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Where Do Things Stand?
James Howard Kunstler Blog ^ | 6 Feb, 2023 | James Howard Kunstler

Posted on 02/08/2023 4:42:37 AM PST by MtnClimber

Have you forgotten the Chinese balloon incident yet? Don’t worry, you will. It was just a momentary distraction from the slow-motion crack-up of our country. And it came along with a boffo jobs report, led by hiring in “leisure and hospitality.” Oddly, the same month saw a record car re-po number, even higher than it was in the depths of the 2009 Great Financial Fiasco — raising the question: how will all those people without cars actually get to Disney World? And if they do, what will they use for money there?

America was bundled up last week, huddled beside space heaters and wood-stoves against an Arctic super-blast that also distracted us from the global warming scare-talk which the agit-prop industry has ramped up to replace the disintegrating Covid-19 story in the public’s attention-space. Lesson: The more impotent and inept our government gets, the more it will seek the appearance of exquisite control over everything… employment… the weather. The key fallacy of the climate change crusade is that there’s nothing our government can do about it except posture and pretend — and issue more idiotic regulations that prevent people from doing business and leading their lives.

The citizenry, a.k.a. the public, has been successfully divided and groomed into two political factions. On the Left: those who believe anything government officials tell them, no matter how absurd. Most of that faction’s senior members used to be people who believed nothing the government told them, but then they got “Woke.” Now, they believe that mRNA vaccines are really good for you… that basing all social conduct on skin color will exorcise racism from society… and that sexual confusion is the highest-and-best psychological state of being. If you try to debate any of these points with them, they’ll block or cancel you. If that doesn’t work, they’ll orchestrate a new episode of political chaos as an excuse to push you around.

On the Right: those skeptical and worried about government overreach, those opposed to meddlesome official censorship, those who resist the manipulation of language to invert and subvert a formerly coherent value-system, those who recognize a hustle when they see it and coercion when they feel it, those who respect the long struggle of mankind to construct a comprehensible view of reality and mechanisms for testing it. Those who insist on a certain degree of personal liberty under a fair and upright rule-of-law.

Nothing is more self-evident than how implacably at-odds these two factions are. The ascendance of the Left follows exactly our glide-path into collapse. The so-called mass formation phenomenon rises as a function of suppressed panic over America’s wobbling business model, especially among the managerial class and the “experts” who are supposedly in charge. The more their management and expertise fails, the more desperately they seek to control every lever of daily life. Pretty soon, their policies become mindless — in the pure sense of the word.....


TOPICS: Politics; Society
KEYWORDS: kunstler; leftism

1 posted on 02/08/2023 4:42:37 AM PST by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

After the Joe Biden SOTU speech last night I thing we are still sliding toward clown world.


2 posted on 02/08/2023 4:42:48 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

3 posted on 02/08/2023 4:43:32 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

Great article/blog. Thanks for sharing.


4 posted on 02/08/2023 5:35:43 AM PST by Reddy (BO stinks)
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To: MtnClimber
Money quote…

The Zelensky regime that we employed to foment this conflict with Russia is losing its mojo for creating chaos in that corner of the world. The newly-announced tank caper will amount to nothing. Russia’s war-aim is simple: the elimination of chaos on its border. This rational objective is something that America’s Party of Chaos can’t understand. How will it react when chaos gets cancelled in Ukraine? Probably by attempting to foment chaos in another corner of the world, or on the home front — another reason that power must be wrested away from it.
5 posted on 02/08/2023 5:43:15 AM PST by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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To: Jan_Sobieski

“Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder.”
— Petyr Baelish


6 posted on 02/08/2023 5:53:45 AM PST by ClearCase_guy (“You want it one way, but it’s the other way”)
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