Re: SC88

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2009/03/forget-about-recovery/comments/page/2/#comments

Vultures & Hyenas:

We have entered the carcass-picking moment in human affairs, a relatively brief era in which the Earth's vultures and hyenas are going to scour humanity's carcass clean, leaving only the bleached-white bones, fossils that a new generation of post-industrial human beings will uncover and examine and about which they will shake their heads in bemused bewilderment.

There is no way to stop it now. We have reached that extraordinary point in time in which the first shot has been fired and all hell has broken loose; in which cannibalism has become the preeminent form of social organization; in which the industrial disease that we birthed some two centuries hence has finally taken on a life of its own and is commencing the process devouring its masters.

The government knows its over. That is why they employ apparent insanity in lieu of reason in their development, defense and implementation of fiscal policy. They lie, as all false Messiah's lie, about such things as "renewed prosperity" and about the coming of a "better, more prosperous America" in the future, but they too are coming to recognize that the numbers all point to an epic global implosion. No capital, no food, no water, no fuel, no shelter: All summarily destroyed by a system fatally addicted to growth and consumption and resource exploitation and avarice; a system in which the new virtues of lying and theft and accumulation have buried the old, quaint virtues of kindness and generosity and humility.

The financial chieftains know its over. That's why they are willing, with utter impunity and stunning bravado, to steal every last possible cent from the rest of us. They do not even hide their theft anymore. They understand the coming chaos, and any fear of retribution or humiliation has all but vanished from their maggot-infested consciousness. They know that the Titanic is taking on water and it's only a matter of time before the Unsinkable Molly Brown tips her hat one final time and races to the bottom of the sea, gone and all but forgotten.

This past weekend's big news was the astonishing disclosures about AIG's trillion dollar Credit Default Swap scam and the U.S. governmental complicity in perpetuating these financial crimes against humanity. Before that it was Sheila Bair's $500 Billion TARP II, "bad" bank end-run. And before that, trillions in secretive bailouts to banks that are completely insolvent and who must, by the very nature of things, eventually die. Tomorrow, who knows. Hundreds of billions of dollars more to GM? Trillions more to Citi and BofA?? The Obama team---with support from the most powerful Democrats AND some weighty Republicans as well---is willing to spend tens of trillions of dollars in Monopoly Money to attempt, in vain, to subsidize a global stay-of execution. It's no longer about saving the system; it is now about delaying the inevitable.

But the gallows beckons, and she will have her day. As has been stated a thousand times on this blog alone: Spending trillions of dollars that do not exist to somehow try to"restart" a global economy that, for decades, has been based upon the reckless consumption of goods and services, and thus upon the total destruction of our environment---well, it simply cannot succeed. In reality, the only thing that our current "efforts" succeed in doing is hastening our inexorable march toward our very own global "Atlantis" moment. Like blowing holes in the side of a sinking ship, things will go down far more quickly.

It's an amazing experience, really, to witness first-hand the instant in which reason and rationality gives way to chaos and abandon. When political discourse disintegrates into riots and massive blood-letting; when the food dropped from the helicopter to the starving masses leads to the trampling deaths of hundreds of children. A complete social breakdown. We truly are an awe-inspiring species. Capable of such beautiful things---and yet somehow we have found a way to destroy it all.

Posted by: DanW | March 09, 2009 at 11:05 AM