The Political Librarian

The Political Librarian, a journal from Washington University in St. Louis.

The Political Librarian is dedicated to expanding the discussion of, promoting research on, and helping to re-envision locally focused advocacy, policy, and funding issues for libraries.

We want to bring in a variety of perspectives to the journal and do not limit our contributors to just those working in the field of library and information science. We seek submissions from researchers, practitioners, community members, or others dedicated to furthering the discussion, promoting research, and helping to re-envision tax policy and public policy on the extremely local level.

All issues of this journal can be browsed here.

Kunstler's Columns This Week

Lately, Kunstler has taken on the country's intellectual/chattering classes. To him, not only are they concerned with the wrong things, they try to narrow debate. Of course, I disagree with Kunstler's stances on gender and race relations. (He seems to think gender-variance is an example of modern decadence. But examples of such occur throughout history: Here. And Hawaii's own mahu phenomenon.) He is strongest on the importance of (cheap) energy to running modern civilization.

Kunstler: We're Good People, Really We Are!

The disgrace of America’s putative intellectual class is nearly complete as it shoves the polity further into dysfunction and toward collapse. These are the people Nassim Taleb refers to as “intellectuals-yet-idiots.” Big questions loom over this dynamic: How did the thinking class of America sink into this slough of thoughtlessness? And why – what is motivating them?

One path to understanding it can be found in this sober essay by Neal Devers, The Overton Bubble, published two years ago on TheFuturePrimaeval.net — a friend turned me on to it the other day (dunno how I missed it). The title is a reference to the phenomenon known as the Overton Window. Wikipedia summarizes it:

The Overton Window, also known as the window of discourse, is the range of ideas the public will accept…. The term is derived from its originator, Joseph P. Overton (1960–2003), a former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy….

Devers refines the definition:

The Overton Window is a concept in political sociology referring to the range of acceptable opinions that can be held by respectable people. “Respectable” of course means that the subject can be integrated with polite society. Respectability is a strong precondition on the ability to have open influence in the mainstream.

This raises another question: who exactly is in this corps of “respectable people” who set the parameters of acceptable thought? Primarily, the mainstream media — The New York Times, The WashPo, CNN, etc. — plus the bureaucratic functionaries of the permanent government bureaucracy, a.k.a. the Deep State, who make and execute policy, along with the universities which educate the “respectable people” (the thinking class) into the prevailing dogmas and shibboleths of the day, and finally the think tanks and foundations that pay professional “experts” to retail their ideas.

...

Here is an alternative list of matters [the thinking classes] are not generally concerned about or interested in:
•The energy quandary at the heart of our economic malaise.
•The enormous debt racked up to run society in the absence of affordable energy inputs.
•The dangerous interventions and manipulation in markets by unelected officials of the Federal Reserve.
•The extraordinary dysfunction of manipulated financial markets.
•The fragility of a banking system based on accounting fraud.
•The dysfunction and fragility of the American suburban living arrangement.
•The consequences of a catastrophic breakdown in the economy due to the above.
•The destruction of planetary ecology, threatening the continuation of the human race, and potentially all life.

More here.

and

(Note that I don't share his general pessimism.)

Kunstler: Holy Hell.

The abiding enigma of this tormented era remains: why has the thinking class of America abandoned thinking? The answer is: it’s the reaction to their own failure. Failure to do what? To produce the utopia that Gnostic liberalism promised — a perfect world based on altering human nature.

The result is an essentially religious hysteria, like the witch frenzies of Medieval Europe that were sometimes provoked by ergot poisoning — a fungus with toxic psychotropic properties that grew on the harvested rye, inducing frightful hallucinations in the villagers, who then lashed out at their perceived supernatural antagonists. Trump in our time is the ergot on the bread of our politics. And Russia is the witch.

Like other operations of the human mind, this collective fugue-state has a big subconscious module in it: the deep, poorly articulated fear that the signal notion of Progress behind progressive politics in the industrial era has reached a dead end. The world is clearly not becoming a better place, but rather reeling into disorder and ecological crisis, despite all the rational programs and politics of modern democracy, and political failure is everywhere.

More here.

Various Tweets on Peak Oil and the Environment

The frank, erudite @RichardHeinberg on where to focus our effort: Disengage from the spectacle https://t.co/22TMMniDpM via @postcarbon

— Maria T Stadtmueller (@mariastadt) March 30, 2017

Peak Oil Review – Mar 27, 2017 https://t.co/YX6LBIUTeA (@buildresilience)

— Post Carbon Inst. (@postcarbon) March 27, 2017

One report places #Bolivia’s #deforestation rate at more than 700,000 acres per year from 2010 to 2015. https://t.co/5pghVaAKCq

— Sierra Magazine (@Sierra_Magazine) March 27, 2017

More on deforestation in Bolivia here.

Daily Digest 3/31 - Good News Friday: Homeless Aid In LA, The Dawn Of Commercial Spaceflight https://t.co/4mUe6kbpVz pic.twitter.com/b4Xo0l4QGG

— PeakProsperity.com (@chrismartenson) March 31, 2017

Kunstler's Forecast 2017: The Second Excerpt

So extensive is Kunstler's 2017 forecast that this is only the first part of the section "Vagrant Thoughts on Geopolitics."

