Two Peckerheads

January 23, 2006
     I'm fond of saying that I'm allergic to conspiracy theories. Behind our country's dismaying governance, cluelessness really rules, not plotting or scheming. Take, for example, these astounding remarks made Friday by former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on NPR's "Marketplace" show:

"As China grows -- at the current rate it's growing, in twenty or thirty years -- and becomes the number one largest economy in the world, I think China may become our nemesis."

     One would think that Mr. Reich is a pretty smart guy -- former Rhodes Scholar (same class as Bill Clinton), Harvard faculty, cabinet secretary. Now, why on earth would Mr. Reich believe that China can possibly keep behaving the way it does for another two or three decades? China faces energy starvation along with the rest of the world. China has less oil left than the United States (and the US would have roughly four years worth of oil if we were deprived of imports -- 26 billion barrels used at the rate of 7 billion a year).

     There is no way that China can put another one half percent of its population behind the wheel of a car without sending its army and navy out to seize foreign oil fields -- let alone continue manufacturing toasters and Christmas tree ornaments for Americans. And Americans are not going to have the the cash to buy those things, whether or not we are actively engaged in a war for the world's remaining oil. And all this trouble is going to play out in the next decade, not in "twenty or thirty years." Near the end of the segment, Reich repeated this inanity:

"As China, over the next twenty, thirty years, grows and prospers, a lot of Americans are gonna say, now, wait a minute. . . ! The endgame, we hope, is more and more economic integration, a Chinese middle class that is more and more prosperous, that is able to buy things from the United States, that looks a little bit more like middle-class Americans live, and therefore is not so different from us."

     An arresting fantasy, isn't it? A Beijing that resembles Atlanta, full of strip malls dishing out cheeseburgers and other interesting foreign foods to Chinese soccer moms hurrying back to Toll Brother's starter homes in Chinese knockoffs of the Ford Explorer.

     Note to Mr. Reich and the rest of the people he is smoking opiated hashish with: you've got it backwards. Over the next twenty, thirty years America gets to be more and more like Chinese peasant life in 1949. Why? Because neither America nor China (nor anybody else) can continue running industrial economies the way we have been, or even a substantial fraction of that way, in an energy-starved world. Nor will anybody come up with a miracle technological rescue remedy to keep all the motors humming.

     Our second peckerhead of the day is David Brooks of The New York Times. Actually, Brooks could qualify for peckerhead of the decade among mainstream news pundits, since his fantasies about America diverge so extravagantly from the realities our nation faces. In his most recent column, Mr. Brooks asserted that the desert wastelands beyond the last ring of Phoenix's current suburban asteroid belts would become the next suburban utopia, adding an additional million people to that hopeless mega-metroplex. Note to Mr. Brooks: Arizona's groundwater basins are overdrawn. Most of the rivers are tapped nearly to their limits. The southwest is suffering its worst drought since the 1950s, and climate change signs suggest that the drought will persist. This is happening, of course, as the nation (and the rest of the world) enters an epochal depletion of fossil fuel resources that will, how shall we say, put the fucking shnitz on further suburban development of any kind. Mr. Brooks writes:

". . . half of the buildings in which Americans will live, play and work in the year 2030 don't even exist yet. We are in the middle of a $25 trillion building boom that is changing the face of the country, and most of it is happening in desert places like this one."

     Another note to Mr. Brooks. An economy based on land development and housing bubbles is finished. We are going to have to make other arrangements for running a civilization, and return to traditional methods for occupying the terrain of North America, without the prosthetic enhancements of Ford Explorers.

     This is the quality of thinking that we are getting from leaders in politics and opinion in our country now. It could not be more inconsistent with reality. No evil cabal of corporate CEOs is paying off either of these idiots. They arrive at their opinions by a simple failure to pay attention to what is really happening in the world. Their failure will contribute to a greater failure of authority in this country when we hit the wall of economic pain in the months ahead, and the public wonders why it wasn't informed. That failure of authority, and the angry response to it, will lead a very dangerous politics of grievance and recrimination.

Comments

[nostalgia]

Well, somebody is paying their paychecks - look at their employers.

[Jeff Schultz]

They are not going to wake up until it's too late. That's just the way humanity works. It's going to be fun.

