Next, of course, comes the empty ritual of pretending that we must make sure something like this never happens again. How? By some forensic inquiry into the psychology of the shooter, Mr. Lanza… his comings, goings, email musings, Netflix rentals, chemical composition of his fingernail clippings? We flatter ourselves with the technocratic conceit that if we can measure something enough, we can control it. Ban assault weapons or tighten up the background checks? The horse is out of the barn on that one. There are enough weapons loose in the USA to conduct a full-scale Civil War right now. And probably enough ill feeling. Just pick the flavor of the conflict you want: ideological? Religious? Racial? Regional?

      For what it’s worth, the Newtown Massacre to me is largely about the failure of men in America, and in particular the failure of men to raise up male children into men. The tragic monster that Mr. Lanza grow up into lived with Mom and ended up parking four bullets in her brain. Imagine the tensions in that monster. It’s not an accident that the commercial fantasies represented in movies and television aimed at boys are populated by legions of super-heroes. This sort of grandiosity — the wish to project supernatural powers — is exactly what you get in boys who have not developed competence in any reality-based, meaningful realm of endeavor — and I wouldn’t necessarily include school, such as it is in our time, as a reality-based, meaningful realm of endeavor, since it is mostly a brutally boring accreditation process. Notice, Mr. Lanza’s chief instrument of death was the “Bushmaster.”  His weapon made him a “master” of something, at least, even if it was just the systematic slaughter of six-year-old kids and the women in charge of them.

     History has its own arcs and particular moments in history have their own spirits of the time. This moment for us is the sum of the unintended consequences of countless bad choices we’ve made for many decades against the backdrop of enormous material riches. I’ve inveighed against these manifold fiascos enough for this audience. The net result is a nation that has turned men either into weaklings, fakes, or monsters. I think the greater tragedy is that we are past being able to teach ourselves how to act and now it is up to nature and history to provide the only kind of instruction we can understand.

     I used to crack a joke when showing a particular slide in my visiting college lectures that “we’re a wicked people who deserve to be punished.”

It’s not so funny anymore. Look around at the squalid mess that America has made of its own terrain: the endless wastelands of free parking and slumping strip malls, the wilderness of tract housing subdivisions, the cities left cored, rotting, and stinking in the fall drizzle, the countless redundant roadways — and while you’re at it, take a good hard look at the depressing and disgraceful industrial boxes that school is conducted in, these euphemistically-named “facilities.” We live in physical surroundings that are the perfect growth medium for serial killers, mass murderers, psychopaths with no feeling, and sado-masochists preoccupied only with the ritual orchestration of their own shame and guilt in the service of inflicting pain.

     Let me remind you that there is a range of thought and feeling evinced in human culture that no longer exists in America. These things were called virtues. They are qualities in thought and action related to goodness and excellence, and they are in very short supply these days in the USA, though we are well-supplied with fakes and approximations of virtue — such as the moments of sham heroism witnessed yesterday afternoon and evening by men watching televised football. What matters now is that an epochal undertow of events is dragging this enormous nation into an economic convulsion that will inevitably turn political. I don’t think that our society can be redeemed in its current form. It has to pass through a tribulation that demands the reemergence of adult male humans who know how to be men in more than one dimension. And you who make it through to the other side will barely comprehend the monsters left behind, or how they made themselves that way.

18 Comments on "Kunstler: America the Horror Show"

Rick on Tue, 18th Dec 2012 1:13 am 



I like JHK. Sometimes he’s wrong, sometimes he’s over the top. But, overall he’s right, though his timing like most, is ahead of its time.

Nonetheless, this was a good post. And he’s right about this country, much it is depressing. The more you have traveled, and most Americans have not, the more you get it.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of natural beauty in the US. But a lot of it is gone now, due to moronic greed, and shear stupidity.

I no longer fly, because it’s one of the worst things you can do, in terms of AGW. But, when I did travel, it was always depressing to land at O’Hare. After being in Europe or elsewhere.

Gleb on Tue, 18th Dec 2012 1:27 am 



As depressing as this article is, it is the truth.

BillT on Tue, 18th Dec 2012 1:40 am 



Rick, I agree. I was of the “America the Great” mindset until I left the country and went to other countries. I have lived in the Philippines for 5 years now and the rot in the US is blatantly obvious. I try to get my family to relocate, but they are blind to the problems.

The US is going to go through a revolution eventually. One that will leave it a shell of it’s former self and maybe 2/3 less population. You put 300 million guns in the hands of a country on drugs of one kind or another, raised with a ‘game-boy’ in their hands, killing imaginary enemies by the thousands, movies and TV numbing you to the idea of death, and you get Newtown.

