Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on July 10, 2017
Kunstler: We’re Good People, Really We Are!
The disgrace of America’s putative intellectual class is nearly complete as it shoves the polity further into dysfunction and toward collapse. These are the people Nassim Taleb refers to as “intellectuals-yet-idiots.” Big questions loom over this dynamic: How did the thinking class of America sink into this slough of thoughtlessness? And why – what is motivating them?
One path to understanding it can be found in this sober essay by Neal Devers, The Overton Bubble, published two years ago on TheFuturePrimaeval.net — a friend turned me on to it the other day (dunno how I missed it). The title is a reference to the phenomenon known as the Overton Window. Wikipedia summarizes it:
The Overton Window, also known as the window of discourse, is the range of ideas the public will accept…. The term is derived from its originator, Joseph P. Overton (1960–2003), a former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy….
Devers refines the definition:
The Overton Window is a concept in political sociology referring to the range of acceptable opinions that can be held by respectable people. “Respectable” of course means that the subject can be integrated with polite society. Respectability is a strong precondition on the ability to have open influence in the mainstream.
This raises another question: who exactly is in this corps of “respectable people” who set the parameters of acceptable thought? Primarily, the mainstream media — The New York Times, The WashPo, CNN, etc. — plus the bureaucratic functionaries of the permanent government bureaucracy, a.k.a. the Deep State, who make and execute policy, along with the universities which educate the “respectable people” (the thinking class) into the prevailing dogmas and shibboleths of the day, and finally the think tanks and foundations that pay professional “experts” to retail their ideas.
The Overton Window can be viewed as a mechanism of political control, demonizing anyone who departs from the consensus of respectable thought, and especially if they express their heresies in public speech. This has consequences.
Deavers explains:
The trouble with the Overton Window as a mechanism of political control, and with politicization of speech and thought in general, is that it causes significant collateral damage on the ability of your society to think clearly. If some thoughts are unthinkable and unspeakable, and the truth happens in some case to fall outside of polite consensus, then your ruling elite and their society will run into situations they simply can’t handle…. An unwise political elite is one incapable of thinking clearly about their strategic situation, acting in concert, or sticking to a plan…. An insecure political elite is one which has either no sufficient mechanisms of political power short of the politicization of speech and thought, or is faced by such powerful but somehow never decisively powerful enemies that they need to permanently escalate to a state of vigorous politicization of speech and thought. We can compare this state to “intellectual martial law” for its structural similarity to the physical-security equivalent.
We’re now living under that condition of “intellectual martial law.” The consequent degradation of thinking means that the polity can’t construct a coherent consensus about what is happening to it (or devise a plan for what to do about it). This is exactly the point where the Overton Window turns into an Overton Bubble, as described by Devers. The bubble comprises ideas that are assumed to be self-evident (though they actually aren’t) and notions that are potentially destructive of society, even suicidally so. Here is a partial list of the current dogmas and shibboleths inside today’s Overton Bubble:
- Russia hacked the election of 2016 (no evidence required).
- Russia (Vladimir Putin in particular) is bent on destroying the USA.
- All immigrants, legal or illegal, have equal status before the law.
- National borders are inconvenient, cruel, and obsolete.
- Western Civilization is a malign force in human history.
- Islam is “the religion of peace,” no matter how many massacres of “infidels” are carried out in its name.
- Men are a negative force in society.
- White men are especially negative.
- Brownie points given for behaviors under the rubric LBGTQ.
- All discussion about race problems and conflicts is necessarily racist.
- The hijab (head covering worn in public by some Muslim women) is a device of liberation for women.
- There should be a law against using the wrong personal pronoun for people who consider themselves neither men nor women (recently passed by the Canadian parliament).
- A unifying common culture is unnecessary in national life (anything goes).
- Colonizing Mars is a great solution to problems on Earth.
That list defines the general preoccupations of the thinking classes today — to the exclusion of other issues. Here is an alternative list of matters they are not generally concerned about or interested in:
- The energy quandary at the heart of our economic malaise.
- The enormous debt racked up to run society in the absence of affordable energy inputs.
- The dangerous interventions and manipulation in markets by unelected officials of the Federal Reserve.
- The extraordinary dysfunction of manipulated financial markets.
- The fragility of a banking system based on accounting fraud.
- The dysfunction and fragility of the American suburban living arrangement.
- The consequences of a catastrophic breakdown in the economy due to the above.
- The destruction of planetary ecology, threatening the continuation of the human race, and potentially all life.