Kunstler's full column.


Vagrant Thoughts on Geopolitics

As I write just before New Year’s Eve, President Obama is trying to start World War Three with Russia as a parting gift to the voting public. I’m among the skeptics who think that the “Russia Hacks Election story” is a ruse to divert the public’s attention from the stupendous failure of the Democratic Party to win, as expected. Rather, Wikileaks should get the Pulitzer Prize for revealing so much about the nefarious workings of the Clinton Foundation and the Democratic National Committee.

Regular readers know I didn’t vote for Trump, that I heaped considerable abuse on him in the campaign commentaries. But I didn’t take any comfort in the nostrum about being “better off with the Devil you know (Hillary) than the one you don’t know (Trump).” Both candidates were awful, and the condition of the country is pretty awful as we turn the corner onto 2017. Readers also know from these commentaries and from my books that I expect we will have to make big changes in our living arrangements up ahead as the techno-industrial fiesta winds down. I won’t reiterate the particulars here, but 2017 is the hinge year for that [Emphasis mine.--P.Z.]. The strains on global finance are so spectacular that something’s got give. President Trump is sure to be overwhelmed by epic dislocations in markets, currencies, debt, and misguided central bank efforts to hold back the tides of a necessary re-set — a re-set which will see a lot of wealth vanish and a lot of pain inflicted on the losers of wealth, including whole societies.

We have three major European elections to look forward to in 2017: The Netherlands and France in the Spring, and Germany in the fall. Geert Wilders (a member of the Trump Big Hair Club), is virulently against the “Islamisation” of his country. He has campaigned previously to leave the European Union and for the return to the old guilder currency. Should the right-wing Marine LePen win in France, the EU experiment will likely end — she has made express promises to take France out of the EU. Angela Merkel has made herself impressively unpopular by opening the gates to a flood of immigrants fleeing the breakdown zones of the Middle East and Africa. And then, because of the Schengen Agreement (free passage across EU borders), the immigrants were unleashed on the rest of Europe.

Those of us paying attention may have easily lost count of the terror atrocities carried out across Europe by Islamic fanatics. Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice, the Brussels airport, the Berlin Christmas Market were only the most recent and spectacular. For years, individuals have been stabbed, had their heads cut off, throats cut, been blown up, machine-gunned. Take a look at this comprehensive list going back to 2001. You may be astonished. In that light, it’s pretty hard to keep waving the “diversity” banner, and I sense that Europe has had enough of it. One big question is whether the new European right-wing leaders will actually move as far as mass deportations. I rather think they will.

The UK “Brexit” vote was surprise all right. (I hit a white-tailed deer on the Maine Turnpike at 70mph that June morning, uccchhh, and lived to tell about it.) Now there’s a fair chance that Parliament will find a way to wiggle out of Brexit. Noises are also emanating out of Brussels to the effect that the EU could loosen up some of their rules — e.g. the Schengen Agreement — to induce Britain to stay in the EU. But there are so many other fissures and fragilities in that system that the Brexit may not matter anymore. The European banking system is melting down and there is absolutely no way to rescue it on the macro EU scale. Italy was heading for a banking crackup before Christmas. Deutsche Bank has been whirling around the drain for a couple of years. When the US markets and banks shudder in 2017, Europe will get the vapors. Hence, I’ll forecast breakup of the EU by this time next year.

We’ve come to the pass where “all that is solid melts into air,” in the poetic phrase of old Karl Marx. Marx was referring to the “specter” of communism that loomed over burgeoning industrial society of the mid-19th century, and indeed it turned into quite a world struggle through the century that followed. But now communism is down for the count and we begin to see what is truly melting into air: Modernity itself, this colossal, hulking, grinding, machine of destruction that threatens the global eco-system, and all its sub-systems including the human realms of money and politics.

The idea that Modernity itself might go down is inconceivable to those in thrall to the Religion of Progress, which declares that the world (and life in it) only gets better and better every year. This would appear demonstrably untrue, just in the visible damage to the landscape and the living things that struggle to dwell there. The most obvious problem with Modernity has been human population overshoot. The truth is, we’re not going to do a darn thing about it. There won’t be any policy or protocol, despite the good intentions of the groups inveighing against it. It will just go on… until it can’t, to paraphrase the late Herb Stein. Of course, people still have sex under conditions of hardship, so the population may plateau for a while until we are well into the long emergency. But the usual suspects of starvation, disease, and war are all still out there, doing their thing, and will only ramp up their operations.

Kunstler: Signs of Desperation.

Kunstler: Signs of Desperation.

Idiocy and mendacity are a bad combo in the affairs of nations, especially in elections. The present case in the USA displays both qualities to near-perfection: on one side, a boorish pseudo-savior in zero command of ideas; on the other side, a wannabe racketeer-in-chief in full command of her instinctive deceit. Trump offers incoherent rhetoric in opposition to the current dismal order of things; Clinton offers empty, pandering rhetoric in defense of that order. Both represent an epic national drive toward political suicide.

The idiocy and mendacity extend to the broad voting public and the discredited elites pretending to run the life of the nation. The American public has never been this badly educated and more distracted by manufactured trivia. They know next to nothing. Even college seniors can’t name the Secretary of State or find Switzerland on a map. They don’t know in what century the Civil War took place. They couldn’t tell you whether a hypotenuse is an animal, a vegetable, or a mineral. Their right to vote is a danger to themselves.

