Oh my, oh my. What’s to become of us?

Kunstler lays it bare.  “Money Minus Value, No Limit” – Kunstler

I love him when he’s in this mode.  I also have a soft spot for Wile E. Coyote and, like Jim, I also don’t buy into the conspiracy theories.  There are plenty enough real ones of those around, but not concerning this virus.  Though I don’t doubt such schemes would have crossed some demented minds and that sort of thing does still pose some future threat.

Speaking of medical experts around the world, buying into or complicit with the ‘shut the world down while we loot it’ virus conspiracy, “they can’t all be orcs,” says Jim.  I agree.  Some may even be normal folk – though I do try to avoid medical experts myself for the most part.

On “Americans confusing movies with real life,” well that is simply a known fact (but they are not alone in that). As is the one about Bill Gates “using his foundation’s deep resources to reduce the world’s population by sowing maximum disorder,” as a general philosophy.  So I disagree with Jim there, although I am not aware of Gates saying or doing anything in particular around COVID-19.

As for the “floundering of centralized authorities,” well that is certainly going on – though not everywhere as yet. But pertaining to that floundering – which will soon turn into a desperate clutching at straws and a general collapse of everything connected to social order, again, this disruption to normality leading to a “shadowy gang of “globalists” using the disorder spawned by the virus to impose a centralized global uber-government run by international financiers,” well that is a real threat. Money, for a while at least, will still be able to buy a lot of things, including armies of black clad riot police to violently enforce a stern new order of suppression and oppression in the interests of maintaining an air of stability. What else are all of those out-of-work soldiers and mercenaries going to do? And bankrupt governments,  if such are still operable, will not be able to afford to keep them on the payroll.

Jim’s statement that “As they flounder, the faith of their subject peoples ebbs away and the trust horizon shrinks so that the people are no longer willing to depend on distant authorities for anything” is, I think, a peculiarly American view of their own supposed independence.  If only such a case were true of more than just a minority.  I fear that the vast majority of the population everywhere would opt for the centralized, seemingly secure, approach offered by whatever organised power prevails – no matter its composition or demands – without giving much thought to what that may entail in terms of personal liberties and freedom of choice. Security does not generally equate to liberty – as we can see even through the last couple of decades of what has been happening in Western societies up to this point.

Turning to US leadership, Trump may be an incoherent bumbler and Jim is right that the proposed alternative, Biden, “is missing a few transistors on the old motherboard,” but he is forgetting his own prediction that there may be no US election later this year for any such choice to be exercised.  The list of reasons why that may come about keeps getting longer as time passes. The one which involves “the modern equivalent of pitchforks,” is just one of those reasons – and if such a thing actually gets its wheels off the ground, there is no telling where it will end up.

So, while I agree and mildly disagree on various aspects, I really value Jim Kunstler’s writings for the stimulation to think important matters over that they provide.  For you too, I hope.