Jim
Kunstler: Welcome To The Long Emergency
19
October, 2018
Feeling The Heat Yet?
The
loyal opposition is the party out-of-power in a
polity that stands divided into two factions -
assuming the polity can still function as such, which, apparently, it
no longer can. Historically
in the USA, this used to allow for the tempered regulation of
changing conditions during
two hundred years of a rapidly evolving techno-industrial economy
that pumps out more goodies year after year while the population
grows and grows.
Much
of America, political leaders especially, assume that this arc of
growing goodies and more people will just keep trending up forever.
They are just plain mistaken about that.
Rather,
the whole industrialized, wired-up world is rolling over into the
greatest contraction ever witnessed. The
only thing that’s postponed the recognition of this reality is the
profligate borrowing of money, or shall we say “money” - data
entries that pretend to represent secure wealth.
This
amounts to borrowing from the future to pay for how you live today.
Of course, the act of borrowing is based on the supposition that
there will enough future productive activity to allow you to pay back
your borrowings with interest. This is obviously not the case now, in
the face of epochal contraction, especially of affordable energy to
keep things running hot.
Thus,
the US has decided to get through the approaching winter by setting
its house on fire. The
two political parties alternately in charge of things are driving
around the burning house, stopping at intervals to run Chinese Fire
Drills.
We call these “elections.” Both
parties pretend that the burning house is not a problem. Mr.
Trump, aka the Golden Golem of Greatness, has taken “ownership”
of the rising temperature in the burning house. “Hey,
at least you’re not freezing now.”
He and his party have been piling all the furniture inside the house
on the fire, to keep the heat up, rather heedless that flames are
starting to shoot out of the attic.
The
other party has no quibble with burning down house. In fact, this has
been the Democratic Party’s sovereign remedy for problems since the
War in Vietnam,
when it was explicit policy to burn down villages in order to save
them. Seemed to work, until it didn’t - and then we just tried to
forget about the whole sorry exercise. It still haunts them, though.
So these days they’ve decided to destroy the culture that abided
inside the burning house. They’re taking down the draperies and
collecting all the clothing and Tchotchkes and framed photographs of
loved ones, and piling them on top of the burning furniture, doing
their bit to keep the heat up.
You
might infer from all this that no
matter whatever else the Republican and Democratic parties might do
now is not going to prevent the house from burning down. In
a month, or six months, or eighteen months, they will be left
standing stunned in the ashes. How’d
this happen!?!
Even the clown cars they were riding around in will be smoldering
wrecks. And then the rest of the people of this land can sift through
ruins, seeking a few trinkets or useful tools with some remaining
value. These people will be entitled to call themselves “survivors.”
And they will act like survivors should act: by earnestly assessing
how the house happened to burn down, and using what few assets and
resources they still have at hand to shelter-in-place, while they
draw up plans for a more sensible house.
If
there was a true loyal opposition in this land, they would have
called the fire department long ago. But
they were too busy texting out their contrived grievances and sending
cute Instagrams of each other in pussy hats to friends and allies
while the flames of the burning house reflected off the screens of
their iPhones. The
vaunted technology did not save the day. It only stole their
attention.
If
it happens that the Democrats lose the midterm elections a few weeks
ahead, they will jump up and down and holler that the elections were
stolen from them, that somebody meddled and colluded to deprive them
of victory, and
that will amount to throwing just enough gasoline on the
still-burning house for one final glorious burst of heat and flame
before the rafters crash through the floor.
Welcome
to the Long Emergency.
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