The elites operate in their own twilight zone of ignorance, only at a loftier level, flying on wings of sheepskin. Submitted for your approval: Harvard wizard Kenneth Rogoff’s new book, The Curse of Cash. This is the latest salvo in the international campaign to herd all money into the control of central banks and central governments, supposedly to make central planning of the economy more effective — but really for the purpose of extending the fallacy that the mis-pricing of credit and collateral (that is, of everything) can save the current incarnation of crony capitalism, and more to the point, save the fortunes of the racketeers running it, along with the reputations of their intellectual errand boys. Henceforth, all “money” transactions would be traceable, allowing unprecedented power for authorities to regulate the lives of citizens.

It remains to seen whether the American public might be snookered into this scheme, which already has some traction in Europe. Of course, Europe is headed into some interesting political heavy weather of its own in the months ahead, and there is plenty of reason to think that even the docile people of Denmark and Sweden might eventually revolt against the central bank regime if they see the Germans do it.

Aggravating matters is the hyper-complexity of our current financial arrangements, much of it in the service of deliberately mystifying the masses. Does the public understand the rationale behind zero interest rate policy (ZIRP)? Not any more than they understand the interaction of gluons and quarks or the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It is one of the abiding mysteries of our time, for instance, that a group like AARP, purporting to represent the interests of retired persons, has offered not a peep of pushback to ZIRP, which has pounded retired people dependent on savings into penury. Of course, this might be explained by the pervasive racketeering feature of our current national life: AARP is an insurance racket masquerading as a citizen interest group. Or, stretching credulity to suppose that AARP is honest, perhaps the org’s executives don’t understand that zero interest on savings equals zero income to savers.

Kenneth Rogoff tries to justify his war on cash by invoking two of the era’s favorite bogymen: terrorists and drug dealers. Cash, he says, allows this axis of evil to do its thing(s). This is a ruse, of course. If currency is eliminated, these outfits will turn to gold and silver, it’s that simple. And so will everybody else, by the way. The real reason to abolish cash and herd all money into central banks is to permit the authorities to confiscate it one way or another, either by unavoidable taxation or by “bail-ins” — declaring deposits to be “unsecured loans” that can be repudiated in the event of a financial “accident.”

The results are already in for this experiment: “money” becomes more and more dishonest, that is, it cannot be trusted to represent what it pretends to stand for: an index of account and a store of value. Its role as the basis of capital formation is so impaired that real capital (i.e. wealth) cannot be generated, meaning that none of the credit issued as “money” will ever be paid back. Zero interest rate policy eventually equals zero interest paid. “Money” based on loans that won’t be paid back loses its legitimacy. Herding all the “money” onto central bank computers only allows for more three-card-monte maneuvers to conceal the bezzle. It would be much harder to hide the destruction of value in circulating paper currency. Eliminating currency as a medium of exchange can only lead to the repudiation of “money” — which will beat a quick path to the repudiation of all authority. And there is your recipe for really suicidal political disorder.

One more thing this week: why exactly are America’s Clinton-invested political elites inveighing so strenuously against Russia and its president, Mr. Putin? The US has gone out of its way to provoke Russia militarily the past several years. We foolishly sponsored the revolution in Ukraine that has left it a failed state — and which prompted Russia to reclaim the Crimea, historically its own territory and the site of its strategically crucial warm water ports. We continue to run NATO war game exercises along Russia’s borders. We fly surveillance planes in their airspace and then act surprised when Russia sends up fighters to remind us where we are. We hold naval exercises in the Black Sea and wonder why the Russians buzz us. Are we out of our minds? How would we act if the Russians flew their planes over Catalina Island or held naval war games off Hampton Roads? Who does the US policy elite think they’re kidding?

These memes in financial and foreign policy are dangerously crazy and dishonest. They are doing a good job of making the US political establishment look like a claque of fools and outlaws, and laying a red carpet for the election of Trump, the fake savior… the apotheosis of the fabled Greater Fool.

The Journal of American Greatness

Another busy week for me draws to a close. The September issues of Harper's and The Atlantic came in the mail today, and both are substantial reads. The Atlantic mentions, in an article called "Trump's Intellectuals", a short-lived website called The Journal of American Greatness. Online for only four months--it closed in June--JAG "made a highbrow case for overthrowing America's existing political order and replacing it with the raw, dynamic, intoxicating energy of Donald Trump."

JAG Recovered lists the titles of articles published on JAG, if not always the articles themselves, which were deleted.

At least some of them were republished elsewhere, e.g., "A Coherent 'Trumpism.'"

The Week: Trumpism for Intellectuals.

Kunstler: Burning Down the House

Kunstler: Burning Down the House.

There’s a new feature to the Anything-Goes-and-Nothing-Matters economy: Nothing-Adds-Up. The magicians who pretend to measure the growth of GDP (Gross Domestic Product — the monetary value of all the finished goods and services) came up with a second quarter “adjusted” figure of 1.2 percent. That would have to be construed by anyone acquainted with basic econ stats as perfectly dismal. And yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics put out a sparkly Nonfarm Payroll Report of 255,000 for July, way above the forecast 180,000.

