News & Opinion

Hypercritical Mode

6 days ago

A Hard Rain

The political disorder spooling out is the political expression of the long emergency that the nation faces as it finally encounters the limits to growth we were warned about decades ago. The techno-industrial phase of history is ending, and we are left only with inadequate fantasies for coming to terms with it and moving forward. The dynamic relationship between affordable energy supplies and the operations of money roils at the core of this predicament. They are undoing each other and the result will be a contraction of human activity. The big question we refuse to face is how to cope with contraction.

Beyond the ongoing orchestrated coup stands a reality-optional political Left consumed by serial hysterias, uninterested in truth, steeped in social despotism, and apparently willing to do anything to gain power. We should be very concerned with what they intend to do with that power. As they attempt to redistribute wealth, they will make the unhappy discovery that the wealth itself is subject to the wholesale contraction underway. The overvalued “assets” representing “money” hoarded by the “wealthy” will turn out to be figments of a runaway debt crisis. We have already debased the operations of banking, and the tokens that banks issue — currencies and securities — levitate over an abyss.

We already have plenty of evidence for what the Left will do to the principle of political liberty. Their shibboleths of “diversity” and “inclusion” really mean shutting down free speech and telling everybody how to think. They are less interested in “social justice” than in plain coercion, the pleasure they take in pushing people around. What’s worse is that they want to use government as the instrument for enforcing their will. I object to that not just on principle but because government itself will be subject to the same contraction affecting everything else. It simply won’t be able to compensate for all the other losses. Can we downscale its activities coherently, or will we make that journey violently, in some sort of civil war?

The Left seems to be opting for civil war. It is surely underway among branches of government and the administrative bureaucracy I call the Deep State. Barack Obama, John Brennan and others set the intel and police apparatus against Mr. Trump and the war goes on in the latest reckless campaign of “whistleblowers” who are no such thing, but rather agents provocateurs of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Democrats in congress play a dangerous game with this as they attempt to engineer a non-impeachment impeachment — that is, without a vote by the whole House. To allow that vote would be a move to allow the opposition to participate in issuing subpoenas and seeing evidence, and the Democrats are bent on to preventing that. That ploy will provoke the White House to ignore their subpoenas and demands for documents on the principle that this mode of “Impeachment” is not legitimate.

The machinations of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff in this latest “whistleblower” affair pulsate with skullduggery. Are we to suppose that they will march out one “whistleblower” after another whose identity — or very reality — will remain secret through these proceedings? This is the sort of thing you get in Spanish inquisitions and soviet show trials. Until recently, all Americans had very firm objections to kangaroo courts and star chambers where the common-law safeguards of due process are thrown out the window. If the standoff goes to the Supreme Court, we’ll surely get yet another crusade to disqualify Justice Kavanaugh.

The Democratic Party is doing everything possible to destroy the legitimacy of these institutions — starting with elections themselves. The origins of the RussiaGate hoax will demonstrate that the party itself was behind “interference” in the 2016 election, and enlisted the help of several foreign governments in doing so. That is why they are so desperate to keep the level of hysteria amped to the max. The day may be not far off when a great and chilling silence falls over this mob as they look to the sky and see the indictments raining down.

kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/ ...

Hypercritical Mode

6 days ago

In Memoriam: Reality

The Golden Golem of Greatness shifted into mad bull overdrive for last night’s Minneapolis fan rally, cussing and bellowing at the picadors of the Left who have been sticking lances in his neck for three years. Decorum is not Mr. Trump’s strong suit, but then the bull is not sent into the ring to negotiate politely for his life. The narrative of the bullring is certain death. The bull must do what he can within his nature to dispute it.

It’s in Mr. Trump’s nature to act the part of a reality TV star, and, of course, it is the nature of reality TV shows to be unreal. That is perhaps the ruling paradox of life in the USA these days. Saturated in unreality, the spectators (also called “voters”) flounder through a relentless barrage of narratives aimed at confounding them, with the unreal expectation that they can make sense of unreal things. In a place like Minneapolis of an October evening, you can go see the Joker movie or take in the President’s rally — and come away with the same sense of hyper-unreality. We’re no longer the nation we pretend to be and we don’t know it. Jokers are wild and the joke’s on us.

So it goes in these dangerous autumn days of The Fourth Turning. Something’s got to give, and all indications are it will happen where few are looking at the moment: the sideshow of money and banking. When things start slip-sliding away over in that alternative universe, Mr. Trump will be propelled into the role he was cast for in 2016: bag-holder for economic collapse. The global slowdown of productive activity and commerce is undermining a vast network of dubious financial obligations ruled by an overgrowth of loans that will never be paid back. Unlike New York real estate moguls, the whole world can’t just go into bankruptcy court and apply for a fresh start. The “workout” is brutal and produces epoch-defining trauma.

The nation has been too preoccupied with political mud-wrestling to notice that the US debt has gone hockey-stick parabolic, racking up $814 billion just since August. Math majors may see that’s close to a trillion dollars, or 4 percent of the total $22,837 trillion, just in a few months. Zowie! (Hat tip Steve St. Angelo.) Parabolic trends don’t end well. In the meantime, the Federal Reserve, as usual, attempts to “fix” the problems caused by excessive bad faith borrowing with additional excessive bad faith lending in its overnight repo operations and revamped non-QE QE. That’s telling you something about where the dollar is headed: history’s graveyard of dead currencies. The upshot is looking like an inflationary depression for the ages.

That event would kill the shale oil industry, and with it the prospects for continuing the mode of living that Americans consider normal. The shale oil producers will not be able to borrow more money from a crippled banking system to produce a type of oil that is basically unprofitable to lift out of the ground. That’s when America starts to go medieval lifestyle-wise. The curious feature of this big picture is how the anxieties generated by these looming economic and financial tensions express themselves in politics as a sort of early warning system. The craziness of the Trump era — which is distributed pretty equally between both factions — represents the failure of all involved to cope with the mandates of reality, which really exist despite the illusions of our realty television zeitgeist.

The current impeachment frenzy is heading into a collision with these forces, along with the so-far secretive activities of Attorney General Barr and his deputy Mr. Durham. When that happens, Mr. Trump will not be the only mad bull in the national ring, and the nation will be notably short of toreadors. The whole bullring is liable to get busted up with quite a few fans gored in the ensuing mayhem. As I’ve averred before, don’t be surprised if the 2020 election doesn’t even happen. The institutional damage may be too deep.

History doesn’t like vacuums anymore than nature does, and what we’re facing is a vacuum of authority that the USA has never experienced before. That’s the final consequence of a society in which anything goes and nothing matters. Better check what you believe and who you believe in the days ahead, and recalibrate accordingly. This ain’t no foolin’ around.

kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/ ...