[Euthydemos in Athens]

I guessed you missed the thrilling segment on 60 Minutes last night about the unlimited resources just sitting there in the Alberta oil sands. According to the talking heads at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Processors, they have 1.7 trillion barrels of oil "just sitting there!" All ya have to do is dig it up! They helpfully pointed out that there is zero "exploration risk." "You can't drill a dry hole up here," he jokingly informed us. And, you will be happy to know that Alberta is a great place to do business! Why, even T. Boone Pickens says so. They fuilly expect a capital investment of $100 billion dollars in the next 10 years. Why, even the Chinese are getting into the game now, after "kickin the tires" for a while. With so many homespun homilies and witticisms in one news article, I don't see what you have to be worried about Jim. ;)

[jeff]

Great stuff, as usual. I look forward to further thoughts on the coming "Peak Shnitz."

[better future]

Good to see more clear headed thoughts here about conspiracy thinking - why would anyone in the media or investment banking industry have any reason to tell us anything but the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Really - thinking that the NYT is somehow involved in an evil cabal is just the sort of typical mushy think that so many people indulge in these days.

When the good corporate CEO of such an upstanding company as the NYT actually starts reading what Brooks writes, I am sure that this deluded columnist will be fired in a heartbeat, maybe even along with the person that hired him, the person that approved the hiring, and maybe even the editor of the editorial page.

Because, as we all certainly know, Brooks is deluded, not his employers. Right?

[Philski]

If it didn't have such apocalyptic implications the whole situation would be hilarious. Instead I am reduced to morbid curiosity about just exactly how this is going to play out...

[Richard]

Of course, the layoff of 30000 GM employees last year, the layoff of another 25000 - 30000 Ford workers to be announced at any moment on CNN (not to mention all of the jobs lost on second string parts manufacturers for both companies), political tensions abroad in Iraq, Iran and now Nigeria, gas prices expected to average $3.00+ this spring (at least), natural gas prices through the roof and going up...but we're building in the desert. Yep.

[kd]

Though I don't share your allegy to conspiracy theories, I enjoyed this week's excellent post, Jim.

Reich & Brooks indeed live in a fantasy world, but I hesitate to attribute this to cluelessness. They have embraced a world-view that is expansionist & consumptive, & decades of "success" have created the illusion that American know-how (not to mention God's blessing & our innate "goodness" as a people) will solve/dispell any problem, technological or "political".

Rather than cluelessness, I'd call it delusional hubris.

[bud4wiser]

When you can understand that the US economy is "booming", unemployment is "down", and we've created a "democracy" in Iraq, you can rationalize new housing for everyone and a middle-class China.

I don't "know" anything, I guess this is the result of that red or blue "reality thing" expressing itself with different hues.

I have two questions, how come there's no "housing boom" going on in the Katrina "wastelands"? And just what items does the US produce that are consumed by the world's middle-class?

Please, retint my reality. I'm not seeing so clearly.

[Philski]

I like Richard's "delusional hubris" as opposed to "cluelessness". Whattya think, Jim ?

[Barry]

Philski - kd posted the 'delusional hubris' bit.

[Shep]

"No evil cabal of corporate CEOs is paying off either of this idiots."

In the case of Brooks, I'm not too sure about that.

Otherwise, another excellent post on the high level of insanity that pervades this country's "intelligentsia". It makes one wonder if they really believe their own bullshit, or if all this posturing is just for public consumption.

Like some others who've posted, I can't wait to see how this is all going to play out... or maybe I can.

[reason]

bud4weiser,
Holiwood movies, CNN and Californian Wine.

[montysano]

"It makes one wonder if they really believe their own bullshit, or if all this posturing is just for public consumption." That indeed is the question.

Re the 60 Minutes oil sand report: after all that cheerleading for oil sand, it was stated that the expected output was........... 1M bpd now, increasing to 3M bpd by 2015. Lessee....current usage worldwide is 80M bpd or so, increasing to over 110M bpd by 2015. So how is this a solution? Insanity.

Meanwhile, the vital hegemony of the dollar as the world's reserve currency is teetering on the edge of the abyss, with Iran and China poised to give it a gentle nudge. The result of our saber-rattling at Iran last week: an unequivocal "fuck you" from Iran.

Fasten your seatbelts, folks.

[jeff koontz]

Mr. Kunstler said:
"Their failure will contribute to a greater failure of authority in this country when we hit the wall of economic pain in the months ahead. . . "

Months, not years ahead? Fasten your seatbealts because 2006 is going to be a better ride than anthing at Six Flags.

[Walt]

The Brooks column on Phoenix deals with a faux New Urbanist development called Verrado. "Faux" because it has a phony town square with maybe room for a dozen or so businesses. This in a project which will have nearly 10,000 houses at built-out. And many of the houses have front porches, which in Arizona, means room for dust collectors from Lowes.