Now, the question of motive. Why does the thinking class in America embrace ideas that are not necessarily, and surely not self-evidently, truthful, and even self-destructive? Because this class is dangerously insecure and perversely needs to insist on being right about its guiding dogmas and shibboleths at all costs. That is why so much of the behavior emanating from the thinking class amounts to virtue signaling — we are the good people on the side of what’s right, really we are! Of course, virtue signaling is just the new term for self-righteousness. There is also the issue of careerism. So many individuals are making a living at trafficking in, supporting, or executing policy based on these dogmas and shibboleths that they don’t dare depart from the Overton Bubble of permissible, received thought lest they sacrifice their status and incomes.
The thinking classes are also the leaders and foot-soldiers in American institutions. When they are unable or unwilling to think clearly, then you get a breakdown of authority, which leads to a breakdown of legitimacy. That’s exactly where we’re at today in our national politics — our ability to manage the polity.
Read Neal Devers’ excellent article, The Overton Bubble.
22 Comments on "Kunstler: We’re Good People, Really We Are!"
Alice friedemann on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 9:31 am
They are also science and energy / natural resource ignorant and proud of it, they’d rather quote proust and aren’t embarrassed at all by not knowing what the 2nd law of thermodynamics is. Their education since school began is social, political, economics, and literature. The bubble is small and begins to limit thinking from age 5
Sissyfuss on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 11:01 am
Yes Alice, but the polity aka control freaks follow the educational path that gives them access to power, the lifeblood of their existence.
mynamett on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 11:15 am
It is because we live in western countries in a matriarchal form of government. This is why news ideas are not welcomes. Everything in westerns countries revolve around pleasing women and making them comfortable physical and emotionally. There can be no real discussion because it makes women and manginas in feel bad.
onlooker on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 11:26 am
Intelligent ideas and people have been silenced or bought out. The US is a country of profit for profit and by profit. Everything else is secondary or marginalized
deadlykillerbeaz on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 11:51 am
You can’t pay attention to thinking class idiots, they’re idiots. Useless eaters and useful idiots both, when you think about it.
They wouldn’t know what to do if they actually could think. Howling at the moon is more productive, thinking is for the birds.
Besides, they think too much, they all have a thinking problem, thinking is for people who can’t drink.
Stay away from those idiots who think they can think. Just because you think you can think doesn’t mean you really can think.
The thinking class, those who think they can think, has a propensity to make stuff up, afflicted with Munchausen Proxy.
The drinking class is the only way to go.
The power of positive drinking works the best.
Ask any double ham-fisted drunken Irishman.
Hubert on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 11:56 am
Problem is, the so-called “intellectuals” in America are just as stupid as the rest of the garbage in this country. No one is preparing these people for the real crash ahead.
baha on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 12:57 pm
Kunstler is a smart guy. But he’s not always right. I am an American that still knows how to think. I think I know what’s coming and I think I’m pretty much prepared . There still other people like me.
Apneaman on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 1:37 pm
Politics makes people stupid and that’s why everything in the US, down to the tiniest fart, has been overblown by the ruling classes as a dived and rule strategy. That only explains part of it. Most of the rest is cultural and self inflicted. Arrogant exceptionalists, by default, blame all others for their own failings. The Germans and Japanese were both exceptionally arrogant and it did them in. Looks like a repeat – US style.
In spite of trillions of dollars spent on education in the last few generations the US has the most retarded white people per captia and growing by the day.
These Coloradans say Earth is flat. And gravity’s a hoax. Now, they’re being persecuted.
The Flat Earth movement is growing in Colorado, thanks to technology and skepticism about science
“The Fort Collins group — mostly white and mostly male, college-age to septuagenarian — touts itself as the first community of Flat Earthers in the United States. Sister groups have since spawned in Boston, New York, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Chicago.”
“There’s so much evidence once you set aside your preprogrammed learning and begin to look at things objectively with a critical eye,” says Bob Knodel, a Denver resident and featured guest at a recent Tuesday meeting. “You learn soon that what we’re taught is mainly propaganda.”
“Our YouTube channel gets people to critically think,” she said to the Fort Collins group.”
“How are we Flat Earthers supposed to explain to our friends the solar eclipse in August?” asked one attendee. The room fell silent. “We’ll have to do more research and get back to you on that.”
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/07/colorado-earth-flat-gravity-hoax/
“mostly white and mostly male”
There’s your ‘superior’ white N educated super race. Sounds an awful lot like clog.
Keith McClary on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 2:22 pm
The USS Liberty incident was a mistake.
Hello on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 2:37 pm
>>>>> Kunstler is a smart guy
You realize that Kunstler is predicting imminent doom on a weekly basis, right?
He has been on a wrong-spree since 2008, and I think he was also peddling doom during the 1999/2000 switch.
He’s the exact opposite of smart. He’s wrong all the time. Actually thinking about it, my doorknob is not any less smart than Kunstler.
Apneaman on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 3:10 pm
Hello – Wrong…again.
