King of Fickleness
Oh well, he is large, he contains multitudes.
“Blacks and whites and others will eventually intermarry and interbreed.”
=======================
Dammit Cash, you just caused Vlad to throw up on his keyboard.
“Based on their long term record in Asia, the Chinese will not blend in but rather strive for dominance. After all, they view themselves as superior to all. Their dominance is such in Malaysia that it lead to massive riots…they will change the face of New Zealand forever.”
Face of New Zealand? They’re off easy compared to what Russia, America and West Europe is undergoing:
USA – 3 million chinese
Russia – about 300000-500000 thousand
UK – 500000 thousand
Australia – 203000
Well you get the picture.
Mao Zedong always blamed it’s northern neighbour for civil unrest, and was brazen enough to attack Damanskii island. It was their lifelong dream to claim everything east of the Urals and with economy booming, that dream is stronger than ever.
They’ve also began to harass India, taking Pakistani side during the 1971 conflict, and pressurising India along the border. Right now, they’re planning to surround India by constructing bases in Pakistan and, possibly, in SE Asia.
“They needed it – the Chinese IQ is more than fifteen points higher than their’s. ”
Don’t agree with you here though. IQ isn’t that important, in my opinion. If we believe IQ and Wealth of Nations, then the Chinese ( 100 ) are more intelligent than both Russians ( 96 ) and Americans ( 98 ). However, to this day, China continues to purchase the bulk of its weapons from Russia, copying them and building their own models. They sent their man to space in 2003, while US & USSR sent theirs back in the 60s. Similiarly for 5th generation aircraft, we started on them in the late 80’s, the Chinese won’t have them until 2020’s.
“Dammit Cash, you just caused Vlad to throw up on his keyboard.”
Vlad, old buddy, you OK?
Political elites don’t give a crap about malodorous people like us that worry about money and rents and mortgages and college educations.
The Liberal Party of Canada just had a Big Thinkers Conference basically to give them a rason d’etre. Not once did you hear the word “jobs” uttered.
Why the fuck would they care? They have no money worries what with their family wealth, their haute cuisine, fine French wines, their grand degrees.
Same in the US. Millions of jobs, peoples’ livelihoods, get sucked into crapholes in China. What’s it to them?
“Didn’t the idea of democracy, “no taxation without representation” come before the idea of republic in these United States of America?”
That depends on when you think “America” got started, and if you feel representation is more important than just laws.
“Blacks will self segregate and it’s going to take time… Blacks and whites and others will eventually intermarry and interbreed.”
You are contradicting yourself.
What I’m saying is blacks will self segregate for a time but eventually the human mating instinct will break down the barriers. I didn’t word it well.
“Ah Jim, predictions are always tough, but of one thing we can be sure about activist government: There will be plenty of Unintended Consequences. See one of the happier ones at http://WWW.THENOTHINGSTORE.COM
Please, no more nothing store. Thanks, -KB-
Qshtik: “Asoka – King of Fickleness”
I was opposed to Bush’s plans for offshore drilling (though I like Bush as a person).
I am now opposed to Obama’s plan for offshore drilling (though I like Obama as a person).
Please explain how that consistency is fickleness.
Perhaps you are thinking as an “Obama supporter” I should not criticize Obama? But Obama himself encourages criticism to make this country a better place. Obama was saying that yesterday when he was defending the Tea Party protesters.
If you remember I have criticized Obama regularly. I even call him a war criminal for continuing Bush’s wars. Obama should be tried in an international court of law for permitting drone bombings in Pakistan (a country I don’t recall Congress having declared war against)
I don’t know exactly where your thinking is going wrong because I don’t know all the assumptions you are erroneously making.
Perhaps you can explain what you meant by Asoka’s fickleness?
Drill, baby, drill” is basically a “rape America first” strategy… Obama has become a Republican….
so his true colors showed?
loyalty to the power elites?
its not shameful but obvious hes a politician first.
huh?
‘New Zealand forever’…how many of them move there?
yes its not eqaulity but dominance and natural resources we…i mean they seek.
US=China.
‘Tim McVeigh? He did more damage with a single van than ‘
if he did all that damage with a fertilizer bomb where was the fertilizer.
DEE, see john rappoports book on the bombing.
JR was also way ahead on seeing the curve on GMOs and how corporations will use/misuse them [see: the great boycott/jr].
where in NZ? and whats it like?
‘The important question for non-Chinese population of New Zealand is where the loyalty of New Zealand’s Chinese population lies’
baaa..its in the numbers, having traveled to mexico and india….while living in the USA…NZ offshore from 3? billion chindians its in the numbers not the ‘ loyalty’ or claimed loyalty…dont many take an oath here that they dont like or honor?
also i know NZers..they say lots of asians moved there when Hongkong went to chinas rule.
remember australia and nz have 30? million combined..or the population of mexico city.
I am not the ‘smartest’ person, I just live life and I experience and feel the changes around me.
I mean I lived simply most of my life, then it started getting harder and harder. years ago I commented to a friend that the U.S. will have a 3rd world country status.
I said that 20 years ago. I saw that it felt like everything was being taken and exploited that could be, and ‘they’ the people who want power and control are moving on the wherever to exploit others. that is what they do. They took what they could here, and now moving on. and still taking here.
JHK explains the details. It blows my mind how many people just don’t even think about or see what is going on to them and right in front of their noses.
It is so illegal, immoral, etc. It is the big bankers, etc. But these people even blame other people, their neighbors for instance for getting loans, and then forclosing, etc.
I don’t have a way with words, I am sorry. I just worry because we have lived beyond our means for so long. It’s obvious we need to cut back.
and live simply. We never did need all these things. And The Geography of Nowhere got me thinking way back then.
It’s like we are brainwashed into thinking we need all this crap, and also to be entertained, it’s all so insane. So many people are miserable.
And it was set up so we have to drive everywhere, especially if you have children, which I don’t.
I bike or walk. I live in a town where I can.
I am scared because it seems to me that in CA and even big cites across the U.S. that Gangs are growing exponentially. I live here and I see them everywhere. If they just went after one another fine, but they go after US. to get initiatied, etc.
We are falling apart as a civilized society. Some of it is reorganization that needs to happen, some of it’s gonna be violent.
They are stealing parts off cars, catalytic converters, and breaking things, throwing rocks into cars on freeways, etc.
makes me ANGRY and sick. It’s not just CA. but it’s is here everywhere.
Too many people have no clue what is going on, or they are ignorant. Some Intentionally.
I don’t have the answer. It seems ‘we’ have to stand together and defend our selves.
They are cutting police forces back by 30 and 40%.
and advertising it on the news.
If we can’t take the law into our own hands what are we supposed to do. turn the other cheek, (I am not a saint.) or just roll over and die. I don’t know. seems like a lose lose to me.
Love ya James. don’t stop your writings.
NB:
NZ for many decades has had a big sister policy to those of ‘the islands’….presumably this was used to dumb down and ‘de border’ the place.
Racism is a smear term, typically used to impute negative characteristics to an opponent, whether he actually has those negative characteristics or not. It is, in this sense at least, an inherently dishonest term to throw about.
Does the same go in Jk use of ‘republican’?
1,000,000,000+ versus 4? million dumbed down whites….guess who wins?
have you read ‘ the fatal shore’….colonizing australia.
first words to the whites from the browns [yelled from the shore] ………….’GO HOME’
CLINTON GAVE THEM THE SUPERCOMPUTERS.
im sure vlad knows more on that than i.
and africans are unhappy with chinese going there and buying off the corrupt communist leaders.
there was years ago a great piece in firbes taking on clinton and albrights praise for the dead nyeyre[cant spell it]..the guy that ruined tanzinia.
THE GOLDEN RULE:
he who has the gold makes the rules. and the chinese have the gold. they have the seat in Un..not taiwan.
“I cannot see the vast majority of parents, conservative or liberal, allowing the extremists to take over.”
And as these same parents pretend to think there is a difference between the only two 100% corrupt political parties in the US, these parents will stand up and do what exactly? The extremists have already taken over. It was back on November 22, 1963…or did everyone who posts here forget about that milestone? The extremists then reiterated the takeover and put a period on the end of the sentence when they assassinated RFK and MLK Jr. and just in case assassinated John Lennon back in 1980 to make sure everyone knew there was no turning back. Barack Obama would be right at home as a guest commentator on Fuxnews…think about it. Those in power knew all along the Suburban Empire was a farce. There is nothing to do, and no reason to fight unless you have a death wish.
HUH?
‘seems to me that in CA and even big cites across the U.S. that Gangs are growing exponentially.’
SEEMS?????
‘even big cities’ ????
Wow – talk about going off the deep end. Jim says – “I don’t mean a family squabble, like the Boomer-Hippie-Vietnam uproar that was essentially an adolescent rebellion against bad parenting in the national household. I mean a genuine descent into madness, with the very high probability of persecution, violence, murder, and mayhem — all more or less sponsored by various authorities and institutions.”
Jim goes on to try to claim that what we are witnessing currently – some angry phone messages, bricks in a few congressional office windows, protest coffins on a lawn and a single unsupported claim of someone spewing a racist name at a protest – are similar to what happened in the 60’s in this country! Where was he in the 60’s?, Bermuda?
Are you kidding me – a President assasinated, another Presidential candidate assasinated, a hero of the civil rights movement assasinated, numerous heros of the black power movement assasinated (including Malcolm X) – many by completely rogue police. Students at Kent state gunned down. Massive riots in black urban communities across the country from Detroit to Watts to DC and Harlem. Lynchings in the south of blacks by the KKK. A police riot at the ’64 democratic convention. Bombings of police stations, university buildings, the Pentagon by militant youth. Kidnappings by the SLA. The House of representatives shot up by Puertorican nationalists, seriously wounding members of Congress. Hundreds of protests – some of which turned violent by anti-war demonstrators. People throwing bricks, not at congressional offices, but at school buses with children in them during the busing wars. The list goes on. This is Jim’s example of a “family squabble?” What family did Jim grow up in – the Manson family??
Many of us alive at the time thought that America was going to be ripped apart, and we had very tangible reasons to believe that. And, I’m not saying that we may not be witnessing something imminent that will be equally as or more scary. But to compare a few instances of brick throwing and harsh language (although I notice Jim didn’t include the death threat against Kanter – a Republican – for which someone was actually arrested) when the overwhelming number of protests by Tea Partiers are peaceful to the mayhem that happened in the 60’s is MENTAL!!
