I came across some interesting thoughts the least couple of days. Although I don’t write about current affairs nearly as much as I used to, i still rant about stuff during my lunch break or late at night to bean, who listens politely. I’ve explained a few times already why i don’t write about US current affairs or Sino-US geopolitics or riots: because shooting arrows into the air is stupid.
But I still like to read other peoples’ rants.
So I enjoyed this rant-fest, “Clusterfuck Nation,” by James Howard Kunstler. The man has style. He knows his US politics. His views are in line with mine: we’re fucked and its their fault. And his solutions remind me of William Berry, so I like Mr. Kunstler.
Choice cut;
“…hasn’t the mainstream news media noticed that there’s something a little peculiar about a cycle of perpetual election with no governing in between?”
Kunstler led me to the romantic ranting of Umair Haque in this essay, “The Great Splintering“. Again. A man after my own heart. He sees the relationships between man and woman, organization and individual being shattered and replaced with lies. I see it too. Right down to the family unit. Look around and you might see some of that happening as well. Haque’s solutions lean toward the mystical Gibran School of revitalized virtues:
Choice Cut:
“a social contract fit for the future has probably got to be eudaimonic, centered on the right to have the capacity to create — and the responsibility to pursue — lives lived meaningfully well. A social contract built not merely on the promise of more, bigger, faster, cheaper, nastier (whose hidden boilerplate terms and conditions include polarization, alienation, and stagnation) — but on the promise of smarter, healthier, fitter, humbler, closer, safer, truer, wiser.”
And then I went to Spengler’s page (cue the boos, BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!). I hate Spengler. We would never ever get along. He’s a sanctimonious banker and I’m a dreamer. BUT. He can often see through the bullshit and call a spade a spade AND he represents the high brow intellect of the Sarah Palin+Rick Perry = America Fuck Yeah! Tribe. So it pays to read what the “other guys” are thinking.
Spengler’s latest anti-The People essay is called … “The People’s Ponzi Scheme,” in which he urinates upon the idiots who want Wall Street heads to roll, whips out two self-serving graphs to support his argument and then goes back to his portfolio and afternoon meetings.
Choice Cut:
“A proposed witch-hunt of American bankers for the 2009 crash is unfair since the asset bubble that burst wasn’t caused by “Wall Street gamblers” – it was a Ponzi scheme by the people, of the people and for the people. Bankers got wiped, while Main Street is now better off than before.”
See? He has the audacity to say stuff like that and say it in such a condescending and haughty tone that you just want to drag him out of his office and beat him on the street while he screams wordlessly in confusion and terror.
Who bailed out Main Street Spengler?
And, just because he whipped out a “graph” I would like to point out that a man who bought a house that appreciated 400% still only made a few hundred thousand dollars at most whereas a banker who sold toxic deals to another bank made hundreds of millions … and got bailed out …
Anyway.
I guess the reason we have to read this stuff is because when the West crumbles and China seizes its opportunity to make white people build railroads for fake money, then I want my people calling the shots, not Spengler’s people. Right?