There were so many ways to game the jobs number — between people forced to work more than one shit job and the notorious “birth/death model” used to just make up any old number for political purposes — that no one can take this information seriously. Anyway, the GDP number was instantly forgotten and the jobs number launched the stock markets to previously uncharted record altitude.

It’s that time of the year for the hedge fund boys, with their testosterone flowing, to start burning down their house rentals in the Hamptons. And it’s also the time of year for an ever more stressed financial system to go down in flames. And, of course, it’s a presidential election season. Even for one allergic to conspiracy theories, it’s not farfetched to imagine a coordinated effort by central banks — under government direction — to generate Money-Out-Of-Thin-Air (QE) for the purpose of allowing “liquidity” flows to end up in US equity and bond markets in order to paint a false picture of “recovery” so as to insure the election of Hillary Clinton. I think that is exactly behind the recent money-printing activities by the Japanese and European Central Banks, and the Bank of England.

Why would it end up in US markets? For bonds, because the Euro and Japanese bond sovereign yields are in sub-zero territory and the BOE just cut its prime rate lower than the US Federal Reserve’s prime rate; and for stocks, because the value of the other three currencies is sliding down and the dollar has been rising — so, dump your falling currency for the rising dollar and jam it into rising US stocks. It’ll work until it doesn’t.

Why do this for Hillary? Because she represents the continuity of all the current rackets being used to prop up belief in the foundering business model of western civilization. If she doesn’t get into the White House there may be no backstopping of the insolvent banks and bankrupt governments and a TILT message will appear in the sky. That TILT message is likely to appear anyway because, remember, the authorities are only pretending that they can manage events. In fact, all of their “management” strategies and shenanigans only insure the further distortion of the basic operating system, which is already so far out of whack from twenty years of previous management efforts that nothing in banking and markets really works anymore.

Companies don’t make money, despite rising share prices. No one in his right mind buys bonds with negative yields — that promise to pay back less over time — so governments have to pretend to buy them. (In fact, they don’t so much “buy” them as simply extinguish them by playing three-card-monte with national treasuries.) And, of course, the masses of people in all these nations — including the patsy USA — sink ever deeper into penury every month.

The release of tension is being felt in the ground game of politics where outsider candidates here and abroad are rising on a tide of rage and resentment. The fecklessness and stupidity of the elites has been epic, sacrificing everything to maintain the illusion of normality. Nothing is normal and “the people” are finally onto it. Sadly, it looks as if both politics and finance are veering toward crack-up simultaneously. The daisy-chained Too-Big-To-Fail banks are already choking on the suicide bolus of derivatives. The equity markets are one algo accident away from cratering. The bond markets are a sick joke. And Hillary may win the booby prize of presiding over the smoldering wreckage of it all. When it happens, she will have no idea what to do.

Kunstler: ZZZZZZZZZZZ….

Kunstler: ZZZZZZZZZZZ….

Political News

Mother Jones: "Texas Republicans Inch Closer to Secession." Oh my, grab the smelling salts.

In 1998, Mother Jones had a brief, superficial overview of the major American secession movements, starting with--Texas. It mentioned Hawaiian sovereignty, and quoted Dr. Kekuni Blaisdell.

---

From half a year ago, Rod Dreher predicting "Our Trump-ish, Cruz-y Future":

Neither Trump nor Cruz is electable. It’s looking like the only GOP candidate who might have the power to stop them is Marco Rubio, of all people. If he can’t do it, Republican Party bigs may have to hold their noses and back Cruz as the only way of stopping Trump.

It wasn’t long ago that Republicans were excited about the 2016 race, looking out over all the strong candidates in the field. That was before the Summer of Trump.

The Hullabaloo

I've been busy, and so I haven't paid much attention to the political news. I watched Rachel Maddow the other day, where she led the show with a lengthy account of Edward Cox, who married Richard Nixon's daughter Tricia, and is now head of the New York State Republican Party. (And he's not related to Archibald Cox, as I searched online.)

This poll was mentioned in today's paper as well:
"When it comes to rudeness in 2016 politics, the Republican presidential contest wins in a landslide."

Check out ElectionGuide.org, where you can read about elections all over the world. As I've noted earlier, Maureen Kyalya was running for President of Uganda. Museveni, Ugandan President since 1986, won in a landslide. He dismissed claims the election was rigged.

More later.

"When Writers Run for Office."

"Books and Ballots: When Writers Run for Office."

Various Links on Politics

"The wilful ignorance of a new generation of 'Liberals' shields the Congress from its culpability in the 1984 massacres" by Hartosh Singh Bal, Caravan Magazine, 2 April 2016.

This is the website of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

A few reviews of Jane Mayer's book Dark Money:

National Review.

Dissent.

Kirkus Reviews.

------
Update:

If I had a trust fund I would donate millions to @intifada @Mondoweiss @TheRealNews and @AlterNet among others https://t.co/690HqdMsVv

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) April 1, 2016

Former Pro Golfer Leaves Links to Pursue Promise of Greener Urban Farming Pastures https://t.co/664MmNMy8k (@buildresilience)

— Post Carbon Inst. (@postcarbon) March 31, 2016

Garfield is running for president too:
https://twitter.com/Garfield

Put a REAL fat cat in the White House! https://t.co/oF0dZDKJ51 #PresidentGarfield #YouCouldDoWorse pic.twitter.com/SCHlEs7WWN

— Garfield (@Garfield) March 24, 2016

Alexander Cockburn, Thou Shouldst Be Alive at This Hour...