SEEMS?
Gang violence actually decreased in the 2000s. Bush started two wars and provided lots of opportunity to act out violence with official support. Gangs lost lots of potential members.
The statistics show gangs have decreased and gang violence has decreased.
It may SEEM otherwise because you are being hit by propaganda day and night from news media that want to scare you. If it bleeds, it leads. So you don’t see the millions of kind actions, you don’t see the millions of nonviolent transactions, you don’t see the good news.
You just see violence and you are afraid. Apparently the propaganda is working.
Check out the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention National Youth Gang Survey (Department of Justice) for statistics on the decrease in gang violence.
run_dmc, well said!
The right wants to make a case that there is an equivalency between violent militias and violent left-wing protestors of the 60s.
Let’s see… in the 60s the protestors were subjected to massive state violence (police riots) for objecting to slaughter of millions of innocents.
Now the militia and Tea Parties are not attacked by police (even when Tea Baggers bring their guns) for objecting to people receiving health care.
Protesting napalm, bombing, mass murder is not the same as protesting health care. There is no moral equivalency.
The Tea Partiers are being played by the corporations and corporate media.
Correction: protesters
“I was opposed to Bush’s plans for offshore drilling (though I like Bush as a person).
I am now opposed to Obama’s plan for offshore drilling (though I like Obama as a person).”
=======================
Next I expect Asoka will say:
I was opposed to Hitler’s murder of 7 million Jews (though I liked Hitler as a person).
What does it take before you stop “liking someone as a person?” How ’bout if they stomp on your nuts?
I purchase beach chairs today.
Made in F–cking China…
Everything is made in China.
The money wasted on unless college educations,
lets train our young people to build real things.
Instead go to an ivy school and become a thief on Wall Street…
Angry white man lol
“The money wasted on unless college educations”
=====================
Apparently some folks’ youth was wasted on unless grammar school educations. Nevertheless, I agree with your point.
you are too much! whats wrong with liking bushy? or asok for that matter?
since china got into WTO where is the outcry against its endless evil?
yahoo seems to be saying by posting this that this disrespect for young lives is NOT biz as usual there. with its gender imbalance others know otherwise:
BEIJING – Rural traditions of abandoning dead infants because they’re considered bad luck may have played a role in the case of 21 babies’ bodies found along a river in eastern China, apparently dumped by hospital mortuary workers.
The little bodies — at least one stuffed in a yellow bag marked “medical waste” — were found floating and strewn along the bank of a river on the outskirts of Jining city in Shandong province last weekend.
Police detained two mortuary workers at a hospital who were paid by the babies’ families to dispose of the bodies.
One question that arose Wednesday was why would the parents of so many dead children simply abandon their remains?
Hospital procedures normally call for families to take away dead infants, the Shandong province-based Qilu Evening News reported. However, the death of a young child is considered bad luck among some rural families, and the body is often abandoned or buried in unmarked graves.
“According to customs in some places, dead infants are not considered to be a family member and will not be buried in family tombs,” said Cao Yongfu, professor with Medical Ethic Institute of Shandong University.
Some families would rather leave the body at the hospital or pay someone to bury it, Ma Guanghai, deputy dean at Shandong University’s School of Philosophy and Social Development, was cited as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.
Some local customs go even further. When a baby dies, the family burns its clothes, toys and photos — anything that would remind them the child ever existed. The traditions stem from China’s agrarian past, where child deaths were common, and not considered something to dwell on.
Though the case has shocked the public, Cao said a more pressing issue was developing clear regulations on how the bodies of infants and fetuses should be disposed.
“It’s necessary for China to issue a legal explanation on how to deal with the bodies of dead infants and fetuses, otherwise it is possible there will be loopholes in hospital management,” he said.
Blacks and whites and others will eventually intermarry and interbreed.”
=======================
Dammit Cash, you just caused Vlad to throw up on his keyboard.
And poop his pants.
But Vlad the Bad, its inevitable, the world will change, and either the human race changes or dies.
The change will do us good. Someday there wont be any whitey or any blackie, just a nice coffee & cream colored race, a little darker here, a little more cream there.
Its evolve or die, humans. You choose.
“you are too much! whats wrong with liking bushy? or asok for that matter?”
===================
You’re right Asia. I did a bad job of trying to make my point. I am in no way equating Bush and/ or Obama to Hitler. My problem is with the expression “I like so-and-so as a person.” How is it possible to oppose everything someone does and stands for yet “like them as a person?” Is the opposite possible, e.g. I like everything Obama does and everything he stands for but I dislike him as a person.” This makes no sense to me.
Perhaps I should simply ask Asoka if there is anyone he doesn’t like as a person and, if so, why.
Saw this:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/32906678/looting_main_street
AND
Oil is gettin’ on up.
Happy Passover!
IQ is seen to be important – when it’s not there. The Chinese are a bit smarter than we are -that figure may be a few points too low. But my point is that they massively outclass the poor Malays in their own Country just as we outclass the Blacks and Mexicans. But what we may have that the East Asians don’t, is a very creative high IQ minority. Creativity is the X factor. Unlike IQ, it really can’t be tested. The only test is the real world: create something. And we have to much greater degree than any other people. And what they have that we don’t is an incredible practicality, strong family life and a high degree of social conformity, and a very great ancient Culture and a very high degree of ethnic pride. I fear that they are more than a match for us – now that we have so stupidly given them the secrets of Nature that we discovered.
The historical record does not bode well for us. Asian armies usually defeated European ones with a very skillful use of mounted archers that would surround and decimate the more pedestrian European Armies – and then just gaily ride away when a counter attack was launched. Then they would turn around in the saddle and shoot as they rode away – the so called Parthian shot. And the Parthians were a Persian Group – even White Asians learned the game. Our victories came with technology. Now we have given it all away. How very short sighted.
Another thing they have: genetic stability. They produce far fewer criminals and idiots than we do. Our geniuses are just as bright as their’s and probably more creative. But can that make up for their very high average IQ and their relative lack of low IQ types? I think not. We are so held back by our lower types. Yet if we ever tried to purify our race we would be regaled by cries of Nazi. Yet no other race could benefit more from some kind of clean up – by which I mean an incentive based program to sterilize some and to encourage high IQ people to have LOTS of kids. All voluntary.
He’s right. I just threw up – it looks like an omlette.
WE have rational minds – they don’t typically. Your judgement has been skewed by working with the creme de la creme of the Blacks. You haven’t lived with ordinary Blacks and you don’t seem to know what the regular ones are like.
Integration does mean giving up everything we hold dear. It’s demands the lowest commond denominator. If you lived in a multi-racial city, you’d be able to see that Whites aren’t lifting up Blacks, but rather White kids are being dragged down to African levels.
Read the last speech of Enoch Powell – his blood in the streets one. It is being realized more and more every year.
There you go talking about shit again. You should hang out with ghetto Blacks – they talk about shit all the time too – even when eating. I know you’d love it.
So – all change is good? It’s always evolution? No Dee – not all change is good. Some is just OK, not an improvement. And some is very bad. The mixing of Blacks and Whites is of the latter nature. Not evolution in any way but in fact, devolution. It’s like breeding a race horse with a broken down old nag.
Real evolution tends towards greater and greater diversity in response to specific environmental conditions. Having everyone look the same is going backwards towards a gray uniformity. Many valuable traits will be lost – high IQ not the least among them. Remember diversity Dee? Isn’t that what you folks are supposedly all about?
When modern humans began to differentiate themselves from Homo Erectus, undoubtedly there were many false starts in which the higher types would breed down with local Homo Erectus thus nipping evolution in the bud so to speak. Real progress would have been made when the higher types separated off into their own groups and created a taboo against breeding with the old groups.
If it was just Blacks and Whites in the world, I wouldn’t be worried at all. The Whites who bred with Blacks would be Black and their progeny would fall from any economic or social height they had attained. But now we are competing against very gifted groups who have no love for us at all – Jews, East Asians, and to a lesser degree Arabs and South Asians. They will not mix with the Blacks. But they are all in favor of us doing it. Thus as our numbers and IQ falls, their relative strength will increase.
See what I’m doing here Dee? It’s called thinking – a far cry from your mindless Idealism backed by emotionalism, insults, slogans, and scatological references.
Headmaster Qshtik – thanks for the spelling correction.
Most college educated people consider themselves too good for manual labor. It doesn’t carry any prestige or social standing. The Chinese love that…While we have pussies who speak the Kings English, sip Starbucks, display a fine knowledge of wines, and write perfect essays on Plato’s cave.
Yo Cho Yi is cranking out beach chairs, motorcycles, water faucets, furniture etc…
There(I mean their Qshtik) quality sucks, but nobody else wants to make anything. Hello Detroit, do you smell some opportunity to go back to work…
I have a book recommendation “Shop Class As Soulcraft” by Matthew Crawford.
Will collapse happen in our lifetime or, alternatively, revolution? This could turn out to be a generational conceit.
A transcription of RD Laing’s lecture What is the Matter with Mind? forms part of The Schumacher Lectures (1981). In it, Laing quotes from Tertullian’s Treatise on the Soul (210).
It is worth quoting the quote in full. Keep in mind that this was written in AD 210.
Am I the only person who finds American’s persistent use of “auto” and “automobile” intensely irritating?
We know the fucking things go by themselves.
We know they aren’t pulled by horses (at least, not yet).
Give it up, will you? They’re cars.
“Am I the only person who finds American’s persistent use of “auto” and “automobile” intensely irritating?”
===================
Martin, your one of those people for whom the world cannot adapt fast enough. Actually, I’m a little like that myself.
Give me a little time and I’ll come up with a hundred more examples like “automobile.”
How about “motion picture” and “dial-up service.”
Make that “You’re one of those …”
Your a genius. ;=) To be fair to Americans, Germans are also inclined to the use of automobile. Speaking of horse-drawn autos, did you hear about the New Yorker who converted a Hummer into a carriage as a protest against consumerism?
“did you hear about the New Yorker who converted a Hummer into a carriage”
========================
Drawn by a Clydesdale, I presume.
Actually two horses, but not Clydsdales, to judge from their coloring.
See here: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/30/horse-drawn-hummer.html
A Brief History of Humanity, by Oiligarch.
