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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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To: MtnClimber

Good read. It sums up quite a bit of the madness we live under. 2024 will be a horrible year for everyone who is not independently wealthy.


21 posted on 12/30/2023 7:10:19 AM PST by wildcard_redneck (He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.)
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To: Nervous Tick

I like to upset leftists by saying that “CE” stands for “Christian Era”.

People that ignore the article because of the use of “CE” are shortchanging themselves.


22 posted on 12/30/2023 7:12:48 AM PST by wildcard_redneck (He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.)
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To: wildcard_redneck

Thanks for the tip!


23 posted on 12/30/2023 7:25:04 AM PST by Nervous Tick ("First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people...": ISLAM is the problem!)
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To: wildcard_redneck

“People that ignore the article because of the use of “CE” are shortchanging themselves.”

“If I just cover my eyes over nothing I will be fine.”


24 posted on 12/30/2023 7:33:26 AM PST by SaxxonWoods (Are you ready for Black Lives MAGA? It's coming.)
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To: MtnClimber

Bkmk.


25 posted on 12/30/2023 7:41:25 AM PST by Jane Long (What we were told was a conspiracy theory in ‘20 is now fact. Land of the sheep, home of the knaves)
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To: wildcard_redneck

I like to upset leftists by saying that “CE” stands for “Christian Era”.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nice... I’m totally going to steal that.


26 posted on 12/30/2023 7:42:58 AM PST by hecticskeptic (Q. What’s the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth? A. About 6 months....)
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>> their own self-disgust, moral failure, peevish discontents, petty hatreds, willful profanations …

exactly


27 posted on 12/30/2023 8:08:52 AM PST by Gene Eric (Don't be a statist! )
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To: AAABEST

I’m guessing CE was written intentionally because even the usage of AD would seem odd — the usage of either is irrelevant to the span of recent times. With respect to the existence of the Country, it’s not necessary to make the distinction between 2024 BC and 2024 AD. For example, we don’t refer to the birth as 1776 AD.

The usage of CE seems to be a mockery of the term itself.


28 posted on 12/30/2023 8:23:12 AM PST by Gene Eric (Don't be a statist! )
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To: AAABEST

Per Wikipedia: “Kunstler was born in New York City to Jewish parents...”

Let’s ignore anything a Jew has to say if, because of his religious beliefs, he uses ‘CE’ instead of ‘AD’.


29 posted on 12/30/2023 8:34:43 AM PST by Max in Utah (A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.)
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To: House Atreides

Thx. Good link to the same topic. I like to see comment to the post and not a bunch of I refuse to be informed because someone used CE vs AD. Mostly the comments have been I refuse to educate myself because is superficial BS so I’m going to show everyone how important I am by holding my breath, turning blue and …. Just stupid reason not to read something that educates band seems to align with most at FR.


30 posted on 12/30/2023 8:54:14 AM PST by wgmalabama (Censored. )
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To: MtnClimber

Still trying to figure out the Texas reference of “peccary testicles and mesquite pods” in the second line.


31 posted on 12/30/2023 9:20:25 AM PST by Deaf Smith (When a Texan takes his chances, chances will be taken that's for sure.)
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To: Gene Eric

“The usage of CE seems to be a mockery of the term itself.”

Finally—somebody gets Kunstler dark humor.

This thread—omg.

;-)


32 posted on 12/30/2023 9:27:27 AM PST by cgbg ("Our democracy" = Their Kleptocracy)
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To: SaxxonWoods
Yep. There's nothing like ignoring a sinking Titanic to keep it afloat.

"There's no place like home. There's no place like home..."

All of you Dorothys out there are in for some exceedingly unpleasant surprises.

33 posted on 12/30/2023 9:53:21 AM PST by Noumenon (You're not voting your way out of this. KTF)
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To: Deaf Smith
...Historians of the future, flash-frying peccary testicles and mesquite pods over their campfires...

The author is speculating that in a post-Biden America, even the historians might be living rough and trying to survive on anything they can find to eat. Ever see the movie "The Road"? Kinda like that.

34 posted on 12/30/2023 9:59:14 AM PST by Max in Utah (A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.)
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To: AAABEST

“I never read a single word after an author uses ‘CE’ to mark time.”

Never heard of it. Just looked it up. What a load of crap, huh?


35 posted on 12/30/2023 10:09:55 AM PST by MayflowerMadam ("A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once.")
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To: Max in Utah
>>trying to survive on anything they find to eat

Would be a very serious situation if the millions of Texas feral hogs have already been eaten and everyone is fighting for the remaining small populations of peccary.

36 posted on 12/30/2023 1:56:51 PM PST by Deaf Smith (When a Texan takes his chances, chances will be taken that's for sure.)
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To: MtnClimber

My prediction for 2024: starting about a week into November, personal inventories of ammunition will begin a sudden and steep decline but, good news for reloaders, empty brass will begin to increase


37 posted on 12/30/2023 3:13:17 PM PST by muir_redwoods (Freedom isn't free, liberty isn't liberal and you'll never find anything Right on the Left)
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To: MtnClimber

About a third of the way through 2024 and I am not optimistic. It is worse than I thought it would be.


38 posted on 05/13/2024 6:25:31 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
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To: AAABEST

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

Not interested.”

A perfect example, IMHO, of the olde idiom of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.

Very valid points worth considering in this article. Any knee-jerk refusal to even read the material is very closed-minded and short-sighted... and in doing so, you are doing yourself a disservice. JS...


39 posted on 05/13/2024 7:50:13 AM PDT by Danie_2023
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