What would Alexander Cockburn have made of the 2016 presidential race--especially the candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders-- or the Charleston church shooting? We have a good idea but his commentary is missed.

A warts-and-all review of A Colossal Wreck by Paul Berman.

"Political Critiques of the Anthropocene."

"Political Critiques of the Anthropocene" (Telos 172, Fall 2015).

Kunstler column: "Worse Than Hitler."

Kunstler column: "Worse Than Hitler."

E ven the formerly august New York Times grants that Donald J. Trump has ignited a voter firestorm of grievance against a dumb show election process that rewards a craven avoidance of real issues. Immigration is actually a stand-in for the paralysis, incompetence, overreach, and bloatedness of government generally in our time — but it is a good doorway into the larger problem.

Immigration is a practical problem, with visible effects on-the-ground, easy to understand. I’m enjoying the Trump-provoked debate mostly because it is a pushback against the disgusting dishonesty of political correctness that has bogged down the educated classes in a swamp of sentimentality. For instance, Times Sunday Magazine staffer Emily Bazelon wrote a polemic last week inveighing against the use of the word “illegal” applied to people who cross the border without permission on the grounds that it “justifies their mistreatment.” One infers she means that sending them back where they came from equals mistreatment.

It’s refreshing that Trump is able to cut through this kind of tendentious crap. If that were his only role, it would be a good one, because political correctness is an intellectual disease that is making it impossible for even educated people to think — especially people who affect to be political leaders. Trump’s fellow Republicans are entertainingly trapped in their own cowardliness and it’s fun to watch them squirm.

But for me, everything else about Trump is frankly sickening, from his sneering manner of speech, to the worldview he reveals day by day, to the incoherence of his rhetoric, to the wolverine that lives on top of his head. The thought of Trump actually getting elected makes me wonder where Arthur Bremer is when we really need him.

Did any of you actually catch Trump’s performance last week at the so-called “town meeting” event in New Hampshire (really just a trumped-up pep rally)? I don’t think I miscounted that Trump told the audience he was “very smart” 23 times in the course of his remarks. If he really was smart, he would know that such tedious assertions only suggest he is deeply insecure about his own intelligence. After all, this is a man whose lifework has been putting up giant buildings that resemble bowling trophies, some of them in the service of one of the worst activities of our time, legalized gambling, which is based on the socially pernicious idea that it’s possible to get something for nothing.

I daresay that legalized gambling has had a possibly worse effect on American life the past three decades than illegal immigration. Gambling is a marginal activity for marginal people that belongs on the margins — the back rooms and back alleys. It was consigned there for decades because it was understood that it’s not healthy for the public to believe that it’s possible to get something for nothing, that it undermines perhaps the most fundamental principle of human life.

Trump’s verbal incoherence is really something to behold. He’s incapable of expressing a complete thought without venturing down a dendritic maze of digressions, often leading to an assertion of how much he is loved (another sign of insecurity). For example, when he attacked Jeb’s (no last name necessary) statement that we have to show Iraqi leaders that “we have skin in the game,” Trump invoked the “wounded warriors,” saying “I love them. They’re everywhere. They love me.” In the immortal words of Tina Turner, “what’s love got to do with it?”

Trump’s notion that he can push around world leaders such as Vladimir Putin by treating them as though they were president of the Cement Workers’ Union ought to give thoughtful people the vapors. It doesn’t seem to occur to Trump that other countries could easily get pugnacious towards us. He would have us in a world war before the inaugural parade was over.

The trouble is that it’s not inconceivable Trump could get elected. Farfetched, perhaps, but not out of the question. The USA is heading for a very rough patch of history — as those of you with your eyes on the stock indexes lately may suspect. The country stands an excellent chance of waking up some morning soon to discover it is broke and broken. When that happens, all the anxiety and animus will be focused on looking for scapegoats, and they are likely to be the wrong ones. World leaders considered Hitler a clown in the early going, too, you know. But the Germans were wild about him. He pushed a lot of the right buttons under the circumstances. Trump is worse than Hitler. [Emphasis mine.--P.Z.] And the American people, alas, are now surely a worse lot of ignorant, raging, tattooed slobs than the German people were in 1933. Be very afraid.
----------------

In his 20 July column Kunstler wrote, "I’ve proposed for many years that we are all set up to welcome a red-white-and-blue, corn-pone Nazi political savior type. I don’t think Donald Trump is it. But he will be a stalking horse for a far more skillful demagogue when the time comes." Now he says "Trump is worse than Hitler." Is it America's nuclear arsenal that makes him say that? I know a lot of people who aren't "ignorant, raging, tattooed slobs." Kunstler should stay with his July assertion that Trump is just a foreshadowing of an even more charismatic, manipulative pol.

31 August update:

The post-Empire political theater of DONALD TRUMP is thrilling: destroying the G.O.P. and terrifying the U.S. press. pic.twitter.com/M1HbPY1seY

— Bret Easton Ellis (@BretEastonEllis) August 27, 2015

Kunstler: The Spectacle So Far.