Do you just have the one comment? Cut & paste every time. Same thing for over 3 years I’ve been here and never any counter evidence. Just repeatedly calling others stupid and dumb like a fucking broken record. Do you have anything else? Anything at all? How about a link to some kinda counter evidence demonstrating that everything is awesome? At least Kunstler provides easily verified examples, while you are nothing but an unoriginal one trick pony contrarian. Essentially a whinnying little bitch. Hey why not show Kuntsler up by authoring a bunch of books like him and creating a successful web site like his to showcase your superior intelligence? What’s stopping you? Too busy polishing your doorknob?
Hello on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 4:06 pm
Ape,
The fact that unemployed and school drop outs have enough money to buy high tech computers and access to high tech networks and have enough time to waste arguing about nonsense instead of laboring 14h/day for pure survival is all the proof necessary to show that doomers are wrong.
Let me go and polish one of my doorknobs. And while doing I will ask it about doom. I don’t think it will be any more wrong than Kunstler.
Apneaman on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 5:13 pm
So instead of homes and cars and vacations and being able to pay for their kids collage education like a generation or two ago they get a smart phone on a three year contract with G3 and free wifi at the library and fast food joint on for $50 – $75 a month and that’s what you consider proof that everything is awesome?
Proof that you are an unthinking dogmatic retard. You got nothing except more bitching and system justification to sooth your ever growing cognitive dissonance. You believe in capitalisim and authority like a radical Muslim believes in his dogma.
Do you labour 14hrs a day to survive?
If at the so called height of techno industrialization one needs to labour 14hrs a day to survive then I can think of no greater proof of a failed system. That is a direct contradiction to all the promises I have been hearing from capitalist techno cornucopians for 50 years.
Grandpa and grandma had a nice middle class life with a high school education and one salary and their grandkids have a student loan that will take as long to pay off as grand dads mortgage cause their are no fucking jobs for them. Another failed promise from the system and education racket.
Ok, so what would be your top three pieces of evidence that would indicate the system was in overshoot and failing if it was happening?
What would it take to convince you?
Apneaman on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 5:30 pm
hello, just so you know, here is what ‘proof’ of your doom looks like. Make popcorn bitch.
Essential California: Record heat, destructive fires and a massive power outage roil California
http://www.latimes.com/newsletters/la-me-ln-essential-california-20170710-story.html
Record temperatures fuel raging wildfires in western US
“Thousands have been forced to evacuate as the fires threaten hundreds of homes from California to Montana.
The fire has burned nearly 11km2, injured four firefighters and destroyed at least 10 structures, but that number is expected to rise, fire spokeswoman Mary Ann Aldrich said.
The area burning was southeast of Oroville, where spillways in the nation’s tallest dam began crumbling from heavy rains this winter and led to temporary evacuation orders for 200,000 residents downstream.”
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/record-temperatures-fuel-raging-wildfires-in-western-us
Massive Flooding Causes Trouble For Fort Worth Drivers
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2017/07/09/massive-flooding-fort-worth/
Paris flooding: Record rainfall hits French capital
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40554842
This is not a prediction, this is the predictions/
decades of warnings coming true every fucking day now and many decades “faster than previously expected”.
Makati1 on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 6:17 pm
Thinkers vs Deniers. The teams are very obvious in the above comments. Some have removed the mental shackles caused by the brainwashing going on 24/7/365 in America. Most have not.
The thinkers see the cliff ahead and are doing all they can to prepare for it. Not to prevent it, (too late for that) but to try to ease the pain it will cause for themselves and their loved ones. And to relocate to a less painful location (out of cities or to a different part of the world), if possible.
Deniers, baaing like sheep on their way to the slaughter house, after being sheared by their government ‘shepherd’, are oblivious and will suffer the most. So be it.
Kevin Cobley on Mon, 10th Jul 2017 11:28 pm
Mr Kunstler was a closet racist, but has now joined the Alex Jones nutjob conspiracy theorists mob, his racism fully exposed. All religions are baloney.
His bizarre eposes of Muslims, he tends to ignore the group of people he is related to decided at the end of the 2nd world war decided to steal another people’s (Muslim peoples) country, other groups of people decided to steal the resources of countries where Muslims lived, using the military to secure those resources.
This how disputes between peoples started.
Bloomer on Tue, 11th Jul 2017 12:07 am
Well put Apneaman. I remember playing monopoly as a kid. Buying up all the property and building hotels before all the other players knew what the hell was going on. Everytime they rolled the dice they had to pay up. When they ran out of money they had to mortgage what little they owned and turn it over to me. Soon like the very few in our capitalistic world I had everything.
In todays society, the game is rigged as a handful of super elites own it all and make the rules. Its’ just one gigantic monopoly game folks and your not the guy wearing the top hat.
The apologize talking heads who bombard us daily with their free market bullcrap are merely bum boys, bought and paid for by the capitalistic elites.