As JHK said, there are few real men left in America that want to take responsibility for their family and set a good example. Most are too busy pursuing money or selling drugs or working on Wall Street or K Street to be concerned with the inconvenience of raising a family. I spent 28 years of my life doing just that, raising a good family and setting the example. Many others won’t spend 28 minutes a day being a good parent.

Beery on Tue, 18th Dec 2012 3:14 am 



I like some of Kunstler’s rants, but sometimes his misogyny shows, and here it’s quite apparent in his unspoken belief that women can’t make boys into men. It’s foolish sexist nonsense and it’s the main reason I can’t stand his novels.

Cloud9 on Tue, 18th Dec 2012 3:25 am 



Beery the stats are on Kunstler’s side. To steal a line from Kris Rock, “If you call your mom pam and your grandma mom, you’re going to jail.”

Gale Whitaker on Tue, 18th Dec 2012 4:25 am 



In “The Long Emergency” James does a great job making the point that the so called sustainable alternatives just won’t work because it takes cheap carbon energy to produce and maintain the stuff. After the die off humans may be able to live like they did in 1820.

ken nohe on Tue, 18th Dec 2012 6:13 am 



The truth yes but only part of it. The problem is that behind the myth of the American melting pot there is the reality of a geographically divided country. As the US was desegregated legally in the 50s and 60s, it was re-segregated geographically and the current landscape as grim as it is, is the result of these trends. It took 50 years to build it and it won’t disappear overnight.

Same thing for the social landscape. The Norway massacre proved that it can happen elsewhere and that there is little you can do to avoid it. But only the US and a handful of lawless countries have a regular stream of blood running in the gutter. Some people were even proposing to arm the teachers. Must be the solution indeed: A M16 padlocked in every class! With drones flying over the courtyards it should be secure indeed. The kind of society you really want to live in. (Maybe as a added benefit it will also deter illegal immigrants? Superb!)

Arthur on Tue, 18th Dec 2012 12:40 pm 



Holland has gun control, the overwhelming majority do not have guns. Yet in April 2011 a young guy in the town of Alphen aan de Rijn shot 7 people dead and injured 17 others. Mexico has gun control, yet 50,000 were murdered in the past 3 years by guns.

The US government was waiting for this to happen in order to disarm the (white) American population, the last hurdle before erecting a totalitarian state like the USSR. The jewess Feinstein had her 2700 page legislation ready in her drawer. It looks like this time they could be serious. I do not have enough feelers into the US society to be able to judge whether they are going to succeed or not. But they succeeded with 9/11, so why not with this.

http://www.anarchiel.com/stortplaats/toon/sandy_hook_schietpartij_op_school_vs_false_flag

Beery: “here it’s quite apparent in his unspoken belief that women can’t make boys into men. It’s foolish sexist nonsense”

Were you not the guy who wanted to imprison ‘foolish preppers’? Always distrust people who are using the prefered buzz words of your rulers, ‘sexist’ and ‘racist’. In the US 40% of the children grow up without father, including that cretin that apparently carried out the murder. For children and certainly for boys it generally is bad to have to grow up without a father. Women can’t replace fathers, regardless how much they try.

I have a very ill-boding for the US and that happy ends, like sort of happened to the USSR (thanks to the semi-God Putin) is not in the cards for the US. Reason: a certain maffia had by and large already left the USSR during the seventies. But the US still has these criminals within it’s border, by the millions. They are likely not going to succeed to conquer the world, as they would like, but I think they could very well hold on to power in the US, turning it into a nightmare police state. Maybe after a stand-off between between the GOP fly-over whiteys against the jews, FEDs, ‘minorities’ and white lefties like Beery over gun control. I already know who would be the likely winner in such a standoff. Bill was right to escape, lefty or not. Nobody could escape the USSR.

TIKIMAN on Tue, 18th Dec 2012 1:43 pm 



Kunstler is becoming an annoying little worm.

Arthur on Tue, 18th Dec 2012 6:17 pm 



Alerted by LewRockwell.com (twitter)… Zuckerbook (which I avoid like the plague) started to suspend accounts of those with the wrong opinions about the shooting:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/facebook-suspends-account-for-questioning-official-narrative-on-shooting.html

Do not want to launch theories out of thin air here, but one is well advised in paying close attention to the development of this story. There is too much at stake here for the government to accept anything at face value. One stinking bin Laden story is enough.

rollin on Tue, 18th Dec 2012 8:05 pm 



Hmmm, the suburbs produce millions of normal acceptable human beings for every “monster”. I do not see the correlation nor do I view the suburbs as the nightmare that JHK sees.