Kunstler: The Spectacle So Far.

Y es, there is such a thing as “the public,” a term that derives from the ancient Latin, populous (the people), via publicus (of the people), via old French, public — pertaining generally to the mass of adults dwelling in a polity, a society under (political) governance. In the USA, government is vested as a republic, also from the Latin, res publica, meaning the public thing, the vessel that contains the public.

I present these terms to clarify how our society is cracking up. The American public, we the people, lately swoon into a morass of multi-dimensional failure: failure to control their economic lives, to regulate their appetites and their bodies, to understand what is happening to them, to fend off the propaganda and distractions that disable them, and to properly express and direct their wrath at those elements of the polity who deserve it.

True, their awful, epic failures at this moment in history are largely engineered and aggravated by those who have captured the polity and turned it into a looting and racketeering engine. The net result, though, is a self-reinforcing circle of degradation that rots the collective ethos of the public while it destroys the vessel of the republic that contains it.

Societies that act as though they are hostage to these forces of degradation are able to pretend that they are helpless in the face of them; that the public bears no responsibility for its own choices or for the disintegration of the polity they live under. Hence, the current condition of the American public and its disgraceful government.


It’s not difficult to understand how Donald Trump becomes the instrument for the public’s wrath. Whatever his checkered career in land development amounts to, he is at least a freely-functioning and unfettered actor in the political arena. The public enjoys most of all his assertion of independence from the tremendous engine of grift that the republic has become. His arrant contempt for his rivals, and for the disgusting political process erected for the election contest, also thrills a big wad of the public. So far, his actual ideas for governing lack coherence, except for the rather general notion that uncontrolled immigration, and all the mendacious fakery associated with it, is a bad thing for the republic. Beyond that he offers only blustering claims that he is “very smart,” an “artist of deal-making,” a “patriot.”

Almost nothing so far can knock him down or take him out. Fox News tried in last week’s “debate” — which was not a debate at all, really, but a half-assed interrogation — by trying to set the female half of the public against him for his nasty remarks about women over the years. Of course, the dirty secret of both politics and the media is that the common backstage chatter among pols and TV news producers is every bit as vulgar and hateful as anything Trump said. In case you haven’t noticed, all of America has turned into a verbal sewer, especially the virtual public realm of television. I don’t remember anyone complaining about the comportment of the characters in Tony Soprano’s Badda-Bing Lounge. In fact, awards were heaped on the depiction of that behavior. That’s who we are now.

The rise and persistence of Trump raises a more pertinent question: why are all the other candidates such obvious shills for the implacable engine of grift that is destroying the Republic? Why has nobody with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders, called bullshit on the basic operations of the machine? Why have no other persons of real stature stepped forward to challenge the suicidal dynamic of the age?

There are many cycles in history, politics, and economics. One in particular afflicts the American public today: we’re at a cycle low for comprehending what is happening to us. Sometimes societies know very well what is going on and communicate it superbly. Such was the case in the late 1700s when American leaders filed divorce from Great Britain. Can you imagine any of the clowns onstage for the Fox News “debate” playing a role in writing the Federalist Papers? Obviously, the public and its putative representatives today don’t have a clue what is happening. And then, necessarily, they don’t have a clue what to do about it.

The foregoing assumes that they are honorable persons, though, which may not be the case. This is the chief gripe against Hillary Clinton, of course: that she is an unprincipled monster of ambition and little more. That would be my take on her, for instance. Among the Republicans (as in party) only Rand Paul stands out as not appearing to be some kind of puppet shilling for the grift machine. After all, the party is the very embodiment of that machine. And by trying to play nicely in its arena, Rand Paul may lack the fortitude to attack it.

I’m with those who think that the 2016 election campaign is going to be a wild spectacle beyond the current imaginings of news media. I’m serenely convinced that, among other things, the banking system is going to implode so hard and fast well before the nominating conventions that the nation will be in a state of near chaos. What’s out there now is just a tired dumb-show replaying the shopworn themes of an era that is about to slam to a close.

Kunstler: Where Candidates Fear to Tread.

Kunstler: Where Candidates Fear to Tread.

That the snarkier circles of political commentary thrill to the elephantine bellowings of Donald J. Trump only shows the pathetic limitations of the snarkists. They enjoy Trump’s filterless mouth, his harsh goadings of the other presidential wannabes, and his supposed telepathic empathy for the suffering public outside the magic kingdom of DC.

Trump has one legitimate issue, immigration, plus a brief against the general incompetence of professional politicians, and a pocketful of grandiose claims about his majestic skills in business and deal-making. As business goes in this huckster’s paradise, being a real estate developer is perhaps one click above being a car-dealer, and the fact that some of Trump’s artful deals end up in bankruptcy court might argue against his self-proclaimed mastery. Hence, his relegation to the clown category.

