Campaign Blues

        While it's gratifying to watch Hillary Clinton melt back into her senate seat -- in the process foiling the ascent of Emperor Bill the 1st -- one can't help but feel that that the contest for president is taking place in a different "world-line" (shall we say) than the melt-down of the US financial sector, and with it, the US economy.

        Whoever wins on November 5 will wake up to preside over a different America than the schematic one he was debating about during the primaries and the election. The long campaign will beat a path straight into the long emergency. The new president will inherit a wrecked banking system, an economy in freefall, a wobbling world oil market, and an American public extremely ticked off by its startling, sudden impoverishment. (This is apart from whatever melodramas spool out on the geopolitical scene.)
     The president-elect will quickly realize that the number one problem is not that Americans can't afford health care -- it's that they can't afford anything, because their income is evaporating in terms of both lost jobs and a dollar that is racing toward worthlessness. They'll be hard put to pay for food and gasoline, nevermind Grandma's emphysema treatments. They will be walking away from home ownership -- or yanked kicking and screaming by default-and-repo -- and any government scheme devised to abridge their mortgage contracts will only undermine basic contract law that has made mortgage lending a credible thing in the first place. And that too, of course, would redound straight to a real estate sector already in price free-fall, with no one willing or able to think about buying a house.
     As Obama and McCain go at it through the next eight months, they will likely focus on our situation in Iraq. (Calling it a "war" now is imprecise.) As merely one commentator among thousands, I'm not satisfied that either one of the contenders has defined his position on this coherently. Obama is disposed to get the US military out of there as quickly as possible. He's right that the sheer awful cost of the adventure is one big factor in wrecking US finances while it erodes our standing in the world. But with our Iraq garrison shut down, he'd better be prepared for a further breakdown in Middle East stability and the oil markets that depend on it -- meaning, the basis of American life for four generations, dependable oil imports, will sharply end. That would accelerate the disorderly abandonment of our massive misinvestment in suburban living, and also ramp up the anger and resentment of the public grieving over its lost entitlements.
     McCain's contrasting hundred-year plan does not take into account the severe impoverishment and exhaustion of the military itself, not to mention the overall purpose of the adventure -- to keep suburban life and all its accessories running in the homeland -- which is an exercise in futility under any terms. McCain would have to confront the terrible paradoxes of the war, namely that thousands of legs have been blown off for the sake of WalMart, which company will be hemorrhaging customers anyway, as incomes wilt, at the same time that WalMart's own operating system -- the "warehouse on wheels" -- surrenders to the reality of five or six dollar-a-gallon diesel fuel. In any case, the implosion of the US economy during the next eight months will overshadow whatever we decide to do in Iraq, and that cratering will be laid directly at the feet of the Republican party. If the party survives that, which I doubt, it would a long time before anybody trusted it again.
     Whoever wakes up as the next president on November 5 will have to preside over the comprehensive reorganization of American life. The big question is whether he can persuade the public to let go of its sunk costs, and all the sheer stuff that represents, and move ahead in a unified way that doesn't end up tearing the nation apart. The danger is that the public will want to mount a kind of last stand effort to defend a way of life that has no future under any circumstances, and they will ask the president to lead that last stand.
      To avoid that deadly outcome, the new president will have to be equipped with a realistic vision of what this society can actually do to survive the discontinuities that circumstances present. This will require him to confront the prevailing delusion that the US can become "energy independent" in the sense that we can run WalMart on something other than oil from foreign lands. The new president would have to carefully restate American expectations and goals -- for instance, not to keep all the cars running at all costs, but to get us living in places where driving is not mandatory. I'm concerned that the American people will hate the new president if he tells them the truth: that an old way of life is over and a new one has to begin now. We're about to find out how much "change" the public can really stand.
      

 

Comments

[jp]

The Long Emergency will be televised:

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3898008n

[Tangurena]

>and move ahead in a unified way that doesn't end up tearing the nation apart.

Nope. The sole reason for delaying the wargasm in Iraq was to allow the bush derangement squad to say things like "we was winning in Iraq until those other guys came in and screwed the pooch." This wargasm will provoke several more generations of finger-pointing, and don't forget that the conservatives are still blaming everyone to the left of them (which includes McCain) for losing in Vietnam. Never underestimate the power of self deception.

>The danger is that the public will want to mount a kind of last stand effort to defend a way of life that has no future under any circumstances, and they will ask the president to lead that last stand.