Once there was an upright, bi-pedal, clever group
of primates called “mankind”. They evolved from sea-slime into the most fearsome, predating, hominids on the block. They were so clever that they spread far and wide over the planet that offered them sustenance and succor. Soon they began to clump up into tribal units which began to enjoy making raids on one another for fun and new brides. Sometimes the brides went willingly; attracted as they were to some foreign hunky-monkey warrior.
After awhile said clever hominids began to hammer out swords, shields, and helmets from metal and band together in large, disciplined legions to improve their military might. Their militarism began to take on a ruthless, mechanical nature as the upkeep of their tribal empires began to require larger energetic input to remain profitable for the ruling-class hominids. An ideology originated that made it conscionable to enslave neighboring tribes and steal their valuable stuff for resale at home. Said senatorial, dominant apes began to need lots of slave energy to build the triumphalist monuments and palaces that their narcissistic, self-aggrandizement dictated. A virulent ideology emerged from this milieu which is still echoing in our thick monkey skulls today.
Throughout history the ruling primates have continuously returned to this ideology because it suits their addictive need to acquire all the common wealth that surrounds them and convert it into private profit. In their clear, focused, heavy-lidded, porcine eyes; they view all the other primates on the planet as their chattel property to use and abuse as their whimsy dictates. Because of their power and wealth they are able to disseminate their poisonous ideology with impunity through the clever manipulation of the collective monkey-mind.
Due to dynastic nature of hierarchical power and wealth acquisition: dominant primates were able to discredit competing egalitarian ideologies with a repetitious drumbeat of lies, manipulations, omissions and distortions, coupled with gallant military distractions and triumphalist extravaganza.
Fast forward to the future:
Injudiciously, the clever, science chimps and financier reptiles “cracked the code” on cheap, abundant hydro-carbon energy (CAAHCE, pronounced: “KaahKee”). At last, there was a replacement for direct enslavement of their fellow primates. Now, there was a much more efficient way to convert public wealth into private profit. The ancient, relentless, mechanistic, formula for wealth acquisition went into high gear and there was an explosion of militarism, conquest, xenophobia and jingoism that humanity had never experienced before. All powered with this magical new CAAHCE. Thanks to CAAHCE, there is a cranking up of the formalistic, usurious, debt and interest machine to unprecedented levels of profitability. Their fellow hominids become nothing but numbers and quotas on a tee vee screen for the dominant, oligarchic, relative of the orangutan-bonobo.
Said creatures and their quislings begin to pit entire populations against one another in a race to convert as much of the planetary resource base into private profit and demolish any organized resistance to their enslavement and immiseration of every other primate (and organism) on the planet.
Unfortunately for these avaricious, primitive animals; they managed to pile-drive the bio-sphere of their limited, little planet into some messy tipping points of massive methane release and Thermohaline circulation disruption. Sadly, their delicately balanced planet simply could not sustain the onslaught of their strange and distorted ideology of death. Thus ends the tale of an insignificant and over-rated creature; asphyxiated by it’s inability to evolve beyond it’s narcissistic self-aggrandizement and wanton hubris.
-the end-
Aldous Huxley? Aldous Huxley already called you on your shit:
“If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.”
Many people do not puzzle that much over why Nazism took over in Germany. The conditions there in the early 1930s were very unlike those in the US today. There have been many books written about the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, and I don’t think that many historians find it that great a puzzle.
It was shortly after a near-run, but devastating military defeat. Communist and fascist gangs had been warring in the streets all through the 1920s. Inflation was rampant (orders of magnitude in months). Many factors led to Hindenberg’s “abdication” and Hitler’s take-over.
Also, many who criticize the Germans for not resisting the Nazis, once it became clear that their use of power was total and ruthless, do not realize just how ruthless it was. The Nazis executed or sent to labor camps all who opposed them. This started in 1933, not during WWII.
I agree that we are in for tough times, but I cannot see a madness like the Nazi party taking over the US. I’m also certain that it would not be as easy to scapegoat the Jews (or the bankers) as it was in Germany in 1933.
Ok, I’ve seen white kids adopt hip hop and try to act black. It looks absurd, akin to white bread anglos (picture people like Jim Lehrer or Mitt Romney) trying to act and sound like goombahs from Little Italy. Doesn’t work.
But the adoption of black slang, black music etc isn’t a new thing ie the jazz age. Or for that matter 1950s and rock and roll.
So why do you figure this is? What do you think it is about white culture that doesn’t turn people’s cranks or makes them turn away from it?
You’re right about the blacks that I worked with. They were highly skilled, university educated etc. I think also that the crap that blacks went through up here maybe wasn’t as bad as in the US so maybe they’re not as gunshy about mixing with whites or “acting white” for that matter.
You’re also right that my views about blacks and other non whites incorporated my own personal experiences. So I’m curious about your own. How did you comes to the views that you hold?
Well, “many historians”, if that is what they really think, are idiots.
The rise of Hitlerism was a once-off event, it is true, because many factors led to it, a confluence that is unlikely to be repeated.
But something of the atmosphere of Weimar Germany already pertains in the US: desperation, the search for scapegoats, the longing for a redeemer (think: Obama), economic hard times, unpayable debt, and a multitude of New Age fuckwits who are ready to believe in any stew of half-digested platitudes that give their pointless lives meaning.
I’m aware of at least two books that draw parallels between the rise of Nazism and America. I’d like to direct your attention to one of them: Coming to our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West by Morris Berman. At the conclusion of his chapter on Nazism, The Twisted Cross, Berman writes:
“A Brief History of Humanity, by Oiligarch.”
=======================
Not precisely my take on human history but I did learn a new word: immiseration.
Oh, and on the point about New Agers, most people are unaware that there was a proto-Hippie movement in Germany around the time that brownshirts were beating people in the streets. They had long hair, they plucked guitars, they gambolled in the flower-strewn fields, they had copies of Thus Spake Zarathustra in their backpacks. And then they joined the Nazi Party.
Immiseration? You like?
Division of Labor by John Zerzan.
http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/division.htm
The Mass Psychology of Misery by John Zerzan.
http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/massmisery.htm
Climate change is real – but human activities have little to nothing to do with it. Eighty million years ago Florida was completely underwater. Was it because of SUV driving dinosaurs? I doubt it. Climate change has to do with wobbles in the Earth’s orbit, fluctuations in solar radiation levels and sun cycles, etc. etc. – even plate techtonics contributes to changes in sea level. Trying to stop it is insane. We will simply have to adapt (and stop building cities in floodplains and low-lying coastal regions, which, duh, shouldn’t have been built in the first place).
Miss Gayle doesn’t believe in paying her debts. Miss Gayle thinks the Holocene period just simply happened because Mother Nature is kind. Miss Gayle thinks that billions upon billions of tons of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere has gone unnoticed by the bitch-goddess Mother Nature. Miss Gayle is mistaken.
Mother nature can be bitchy, true. However, I thought it was Jehovah who had this planned all along. Doesn’t it say in the book of revelation that the earth will be scorched with heat in the last days?
Miss Gayle, thank you for your reply. Actually, if you look at the work of climate change scientists, they attribute global temperature variations over the past century to a combination of anthropogenic and natural influences.
There is no dispute among climate scientists. It is now well established… with the anthropogenic factors dominating.
Other aspects of the climate system, including regional quantities, are increasingly being found to also show a detectable signal of human influence.
The bad news is that multi-millennial simulations with a fully coupled climate–carbon cycle model have been used to assess the persistence of the climatic impacts of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
Climate scientists found that the time required to absorb anthropogenic CO2 strongly depends on the total amount of emissions; for emissions similar to known fossil fuel reserves, the time to absorb 50% of the CO2 is more than 2000 years.
The long-term climate response appears to be independent of the rate at which CO2 is emitted over the next few centuries. Results further suggest that the lifetime of the surface air temperature anomaly might be as much as 60% longer than the lifetime of anthropogenic CO2 and that two-thirds of the maximum temperature anomaly will persist for longer than 10,000 yr.
This suggests that the consequences of anthropogenic CO2 emissions will persist for many millennia.
If you want to check out the data for yourself, find this article: Eby, M., Zickfeld, K., Montenegro, A., Archer, D., Meissner, K., & Weaver, A. (2009). Lifetime of Anthropogenic Climate Change: Millennial Time Scales of Potential CO2 and Surface Temperature Perturbations. Journal of Climate, 22(10), 2501-2511.
The Revelation of Saint John the Divine is not a prophetic book. A good case can be made, has been made, that the book, far from being prophetic, describes events that took place shortly before it was written. The main protagonist, the supposed Antichrist, was one Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who committed the abomination of desecration in Jerusalem by sacrificing a pig in the Holy of Holies. Try to remember that the Revelation almost didn’t make it into the Christian canon. It is of doubtful provenance (some scholars think it derives from earlier Egyptian texts), written in appallingly bad Greek, and only made it into the canon by a tiny margin. Oh. Did you know that what made it into the canon was decided by a show of hands at the Council of Nicea? God, apparently, moves in mysterious ways.
That’s right, Asoka. I was astounded when I learned that the average CO2 molecule takes an incredibly long time to be re-absorbed by plants into the photosynthesis cycle.
If we hominids (the dominate species on this small, finite planet) manage to raise the combined particulate levels of many different gases in the atmosphere to much higher levels; we could see a catastrophic “run-away” effect caused by the melting and release of methane gas frozen into the Arctic tundra and at the bottom of the Arctic ocean. This in turn would cause the planet to overheat and cook life off very rapidly. Don’t believe me? Talk to James Hansen.
Miss Gayle needs to stop watching CAACHE industry propaganda broadcasts. Part of the relentless drumbeat of lies and obfuscation covering the mechanistic conversion of common wealth into private profit. Goodbye stupid baboons, mother nature needs to conjure up some exciting, new, experimental biological lifeforms after she has finished composting your worthless asses.
Oh Vlad, lighten up, so whitey is going extinct, the new breed of coffee colored humans will do just fine without YOU.
And, Olli, that was funny! Too bad Vald has no sense of humor.
So why do you figure this is?
advertising, radio,tv,film > inclinded to make civilization decline.
what about the methane that will be released by obamas ‘drill baby drill’?
They produce far fewer criminals and idiots than we do…what about the murder of 70 million in china and one fourth of cambodias population?
if thats not crime what is?
and theres tibet!!!