What Trump represents most vividly in this moment of history is the astounding lack of seriousness among people who pretend to be political heavyweights. No one so far, including the lovable Bernie Sanders, has nailed a proper bill of grievances to the White House gate. A broad roster of dire issues facing this society ought to be self-evident. But since they are absent so far in the public discussion, here is my list of matters that serious candidates should dare to talk about (all things that a sitting president could take action on):

The security state. America has developed the most horrifying state security apparatus that the world has ever seen in its NSA and associated agencies. It has become the sugar tit for some of the most malevolent enterprises of the corporatocracy — the black ops companies and the weapons dealers. The growth of this monster was not mandated by heaven. A president could lead the move to deconstruct it. A candidate with a decent respect for our heritage would make this a major campaign issue.

Related to this is the disgusting militarization of the police. Police forces in small towns have no business owning MRAP vehicles, tanks, and heavy weaponry. The federal government gave a lot of this stuff to them. Guess what? It can take the stuff back. Serious candidates should propose this.

There is a more general militarization of national life that ought to be disturbing to thoughtful citizens. I live near a US Naval base. I see enlisted men in town wearing desert camo uniforms on their time off. I resent this hugely. Military personnel at home have no business wearing war theater garb in a place where they are not at war. Historically, it was never before the case that US soldiers went about in battle dress at home. This disgusting trend has even been adopted in major league baseball. The New York Mets and the Pittsburgh Pirates have gone on TV wearing camo baseball uniforms. What are they trying to prove? That we are all at war all the time?

The pervasive racketeering in American life is destroying the country. Medical racketeering leads the way. Be very clear: it is a hostage racket. You are the hostage when you are sick or in need of treatment. You will probably agree to anything that will save your life. The medical racketeers know this. Hence, we live under the tyranny of the “Charge-master” pricing system that assigns ludicrous costs to everything doled out as “medicine,” with the pharmaceutical industry creaming off whatever remains. A trip to the ER with a broken arm can easily propel a household into financial ruin. A president could apply the antitrust laws to many of these rackets and practices. There is no excuse for failing to take a stand.

The most dangerous rackets of our time are those running through banking and finance. The superficially genial President Obama has done absolutely nothing to defend the public against gross financial misconduct and pervasive accounting fraud. His justice department has failed to prosecute widespread criminality in banking and his regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission and other agencies have sat on their hands for six years while markets are hijacked and manipulated. This behavior gives credence to a greater conspiracy between the governments, the “systemically important” banks, and the Federal Reserve to prop up a Potemkin financialized economy for political cover and favor at the expense of crumbling real economy. A potential president has got to swear to defend the public against these institutional turpitudes. A president can lead the way by proposing to reinstate the Glass-Steagall act and by directing the justice department to break up the “systemically important” banks before they implode the entire operating system of the global economy.

President Obama didn’t do a damn thing in the wake of the 2010 Citizens United decision issued by the Supreme Court. This decision endowed the alleged “personhood” of corporations with a “right” to express their political opinions by giving money in unlimited amounts to candidates. The decision has been a disaster, since it amounted to a “right” to buy elections. The “personhood” of corporations has evolved during the industrial age from a very circumscribed set of chartered practices to the very dubious realm of “personhood” privileges. The basic truth is that corporations do not have duties, obligations, or responsibilities to the public interest; only to their shareholders and boards of directors; and this condition should be self-evident to jurists. Hence, it is necessary to directly address by statute or constitutional amendment the limitations on the personhood of corporations. A president can lead the effort to do this via his party allies in congress.

Why has the foreign policy apparatus of the USA gone into the business of antagonizing Russia? How does it benefit the American people for its government to finance and direct a coup d’é·tat in Ukraine? Why did the Senate Foreign Relations Committee cease to function. Some of the GOP candidates for president are sitting senators. Why doesn’t press inquire of their failure? Why is there no public discussion of this very disturbing policy?

President Obama promised in 2009 to put an end to the revolving door between government regulators and the entities they were regulating, banks in particular. He did absolutely nothing about it. In fact, he installed a revolving door at the White House, allowing the free movement of such rogues as Robert Rubin, Gary Gensler, Mary Jo White, and Larry Summers in and out of government. Such villains are destroying the nation. Any president with a shred of common decency could put an end to this practice.

There you have a few choice things to chew on. They go beyond mere inchoate rage and revulsion against politicians. They represent a very rich agenda of matters the country must attend to if it is going to survive. I wonder if the major media grandees who make up the debate questions will even think of these things.

Kunstler: Change They Don't Believe In

With a Bush-Clinton matchup, people will either abstain from casting their presidential votes for the Big Two or will choose from among the third parties.--P.Z.

Kunstler: Change They Don't Believe In.

The unfortunate consequence of not allowing the process of “creative destruction” to occur in banking and Big Business is that the historic forces behind it will seek expression elsewhere in the realm of politics and governance. The desperate antics of central banks to cover up financial failure can’t help but provoke political upheaval, including war.

It’s a worldwide phenomenon and one result will be the crackup of economic relations — thought by many to be permanent — that we call “globalism.” The USA has suffered mightily from globalism, by which a bonanza of cheap “consumer” products made by Asian factory slaves has masked the degeneration of local economic vitality, family life, behavioral norms, and social cohesion. That crackup is already underway in the currency wars aptly named by Jim Rickards, [Link added by me.--P.Z.] and you can bet that soon enough it will lead to the death of the 12,000-mile supply lines from China to WalMart — eventually to the death of WalMart itself (and everything like it). Another result will be the interruption of oil export supply lines.