The book Collapse is a list of other such cultures that likewise, when faced with the choice between staying "true to themselves" or survival, chose to "stay the course" and perish. Never underestimate the power of self deception.

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

Nice entry this week, but could have used more references to NASCAR, SUVs, and some more of that man-on-granite action.

[Lost Horizon]

Your prognosis Jim seems to be unfolding like that line from Leonard Cohen, "the peacock spreads his deadly fan"

It will be amusing over the coming year to hear the desperate rationalizations from the status quote crowd, some of whom haunt this hollowed blog, that all this will blow over and be gone, like pixey dust , by next year. The false faith in Crony Capitalism and Bushit-o-nomics will finally reveal the 'Inner Fuckwad' of the climate change deniers and Wall St sycophants who spew their nonsense to the world at large.

Peak Oil, Peak Climate, Peak Finance.

A real witch's brew:

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death."

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

I guess I can't see any of the current crop of selectees doing anything other than fighting for that "last stand" as JHK describes it. I'd like to think I'm wrong there, but politically and socially I don't see it playing out any other way.

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

Freakishly warm here today. I'm going to borrow my neighbor's roto-tiller and till those fireplace ashes into the garden plot. That's what they tell me is the best to use, and some cow manure. Ashes and crap. Seems like that should be sustainable. They tell me I should have planted some lettuce already if I was going to do so.

[ziggy]

Things have been cunted up to such an extent by Bush and his coherts that if tne next president is to have any hope of rallying the public to make the type of sacrifices that will be necessary, she or he will have to have the oratory skills and leatdership abilities of Kennedy, Churchill, Rosevelt all rolled up into one. to have any sort of future whatsoever. But then they say that great leaders are created by circumstances.

[rogp]

As I slog my way through the book you mentioned several weeks ago, Niall Ferguson's The War of the World,I conclude--likely simplistically--that both WW1 and WW2 were caused by economic crises. Americans take note of the past as we appear to be swirling down the drain towards possibly another WW. Did the respectable citizenry of the war mongering nations of those wars choose to overlook their pathological leaders' handiwork because the leaders eased their pain and suffering with public works employment programs? My respect goes to the silent folks of the Dutch Resistance and the likes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who chose to say no to the easy way out with their lives.

[Abrey]

Dear Jim:

Another great & thoughtful post this week. Off-topic question: Would you consider an anthology of your best CFN columns for your next book?

Abrey

[RJG]

re: Calling it a "war" now is imprecise..

..'you sure it's not a war..?
a war to "defend our freedoms"..?
..'gonna be difficult however to convince my neighbors down here in Florida to the contrary I do suspect..
I have met the enemy believe me..
and "they"..
is "us"..
etc..
I feel sorry for this whole Godless world..
when Joe Nascar's daddy takes his T-Bird away..

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

Peak Election Leakage:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks

[Uncle Remus]

Peak Election Leakage:

Once again, the Russians copy us...

[Gothabilly]

Im not sure if paying 6 US rupee is that bad as far as fuel costs go, we pay for our fuel in 'Australian dollars'(90c US) costs approx $1.50AU per litre, and has been for a few years. The clowns are still buying SUV's.
By the way LAUGHING AS ROME BURNS check your soil's pH before digging ash into your garden, or you may completely fuck your soil.

[Mark]

Viva La Emergencia Larga!

L.A.R.B. - if you have soil on the sandy side and you live in the East, chances are excellent that you are improving your soil greatly with the ashes and you can forget the soil test.

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

My neighbor is even more mature than I am, and his garden was great last year, so I am trying to follow what the old-timers do, and not spend any money on fertilizers, chemicals etc. I'm on the east coast, btw.

Supposedly planting marigolds on the perimeter will keep deer and rabbits out, I'd not heard that one before either. We'll see.

[Dave]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5bDFjIcopk&feature=related

[dogfather]

great link, dave. some things never change.

[bud4wiser]

Still Crazy after All These Years
___________________________

Thank you JK. This week’s article was a refreshing change of content from all the economic talk. And “change” is what this “Clusterfuck” is all about - isn’t it?

Change is coming, the loss of continuity, the loss of the status quo, the loss of the known and the beginning of the “unknowable.” As with most of the citizens of CF Nation, I read comments each week purporting to have evidence of descriptions of our collective future.

As you so poignantly journal each week, our sources of frustration and causes for concern are multiple in origin. These causes are identifiable and undeniably rooted in greed, stupidity and a misanthropic perspective toward those “everyday” people unwilling to fight, steal or scheme to obtain wealth and power.

