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Do You Dare Even Look? — Forecast 2024
Kunstler.com ^ | 29 Dec, 2023 | James Howard Kunstler

Posted on 12/30/2023 6:16:37 AM PST by MtnClimber

“I’ve also lost patience with the Sharia of the political left taking over the entire system.” — David Collum.

Historians of the future, flash-frying peccary testicles and mesquite pods over their campfires, will wonder at how the archetypal Shining City on a Hill of America’s storied yesteryear got transformed into the roach motel that our country has become on the threshold of 2024 CE. Will they be as stupidly bewildered as, in our time, the faculty at Harvard, the editors of The New York Times, or the directorate of the CDC? Or will they figure out the score by then?

Which is: the nauseating state-of-the-nation is being driven by a cohort of our own fellow citizens lost in an evil crypto-religious salvation rapture that veils their own self-disgust, moral failure, peevish discontents, petty hatreds, willful profanations, compulsive lying, sexual depravity, fraudulence, venality, cupidity, and all-around want of boundaries. They are wrecking the country on-purpose, led by their chosen figurehead avatar, “Joe Biden,” and the horses of many different colors he rode in on.

The people running things, yanking the levers of power, managing the malign weapon they have made of government (and the law, and schooling, and medicine, etc.), have got to be turned out, and hard. Not a few should find themselves in the courts and, with proper and fair adjudication, be conducted to prison, perhaps even to the special room there where the lives of the wicked are ceremonially concluded.

You may legitimately ask: Does America deserve what it’s getting? Well, you know the old maxim about hard times make strong men. . . strong men bring good times. . . good times make weak men. . . . Our national quandary is certainly a case of that, plus the manifestation of well-known terrestrial cycles (e.g., Fourth Turnings), plus the workings of emergence as the dynamics involved in all this sort themselves out. . . topped off by the “secret sauce” of Globalist wickedness, with the aim of severe population reduction and the asset stripping of Western Civ for the benefit of the that moneygrubbing Globalist transhuman technocrat rat-pack.

My natural inclination, you know, is a kind of allergy to paranoid schemes, but one does survey the scene with wonder at how superbly coordinated the fuckery has been — much of the world locking down simultaneously for the Covid-19 op. . . the global mass vaxx campaign. . . the fiscal lunacy and accompanying central bank shenanigans. . . the broad-based censorship operations. . . the capture of the news media. . . and the war-mongering.

So, the country is in the toilet and it is our job in 2024 to make sure it doesn’t get flushed all the way down the pipe. That’s all the throat-clearing you will hear before we get to the meat of this broadside: predictions for the year ahead.

The Great Race

Uh, no, I am not referring to Blacks, Browns, Ochres, and Whites of the Homo sapiens persuasion but to an epic contest between forces already in motion and how that competition is going. Three big tendencies propel us into the uncharted territory of the near future. 1) technological advance, especially artificial intelligence, 2) Collapse of complex systems needed to run a technologically advanced civilization, and 3) geopolitical disorder (including domestically in the USA).

Some combo of these three will determine the direction history goes in the year directly ahead. Will it be techno tyranny of the elite oppressing bug-eating serfs a la the WEF’s proclaimed goals? A Google-ist robotic nirvana of intergalactic leisure and incessant orgasm in the Ray Kurzweil vein? Some brand of SHTF like Mad Max or a World Made by Hand? A war of all against all (or maybe just some against some)? Or only more of the same tiresome, inconclusive, morbid and grotesque, Woked-up, post-modern Jacobinism?

Mystery Mutts on the Loose

The USA under “Joe Biden” has lost its military credibility, its economic power, and its moral authority. We must wonder if we are susceptible to being overrun, and possibly even occupied by our adversaries. Of course, the first duty of any government is to defend the country’s sovereign territory. “Joe Biden’s” Homeland Security Chief Mayorkas is allowing more than 10,000 illegal aliens across the Mexican border each and every day. Most of these characters are military-age men, 90-percent of them lately from places other than Latin America, quite a few from China and hostile Muslim lands. We don’t bother vetting them anymore. We just give them cell phones, debit cards loaded with $5,000 of walking-around money, and plane tickets to. . . wherever they like. They’re not here to make Moo Goo Gai Pan or trim privet hedge. What do you think might happen in a set-up like that?