The USA as currently engineered (no local economies, universal suburban sprawl, big box commerce, despotic agribiz) won’t survive these disruptions and one might also wonder whether our political institutions will survive. The crop of 2016 White House aspirants shows no comprehension for the play of these forces and the field is ripe for epic disruption. The prospect of another Clinton – Bush election contest is a perfect setup for the collapse of the two parties sponsoring them, ushering in a period of wild political turmoil. Just because you don’t see it this very moment, doesn’t mean it isn’t lurking on the margins.

This same moment (in history) the American thinking classes are lost in raptures of techno-wishfulness. They can imagine the glory of watching Fast and Furious 7 on a phone in a self-driving electric car, but they can’t imagine rebuilt local economies where citizens get to play both an economic and social role in their communities. They can trumpet the bionic engineering of artificial hamburger meat, but not careful, small-scale farming in which many hands can find work and meaning.

The true genius of Hillary is that she manages to epitomize every failure of our current political life: the obsessive micro-manipulation of image, the obscene moneygrubbing, the tired cronyism, the entitlement masquerading as sexual equality. Mostly, though, she has no idea where history is taking us, in case you’re wondering at the stupefying platitudes offered up as representative of her thinking. I’m not advocating for this gentleman, but it will at least be interesting to see Martin O’Malley jump into the race and call bullshit on her, which he will do, literally, because he has nothing to lose by doing it. The eunuchs on The New York Times Op Ed page certainly won’t do it.

What happens on the world financial scene will determine the flow of events up into the 2016 election. The built-up tensions and fragilities are begging for release. The defining instant might be Greece’s unwillingness to fork over another debt payment, or the death of the shale oil “miracle,” or some act by Saudi Arabia’s enemies, or some chain of exploding booby-traps in the shadow banking netherworld. The great surprise for America especially will be the recognition that our current living arrangements have no future. That’s the only thing that will prompt a new consensus to form around some alternate, more plausible future, and the emergence of a generation willing to fight for it, even if it requires some real creative destruction of the things that are killing us anyway.

HB 464 Would Require Minor Party Nominees to Pay Filing Fees

A press release from the Libertarian Party on HB 464.
----
For immediate release
April 13, 2015

Texas Republican attacks Libertarian voting rights

Republican state representative Drew Springer of Muenster, Texas has filed HB 464, a bill to require minor party nominees to pay filing fees.

Libertarian National Committee executive director Wes Benedict commented, "Republican Drew Springer's bill is a poll tax on minor parties, including the Libertarian Party. It's an injustice, and it's unconstitutional."

The bill would require all minor party nominees to pay fees to be allowed to appear on the November election ballot. The fees range as high as $5,000, depending on the office.

Kurt Hildebrand, chair of the Libertarian Party of Texas, said, "This law would effectively shut down third parties in Texas, and I believe that is the intent behind it."

According to ballot access expert Richard Winger, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled twice that this sort of filing fee is unconstitutional.

On April 6, the Texas House Elections Committee voted 5-1 in favor of the bill. (Five Republicans voted yes, one Democrat voted no.)

Similar bills have been filed by Texas Republicans in past legislative sessions.

Benedict explained, "Republicans have claimed in the past that their bills make things 'fair' because Republicans and Democrats have to pay filing fees for their primaries. Nothing could be further from the truth.

"Republicans and Democrats have to pay primary fees because their primary elections are financed by taxpayers. Political parties are private organizations, even though they are regulated by the state. Nevertheless, taxpayers are forced to hand over a lot of money to help the Republicans and Democrats pick their nominees. The filing fees pay for a tiny fraction of these costs.

"Libertarians and Greens, on the other hand, don't use primaries. We don't force the taxpayers to pay for our nomination process. So there's no reason our candidates should be forced to pay any fees.

"If Republicans and Democrats are upset about their primary filing fees, they should just get rid of them. They control 100% of the seats in the legislature, so it should be pretty easy for them.

"The purpose of Drew Springer's bill is simple: it has nothing to do with fairness, it's just an attempt to shut all minor parties out of the election process. If this bill gets passed, there will be many more unopposed Republicans and unopposed Democrats in the 2016 elections.

"Representative Drew Springer has also filed a bill to prohibit school districts from offering same-sex couples the same benefits as opposite-sex couples. That gives us an idea of what 'fair' means to him.

"I urge legislators who support democracy to oppose this poll tax, which is designed to silence minority opinions.

"This is America. The people should decide who gets to run for office, not the incumbents. Libertarians stand for freedom on every issue, and we oppose bullies who would try to stop us from participating in the election process."

Benedict added, "Texas isn't the only place that Republicans are trying to step on voting rights. In New Hampshire, the Republican National Committee is trying to get involved in a lawsuit over the state's petitioning law. The law was changed in 2013 to make it harder for small parties to get petition signatures to appear on the ballot. The Libertarian Party filed a lawsuit against the change, but the Republican National Committee is trying to intervene in support of the change."

Wes Benedict is the executive director of the Libertarian National Committee, and he served as executive director of the Libertarian Party of Texas from 2004 to 2008.

Kunstler: "She's Back."

Kunstler comments on Hillary Clinton's formal announcement of her presidential campaign.

Kunstler: "She's Back."