Our time is up. We had our run at it and we failed miserably. I’ve said before that we needed another 20,000 years of psycho-emotional evolution to understand the value of the planet’s resource base. We could have reached the stars if we had meted out the resources sensibly over time for the good of the whole. Instead, we allowed a small group of psychopathic fuck-heads ruin everything for the rest of us with a primordial, addictive, reptilian-brain dominated drive for domination and conquest of all things enlightened and good. It is a shame that we are all going to pay for the stupidity of a few powerful people but what the hey, what can I say.
We can argue, quibble, elucidate, inform and gabble with each other forever in this forum but it does not change the fact that humanity is not going to find a way around this problem. We have run out of room to maneuver and no amount of clever, inventive manipulation or machination is going to pull out collective chestnuts out of this fire.
“Castles made of sand slips into the sea, eventually.” Jimi Hendrix
I got worked up and now Q is going to jump my typos with the grammar police shtick. I’m resigned to my fate, go ahead, I’m ready, lay it on me.
That’s right, Martin Hayes.
And Jehovah doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it, because Jehovah, and God and Jesus Christ are figments of human imagination.
There is no evidence of a historical Jesus. He is made up. Jesus is the made up “son” of a made up God.
Once you allow for God’s existence then people start imagining God had a son, and God’s word is encoded in a book, and God has a split personality and can manifest as a ghost, and God has a will that we have to pay attention to, and God has rules or commandments we have to obey. That we have to fear God’s judgement on us … always fear, threats, and more fear.
IT IS ALL RUBBISH. There is no God except the God made in our image, the God we have made up. The God that priests and politicians, the mafia of the soul, use to frighten and control others while chuckling at people’s studpidity.
Actually they were chuckling at their stupidity.
I am confusing it with the current RNC stud-pidity, the Young Eagles who go to sex clubs on the Republican donor tab.
And while I’m on this tirade, I have to say that I am thoroughly tired of all the Asoka bashing that has been going on in JHK’s, CFNation, virtual, debate society. I think all you crusty, old, opinionated troglodytes are just rankled by his concise, adroit, intelligent and thoughtful ripostes to your derisive slander. He is eternally patient with your horse (crap) and never resorts to ad hominem attacks. He contributes a great deal to the quality of the banter herewith. So just go back to your caves.
Karl Rove issues order to David Kuo:
Thanks, Oligarch.
First time in years of posting on CFN I recall being supported like that.
And thanks for noticing that I try to address substance instead of engaging in name calling and ad hominem attack.
When I provide facts and statistics they are usually ignored. Or when I challenge illogicality (like asking for an explanation of how I am “fickle” for opposing both Bush and Obama), usually no reply is forthcoming.
Sometimes I am driven to silliness, a couple of times I have reacted strongly and later apologized.
Nobody’s perfect.
I appreciate your kind words.
“Q is going to jump my typos with the grammar police shtick. I’m resigned to my fate, go ahead, I’m ready, lay it on me.”
====================
How about instead I jump on Jimi Hendrix’s grammar? Here are three similar lines from Castles Made Of Sand, one of which you quoted in your prior post:
1. And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually
2. And so castles made of sand melts into the sea, eventually
3. And so castles made of sand slips into the sea, eventually
One is correct, 2 and 3 are incorrect.
Poor Jimi can’t make up his mind whether it’s castles or sand that are (or is) doing the falling, melting and slipping. Artistically speaking the song would not have suffered one iota if all 3 of these lines had been grammatically correct. There was no need here for “artistic license.” The correct words, of course, would have been melt and
slip.
Oili, you should never get me started on song lyrics or pronunciation. I don’t know how many times I’ve screamed at the radio when Barry White sang the words ‘Cause quitin’ just ain’t my stick.
BARRY, IT’S SHTICK … IT’S FUCKING SHTICK. IF YOU’RE GONNA USE YIDDISH YA GOTTA TALK LIKE A JEW OR YA JUST SOUND FUCKING STOOOPID!
“how I am “fickle””
==================
Asoka, part of your modus operandi is politeness but you spoil it with your incredible inconsistency. For example, in one of your posts above you explain that belief in God is a crock of shit (my words) yet you are not beyond quoting from religious texts when it supports your point and serves your purpose.
As to Bush: In my 9 months reading this blog I don’t recall one kind word from you about the man, his administration or anything he did during his 8 years at the helm. Yet, in a recent post you had the balls to say “I was opposed to Bush’s plans for offshore drilling (though I like Bush as a person). And so, I repeat a question that has so far gone unanswered: Is there anyone you don’t like as a person and, if so, why? What are the fucking criteria?What the hell does as a person mean? Is everything Bush did for 8 years somehow outside of and unconnected to his personhood?
Qshtik: “you explain that belief in God is a crock of shit (my words) yet you are not beyond quoting from religious texts when it supports your point and serves your purpose.”
I do not see this as inconsistent.
I like to try to communicate with people where they are, with the language they use, appealing to the beliefs they hold, using the scriptures they read and believe in … to contrast and highlight the contradiction between their political beliefs/action and their religious beliefs.
To do that I do NOT have to share any of those beliefs. Think of it as my schtick. Capeesh?
Asoka: You claim to use “…the language they use, appealing to the beliefs they hold, using the scriptures they read and believe in…” not realizing it is impossible to do effectively do this if you do not understand these things. You are just mouthing words, lip-synching to produce an argument. This is apparent to me because you are constantly attacking things that you believe all christians believe. Your “images of God” statement above illustrates this. Images of God are a reality, which people as yourself use to obfuscate and riducule the truth, convincing yourself that nothing else exists but the images {idols}. Sad.
“Think of it as my schtick.”
===================
Your schtick is to say whatever you damn well please to support a point, even if it’s the opposite of what you said yesterday.
But let’s put aside the God and religion aspect of this debate. Let’s get back to you liking Bush as a person. For the third time I will repeat the following questions and ask for your response:
Is there anyone you don’t like as a person and, if so, why? What are the criteria? What the hell does as a person mean? Is everything Bush did for 8 years somehow outside of and unconnected to his personhood?
Why would you be interested in my answer to your question? You have already concluded I will say whatever I damn well please to support a point.
Is it so hard for you to accept that two people can respect each other’s humanity and be willing to sit down and share a meal, even though they hold different beliefs about things?
I think it would be interesting to have a conversation with Bush.
After all, I think Bush is the only president in USA history to have been elected with a history of cocaine abuse and a record of DUI and going AWOL.
“Why would you be interested in my answer to your question?”
=====================
I rest my case.
Obama’s economic recovery stimulus spending has primed the private enterprise pump and now jobs creation will continue in the private sector.
Conventional wisdom on CFN is that manufacturing is dead in the USA. Today’s labor report says differently.
That’s right… gains in manufacturing jobs. This trend will increase rapidly with the emphasis on production of equipment necessary to get energy from alternative, natural, and sustainable, sources.
Can we please stop saying the USA doesn’t make anything anymore? Not all employment is flipping burgers at McDonalds.
“with 13 states seeing employment increases in manufacturing”
=======================
… and 37 states, presumably, showing decreases (or no change) in manufacturing.
Asoka, where did you purchase your rose colored glasses … I gotta get me a pair.
Qshtik, how can you ignore the data? Things are getting better, not worse.
Manufacturers added 17,000 jobs in those 13 states, the third straight month of gains.
The other 37 states added jobs in other sectors: temporary help services added 40,000, health care added 37,000. Leisure and hospitality added 22,000, construction industry added 15,000 positions.
“The stars are starting to align”? WTF?
What about having an intelligent president?
Obama should get credit for turning around our worst economic depression since the 1930s.
Yes we can!
If Asoka chose to view the world darkly he might have said:
“Nearly 3 out of 4 states reported flat or worse manufacturing employment numbers for the month of February.”
See how easy it is to be a spinmiester?
I did not think I was going to make a comment this week but seeing that Asoka is need of disparate help I must.
Enough of this kind of BS………….
” In February, twenty-three states reported increases in private sector employment. ”
Increases here mean that the rate of decrease is not falling as fast as it was, that’s all. This is nothing more than feel good crap.
Rather than put anyone to sleep discussing the criminal fault of educated people discussing the second derivative rate of change as if it were the same thing as the first derivative or otherwise lying with statistics I’ll put it in common sense terms.
Say a state (State X) is down to three private sector jobs and two of these people get laid off in January. When the last person gets laid off in February then the media is free to report a gain in private sector employment because only one person was laid off in February vs two in January even though private sector unemployment in state X is now 100%. Because the rate of change is decreased this is interpreted as a gain.
No state requires prompt immediate mandatory reporting when somebody gets hired in the private sector so far as I know. Certainly not 13 states. There is no way to measure a gain in private sector employment. Maybe that’s why its called the private sector?
If leading economic indicators are being used along with a crystal ball to derive these statistic that’s disingenuous besides being inaccurate and wrong.
The only thing that makes sense is citing the total number of unemployed in a state and even that is very hard to measure (at least honestly).
Measuring how fast an UNCERTAIN statistic is changing is nothing but bullshit.
For months we have been hearing about a ‘recovery’ but nobody in my state is hiring anybody. How is this possible?
“The other 37 states added jobs in other sectors:”
=======================
Asoka, the theme of your 1:16PM post was manufacturing employment. Now you are doing what you so often do … spinning. You are covering over worse manufacturing employment numbers in 37 states by bringing in improved other employment data not relevant to manufacturing.
Stay focused!! The topic was manufacturing.
I hope Oiligarch who said:
I think all you crusty, old, opinionated troglodytes are just rankled by his concise, adroit, intelligent and thoughtful ripostes to your derisive slander.
is reading this since. Oili, was Asoka’s post actually concise and adroit?
K-Dog, I understand the second derivative concept and you may well be right that the reported numbers are discussing a lessening in the rate of change in the decline but the sentences glommed from google by Asoka imply first derivative … i.e. an actual increase in manufacturing jobs.
And forget Asoka’s diversionary other employment numbers … the subject is manufacturing.
As an aside, at this moment everyone who follows employment trends is being carefull to keep the Census (govt) employment numbers separate since they are both large and temporary. Thus the emphasis on “private sector.”
Note: near the end of my 3:09 PM post I failed to delete the word “since” (in case you were wondering what the eff Q is talking about).
k-dog said: “nobody in my state is hiring anybody. How is this possible?”
Tell me what state you are in and I will conclusively prove you are lying.
k-dog said: “There is no way to measure a gain in private sector employment.”
