[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] In the Reality Lounge

[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 (November 17 2008)


The G-20 came to Washington for the weekend and sucked all the air out
of the city before announcing that they were really serious about
patching all the leaks in the foundering ship of globalism. Well, they
have to at least pretend that they are doing something. Meanwhile, the
former bit player known as reality has taken center stage in the ship's
main lounge. It is putting on an act even gnarlier than the Kit Kat Klub
show in Cabaret.

This reality show is sending some clear signals to the denizens of the
real and really crowded world. The main signal is that the trade and
financing rackets of recent decades are over. The extravaganza of
economic hypergrowth based on cheap resources is over. The promiscuous
swapping around of risk and rewards is over. There is no global
institutional framework for managing the impairment left in the wake of
this binge. It will be up to the individual nations now to figure out
their national lives and livings.

Alas, the financial impairment is still on-going world-wide and has
quite a ways to run before it's finished working its hoodoo on the
so-called advanced economies. The lame duck US economic posse so far has
done everything possible except the two things that really matter: allow
the fraudulent securities at the heart of the problem to be exposed to
the light of day to determine their actual value; and allow those
companies who trafficked in them to suffer the full consequences by
going out-of-business. For the moment, they're content to shovel cash
into the truck-bed of every enterprise in America that shows up at the
Treasury loading dock. This can only have the effect of eventually
destroying the value of that cash.

President-elect Obama's cagey appearance on 60-Minutes showed that he's
hardly in a position to say anything of substance about this country's
predicament as long as the old posse holds the levers of the economic
machinery - and retains the ability to run it into the ground before
January 20 2009. So many tribulations are now underway in our Republic
that it is hard to fathom what the head of the federal government might
do besides act as a kind of psychological counselor-in-chief  to a land
full of people in distress.

The world has changed faster than anyone realizes. One big question is
how long the American people will stumble around in a daze before we get
back to work doing constructive things in this country - and by that I
mean activities scaled to the resource realities of the years just
ahead. More specifically, I mean how we are going to grow the food we
eat without massive quantities of diesel fuel and petroleum-based
"inputs" and also how we are going to make any of the useful products we
need in an energy scarcer time.

Perhaps Mr Obama knows that we're not going back to anything even close
to the business-as-usual that shaped our lives for the generations born
after 1945. I would advise him to begin thinking about this by dividing
the problem into two parts. The first part is how his government might
handle the sheer emotional fallout of a people whose standard-of-living
will be pulled out from under them. For a while, perhaps the first year
or so, the public is apt to be trusting and generous, especially
regarding a president who has had some acquaintance with being short of
cash himself, and who can speak English both clearly and empathetically.
Mr Obama stands a good chance at playing that role successfully, at
least for a while.

The second part, though, is the more difficult operational and
administrative matter of promoting the necessary downscaling of all the
essential activities of daily life. This is especially difficult given
the current trend of the government suddenly taking ownership of
everything, from the banking system perhaps to certain areas of heavy
industry (if Detroit gets its way). The Obama government will have to
resist the temptation to prevent enterprises from failing. These failing
things have to get out of the way before new activities can get
underway. It will also require government leaders to tell the public the
hard truth that it can't do everything we would like it to do.

The fiasco of medical care is certainly a product of connivance between
greedy and heartless insurance companies, profit-driven hospitals, and
avaricious drug-makers. But the public itself is responsible for its own
suicidal diet of double cheez burritos and Dr Pepper. How about a
national health-care system with one basic requirement: to qualify,
participants must be within ten pounds of their appropriate weight.
Pretty harsh, huh? Maybe. But times are harsh too, and bound to get
harsher. This system would have the great advantage of being absolutely
clear. Let the United Way and other charities devote their resources to
educating the recklessly obese about diet and exercise so they can
eventually qualify.

The transportation quandary suggests that we have to move away from the
private automobile and commercial trucking, and that the airline
industry is certain to contract dramatically. When are we going to start
the discussion about rebuilding a US public transit system that was once
the envy of the world? It no longer matters how much Americans love
their cars, or even how much investment we've made in car
infrastructure. At some point, we just have to face the fact that
democratic mass motoring is no longer on the program. Nor is a
commercial economy based on incessant motoring. One other implication of
this is the necessity to use our waterways for moving things and people
again. Has anybody noticed, for instance, that the once-bustling New
York City Harbor, possibly the biggest and best sheltered deepwater
harbor in the world, has next-to-zero operating docks left along its
massive perimeter? While you're at it, have a look at the waterfronts of
Louisville, Cincinnati, Kansas City and a score of other inland port
cities on great navigable rivers. What you'll see are condo sites,
festival marketplaces, picnic grounds, and plain old empty lots -
everything but the infrastructure for commerce. We can't afford this
anymore. We have to put these places back to work.

The G-20 leaders in Washington last week made a lot of noise about
ramping up domestic spending. In the decades to come, this will not
happen without import replacement - which is just what it sounds like:
instead of importing things you need, you make them at home, and people
get paid a living wage to do it. Import replacement, by the way, is
exactly how the United States rose in the 19th century to become the
world's preeminent manufacturing nation. It doesn't foreclose trade with
other countries, but it self-evidently changes the terms of that trade,
and it would spell the end of the kind of predatory "globalism" that has
led to the current state of gross imbalance and reckless destruction.

I believe this will happen whether we like it or not, because these
things occur in cycles and the current cycle is obviously ending with a
thundering crash of economies, modes of operation, habits and practices,
and expectations. For better or worse, we have to move on to new ways of
doing things.

I regard the most dangerous fantasy in America right now to be the wish
that we can keep running things just the way they are now (my recurring
synecdoche of WalMart, Walt Disney World, and the interstate highway
system) by replacing oil and gas with "alternative fuels". This just
ain't gonna happen. We're going to use every kind of alt.energy there is
and they will still require us to live very differently than we did the
past sixty years. The public just doesn't get this. I don't know whether
President-elect Obama gets this. I hope he does, and I hope part of his
new mission will be to clarify this state of affairs for the public in
clear and effective speech. It's going to tick off a lot of them, but
it's the theme music playing in the reality lounge right now, and Mr
Obama would be advised to take up the tune.

_____

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

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/11/in-the-reality-lounge.html


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