So no, I am not going to scapegoat people who are different from me. When we start pulling that crap, the elites don’t just own our pocketbooks they own our soul.
antaris on Tue, 11th Jul 2017 12:39 am
Alice I’m with you
antaris on Tue, 11th Jul 2017 12:44 am
And Hello seems as dumb as her door knob.
Cloggie on Tue, 11th Jul 2017 1:14 am
Mr Kunstler was a closet racist, but has now joined the Alex Jones nutjob conspiracy theorists mob, his racism fully exposed.
Why don’t you set up a nice little loving household together with that other spineless cracker Sissyfuss, Kevin, it is legal now. Together you can have beautiful thoughts about an evil world, full of racism, you both unfortunately are forced to live in and agree among your sorry selves that you both are too good for this world. Well, on an imagined moral level that is.
So what’s going on here with kosher tribal mr Kunstler?
This is going on:
The US just suffered another majestic strategic defeat, this time in Syria and apparently mr Trump is accepting it, as he wants to retreat from global hegemony. Poor necons. They thought in the nineties that after the fall of the Soviet empire they could own the world, therefor telecrashed a few planes in NYC buildings to create the pretext to invade Muslim countries at will. And boy did it go wrong.
This means that an era of European and, after 1945, American colonialism is coming to an end in the Middle East. The last remaining US colonies KSA and Egypt could soon fall as well (the whole reason for the standoff between KSA and Qatar).
The West loves to think that Sunnies and Shia are deadly enemies and can be played out against each other. In reality Turkey and Iran get along fine and are not in the least interested of letting the Muslim variety of the Protestantism-Catholicism schism get out of hand. They both have a common goal, namely the “liberation” of Palestine. And as things look now, they might very well succeed in a not too distant past, now that Iraq and Syria de facto will become Iranian proxies.
So what is a poor Israeli to do? Or poor mr Kunstler? Or this Canadian jew-boy Molyneux?
Suck up to whitey, their last refuge in a hostile world.
Here a nice example of some major backstabbing:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-hungary-soros-idUSKBN19V1J4
There is currently in Europe nothing more right-wing than Hungary:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/08/hungarian-far-right-launches-new-political-party
Yet the Israelis suck up to the Hungarians and support them in their battle against Soros… because they are scared to death for their own fate in Palestine and fear for the future… because there isn’t any.
Here is Stefan Molyneux informing us about and warns against the “death of Canada”:
https://twitter.com/StefanMolyneux/status/883763540544413698
Jews turning white nationalists all of a sudden. And Kevin and Pissy-on-his-own-fuss don’t understand the world anymore and pray that Lonnie Johnson and his Super-Soaker water gun will come to their rescue. He won’t. You can’t cure spinelessness. All that remains for Kevin and Siss to make themselves useful is to end up as $2.99 exceptionalist compost bags on a pallet next to the entrance of Walmart.
Alice I’m with you
Alice can’t believe her luck.
JuanP on Tue, 11th Jul 2017 8:34 am
When I was reading that other article about Venezuela a few minutes ago I couldn’t help thinking how similar the attitude of the interviewees was to those of the people that sorround me here in Miami. Everyone bitches, whines, and moans, but nobody is willing to face the truth and do what is necessary. This won’t end well, we are just too fucked up. The elephant in the room is, of course, overpopulation and Kunstler doesn’t even include it on his list. Things will keep getting worse until we deal with the causes. Dealing with the consequences is simply a waste of time. Get a Vasectomy today and fuck worry free for the rest of your life! 😉
Cloggie on Wed, 12th Jul 2017 3:18 am
Poor mr Heseltine thinks that Britain will soon return to the EU:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/827374/Brexit-EU-Michael-Heseltine-Europe-Brussels-European-Union-theresa-may-tory-boris-johnson
And you seriously think that Europe will be waiting with open arms for you? Forget it. Charles de Gaulle was right, the British are no Europeans. They prefer to carry out the orders of the George Sorosses of this world.
We will get rid of you and use the occasion to finally establish a European army, close the door on Turkey, take Gibraltar back, open up to Russia and Heartland USA.
Meanwhile the non-whites, who have long taken over PC Britain, are making fun of Brexit:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/827622/Brexit-EU-Brussels-Sorabh-Pant-Europe-India-European-Union-immigration-theresa-may
Here is why Brexit is going to be very hard:
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-politics-40571580/brexit-boris-johnson-on-uk-paying-any-exit-bill-to-eu
Which is good, the more conflict with anti-Europe Britain, the better and finally create a continental European super-power with Russia of 640 million.
Two centuries of Anglosphere are now coming to a close…
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/20160612_nothing.jpg
…and no Zerohedge, there is not going to be a NYC-based UN governing it all, the kosher wet dream.
Eurasian century is next.