Every private sector job I ever had started by filling out a little piece of paper called a W-2 form. (hint: it’s a way the federal government might know someone is working in the private sector)
When I was self-employed I filed a form also.
k-dog, yesterday was April fools’ day. Knock it off!
Qshtik: “Asoka imply first derivative … i.e. an actual increase in manufacturing jobs.”
That’s right, Qshtik. If you remember the last years of Bush we were losing 800,000 or 900,000 jobs a month. It got to over 1 million jobs lost a month by the time Obama took office.
Then Obama stopped the loss rate, but as k-dog said, there was no positive gain, just a slower rate of loss. That happened for a while, not now.
Now we are into positive gain territory in all sectors, including manufacturing. Most of the jobs created are in private sector, not government jobs. But even the government jobs, like the temporary census workers, stimulate the private sector because census workers with money are going to spend that money in the private sector.
No spin here, Qshtik, just blindness on your part.
You should be happy Obama’s stimulus is working. If you are an American, you should be happy our country’s economy is growing. You should be happy we’ve had five months of strong, positive data.
But, perhaps you are listening to FoxNews, in which case you know we are headed to a socialist communist fascist Islamofascist dictatorship… or Armageddon, whichever comes first.
Asoka, you’ve once again proven your self ignorant (kind of like you do daily, but let’s deal with this one example).
W-2s don’t go the government.
I once suggested you buy a copy of The Idiot’s Guide to Economics. I’m afraid my advice now is for you to buy a copy of The Idiot’s Guide to Idiot’s Guides.
puzzler, you are right. I am an economic idiot.
I send the W-2 form to the government on April 15.
The W-4 form is for the employer (private or public).
My bad.
Here is the documentation from the IRS:
“Complete Form W-4 so that your
employer can withhold the correct federal income
tax from your pay. Consider completing a new
Form W-4 each year and when your personal or
financial situation changes.”
puzzler,
If you have taxable earnings, do you not send the government a form (W-2 or otherwise)?
W-2s don’t go the government until the following February. (I left off the rest of that sentence)
W-4s don’t go to government at all.
Asoka, you’ve managed to join Vlad the Impaired on my list of posters to scroll on by (Although for different reasons).
puzzler:
This is the best solution! Saves you time reading, saves you time responding, and potentially keeps your blood pressure from rising.
I recommend this solution to anyone who thinks Asoka is an idiot or who thinks Asoka engages in spin or who thinks Asoka does not understand their precious religion.
Today’s jobs report pushed interest rates in the bond market to their highest level since before the worst days of the credit crisis in 2008.
Treasury prices fell, sending their yields higher. Bond prices tend to fall as investors’ confidence grows and demand for safe-haven investments wanes.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 3.95 percent from 3.87 percent late Thursday, its highest level since last June.
President Barack Obama told workers at a high-tech battery plant in Charlotte, N.C., that his aggressive – if unpopular – policies helped add jobs.
How about I not defend myself because just singling out 13 states from 50 total already poisoned this precious statistic which apparently means so much to the rest of you.
Perhaps I would but we are discussing but a meaningless number. A number from which one can derive whatever scenario one feels. Reducing the problem to a lonely numbers strips away meaning.
Perhaps the gain (and I’m far from convinced) is nothing but bounce-back from too many being laid off in previous months. If that were true then a plateau not a recovery is indicated. Absolutely not the same thing, but if it makes you feel better go ahead and jump to that conclusion.
Perhaps it is because inventories have fallen so more workers are needed for businesses just to keep going. That would not indicate a recovery by the same argument as my previous paragraph.
Perhaps we have fallen and will never recover and that the gain means we have but a brief respite before total collapse. Perhaps it means we are 10 years from interstellar space travel and everyone will have a pink bunny next year.
Whatever you want the number to mean, go right ahead. It is but a mirror into you own head.
I see (correctly) that I was attacked by not fully understanding the statistic and that those who follow these things are more careful. The thing is though I can say whatever I want about any statistic I wish when the statistic is given without accompanying methodology, part of a study or greater whole. Without context it’s just a number without meaning. Media blurbs lack context.
I also see (correctly) that that I was not attacked by pointing out that the total number of unemployed in a state is very hard to measure and that variations in uncertain numbers do not mean anything. Attacking that point unsuccessfully would suggest that watching unemployment trends might a waste of time, can’t have that.
I can’t imagine any reasons why (La Cucaracha $$$) tracking business statistics across the private sector might be difficult. Since I can’t think of any reasons then none must exist right? I should take the statistic as an honest representation of facts collected by honorable men and women then. Surely they used valid reliable unbiased data like W-2s and they have no political agendas, only my best interests at heart. My bad.
About W-2s Asoka. Do you know for a fact they were used to generate this particular statistic or you just throwing mud at the k-dog because he ruffled your feathers. If you don’t know then you don’t know.
I’ve been at more than one job where I was not ever given a W-2 to fill out. I’ve been at others were they were filled out weeks later.
Life is more complicated than any of us know.
LOL. I understand though.
For some it is painful to read that the socialist marxist communist Islamofascist Obama is doing the right thing and his investment and recovery act of 2009 is working.
For some it is painful to read positive data. Scroll on by, as if nothing is happening here to destroy gloom and doom.
k-dog:
I have seen no evidence of this in any reports from the media or the government.
The statistics and the methodology you are impugning come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and you can see the raw data here:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
No mention is made by the BLS of pink bunnies.
how I am “fickle?
LET ME COUNT THE WAYS!!!
‘HOWS IT POSSIBLE’..because the govt and media is lying. i heard frosty wooldridge on coast to coast..saying ‘ jobs up 90000 last month, but the immigrants let in are 150000’!!!
hes a math teacher so he went thru the grim numbers.
his latest book is ‘ the next 100 million’ or something like that. the last 100 million added to US has ruined this place.
meaning the govts job is to give work to the un employables?
‘Tell me what state you are in and I will conclusively prove you are lying.’
you are in the state of disgrace and we all know you lie.
OUR MILITARY
The US military hopes to use trans-cranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to keep soldiers fighting, without the need to stop for sleep.
An additional benefit is that TMS generates a magnetic field near the region of the brain (just behind the right ear) where moral judgments take place.
MIT neuro-scientists have found they can suspend someone’s ability to judge right from wrong, simply by generating a magnetic field near the same spot where many of us hold our cellular phones and wireless, Bluetooth, headsets.
The researchers’ findings, announced today:
Although TMS’s long term effects on health are not well understood (similar amounts of electromagnetic radiation have been linked to increased cancer risk), the treatment is becoming increasingly popular for everything from tinnitus to depression.
Fickle is in the eye of the beholder
yes on radio they are talking about how people are dipping into their savings [ and as pretzel logic] this is good because it means peeps are
‘ confident’ and ‘sense’ things are improving.
maybe not.
asia: “you are in the state of disgrace”
It was amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blinded by Rush and FoxNews, but now I see.
Asoka, I’d really like to loose some of the gloom and doom. Feeling delightfully positive about the state of the nation would feel lots better and I know I would be happier.
Problem is that does not fit the facts and to do so would be delusional. Being delusional is anyone’s right so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. But at this state of the game being delusional gives tacit acceptance of pain and suffering. You feeling good about Obama’s great leadership will not cause your homeless brothers to be less hungry and yes people are going hungry in case you did not know.
There is nothing painful about positive data, so long as one does not use it to delude oneself into being OK with accepting things just as they are, ignoring facks and being a couch potato because we’re back to business as usual. IMHO
I’m also haunted by the fact that pessimists tend to see the world more accurately than optimists. Something that has been studied, not my opinion.
Sucks to be me
Oiligarch, I hope you are reading all this employment conversation. Asoka is the concise and adroit commentor you defend while the rest of us are just bashing him. NOT!!
ADROIT, CONCISE, FAIR, AND BALANCED
Today’s jobs report pushed interest rates in the bond market to their highest level since before the worst days of the credit crisis in 2008.
Treasury prices fell, sending their yields higher. Bond prices tend to fall as investors’ confidence grows and demand for safe-haven investments wanes.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 3.95 percent from 3.87 percent late Thursday, its highest level since last June.
President Barack Obama told workers at a high-tech battery plant in Charlotte, N.C., that his aggressive – if unpopular – policies helped add jobs.
I’ve been running a huge (100 lb pull) neodymium magnet over my scalp for 5 minutes now trying to loose my doom and gloom.
I’ll keep trying but so far all I’ve learned is that we are not all going to get pink bunnies for Christmas. They are all going to be blue.
Yeah, it’s a bummer to be thinking Armageddon is just around the corner, as soon as the Anti-Christ Obama puts pen to paper to sign his historic pieces of legislation that will prove his presidency was heroic and successful. Fantasies of Armageddon put a harsh on anyone’s doom and gloom buzz.
Any news on the interstellar space travel front?
Asoka,
I support Obama and the end of the world comes not with a bang but a wimper.
CALMEN Z ASS DOWN
OUR MILITARY IS MAKING US LESS SAFE
“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said McChrystal during a recent video-conference with troops”
This is why they hate us. This is why we have no chance of winning. The more civilians we kill the more terrorists we create. It is a losing proposition. And the good General McChrystal knows it. Our military is making us less safe.
I support Obama on some of his domestic policies. Obama is making a big mistake continuing with Bush’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. We need the troops home, and we need the billions being wasted overseas, to rebuild America.
“ignoring facks”
=================
I know this is a little off topic but when I read the above words I immediately thought of
I’ll Be There by Michael Jackson. You and I must make a pact; …we must bring salvation back
where MJ sings “make a pack.”
Is everything sacrificed to achieve a perfect rhyme or was MJ just dumb?
Just a typo no need to look for a hypo.
Well… My comment was more in reference to Asoka being accused of being “full of hate” about his disparaging, but factual, comments on the whitey race. Comments which do apply to whitey and are totally true. You know, a minor issue like the KILLINGS of umpteen MILLIONS and such by the military death machines of various white nations.
However, when it comes to bantering with you fellows on the socio-economic and political state of affairs I am amazed at his ability to reference the most arcane documents and websites.
He seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge of information at his fingertips. Okay, so you spot an inconsistency here and there, so what?
I just think, judging from his comments, that he is an articulate, intelligent fellow and doesn’t deserve the types of slanderous, ad hominem attacks he seems to receive regularly for stating his perspective on things.