The rightwing in America understands this thing very well: you absolutely have to keep Americans living in suburban isolation lest they understand how the world really functions. Only by furthering the fantasy that these consumers are rugged individualists do rightwingers maintain political power. The realization of interdependence is the first step to political maturity, and that must be fought at all costs.

[Dave]

Great Post JHK

Why there is no public response allowed to this shite is an interesting angle to consider. For example couldn't the NYT place your piece right next to Brooks ? Let you two guys really have a go at it in the august Sunday Edition ?
When that question is reflected upon one either thinks of "conspiracy" or entrancement. Perhaps that opiated hashish is doing the trick. Given the pains of reality I think it will be very popular in the next year or two.
By the way. If anyone is able to get their hands on this months "Monthly Review" there is a great article titled "What Has Happened to Ohio". An excellent piece that, read from the perspectve so ably aritculated on this blog, explains just what the cheap oil feasta has done to the political and economic life of the nation. Urge whoever is inclined to pick it up if at all possible. It beautifully compliments this weeks post.

[The Interloafer]

I'd love to see Kunstler and Brooks debate. But Brooks would probably never go for it.

[One Eye Open]

Walt,

You say:

"... you absolutely have to keep Americans living in suburban isolation lest they understand how the world really functions."

Yeah, them city folks (Reich, Brooks, et al) really have shit all figured out. Get a clue.

[Shep]

"If anyone is able to get their hands on this months "Monthly Review" there is a great article titled "What Has Happened to Ohio"."

Thanks for the reference. I believe the article you're referring to is actually titled, "What Was the Matter with Ohio?: Unions and Evangelicals in the Rust Belt" by James Straub?

Its online at:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0106straub.htm

I agree that its an excellent read.

[Patti F]

Here's the URL for the Monthly Review article:

What Was the Matter with Ohio?: Unions and Evangelicals in the Rust Belt by James Straub

http://www.monthlyreview.org/0106straub.htm

[John]

Hey Cassandra:
Not to be insulting, but that seems to be your fate. Other than the small number of people who are aware of you, you are singing to an empty sky.
Traditional media thinks they are presenting the whole range of views when they print Reich and Brooks.
In case its not discernable, Reich is the lefty and Brooks the reasonable con.
Everyone else is a fruitcake rocking the boat.
The bigger they come, the harder they fall...and boy is Murika begging for it.
The Buddhists say ignorance is the root cause of suffering...been true for thousands of years.

[kd]

As sprawl advances in the Amercian southwest, in Iraq the beat goes on.

"He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage 'People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.'"

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/051205fa_fact

[Mike]

For more on the Toll Bros., the housing bubble, and building in the outskirts of Phoenix:

http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/Archives/20060118.html

Warning: This article contains advertisements of a hucksterish nature.

[jorge]

Good morning:

This is a post I made this morning in the previous JHK delivery (which, BTW, is simply wonderful). Funny, I think it's pretty a propos:

"Report after report shows the unstoppable dumbing down of America. College graduates who can't read a map or figure out a restaurant tip makes for great copy. It also ignores the fundamental underlying context of this dumbing down. We live in a society now completely divorced from its cultural history, the philosophical grounds for its governmental system, and the fundamental belief that truth can and should be found through empirical evidence of facts, cause, and effect.

Postmodern America has created a curious epistemological melange. On the one hand, the prevailing multicultural-cum-inclusivity ethos has lead to a curious solipsistic bend: all opinions are valid and truth is unreachable, therefore my perception is as good as any other. On the other hand, the lack of knowledge, context, and a steady barrage of infotainment and propaganda pointedly gives people the foundations for their opinions catering to the flash-bang emotional charge (Sago miners! Natalie Holloway! Runaway bride!). Ergo: Self-absorbed individuals walking around with heads filled with emotionally charged notions planted by somebody else.

Such mental endowment is diametrically opposite to the free inquisitive mind that sustains Western empiricism and the ideals of Enlightenment.

The Western ethos revolved around the unassailable axis of truth finding and rationality. Postmodern United States has casually, thoughtlessly, thrown this ethos overboard. Emoting on the basis of someone else's discourse, not thinking, is the common currency of today's societal discourse. This bodes ill for the continued health of the Nation. A polity composed of egotistic narcissists spouting prefabricated emotional dribble cannot aspire to long remain under the sun."

Well, I will posit the diatribes by the Two Peckerheads cited herein as a prime example of the prefabricated emotional dribble incessantly doled out to our zoned-out and maxed-out populace.

Wonderful read, Jim!

Cheers,