Prediction: in 2024, things are going to blow up around the USA. Infrastructure. Power plants, transport hubs, public places, bridges, monuments, you name it. If you can sneak people and fentanyl across the border, you can sneak Semtex and C-4 plastic explosives over and the electronics are easy to get in-country. I wouldn’t rule out fissionable materials either, or stuff than can be used as a “dirty bomb” — a conventional explosive that disperses dangerous radioactive material when it blows. I’d also expect groups of trained “migrant” men with rifles, grenades, and so on, to be shooting up places where people gather. We under-appreciate the amount of mayhem you can kick off with small arms. If the “Joe Biden” regime just stands by on that and does nothing, will you be surprised to hear that American citizens begin forming militias to shoot back, maybe even start to hunt down and round up illegal immigrants? The table is set for exactly this kind of low-grade war right here in our country.

The Energy Picture

Oil still matters a lot. 90-percent of the new oil in America after 2008 came from fracking. It was a mighty operation and we are at a new all-time production peak in the USA of just over 13-million barrels a day. That’s a lot of oil, quite an achievement, but it’s sending a false signal. (Also note, we still consume about 20-million barrels a day.) Of the several fabled shale oil basins in America, only the Permian Basin in Texas is not in decline, and the situation there belies what the big numbers imply. Individual well production is going down at an alarming rate (says oil analyst Art Berman) even while production is massive for now. We’re draining the remaining “sweet spots” as fast as we can — drinking the milkshake through more straws — driving the shale industry closer to depletion.

We are going to fall away from peak production much more rapidly than the fifteen years it took to get there. All that prior shale oil production was done using money borrowed at much lower interest rates. America has entered a debt crisis. One way or another, the easy investment money for fracking is gone at the same time the shale plays are getting drained. There are no other significant shale plays left to discover in the USA outside of the already declining Bakken, Eagle Ford, and the still-booming Permian. The marine-type shale formations that made fracking feasible in the USA are much harder to find elsewhere in the world, and the capital to explore for them is diverted all over Europe into cockamamie “green energy” schemes that have already failed. Germany had to revive coal production for electricity after the USA blew up the Nord Stream pipelines “to weaken Russia,” at the same time Germany’s big wind-and-solar initiative crapped out.....


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: civilstrife; greatreset
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1 posted on 12/30/2023 6:16:37 AM PST by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

A long article. Well worth going to the link to read the whole thing.


2 posted on 12/30/2023 6:16:55 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

Sorry, but I never read a single word after an author uses “CE” to mark time.

Not interested.


3 posted on 12/30/2023 6:22:27 AM PST by AAABEST ( NY/DC/CA media/political/military industrial complex DELENDA EST)
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To: MtnClimber

I predict that Mrs. Evan’s third grade class will remove President Trump from their class ballots because, well, that’s what 8 year olds do.


4 posted on 12/30/2023 6:35:53 AM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer” )
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To: AAABEST

Man O Man I had the same reaction to the “CE” usage — so unnecessary, so indicative of the real problem. It’s gonna be 2024 AD, and the sum and substance of the problem, AND THE SOLUTION, is between the covers of the Bible.


5 posted on 12/30/2023 6:37:10 AM PST by Migraine
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To: AAABEST

Even the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC hasn’t abandoned BC and AD.

I’m in 100% agreement with you.


6 posted on 12/30/2023 6:41:15 AM PST by Ge0ffrey
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To: AAABEST
Sorry, but I never read a single word after an author uses “CE” to mark time.

+1

7 posted on 12/30/2023 6:41:16 AM PST by JesusIsLord ( )
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To: AAABEST

Nor do I.


8 posted on 12/30/2023 6:45:08 AM PST by sport
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To: AAABEST
Understandable ... and you missed a lot.
9 posted on 12/30/2023 6:46:22 AM PST by glennaro (Never give up ... never give in ... never surrender ... and enjoy every minute of doing so.)
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To: MtnClimber

I predict that Joe Biden will walk up to the presidential podium, urinate, and then attempt to flush with the microphone.


10 posted on 12/30/2023 6:47:15 AM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer” )
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To: AAABEST

> Sorry, but I never read a single word after an author uses “CE” to mark time. <

For me it depends on why it was used. If it’s wokeness, that’s one thing. But if the author is an observant Jew, I would give him some leeway.


11 posted on 12/30/2023 6:52:02 AM PST by Leaning Right (The steal is real.)
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To: MtnClimber

I predict that Hillary Clinton will be an asshole.

OK.

That was an easy one.

She’s always an asshole.


12 posted on 12/30/2023 6:54:25 AM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer” )
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To: MtnClimber

Well, to start with, James, it’s 2024 AD NOT 2024 CE.

There’s your first clue.