How about your right on both counts. Everything is sacrificed to achieve perfect rhyme and MJ was dumb too.
I’ll agree, Asoka is an articulate, intelligent fellow who doesn’t deserve slanderous, ad hominem attacks, nobody here does.
Oh but MJ has never been here and was a walking joke.
“OUR MILITARY IS MAKING US LESS SAFE”
======================
Asoka opposes General McChrystal’s shooting of an amazing number of people (who (whom?), once shot, never proved to be a threat) but he likes McChrystal as a person.
oiligarch, thanks once again. You say “Okay, so you spot an inconsistency here and there, so what?”
Qshtik is very big on consistency, in addition to grammar and all things Safire.
I have tried to share my experience upon reading Walt Whitman’s poetry, but Qshtik says it is “incomprehensible” to him. And Qshtik is not an idiot like me. Qshtik graduated from St. Josephs.
Anyway here is the quote that I love from Whitman (I studied comparative religions and have so many religions living in harmony within me… ooops, I’ll be dinged for that inconsistency, too!)
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” 51
“…he likes McChrystal as a person.”
Yes, you are correct once again. That is why I said “the good general” because he has a good heart and knows our policy of killing innocents is wrong. The most amazing thing is McChrystal had the guts to say it out loud in a video conference with the troops. I like McChrystal as a person (outside of his uniformed role as the general in charge of killing civilians). I am sure he is delightful.
Obama has to withdraw us from Afghanistan now!
Jeeez, that pissant fellow used to slander him at every posting and Asoka never lost his cool.
Seems other posters are rankled by his confrontational style and need to “set him straight” with derision. I disagree with doing this, nobody deserves to be derided for their view of things.
For example, I admire McChrystal’s self-discipline. It would be interesting to converse with him about how he came to run eight miles a day, eat one meal and sleep for only four hours a night. Those are useful skills to have!
“Asoka … doesn’t deserve slanderous, ad hominem attacks”
=====================
Frankly I don’t recall any slanderous or ad hominem attacks on Asoka unless maybe you’re talking about OEO calling him a MORON and a FUCKTARD.
Well … wait a minute … I called him a “crankass” and I asked him if that was because his boyfriend dumped him … but that had to do with his mood one day and not the substance of a debate. I also said some stuff he writes is “Happy Horseshit” but that is neither slanderous nor ad hominem … it’s a plain and simple “fack.”
“I don’t recall any slanderous or ad hominem attacks on Asoka”
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
Well, maybe I am a duck cause the attacks seem, like water on a duck’s back, to roll off harmlessly
God loves you, Qshtik
Qshtik, have you forgotten Rule #4, or, are you just bored and decided to have fun today bantering with your friend Asoka… who I’m sure you would like as a person?
“I like McChrystal as a person (outside of his uniformed role as the general in charge of killing civilians). I am sure he is delightful.”
=======================
Yeah, and I’ll bet those guys who administer the waterboard toture down at Gitmo are a lot of fun to be with at weekend cookouts, playing volleyball and whatnot.
Maybe I should give this line of discussion a rest. It is becoming obvious that “what we have here is failure to comunicate.”
First comes the warm and fuzzy statement:
“I think it would be interesting to have a conversation with Bush.”
And then comes the zinger:
“After all, I think Bush is the only president in USA history to have been elected with a history of cocaine abuse and a record of DUI and going AWOL.”
Personally, I think Bush is a hideous, smirking gargoyle.
I finally get it. Qshtik stands for Quircky shtick! Is this true?
Oh God! I missspelled quirk!
I’m waiting for your crankass reply.
“Qshtik stands for Quircky shtick! Is this true?”
===========
Well, yeah, that too. But I explained the meaning of my handle months ago. Q as in cue; shtik as in stick; cue stick. I was very much into shooting pool all my life. It was my shtick. For years I had a vanity plate on my car that read Q SHTIK. It’s easier to understand with the space after the Q.
Hope you won’t be disappointed by a reply FROM a crankass-ed crank! ;o)
Enjoyed your comments very much. A big bunch of cogent observation there. I would tend to agree that the feedback loop of climate clusterfuck has been set in spin… ’round and ’round she goes; where she stops… is unknown, except that for the nonce it gets EXPONENTIALLY worse?
Also, finding out who the REAL enemies of all life on the planet are, kinda turns out to be a huge deal, don’cha think? (Even if it’s mighty late and the credits are starting to roll.)
Thanks.
What can we say about the jobs report today?
I’m beginning to wonder if our media in close
cooperation with our government in issuing
“statistics” much like those published by
Pravda in the 1960s.
When I look around me, I’m seeing only layoffs
and more layoffs. In what sector of the
economy is there this mythical spate of new
hires? Airlines aren’t hiring. High tech
is not hiring. Biotech isn’t hiring. There’s
little new building. WHERE ARE THESE JOBS?
I imagine that most of you know a lot of people
who are: 1) laid off, 2) terrified about being
laid off, 3) out of work for years, or 4) vastly
underemployed (like engineers pumping gas).
I’m sincerely curious … where do they drum
these statistics up?? In California, I know
of not ONE single firm that is hiring. Even
Cisco, where John Chambers alleged in January
that he was going to hire 3000 new people, has
an ongoing freeze.
Roubini has been calling for the second part
of the double dip in H2 of this year. From
where I’m observing, I don’t even see a ghost
of a sign of recovery … whatever smoke the
media is blowing up our collective asses.
Eleuthero
Eleuthero said:
Why not use Al Gore’s invention? No wonder people are unemployed for long periods if they don’t know how to use Al Gore’s internet.
It took me about 30 seconds to find dozens of companies hiring in California. Maybe people are believing FoxNews, believing the economy is bad as an excuse to not even look?
Eleuthero said:
Nobody is hiring in California? Check out these listings, and this is just for San Diego. Each big city in California has dozens of listings.
http://sandiego.craigslist.org/csd/jjj/
You want to find work? Are you unemployed? Then you have full time work looking for employment … but you have to motivate yourself. Employers are not going to come knocking on your door asking for your resume. They expect you to take initiative.
At the bottom of each page there is a link to the next 100 listings. I counted 224 NEW listings today for jobs in just the San Diego area.
Each day there are hundreds of new job listings added, all over California.
Nobody is hiring in California? Not true.
Discovery Communications announced a new Alaska nature show starring Sarah Palin —
— The same Sarah Palin who escalated Alaska’s war on wolves and offered a 150-dollar bounty for the severed front-forelegs of dead wolves.
— The same Sarah Palin who fought against increased protections for America’s struggling polar bear populations.
— And the same Palin who fought against the increased protections for the dwindling Cook Inlet beluga whales.
If you are troubled that Discovery Communications — known for their stunning wildlife-focused productions — would choose to embrace such a controversial and anti-wildlife person as Sarah Palin to represent Alaska and the wildlife that lives there, write to Discovery Communications urging them to dump Palin.
It’s easy, just take action at http://action.defenders.org/eyeonpalin
Qshtik:
“Those guys” are your neighbors. Those guys went to school at places like St. Josephs. Those guys are like the guys you worked with for 26 years bean counting defense contracts.
As soldiers they are just obeying orders to torture. They are little Himmlers when they are in uniform.
But they are not one-dimensional. As persons they have more dimensions to their lives.
Of course, they would be interesting to converse with as persons.
Asoka failed to tell us the following:
“… from the survey of households, the unemployment rate held at 9.7 percent in March. Over the month, jobless rates for the major worker groups showed little or no change. Of the 15.0 million persons unemployed in March, 6.5 million had been jobless for 27 weeks or more, an increase of 414,000 over the month. These long-term unemployed made up 44.1 percent of all unemployed persons, a record high.”
Maybe these lazy-ass 6.5 million long-term unemployed should catch a bus to San Diego where they have unfilled positions out the wahzoo.
“Immiseration? You like?
Division of Labor by John Zerzan.”
=====================
I recall an article about 10 years ago concerning one car company’s experiment with ways to overcome the soul-deadening effects on employees from performing the same assembly operation endlessly. They set up small teams (4-6 workers, I forget) and had them assemble the entire car. I never heard how that experiment turned out. I can’t imagine they would ever achieve the necessary production levels to be profitable.
Oili, what I take exception to is putting whites in a category all their own and statements that whites are morally inferior. Attila and his murdering hordes set new standards for butchery in his time. Thing is what would Attila have done if he had possessed modern whitey technology? What would Ghengis Khan have done if he had machine guns, bombs etc? What about the depredations of other non whites like Mao and Pol Pot or the Japanese in modern times?
Don’t forget that non Europeans had their own empires. For example, Islam spread at the point of a sword. I don’t recall that anyone ever invited Muslim armies to conquer Spain, Sicily, Italy, the Balkans, the Holy Land, Constantinople, North Africa and other places. Muslim armies took a shot at conquering France. If not for Charles Martel (the Hammer) they would have. Three hundred or so years ago Muslim armies were banging on the gates of Vienna. The Crusades? Long overdue pushback. Europe had been back on its heels for hundreds of years (see above).
Whitey societies have had a technological edge for a couple hundred years. It was this technology that made wars so costly in terms of human life. This edge won’t last for long. We’ll see how non white societies use their technological and military advantage against us and others.
I know, I know only whitey used the atom bomb. So far. But what if instead whitey invaded Japan using conventional armies? What would have been the human cost? I read that the US military estimated a death toll of over one million. Don’t forget, the Japanese army was basically intact on the main Japanese islands, fully armed and equipped and itching for a fight. Maybe using nukes was the lesser of the evils. Don’t forget Japanese armies had been on a rape and murder spree throughout Asia that killed many millions. Should it have been allowed to continue?
About the ‘rosy’ job report, turns out temporary workers are now the lions share of new hires.
Temps have been on the increase for years and nobody talks about it. I guess most people consider a job a job and are blinded to what a temp workforce means to their futures. They are also blind to history and the blood sweat and tears of millions of workers who went before, them some of them dying to make a decent workplace for the rest of us. The current generation is now throwing all that away as they march in lockstep to the tune of their libertarian masters.
Temps sometimes get paid marginally better, just enough to get regular full time workers really pissed off at them, that’s part of the game. In the long run they actually make less on average because they get nothing once they get the inevitable boot and no benefits means no benefits.
Temps are not good, unless of course you employ temps, own a business or otherwise exploit those less fortunate than yourself.