Maybe it’s a failure of view and language. The sociopaths that have led us down the path of disaster and are killing off millions each year are normal and acceptable in the view of society and the law. Maybe JHK does not understand what it truly means to be human.

WhenTheEagleFlies on Tue, 18th Dec 2012 8:42 pm 



I guess Beery doesn’t get out much.

BillT on Wed, 19th Dec 2012 1:44 am 



Actually, suburbs are the bane of America. They are not neighborhoods, they are mini-kingdoms where no-one knows who lives next door or across the street, and they don’t care. They are too caught up in making money to pay for it all to worry about life and living.

Those above who have negative comments need to get out of the States and see how real communities live. See how the US is deteriorating into a 3rd world without the family cohesiveness of those countries. See how the government has caused (Yes, your government) corruption, drug dealing, murder, etc.

Just because someone makes you feel uneasy does not justify name calling. The truth usually hurts. Adjust or die.

rollin on Wed, 19th Dec 2012 3:55 am 



Bill T, maybe the McMansion areas are the bane of America or the dream of wannabee lords and ladies, but that is not what most suburbs were and many are still not. I grew up in the original suburbs, the ones built after WWII, the ones that supposedly epitomized the American dream. We knew all our neighbors and talked with them, kids played in the street, neighbors visited. They had a lot of blue collar people as well as some of the proffesionals. The woods and river were not far away, small mom and pop stores were within easy walking distance. We had gardens and trees. It was a good place, not a nightmare. Sure things have changed a little there, but the houses are pretty much the same and yes there are more “professionals” owning them, but what else, we have been making them by the million by sending everyone we can to college.
I see the suburbs as easily convertible to villages and towns. Some houses will become the general stores, others will be meeting places. A local business will become the new dance hall or bowling alley. It can all change in a few years. Those big abandoned mall parking lots will be filled with solar panels. The buildings will house artisans and craftsmen and local small industry. Maybe a playhouse.
Gardens will be everywhere again. Fruit trees will grow in the abandoned areas.

Oh and those McMansions, they can house several families each or be converted into inns and other businesses.

Arthur on Wed, 19th Dec 2012 6:23 am 



rollin, the argument by Kunstler against suburbs was that you need cars to get somewhere… Jobs, schools, shops. If the car dies, the suburbs die.

About the shooting:

http://lewrockwell.com/orig13/rappoport4.1.1.html

rollin on Wed, 19th Dec 2012 5:24 pm 



Arthur, I live now in the country, back in the suburbs I didn’t really need a car, but here I do, it’s six miles to the nearest grocery store. It’s a farming community, so much for not needing a car in the country. In the suburbs we had everything within an hour walk or a 15 minute bike ride. Grocery stores, movies, drug stores, doctors, schools, restaurants, clothing shops, etc. The hospital was six blocks away. There was a bus route a block away and a passenger railroad station two miles away. All this is still the same there now, with maybe a few more stores and businesses nearby.
It’s all in the design and the design can be easily modified in suburbia.

By definition a suburban area is a residential area on the outskirts of a city. That means it’s near a city or a large town. I think Kunstler is confusing a bedroom community with a suburb. Look at the word suburb – a.k.a. sub urban. A bedroom community is not sub-urban, it is a disconnected residential area full of commuters. Let’s get the terms right.

christian phillip on Wed, 19th Dec 2012 9:38 pm 



…i go one step further than my guru and declare the final truth: this pest has to go….humanity in its entirety does not deserve to not die anymore…after so many extinctions let us go the way of the bees….get ready for canibalism after that…enjoy reading now…bye

Arthur on Wed, 19th Dec 2012 10:15 pm 



rollin, I watched many American movies in my life and hence got many impressions from ‘suburbia’… Generally nice, briad streets, often without sidewalk, little traffic, lots of trees, free standing, large houses, with a separate garage and a huge car in it. Only the newspaper deliverer rides a bike and throws the newspaper on the lawn. Adults invariable leave their houses by car. As you say yourself, you had to walk for an hour to the next shop. In Europe you traditionally have compact cities, designed before the advent of the car age, with much smaller houses than suburbia. I live in a modern Dutch city, build in the fifties, but even there shops are three minutes walk. Only the newest cities like Almere, build in the eighties, were designed assuming car ownership, resulting in ‘slaapsteden’, cities meant to sleep in and work in Amsterdam.