The insight with which everything makes sense in 2020

Larry Kummer, Editor

6 years ago

Summary: To start the New Year, this is the summary of the essential message from my posts in 2019. This gives the insight with which all the news makes sense. As a bonus, I reveal the dark horse candidate whom the Democrats will nominate for the presidency in 2020.

From *The Art of Alice: Madness Returns* by R. J. Berg.

James Howard Kunstler’s reports about our times are always interesting reading. His year-end essay is especially so. Here is the opening section.

“The big question for the year 2020 is simple:
can America get its mind right?”

“If the answer is no, we may not have much chance of continuing as a peaceful, functioning country. The era of the long emergency, as I call it, is of a piece with Strauss and Howe’s figurative winter in their Fourth Turning view of history playing out in generational cycles analogous to seasons of the year. Whatever you call it, the current disposition of things has had a harsh effect on our collective psychology. It has made an unusually large cohort of Americans functionally insane, believing in demons, hobgoblins, and phantoms, subscribing to theories that, in previous eras, children would laugh at, while contesting obvious realities and provoking grave political hazard.

“The madness is distributed over many realms of American life, with the common denominator of a thinking class fallen into disordered thinking. The disorder is led by the information media and higher education with their crypto-Gnostic agendas for transforming human nature to heal the world (in theory). It includes a grab-bag of delusions and deliberate mind-fucks ranging from the morbid obsession with Russian interference in our affairs, to the crusade against free speech on campus, to the worship of sexual perversity (e.g. the Transsexual Reading Hour), to the campaigns against whiteness and maleness, to the incursions of woke-ness in the corporate workplace, to the cynical machinations of economists, bankers, and politicians in manipulating financial appearances, to the effort to divorce reality from truth as a general proposition.

“These diseases of mind and culture are synergized by an aroused political ethos that says the ends justify the means, so that bad faith and knowing dishonesty become the main tools of political endeavor. Hence, a venerable institution such as The New York Times can turn from its mission of strictly pursuing news and be enlisted as the public relations service for rogue government agencies seeking to overthrow a president under false pretenses. The overall effect is of a march into a new totalitarianism, garnished with epic mendacity and malevolence. Since when in the USA was it okay for political “radicals” to team up with government surveillance jocks to persecute their political enemies?

“This naturally leads to the question: what drove the American thinking class insane? I maintain that it comes from the massive anxiety generated by the long emergency we’ve entered …”

—————————————————–

The next sections of Kunstler’s essay discuss the causes of this disorder and his predictions for 2020. I recommend that you read the full essay! Here are three notes by me about his analysis.

I disagree with his description of the “long emergency” he describes. I do not see most of it. Like the “pollution will destroy us” and “peak oil” scares, the generations-long “debt will destroy us” predictions, and the many other “we’re doomed from X, Y, or Z” stories – I doubt that any of these will be more than blips in history. That is, they might generate significant but brief periods of turmoil – like the Long Depression that we have forgotten, the Great Depression that we are forgetting, and the more severe catastrophes now only remembered by historians (e.g., the Justinian Plague, the 30 Years War, the horrific 14th Century).

First, this disorder of intellectuals affects those on the Right as well as the Left. This is too obvious except to those tribes to warrant explanation. See my posts about Libertarians. Even better, see one of the best blog posts ever: John and Belle explain libertarianism.

Second, I disagree about its causes (remembering that we can only guess about such massive phenomena in our own time). We are in the Crazy Years, predicted long ago by the great science fiction writer Robert Heinlein. He set the start date 50 years too early.

“The Crazy Years: Considerable technical advance during this period, accompanied by a gradual deterioration of mores, orientation, and social institutions, terminating in mass psychoses in the sixth decade, and the interregnum. …{then there are more phases} followed by the end of human adolescence and the beginning of {the} first mature culture.”

— From Robert Heinlein’s timeline of his future history stories; first published in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1940. This series was published as The Past through Tomorrow.

That nails it perfectly. Humanity has experienced equally great changes, but never at such a fantastic rate. Of course we have become disoriented. Here are a few of my posts documenting this, but this insight is self-evidence in the daily news.

A key to understanding the news: the unexpected rules in our age of wonders.
America is becoming weird. Here are some recent examples.
We live in the crazy years, but can choose a different destiny for ourselves and our children.
The common thread that explains so much in America — We have collectively chosen to send America into the “crazy years”. It is not too late to change course.
We are living in the crazy years – Documenting the decay.

“The Persistence of memory” by Salvador Dali (1931).

