The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

The suburbs now have a made-to-order sniper terrorist who is underlining a point the news media have failed to register: that the public realm of suburbia is a vacuum that affords no refuge. He circulates anonymously in the democratic traffic and is an equal-opportunity murderer. I wonder whether he is actually summoned up by the anxious zeitgeist itself the way a demon of war emerges at stress thresholds among supposedly civilized nations. Or is the tremor signifying the shaky ground that our national style of living rests on, the end of the reign of suburban "normality"?

I'm amazed that anyone dares to pump gas around Washington DC. The berms are alive with the sound of small arms fire. We make the rueful discovery that the landscaping industry (abetted by zoning laws that demand "green buffers" between every built object) has provided perfect cover for a maniac marksman. A lot of people in the DC metro area must be making a decision that they don't want to live this way anymore. Look for that red-hot real estate market to chill out pronto.

Meanwhile, some people are making a bundle of money on the wildly oscillating stock markets. Rallies like the 500+ point leap last Thursday and Friday are the perfect set-up for short-sellers because they support the delusion that the markets are healthy, i.e. headed back up. I maintain that what we are actually seeing is a "speed wobble" as the "vehicle" approaches crash mode. I'm going so far, at 8:30 this morning, as to predict a classic black Monday on Wall Street today October 14. You heard it first here.