Posted on 02/05/2017 3:17:03 PM PST by Lorianne
I guess you’ve noticed by now that the center didn’t hold. Instead of a secure platform for political premises like tradition, precedent, rationality, and cultural norms, you see a fiery maw of sheer emotion between the camps of the so-called Left and the so-called Right.
I say so-called because the campus Left and the Trump Right have escaped the categorical corrals they formerly occupied. And they may have left their customary official parties stranded and dying too. It may be fatuous to say whether that is a good or bad thing; it just is, for the moment. They are two halves of a polity so broken and so far apart that it is also hard to see how they might ever come back together into a consensus about how a society might operate successfully.
Not having a consensus — some substantial overlap between circles of perspective — it’s not surprising that America can’t construct a coherent view of what is happening, or make a plan for what to do about it. Mainly what’s happening is the running down of fossil fuel based techno-industrial economies, and the main symptom is falling standards of living, with fading prospects for future happiness and security.
As I’ve said before, our economic picture is basically untenable due to the falling energy-return-on-investment of the crucial oil supply (shout-out to Steve St. Angelo). At the high point of 1920s oil production the ratio was around 100-1. The shale oil “miracle” is good for about 5-1. The aggregate of all oil these days is under 30-1. Below that number, you’ve got to shed some activities in our complex economy (or they just get too expensive to support) — things like high-paying labor jobs, medical care, tourism, college, commuting, heating 2500 square foot homes…).
Oddly the way it’s actually working out is that America is simply shedding its whole middle class and all its accustomed habits and luxuries. At least that’s how it adds up in effect. Naturally, that produces a lot of bad feeling.
President Trump is unlikely to be able to fix that essential problem, unless he can pilot the whole political-economy into a glide-path leading toward neo-medievalism — what I call the World Made By Hand.
SNIP (there's more)
SNAP (Post it here.)
One thing both “extremes” seem to have in common; they think things aren’t working.
The vast majority of people I personally know dislike both the ‘protesters’ (punks and no good low lifes) and President Trump and his supporters. I know it’s just where I live, but 80 percent of the people I work with and know socially wanted more of the same, society as it is and moving in the direction it’s been moving. Of course where I live the economy is good and getting better. That was the big mistake Hillary made, hanging out in the bubble where things are OK, and that’s how she ran; the reality is that for people who don’t live in areas like I do (northern CA wine country) things are bad and not getting better; Trump knew that and thus won. If I stayed in the bubble and didn’t listen to friends and relatives in places like Indiana and Montana, I’d be surprised, too. They get mad when I say I don’t see President Trump as anything terribly radical, racist or out of alignment with traditional American domestic and foreign policy; it’s only been since WW2 that anything other than ‘America First’ would have been considered normal.
I’ve seen that “trans-dykes good pure” pic a couple of times now. WTH does it mean? Do I want to know ? haha.
Yes, good points.
Unlike the author I think there are areas of consensus. For example a lot of people of the left I know aren’t really in thrall to victimhood politics and are just as turned off by it as people of the right who I know. Many were turned off by the pussy-hat march on Washington, even if they generally hold leftish views.
It’s just that those areas of consensus don’t get much play in the dog-eat-dog nature our political discourse has become.
It’s a message targeted for those who believe in Unicorns & Nirvana (not the music group).
So WHERE do YOU live?
I tried to read Kunstler’s A World Made By Hand and failed.
Bear in mind, I love alternative history, science fiction and speculative literature. I am a member of the original Back to The Land Movement of the 1970s. The book is a smug presentation of a feudal lord’s view of Medieval life. I’ve lived this life partially in a world with available technology and various escape exits from the inevitable failures and catastrophes one encounters. Without those, it is harsh, uncompromising and wearing for the vast majority, especially children, the disabled, the elderly and women.
There are many reasons to dismiss Kunstler. This book is a small, but telling one. I’d love to extract his monetary cushion and watch him attempt this life style. Sort of like the Truman Show.
More B.S.
The economic assumptions in the essay are not valid.
North of San Francisco. Napa/Sonoma area.
Nice little bubble. I just don’t pretend that it’s anything other than a nice little bubble. I have family in Indiana and Montana and many friends in Idaho, Virginia and elsewhere; things aren’t so good. My house went up $320,000 in the last five years, my relatives in Alexandria Indiana, not so much. Tump nailed what worried people, Hillary told people in nice bubbles like mine that everything was going to be just like a 3rd Obama term. Not a good way to win.
Thx...yes...your area is a nice one...hope California gets its act together soon..would like to do another wine tour there
Thx...yes...your area is a nice one...hope California gets its act together soon..would like to do another wine tour there
“those who believe in Unicorns & Nirvana”
Drug induced, no doubt.
Just who is it that describes on the right? I am not familiar with any examples. They must surely be out there because the esteemed writer says they are but I don't see any. Where are the right wing riots?
Assuming this guy’s thesis were true, we could have built nuclear plants and transitioned away from fossil fuels except for purposes where they are essential. Of course the radical left blocked that route, because they want to destroy our society by whatever means necessary.
The feudal society and manor system was really an innovation when it came along, and offered a lot of benefits from the previous social arrangements. Even to this day, the countries in Europe that implemented manorism many centuries ago still have advantages over the areas that did not, because the social structures like the nuclear family which manorism produced persisted.
However, later systems gave even more benefits than feudalism, so while it might seem romantic to want to go back to something like that, it is counterproductive. What might be coming along, some ways in the future, is a technologically advanced form similar to manorism. If distributed manufacturing, robotics, and some other tech continues to advance and become widespread, you might see, instead of a village producing everything the village needs, each household being able to produce much of what they need, provided certain raw materials. That is, if we can last another century or so without everything collapsing :)
Trump is a progressOR. The progressIVES are shocked to see actual motion, motion they are starting to realize is non-political, I see them starting to heel and ponder this.
In the feudal system, 95% 0f the population spent much of its time looking at the south end of a team of north-bound oxen. Usually, the oxen belonged to somebody else.
The peasant farmers supported the whole system. The nobility took 10% of what they grew, the Church took another 10%. That is when the crops were good; when they were poor, the landlords collected the same amounts, leaving the serfs with less. A bad year and people starved; just not the nobles.
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