13 posted on 12/30/2023 6:57:35 AM PST by sauropod (The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly.)
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To: AAABEST

Had the same reaction you did.


14 posted on 12/30/2023 6:59:27 AM PST by sauropod (The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly.)
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To: AAABEST

>> Sorry, but I never read a single word after an author uses “CE” to mark time. Not interested.

Okay, but you’re doing yourself a disservice.

I don’t care for “CE” because “AD” (standing for “Anno Domini — The Year Of Our LORD) is from a physical and spiritual perspective more accurate.

That said, this article is blow-you-away thought provoking and excellent. So I’ll forgive Mr. Kunstler his “CE”.


15 posted on 12/30/2023 7:00:14 AM PST by Nervous Tick ("First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people...": ISLAM is the problem!)
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To: MtnClimber

I like hot and cold running water, living in a warm and dry dwelling, eating my fill of food I like, Costco and supermarkets, cars, freeways, cellphones, medical care and flying to places to visit and indoor plumbing. Now we are being taken over by a generation that has no idea where any of those things come from but think they can do better by constructing a fantasy utopia where all of those amenities will be provided to everyone without effort and in equal proportions. All they will accomplish is poverty, suffering and denial of that standard of living to everyone, and totalitarian oppression that will micromanage our lives with unfeeling incompetence. Whoops.


16 posted on 12/30/2023 7:00:15 AM PST by Spok (It takes a lot of learning to understand how little we know. (Paraphrasing Thomas Sowell.))
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To: MtnClimber

Thanks for posting this. Very very good.

On Ukraine:

The so-called “free world” was unbothered by Ukraine during the decades it was a province of the Soviet Union, nor during centuries prior when it was a backwater of the Romanov monarchy. Ukraine didn’t cause any problems for us, or anybody else all that time, nor after the Soviet collapse when it became a sovereign state. We made it a problem in 2014 by mounting the color revolution against President Viktor Yanukovych and then installing a set of puppet presidents who we directed to antagonize the Russian-speaking people of Ukraine’s Donbas region.

We adopted the stupid plan to try and enlist Ukraine into NATO, when Russia made it clear that was unacceptable. We persisted and prodded Ukraine to attack Donbas with rockets and artillery for eight years, and blew off the Minsk accord that would have settled the Ukraine-in-NATO quarrel. And finally, the Russians had enough and moved militarily to assert the proposition that Ukraine was and remains within their sphere-of-influence — just as we claim the countries of Latin America are in ours under the Monroe Doctrine.

After two years of real shootin’ war, Ukraine’s death toll is around half a million; Russia’s is way less than that, and altogether, including refugees who left, Ukraine has lost nearly half its population, formerly 32-million. The Russians are firmly in control of the battle space now. They have reserve troops, armaments and equipment, and a substantial arms manufacturing infrastructure to back that up. The Ukrainians are left with just about nothing. It’s only a question of time before Ukraine will have to seek terms for concluding this fiasco. The USA is currently pretending to shift to a stance that would join whatever that negotiation amounts to, but we have no leverage left in the matter. The upshot is another military humiliation for America on “Joe Biden’s” watch. I believe President Putin will resist the urge to rub it in — for the simple reason, as any reader of history knows, that the victor must give the loser a way out, to save face, or at least pretend to. If I were Mr. Putin, I would be respectful of America’s current deeply psychotic condition.

The news media has already pretty much memory-holed Ukraine. It’s off the front page and the first ten minutes of CNN. Two years ago, the US propaganda-industrial complex ramped up vast sentiment for helping Ukraine in its supposedly valiant struggle. $200-billion later we have zip to show for it. Now everyone sees what actually happened and recognizes it as just another trademark “Joe Biden” disaster. There are no blue and yellow Ukraine flags still hanging from the porches and windows here. It’s over.

NAILED IT. Absolutely nailed it!


17 posted on 12/30/2023 7:02:32 AM PST by Nervous Tick ("First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people...": ISLAM is the problem!)
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To: MtnClimber

Related comments:

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4206728/posts


18 posted on 12/30/2023 7:03:10 AM PST by House Atreides (I’m now ULTRA-MAGA. -PRO-MAX)
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To: MtnClimber

I predict that Cheechandchong Peng, the grand Pooba of China, will threaten to invade Belgium.


19 posted on 12/30/2023 7:04:23 AM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer” )
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To: MtnClimber

I predict that Anthony Fauci will become the spokesman for Kentucky Fried Chicken.


20 posted on 12/30/2023 7:07:01 AM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer” )
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