Such a massive social change consists of phases. Now we are in ClownWorld. ClownWorld is something we do to ourselves, as Bill Bonner explained. He writes about finance at The Daily Reckoning and is a founder of The Agora (see this article about it). He is a doomster and perma-bear, but has an interesting perspective on our situation. See these terrifying words from his column “Corrections” in March 2001, describing the essence of ClownWorld.

“Men do stupid things regularly and mad things occasionally. And sometimes, the impulse to self-destruction is so overwhelming it overtakes an entire nation. …The best a person can hope for when he goes mad is that he runs into a brick wall quickly …before he has a chance to build up speed. That is why success, in war and investing, is often a greater menace than failure. …

“People seem to make such obvious and moronic errors that it seems as if they were driven to it by some instinct of self-destruction – like lemmings periodically exterminating themselves in a march off the cliffs. What’s more, this diabolical instinct seems to report for duty at the very moment when the future seems the brightest – that is, when it is most needed! Just when men are most proud, most confident, most expansive in their ambitions and hopes …that is when they make the most lunkheaded judgments.”

In ClownWorld, the experience of reading the daily newspaper puts one in a surrealistic painting. The president is a clown, tweeting nonsense. The Democratic Party’s candidates for president are a collection extremist weirdos (advised by economists who believe in free stuff for all) and elderly dreamers. The Democrats leaders flail helplessly while the GOP’s leaders polish the shoes of their plutocrat overlords. Discussions about politics become gibberish, as the demon Screwtape explains (they know us well) in C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters.

“It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy’s clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning.

“But what with the weekly press and other such weapons, we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily ‘true’ or ‘false,’ but as ‘academic’ or ‘practical,’ ‘outworn’ or ‘contemporary,’ ‘conventional’ or ‘ruthless.’”

America today is well described by these words from “White Rabbit”, written by Grace Slick and recorded by Jefferson Airplane for their 1967 album “Surrealistic Pillow.”

“When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head …”

There are two common reactions to ClownWorld. The first is horror and disorientation. The second is acceptance. Science fiction author James Blish captures both in this scene from his great book, The Day After Judgement (1971). In it, Father Domenico wanders though a world which makes no sense. He arrives in Rome as the Cardinals choose a new Pope.

“By luck it was not a bad position; from here he had quite a clear view up the staircase and between the towering statues of Mars and Neptune. The great doors had already been opened and the cardinals in their scarlet finery were ranked on either side of the portico. …The combination of bell and trumpets was solemnly beautiful and under it the crowd fell quickly silent. …a cardinal cried in Latin: ‘We have a Pope, Summus Antistitum Antistesl And it is his will that he be called Juvenember LXIX!’ The page now stepped forward. He called in the vernacular; ‘Here is your Pope, and we know it will please you.’

“From the shadow of the great doors, there stepped forth into the sunlight between the statues …his face white and mild as milk, a comely old man …the demon AGARES. An enormous shout rose from the crowd and the trumpets and the bell resumed, now joined by all the rest of the bells in the city and by many drums and the firing of cannon. Choking with horror, Father Domenico fled.”

See these posts for more about America in ClownWorld. Also, see Kunstler’s posts. He is one of the best I’ve seen at reporting in ClownWorld.

Welcome to ClownWorld, the final meme for America.
A new, dark picture of America’s future – Our institutions are falling like a row of dominoes.
America’s giant corporations are decaying – Falling like a row of dominoes.
We gave our rulers the greatest gift that we can give.

The Dems will nominate a dark horse in 2020

Almost anything is possible in ClownWorld. In 2120 SAT tests will ask “what came next in this series: Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, {the weird Democrats now running), and __________” Perhaps the Democrats will nominate plutocrat white male Michael Bloomberg as their candidate in 2020. Perhaps they’ll choose his daughter, Georgina. Or perhaps her horse, Caleno 3. Reason has little predictive power in ClownWorld.

The Longines Athina Onassis event in St. Tropez, June 2016. By Philip Letang.

Terrifying words to begin 2020

Here are words that should chill your soul. I hope that a few will be inspired to make the effort of will to take the hard steps necessary for the reform of America.

We have given our elites the greatest gift we can bestow: proof that we are unfit for democracy. America is theirs now, until we prove that we can retake control of our affairs – and our destiny.

“Every nation has the government it deserves.”
— Dark words said by Joseph de Maistre (lawyer, diplomat, philosopher) in a letter dated 13 August 1811, published in Lettres et Opuscules.