About zillions of jobs in San Diego. Most listings there come from temp agencies. The same jobs are actually being listed several times by different agencies who also like to advertise jobs that don’t exist to collect more resumes.
They need lots of resumes to find enough desperate suckers willing to give them half of what they earn just so they can work. Of course the average employee does not know the percentage they take. The percentage turns out to be a private matter between the temp agencies and the companies that use them. You don’t have a right to know what your labor is actually being sold for.
To a temp agency you are only worth what they can talk you down to. Ask for what was once a decent wage 10 years ago and you will remain unemployed, Kumar or Boris now gets your job. Temp agencies make the problem of quantifying true unemployment nearly impossible with their multiple phony ads, and its in their best interest to fuzzify the truth so you can be taken advantage of more easily.
I’d think twice about filling up the gas tank and
making a trip to California in hopes of getting a job there. The housing prices in San Diego have been through the roof for years. If I’m wrong and there are zillions of jobs perhaps its because you can work but can’t afford to live there.
Please don’t bore me with the exception to the rule, but if you really think I’m full of it bring it on.
I can’t imagine production was profitable either. Economy of scale trumps worker satisfaction.
What is radical about Zerzan’s critique of civilization is that it is all a mistake. The first wheat field, the first granary set us on the path to the Taylorist nightmare where a worker does nothing but spot weld the same item over and over.
I don’t know what you have in mind when you think civilization. For the sake of argument, let’s say it’s a Norman Rockwell-like idyllic America where doctors do house visits, girls with bonnets play in the streets with hoola-hoops, and boys are polite and call you sir.
Zerzan’s argument is that, even if we’d wanted to, that pleasant, picket-fenced landscape, what came before it, and everything that has followed after, have all been just staging posts to the dystopian surveillance state Americans now find themselves in. Ineluctable and inevitable.
My problem with Zerzan, though, is that I rather like civilization.
“Please don’t bore me with the exception to the rule, but if you really think I’m full of it bring it on.”
===================
OK Soak, put on your rose colored glasses and give us your take.
“… just staging posts to the dystopian surveillance state Americans now find themselves in.”
===================
Yeah, it’s a bitch. If the boss is so disposed he can check our every keystroke — all those games of solitaire. And the cops can’t give the bad guys a good thrashing now-a-days without being video-taped in the act.
As for division of labor … that’s gotta go way way back. How would they ever have built those pyramids without it?
Mind-numbing boredom, I guess, is just an element of “brutal, nasty and short.”
Balanced budget dems – no, repubs – no
Energy Independence dems – no, repubs no
Rule of law that applies to the rich dem – no, repubs no
Peaceful relations dems – no, repubs no
Jim I fail to see a difference.
Okay, so you spot an inconsistency here and there, so what?
is this a joke? i hope so.if not yr his defender.
JK…..this blog o yours has degenerated into the ‘ashoka show’
‘ Things are getting better, not worse.’
yeah right…to read pls get rose colored glasses.
I don’t think Asoka needs defending; he does that rather well himself. I’m just tired of seeing him bashed with ad hominem attacks. If you disagree with someone, come up with a reasoned, intelligent rebuttal not some idiotic, puerile slanderous slur. S’all.
Cash, If I remember (correctly?): the context of Asokas argument was that Afros never mass murdered anyone the way Whitey did in the 20th century. This happens to be true, hence my agreement with Asoka. Afros mostly – with a few exceptions – stayed out of the big conflagrations of the twentieth century.
Since I don’t separate people into racial categories – to me we are all just upright, bi-pedal primates with narcissistic delusions of grandeur – all of the combative nations of WWII were what I define as Whitey. I view WWII as simply a contest – between various shades of Whitey – for resources as potential sources of profit. Essentially, a contest between (seven?)different fascistic powers for domination and control of profit generating resources both human and mineral. I think that the patriotism, jingoism, xenophobia and imperialism displayed during WWII were simply pretexts for a much deeper socio-economic struggle between the various industrial powers. My ongoing argument is that the ideology has never changed for thousands of years. We are never going to change the underlying ideology. Also,look for the same types of contests in the future as the tension builds again between competitors for resources.
Was the A-Bomb necessary? USA McPetroculture version of the Whitey continuum had been fire-bombing the hell out of many Nippon cities prior to dropping Fat Boy on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Most of Japan was in ruins: why annihilate more innocent people? Why invade at all? The ancient tactic of siege is a tried and true methodology.
Japan certainly wasn’t going anywhere and wasn’t going to be resupplied. Surely all of these angles were considered by the dominant Whitey – USA version – strategists.
Personally, I am skeptical about all the main stream justifications for using the A-bomb and cynically believe it was just a great excuse to test the fucker on living people. Also, it was a great demonstration to the other competing Whitey nations to step aside for the new kid on the block. “Speak softly and carry a big A-bomb”
Those ancient conquering peoples were taking advantage of the military weaknesses of their opponents. Their conquests were vast but the enslavement and plundering were localized to the range of an army on foot or horseback. Humanity uses rapine and slaughter so much that it is (almost) not even a moral issue but simply a function of the mechanics of conquest. Is humanity immoral in it’s annihilation of a bazillion different species simply by the mechanics of burning away the planet’s legacy of cheap and abundant hydro-carbon energy? If your measurement of immorality is quantified by how many people one kills then I would say modern Whitey (my definition: ergo, everyone but the Afros) is definitely the most immoral.
Islam is an offshoot of the cancerous Christian disease. They are both such rabid ideologies that they will be competing against each other militarily until hell freezes over. What can I say? The insane rigidity of their doggerel and the pathological projections they deploy against each other make them both candidates for…?
Are they immoral for going after each other?
Personally, I don’t think so because conquest, rape, pillage and plunder are simply the machinations of warfare and are perfectly natural in that context.
For the sake of clarity I omitted Latin people from my argument but I consider them – like the Afros – to not be a part of my definition of Whitey. They too played virtually no part in the conflagrations between the imperial powers during the WWII.
Also, the people of India are not part of Whitey.
Thanks oiligarch, for explaining in more detail the moral challenge of whitey.
Still, it’s going to be an uphill battle to get whites to accept responsibility for their immoral actions. They think they are good Christians with values respecting individuals, pro-life values, except when they are killing individuals.
It is very rare that they tell the truth, like General McChrystal did about what we are doing in Afghanistan: we are murdering civilians who were no threat to our country and no threat to our troops.
Asoka,
Please, you insult this entire board’s
intelligence when you cite minor numbers
of crap jobs (like “call centers”) as
evidence of some sort of turnaround.
That’s like saying that a hundred jobs
at a WalMart is a “hiring boom”.
You act like YOU discovered Craig’s list
and that us morons have never heard of
it. I happen to KNOW PEOPLE AT DICE.COM.
NINETY PERCENT OF DICE ADS ARE FAKE NON-JOBS.
I challenge you, personally, to name ONE
industry (no, census takers are not an
“industry”) engaging in a hiring boom. ONE.
My post was mostly a RHETORICAL question
because there are no major companies doing
major hiring. NONE. Are you one of those
“Obama for America” types that is determined
to blow blue sky up our asses by jumping up
and down over the smallest positive blips
on the radar??
I’ve met some Obama for America types who
will get all hepped up over a one-month
number and then ignore really major trends
… like DECREASE IN HOURLY WAGES. These
are the same kinds of people who think that
an uptick in consumer spending is a POSITIVE
thing. An uptick in consumer spending means
that an already besieged consumer sector up
to its eyeballs in debt is going to go farther
into debt.
I’ve noticed when I scroll down the weekly
blogs under Jim’s Clusterfuck Nation missive
that you must account for about fifty to
one-hundred posts per week. This calls
into question whether you HAVE A LIFE OR
NOT.
No human being could possibly be gainfully
employed and write as many entries per week
as you. Of course, on the Internet, a person
can feign being the Emperor of the Universe.
There’s no way of checking a person’s identity.
I’m GREATLY suspicious of yours.
Eleuthero
Two days ago Asoka quoted McChrystal as follows:
“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said McChrystal during a recent video-conference with troops”
Last night Asoka implied McChrystal told the truth with these words (note Asoka bolded the words but did not use quotes):
we are murdering civilians who were no threat to our country and no threat to our troops.
If this isn’t spin I don’t know what is. There is a great difference between these two statements. This is Asoka’s mode of operation — mis-paraphrasing.
Oiligarch, take note.
Qshtik said: “If this isn’t spin I don’t know what is.”
I agree, you are seeing spin where it doesn’t exist.
The Battle Ship Dee flees to shallow waters unwilling to sustain further damadge from that dread Dreadnought the Vlad Krandz. Evidently, shallow waters are where she feels most at home.
I saw from personal experience that Blacks weren’t like other people so I began to study. The facts are far more interesting than any personal details. Why don’t they like our cutlure? Because it’s alien to their emotional and rhythm based culure. Why are the suceeding with our kids? Because our culture, being higher, takes longer to learn and grow into. Teenagers are naturally focused on rhythm, sexuality, and emotion. Traditional cultures reign these in so the kids can learn and not make permanent mistakes. As Plato said: introduce a new kind of music at your own peril. Rock takes much from the African based Blues as Jagger and others frankly admitted.
Blacks will naturally be stronger at these levels since these are their natural home. If you observe White and Black kids interacting, it’s obvious who is dominant – as is their taking the White Girls. Our Children, if they are grow into the tall and straight trees they are meant to be, must be protected from the fast growing thorny shrubs of Africa – or they will be smothered, or at best never reach their full height. Please begin your study of this important science. I have provided a good intro with many links for further study. Qshtic and Asia have already begun.
http://www.vdare.com/rushton/index.htm
“Islam is an offshoot of the cancerous Christian disease”. And this guy believes in brotherhood! And he thinks we’re all going to get together and sing leftist kumbayahs – John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Coca Cola jingles. Well he has another thing coming!
Now the very thing they are lambasting the Catholic Church for (and correctly) is one of the very things they dream of legalizing – sex with minors. Remember when the Boy Scouts moved to keep out gay Scoutmasters and how they became enemy number one? Gays abuse boys at three times the rate that Straights abuse girls. And add to that traditionally they had more access to boys in the public sphere. Add to that that there is no limit to the effore gay pedophiles will undergo to get access, including fake marriage for appearance sake and going into a seminary for years. In all male environments, it is a very serious problem that these guys are going to come gunning for new blood. And all male environments are important for any Culture – they breed the espirit de corps so necessary for the male psyche.
