lackey or shrill

LACKEY OR SHRILL


For whatever reason I decided to reread the wonderful book “The Long Emergency” by James Kunstler ( The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century ). Half way through I realized a few things. First, I owe a debt of gratitude to Kunstler for a lot of my information that has informed my journey towards full blown paranoia. Second, I think we’ve done him a disserve by disregarding a lot of what he has to say based on his few peculiarities. The problem with reading a large volume of information is that a lot of it tends to muddle together and you forget sources. Rereading TLE reminding me about a lot of my first exposures to certain problems ( or, if not a first exposure then at least the first reminder linking it to Peak Oil ). The fact that global warming is better thought of as global weather change. The “creep up” of tropical diseases to an area near you. Food availability caused malnutrition leading to disease susceptibility. The whole issue of alternate energy unable to scale up. And the list goes on and on. So, perhaps a bit belatedly, The Long Emergency is good enough to be in your short list of essential emergency books ( along with perhaps the Readers Digest “Back To Basics” ( Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition ), “The Great Reckoning”( The Great Reckoning ), early Howard Ruff ( How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years: a Crash Course in Personal and Financial Survival ), and whatever else I’m forgetting off the top of my head ).
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Kunstler has also shown by example how to report the continuing collapse with sarcasm and wit. I won’t say he was my sole influence. I think you can throw in at least a half dozen others for that. But he certainly deserves to be acknowledged as one who diddled with my subconscious a bit. I would be remiss if I didn’t give credit where it was due. Instead, a lot of us most likely to include myself point out his politics as spoiling what would otherwise be a great thing. Anti-capitalism and pro-Obama. Well, I do think he places a childlike amusing hope on the ability of socialism to save us all, but I think he is more anti-corporation than anti-capitalism. And perhaps we can even excuse his naivety on grasping politics for the last hope of softening the hard landing. Not that I’m trying to detract from a great intellect. Kunstler brain could kick my ass with half its functions tied behind its back. My only claim is that perhaps I can view politics through a lens that will clarify a problem.
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If you hate politics and view them as the bankers whores used as a mere tool, leaning left is futile. Or right for that matter. And if you confuse corporations with capitalism you end up supporting the faction that is eating our economic seed corn. And placing us into 10k plated handcuffs. You end up as a leftist lackey or a corporate shrill. If the bankers control the politicians and fund the corporations, then certainly you can’t vote to contain the corporate interests. Or vote for a smaller government. Yet even the central banks are controlled by events they can’t control, energy surplus. If they even know of its existence. Or can stop the government using the surplus to pacify the unproductive or the corporations from turning resources into profits. My guess is that the bankers are as ignorant of Peak Oil as are most of us. But we won’t get sidetracked. Back to lackey’s or shrills.
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Of course you have no ability to change events. Your vote is a part of the circus meant as a pacifier, made indifferent by electronic voting machine hacks or political bondage to borrowing money. If it makes you feel better, by all means vote. You also feel in control of the weather when you nudge up the thermostat on a cold winters day. Your feet are clay so stop dreaming of god like powers. As my hair will attest I have the direct favor of the gods yet I certainly can’t control anything. But you keep on with the illusion if it lets you sleep better at night, as any good drug will do. What voting does do is put you in a distracted mood. Why fight against doing anything concrete about your financial bondage when you can effortlessly pull a lever in the voting booth? And why feel bad about buying Chinese made goods ( Poorly Made in China: An Insider's Account of the Tactics Behind China's Production Game ) when it makes those cuffs a bit less tight? No, I’m not throwing stones in this glass house. I’m just as guilty as the next peon trying to paste a layer of velvet over the iron fist. The only difference is that I try not to delude myself. I do try hard, success is another matter.
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Corporations are not directly controlled by the bankers, anymore than the government is directed by them. No, the bankers just furnish a financial incentive to each. And the peons in the cage are allowed to fight one another over misdirected “masters”. Oh, god lord, look at the evil commie foreign born half breed leading us into concentration camps! We must vote for the free market and smaller government. Oh, woe unto us, the evil corporations are ravaging the environment! We must reign in their abuses with government control. And meanwhile the voters continue to charge the credit card, live in a mortgaged house and pay for seven years on an SUV. You reward the corporations with profit, the government with taxes and the banks with interest. Well played, indeed.
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Staying out of debt is the only way to not pay for your own enslavement. Well, it is the only way to minimize your enslavement ( Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II ). You think paying a mortgage for thirty years on a farm makes you freer than someone living on junk land buying the food they need? It is just changing one master for another. But at least with the junk land you can be free immediately from debt and use the colonial tool of cheap subsidized ( by tax and oil ) food to insulate yourself from food bondage ( if you act immediately before global shortages direct your cheap grain overseas to our Chinese payday check loansharks ). Stocking up on years of grain and beans is a cheaper way to feed yourself than buying a mortgaged farm. It isn’t self-sustaining but neither is a farm ( to include a large urban/suburban garden IF it gives you enough calories and not just salad ingredients ) unless the bankers don’t own it.
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Don’t be distracted by worthless arguments involving politics or corporate shenanigans. And don’t believe anything will change from Business As Usual. Just get ready quickly before the bankers eat their young as their surplus energy based wealth evaporates.

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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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