[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Anxious Hiatus

[Bill Totten]

Clusterfuck Nation

by Jim Kunstler

Comment on current events by the author of
The Long Emergency (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005)

www.kunstler.com (May 26 2008)


My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at
all booksellers.
____________________________________


Loveliness was everywhere this holiday weekend in upstate New York, and
it was probably hard for many to believe that the wayward nation would
return to the dread uncertainty of life in the crash lane when the
barbeques were over. There was even a wan overtone to the late-night
sports news about the Indy 500 race - as though the spectacle of cars
droning round and round a speed oval epitomized the futility of American
life in this moment of our history.

I had a discussion with one guy at a Sunday night party about the
prospects for hydrogen-powered cars. We rehearsed the usual reasons why
such a system was unlikely to get up-and-running - and then he said,
"... but what if we took all the money from the war and put it into
something like the space program and ... they came up with some way to
make it happen ...!"

This is certainly the golden heart of the great wish out there, as the
empire of Happy Motoring begins to run down on $4 gasoline. It seems
inconceivable that a society so bold as to put men on the moon (fer
crissake) can't overcome such a prosaic problem as finding something
other than oil byproducts to run our cars on.