This access is the answer to one very foolish woman who thought girls were being discriminated against because there were fewer cases of molestation of girls. Did she want more? It’s a matter of access, the gay tendency towards this, and their cunning and tenacity in getting access no matter what. And tragically, one could say straight or bisexual pedophiles don’t need such a charade because they have the access of their own children.
Now the timing of this is far from accidental. Usually the Jews just “discover” gnostic writing this time of year but this time they went for juglar – as if there isn’t endless pedophillia in the Hasidic Community.
As Karl Rove said if reference to the lesbian bondage stripper club: find the pervert and take his RNC credit card away from him.
Asoka admitted to being a racist last Sunday night O Clueless One – as if it isn’t obvious. The reason you don’t see it is because you are a racist too – the worst kind of all, a racist against your own people. Oh and btw, Whitey is a racist word.
You should check into how the peaceful “Afros” treated the other weaker races of Africa such as the Bushmen, Hottentots, and Pygmies. These peoples were once spread throughout Central and Southern Africa until the invasion of the Bantus. Also read how the Bantus treated other less agressive groups of Negroes.
THANKS AND A HAPPY HOLIDAY
or if you celebrate a christian/pagan holyday:
HAPPY EASTER
clearly the middle class in USA [i call it the dis united states] is being destroyed but mr cutnpaste [as someone here disparaged him] thinks because APPLE is selling billions ‘ things are great’…another post months ago that someone called him on!
FYI, as of a couple of mins ago
😉
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1 Smacktle
1 Smokyjoe
1 SNAFU
1 Sonny
1 suburbanempire
1 thomas99
1 Tim S
1 trav777
1 travelwell
1 tubular1
1 Unconventional Ideas
1 Zev Paiss
1 zxcvbnm
2 auntiegrav
2 Chris Lawrence
2 Desertrat
2 Eleuthero
2 george
2 indyamerican
2 keratomileusis
2 Mike M
2 Miss Gayle
2 Nathan
2 ozone
2 RKD
2 Solar Guy
2 SunsetSu
2 The Mook
2 wagelaborer
3 Shambles
3 whitehunter
4 Kalki
4 lpat
4 MD
4 MrRaven
4 ThomasMann
5 DeeJones
5 messianicdruid
6 Puzzler
7 Ryder
7 Workingman1
9 Cash
10 k-dog
10 Whoopdy Do
12 Martin Hayes
15 oiligarch
15 Vlad Krandz
26 asia
43 Qshtik
83 asoka
this guy believes in brotherhood..not
what about biafra? tanzinia under nyerere?
the recent slaughter of christians? the slogan:
you killed my mom you killed my dad i vote for you!!!!!
one man one vote for life etcetc
dafrur…ive lost count of all the black on black horrors..but now something worse awaits them:
the red chinese
the former editor [founder?] of ramparts said ‘african blacks were better off under the colonial system than the reds[ which is how things are there now for them]’
fifty to one-hundred posts per week…….
its the length of the posts that makes them easy to ignore!
There’s no way of checking a person’s identity:
anyone gonna share their facebook with us?
bye
thanks,
can you calculate in terms of characters, no pun intended.
woops…LA just had an earthquake!
AK, did you compile this data the old fashioned way or is there some kind of sort feature?
While it’s on my mind (and following up on an earlier line of discussion) … Paul McCartney commits grammatical murder that makes my skin crawl with this line from Live Or Let Die:
But in this ever changing world in which we live in
Q: I wonder what’s the old-fashioned way…
I used a little of (Linux) shell scripting on the Page Source: For each unique contributor, extracted from the line containing ‘vcard author’, count how many times he or she is present in such a line. ($1 refers to the file where this whole page was saved.)
Ah, the asterisk is to be followed by the smaller-than sign, and
ignore, pls
-e “s/\//”
>
>
>
Wow! This is way over my head. Where do you type the Linux code? Do you first copy the entire 400 + comments into, say, a Word doc and then operate on it from there?
I have often wished that I could do a sort command to group all of my comments, or anyone elses comments.
“woops…LA just had an earthquake!”
=======================
Asia, where are you located, LA or San Diego? I just read a couple of news items that the quake was 7.2 on the Rickter, located in Mexico within 15 miles of the Calif border. Stay out of tall bldgs.
Vlad: Ok, I will admit that I deliberately inserted the comment about Islam and Christianity
to liven up the debate a little. I used Whitey as a generic term for all the major warring powers of the century twentieth.
How can I be a racist when I don’t believe in race? “Race” is just a made up concept. I would guess to justify enslaving and dominating other people and feel justified in doing so. A mental system based on the hierarchy of master and slave. It’s easier to feel justified in enslaving someone if your culture has a hierarchical frame of reference. As an egalitarian: I view everyone as the shambling, upright, bi-pedal, primates that we are.
Sorry, I hate to burst your ideological bubble but there is actually no biological basis for the illusion of “race”. The amount melanin in one’s skin is a meaningless frame of reference to me.
Horribly, having grown up in the South and living around ignorant bigots as a child; I heard so many racial epitaphs that I unconsciously absorbed many of them. They still echo in my head today whenever I see a man with a darker skin melanin than mine. It takes all of my adult consciousness to override that brainwash thinking.
I must admit your ideology does appeal to that old
deep south, brainwash, white-supremacy cult programming I was abused with as a child.
Thankfully, I’ve managed to debrief myself of all that insane old bullshit however.
Also, the inter-tribal warfare issue in Africa.
It’s just the old hominid thing, been going on for 1,000,000 years, no big deal. All the rest of us are doing it too but we have expanded the whole concept into a major, mechanistic, killing operation. It’s a lot more glorious that way.
16 Oiligarch
Hey, whats wrong with Kumbayah anyway!? It’s a pretty cool song!
17 Oiligarch
“I heard so many racial epitaphs
===================
I think you were going for epithets.
Qshtik said:
Qshtik, we are murdering innocent civilians, like these pregnant women. FACE THE TRUTH.
We have bombed several wedding parties. Do you think killing people at wedding parties is done because getting married in Afghanistan and celebrating the marriage is somehow a threat to our country or to our troops?
IMHO, I believe that lumping Nascar fans and Christians in with the radical right of the Republican party is just a wee bit too close to Pol Pot getting rid of all of my fellow four-eyed citizens in Kampuchea.
Eleuthero said at 3:44 a.m.:
Qshtick:
Yes, I take the whole Page Source (ctrl-u in Firefox) and save it as a plain text document.
The command ‘grep XXX’ (in a terminal window, similar to command prompt in Win) gets only the lines that contain XXX from this file. As those lines are kind of ‘busy’, the ‘sed’ (stream editor) commands (in the form “s/old/new/”) replace strings of text, in this case “s/bla-bla//” — bla-bla for nothing.
Then I pipe it into a unique-sort (sort -u), and run the results (login names) in a loop to see, how many times they are present.
There are complications when a user has a website (the user description is different in that case); when a comment is a reply it’s also slightly tricky. Also, one user, ‘Nick ‘, has a blank following his name, so it calls for a special approach.
R’s
AK
This is why Democrats will not lose control of the House or the Senate in the 2010 elections:
THE BIKINI GRAPH
http://wvablue.com/tag/Bikini%20graph
Well, that and the Republican insistence on spending donor funds for luxury jets, fancy meals, expensive hotels, and other things like lesbian bondage sex clubs.
Thanks and a Happy Easter to you as
well, Asia.
As per your post, yes we’re getting
a lot of smoke blown up our asses
every day about the “recovery”. Oddly,
even my LIBERAL friends are highly
alienated by the “Obama for America”
types who seek to perpetrate blue sky
stories which deliberately use “juiced”
data, one-month “trends”, etc..
We have a very odd political situation
developing in America i.e., the corporate
right dislikes the religious right as
being “bad for business” and the “Obama
for America” types are right there with
the corporate right in decrying liberals
who distrust statistical cherrypicking.
And this brings us full circle to Jim’s
weekly missive about a possible descent
into FASCISM. With the abovementioned
scenario, the corporate right and the
pollyanna “Obama for America” members
would join ranks to “prove” that the
economy is “recovering” while most
Americans find evidence of a recovery
to be quite absent in their lives and
observations.
This is a FEARSOME ALLIANCE. The corporate
right represents the interests of defense
contractors, the aerospace industry, and
the energy industry while the “Obama for
America” left doesn’t want us to see the
subsidies for HMOs and Insurers in the
healthcare bill.
This is why we’re not getting any news
any more. Whether the sponsors of TV
and print media are rightist or leftist,
they are ALL CORPORATIST. They don’t
want reporters to be anything more than
shills for the recovery story because
bad news makes people SAVE … and we
can’t have that now can we??
Eleuthero
“Usually the Jews just “discover” gnostic writing this time of year …”
Vlad, what does this mean? (scratches head)
As a result of poor life choices I happen to frequent a living-space with a person who listens to Rush Limbaugh everyday. Similarly, I happene to be faced with involvement with neighbors who seemingly appear to gain their news from what I might describe as less-than-objective media outlets.
One aspect many of my acquaintances appear to possess is in sharing a considerable use of terms like “liberals,” “conservatives” and other uses of stereo-typifying phrasing in their conversation.
JHK, seems to be a Master of colorful phrasing using much of a similar tact to make his points. And for some reason this BLOG seems to attract similar usage of language that simplifies the endless differences and capacities for philosophies each of us bring to humanity.
Recent exchanges have been a good reminder to me not to participate with such limited introspection of the complex mix of ideas and challenges that meet each of us as we enter an era of social responsibilities for ever more cooperation and collective will.
While most our media goes about reducing our human interaction to costs and profits, I will refuse to let my Internet usage be as venal and pointless as those I disagree with.
My novel, The Witch of Hebron, a sequel to World Made By Hand, will be published in September by The Atlantic Monthly Press.
Cool!! Will have to make a slot in my reading list for it. Any date for the book on Techno cultdesacs?
Keep up the great work!
429 Comments total as of 2010-04-06 13:00 (Pacific)
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You did get the Pol Pot numbers wrong. You tend to use the standard number of over a million dead, but numbers of deaths in Cambodia are reported to be from two thousand to two million! An obvious crazy fluctuation. The real number that is used by experts is around a few hundred thousand killed by Pol Pot. Many Cambodians died from famine, much of it caused by Nixon’s illegal bombing.
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