At no time in the history of America’s commerce has the phrase “buyers beware” held more saliency. Yet, just four years ago, many among us saw fit to continue “buying” the fantasy of business as usual from the boy king and his henchmen. And remarkably, now over two-years have past without any semblance of legislative oversight. And even as I write this no public official of national recognition offers meaningful insight to address the consequences of Peak Oil.

This November, the electorate will have an opportunity to “buy into” another chief-executive’s philosophies. While the topic “change” becomes some mindless semantically meaningless “football” kicked back and forth between candidates, what we can all be sure of at CF Nation is our continuing frustration, with the greed, the stupidity and selfish attitudes of millions of Americans that have driven this country to the precipice.

I’m afraid with respect to Peak Oil, the more things change, and the more many people will “stay the same.”

[Uncle Remus]

"the greed, the stupidity and selfish attitudes of millions of Americans"

The CF defined.

[Nudge]

Jim, what a lovely post. I could not possibly agree more with that ending part about how the 'murikan public will (or would) hate with a passion anyone who, gosh, dares to tell them the truth about their grotesquely overblown lifestyle expectations relative to their real-world efforts. AFAIK the last pol to try this was Jimmy Carter, and look what we replaced him with because we couldn't bear to hear his message about smaller cars, using less energy, turning down the thermostat, wearing sweaters in the winter, etc.

Laughing, surf over to Ben Jones' excellent blog (just google housing bubble; it's the first hit) and read every day if you want your fix of schadenfreude. They have it there by the truckload. Lots of FB's are getting the JT treatment.

We're probably due for the same "last stand" re-enactment that the Norse Greenlanders did. Hopefully the Amish, or those living at a similarly low but sustainable level of technology, will weather the sh*tstorm OK.

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

Schadenfrude? I've been unsuccessfully trying to avoid that feeling, but the sweet tears of unimaginable sadness... are just *so* sweet. I'll check out that blog.

[Anonymous Blowhard]

@ LARWBD:

We (and a number of other folks around here) have found that Dandelions around the perimeter also seem to help keep rabbits & deer at bay. They grow so quickly and can be harvested for food themselves, they have worked out well for us for some years now. The critters fill on them and don't get to our other stuff.

[PeakOilBoy]

Want to see America without intervention?

Take a look at Nigeria. It is a mess, due to the combination of legions of legendarily corrupt politicians, buckets of oil money, and vast pools of neglected citizens. The Niger Delta, the wellspring of Nigeria’s oil wealth, is particularly messy. It’s where people, abandoned by their government, are living at a minimal subsistence level just outside the fences of the major oil company compounds, which sport European levels of convenience and lifestyle for their expatriate employees. As a result, it’s little wonder that the Delta’s political environment is a swirling maelstrom of local actors, from tribal chiefs to gangs all competing for a tiny slice of the Delta’s abundant oil wealth, most of which flows into the hands of corrupt politicians/military leaders in Lagos and the coffers of global oil companies.
SOURCE

Also take into account that the United States’ main worry is that Russia - which set up an official SWF last month - is planning to relaunch the cold war, only this time with oil and gas receipts rather than with the Red Army.

Some western governments are suspicious about the motives of sovereign funds that have been buying up assets in developed countries.

Washington, which has launched talks with funds in Abu Dhabi and Singapore, has concerns over Russia’s one-time rival communist superpower China, which has grown weary of stockpiling US Treasury bonds and has started to size up physical assets in the west.

I think I will start learning Chinese so I can be a better butler.

[Dr.Doom]

"the greed, the stupidity and selfish attitudes of millions of Americans"

I completely disagree with all this finger pointing. Bud4's comments are like those of the religious zealot in Dave's Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal) link. The simple fact of the matter is there are too many consumers on a finite planet with limited resources. Despite and because of America's inrapture of the present way of conducting our living in modern times, we have the farthest to fall. It's that distance from the top of the cliff that will shock us into disbelief and inaction. If you want to live, leave now, it's not too late to catch a plane to Papua New Guinea, and join a mountain tribe with a lot less distance to fall.

[scott]

Increasingly, pillars of the establishment are sounding like shrill critics. Consider Martin Wolf, a columnist at The Financial Times . Wolf recently excoriated the world’s big banks as an industry with an extraordinary “talent for privatising gains and socialising losses... [and] get[ting]... self-righteously angry when public officials... fail to come at once to their rescue when they get into (well-deserved) trouble.... [T]he conflicts of interest created by large financial institutions are far harder to manage than in any other industry.”

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/delong74/English