Tag Archives: The Long Emergency

Labor Day Assessment, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on September 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

Big changes are coming and on the other side will be big alterations in lifestyle and probably a much reduced standard of living. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

There will be a Great Re-set, of course, but it’s not exactly the one that Western Civ is blabbering about — a mere shuffling of political and financial protocols. It’s happening with or without “Joe Biden,” the EU, and der Hoch Schwabenklaus, though the aggregate stupidity they represent is surely making the entry process worse. The Great Re-set is what happens when the business model goes bust for powering the world with oil and other fossil fuels — even if there is quite a bit of all that stuff left in the ground. Years ago, I called it The Long Emergency.

Everything emanates off of that, including the astonishing bouts of mischief made in attempts to work around it, assign the blame for it, grub money off it, and shift the effects of it from one group of people or one region of the world to another. Steve St. Angelo says it neatly: “Energy drives the economy; finance steers it.” That’s so. When the oil business model broke in 2008, industrial society lost its mojo and, after that, finance steered it into a ditch.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Debt, Economy, Energy, Environment, Governments, Politics, Propaganda, Tyranny

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The Game in Review, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on September 6, 2021 | Leave a comment

The government is losing control of the Covid “narrative.” It’s getting harder and harder for governments to control anything. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

The upcoming twentieth anniversary of 9/11 is soon upon us and the horrifying videos are back in your face. Whatever way the twin towers came down — and, personally, I think those airplanes got’er done — the demolition provides a potent image for what is happening now: smoke billows out of the top floors, rather like a person with his hair on fire… and then each giant structure slumps into total collapse, sending shock-waves of toxic dust through the desecrated dwelling place of civilization, the city. That’s us in metaphor… like I said: now.

America’s hair is on fire. A chimeric lab virus apparently funded by our own government has been on-the-loose since January 2020. Supposedly, that is. It’s a little hard to tell because, especially in the early going, a lot of very old and unwell people died — as the very old and unwell do — and a Covid-19 tag was slapped on their death certificates, and that primed the hysteria pump that is still pumping away heroically. A Covid-19 virus may indeed be running through the population, but 98.8 percent do not die from it and, as Covid-19 came on, the usual seasonal flu apparently went on sabbatical. Go figure.

The ignited hysteria was reinforced by a PCR test routine that could produce Covid-19 “cases” on-demand, and still does — even though the government had to admit that the test was unreliable and ordered it discontinued (effective, wait for it, December 2021… really?). Meanwhile, the cases keep coming… as ascertained by what means exactly? PCR tests, still? Or what?

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Cronyism, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Governments, Medicine, Politics, Propaganda

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Christmas in Flyover Land, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on December 23, 2019 | Leave a comment

James Howard Kunstler ponders the prospects for rejuvenation in flyover country. From Kunstler at kunstler.com:

Last year, a local guy started renovating a restaurant on Main Street that has been shuttered for at least fifteen years. He’d retired from the army and started a company that made a fortune clearing landmines in faraway lands where US nation-building plans went awry. Wasn’t that a ripe business opportunity! He’s from here and loves the village and married his high school sweetheart — and would like the place to come back to life.

He’s partnered up with another guy who intends to open a bistro with a bar, a fireplace, and supposedly a boutique distillery operation in the back. That would give some people in town a reason to leave the house at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, when the day’s work is done — people like me who work alone all day. It could also give the citizens of this community a comfortable place to talk to each other about their lives and the place where we all live, and what we might do about things here. That’s called local politics.

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Posted in Business, Collapse, Government, History, Morality, Politics, Society

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Rock the Vote, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on November 12, 2018 | 1 comment

Regardless of political antics, the nation is headed towards a cataclysmic crash. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

It warmed my heart to read in The Wall Street Journal that Hillary Clinton is preparing to re-enter the Washington DC swamp from her deluxe exile in the woods of Chappaqua, New York, and make another run for the White House — though it’s hard to calculate how many porters in sandals and loincloths will be required to lug all her baggage around the campaign trail. Will hubbie hit the hustings with her? That would be rich. I can just imagine the pussy-hatted legions shrieking #MeToo at every stop. Surely there is no better way to put the Democratic Party out of its misery.

The post-election melodramas in Georgia and Florida grind on, despite the various rules and laws about deadlines for certifying ballots and accounting for their origin. What is a ballot after all but a mere scrap of paper, easily reproducible, and interchangeable. Sometimes, they make strange journeys out of election headquarters in trucks and SUVs, seeking fun and excitement, and they have been known to mysteriously turn up by the hundredweight in broom closets where they retreat to caucus. Only one thing is certain: the ballot fiasco is a billable hours bonanza for DC lawyers arriving on the scene to sort things out — which they may not manage anyway.

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Posted in Collapse, Debt, Economics, Economy, Government, Insurrection, Media, Money, Morality, Politics

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Feeling the Heat Yet? by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on October 20, 2018 | Leave a comment

Nothing either party does is going to prevent the house from burning down, and most of what they do only fan the flames. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

The loyal opposition is the party out-of-power in a polity that stands divided into two factions — assuming the polity can still function as such, which, apparently, it no longer can. Historically in the USA, this used to allow for the tempered regulation of changing conditions during two hundred years of a rapidly evolving techno-industrial economy that pumps out more goodies year after year while the population grows and grows.

Much of America, political leaders especially, assume that this arc of growing goodies and more people will just keep trending up forever. They are just plain mistaken about that. Rather, the whole industrialized, wired-up world is rolling over into the greatest contraction ever witnessed. The only thing that’s postponed the recognition of this reality is the profligate borrowing of money, or shall we say “money” — data entries that pretend to represent secure wealth. This amounts to borrowing from the future to pay for how you live today. Of course, the act of borrowing is based on the supposition that there will enough future productive activity to allow you to pay back your borrowings with interest. This is obviously not the case now, in the face of epochal contraction, especially of affordable energy to keep things running hot.

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Posted in Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Government, Horseshit, Politics, Society

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