[BigTex]

There's an ancient saying this makes me think of:

"Kill the messenger."

Maybe it's like in the movie "300", where it's:

Kill the messenger if he's an asshole.

If you've seen it I'm thinking of the scene where they threw the arrogant Persian messenger into that giant hole.

I like you BigTex and you have a nice pompadour. but really?

I'm not saying I want to do it, I'm just saying that messengers are more likely to be killed if they're jerks.

So the truth can be jerky? It's kind of interesting that it may take a 'jerk' like Knustler to tell the truth.

10 'well adjusted,' 'caring,' 'warm,' 'socially adept,' 'family-oriented,' 'nice,' 'pleasant,' decent human beings can go an anally pleasure themselves if they continue to contribute to this planet-destroying fiasco we are engaged in and are not worth one page of Kunstler's erudite meanderings.

So Kunstler is a arrogant asshole? Well he's probably a JEW and that makes it okay

I'm also a big Hunter S. Thompson fan, and sometimes I think Kunstler is imitating HST's schtick.

But I appreciate Kunstler's message. I've read LE and I will read more of his work.

What Kunstler do you suggest I read next?

[BigTex]

My copy of his 1994 book "Geography of Nowhere" is nowhere. I keep going over to my bookcase to reference it and it has disappeared. Must have lent it out.

I guess I'll have to push that buy button on FetchBook.com

but that is the book

Thanks!

[efarmer]

I remember going to one of those reenactment villages with
my Dad and Grandpa when I was a kid. While the women looked
at things that caught their attention I accompanied the two
patriarchs to the blacksmith shop. We watched him hammer
out couple of horse shoes and then went off to find the
ladies and gang back up again. On the trail I got to listen
to the older guys talk:

Dad: Did you get a whiff of that blacksmith? Sumbitch stunk
like an angora goat pulling a gut wagon.

Grandad: Yeah but the bastard sure hammers out a good shoe.

It's kind of like that you know. We all stink and are ignorant and
shine and are fine and worthwhile. If you pick out the bad stuff
and throw the good stuff away you are liable to earn yourself
like treatment. The stink washes off the good stuff, honest.

This is my parable for the day. I will go fuck myself now just so
I can beat all of you to the punch with your response.

[threadbear]

I read him only sporadically now. His doomer rant's wearing thin. Still funny at times, but ultimately just getting old. The threadbare reactionary rants about peak oil (yeah, right. We're at 40 bucks, looking at possibly 30, near term?) are in keeping with his creepily bigoted reaction to the Gaza pummeling. Can you just picture this nasty a** in gym class as a child? He must have gotten one heck of a wedgie from a Lebanese immigrant or Jordanian schoolmate to account for what has to be described as a very cruel personality.

Clusterfuck nation: Log on and voice your opinion. Let him know if you're going to continue reading his bile. I'm sure he'll pick up on it when he ego surfs...and something tells me he does a lot of that.

Out of the Woodwork:

"Lately, another large cohort on the political Left adopted the Palestinians as their "pet oppressed minority group du jour." This branch of Jew-haters emanated out of the humanities departments of the universities, when the faculty got bored with the Nazi holocaust, or wished to stake out some new turf in the arena of multiculturalism for the sake of academic advancement."

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/ ... ck_nation/

Hey Kunstler you Schmuck--Who are the "Jew" haters? There are only good people really angry with nasty people like you.

[Leanan]

Did you see this article?

In the unhealed Jewish heart, Arabs became Nazis

It's about Kunstler's reaction to the Gaza thing, and argues it's fear at the root of it:

This background makes it hard for me to accept that he is a Zionist moonbat. His arrogant, unruffled pose masks a deep fear that the dislocation he has been predicting for years will have a pronounced antisemitic hue, but of course mindsets like his invite rather than repel such an outcome.

It ends:

Avraham Burg said, prophetically, in his book on Jewish identity, that the Holocaust is over and we must rise from its ashes. But that is prophecy. In the Jewish heart, it's not over. It's rewinding and replaying. When you slaughter hundreds of children because you feel threatened and aggrieved, you are just perpetuating a cycle of abuse. When you thumb your nose at the world's outrage over the atrocities because the world was silent during the Holocaust, you are not living in history, you're stuck in amber. Often I think that the smartest most Arendtian thing Burg says in his book is that Jews forgave the Germans too quickly (and did so in part for money that built Israel). They took all that feeling and put it on the Arabs. Kunstler does us all a service by making that connection publicly, exposing the terrified emotion behind irrational, and incredibly hurtful, conduct.

[Fishman]

I love it when liberals tear into liberals, it seems to be our best hope for the future. The Middle East alone offers enough to have them at each others throat. If Barach Disillusionment Syndrome spreads quick enough we might get to see them fighting in the streets by March.

[threadbear]

Thanks Leanan. I'm glad there are others out there deeply offended with his garbage. There's a mean, snobbishly effete edge to this guy, I always forgave because he's hilarious, and I appreciate his views on suburbia and depleting resources. But this time he really has gone too far. I would actually discourage people from reading his site now. It's becoming a repository of toxic waste as ugly as the architectural monstrosities he highlights.

[threadbear]

I love it when liberals tear into liberals, it seems to be our best hope for the future. The Middle East alone offers enough to have them at each others throat. If Barach Disillusionment Syndrome spreads quick enough we might get to see them fighting in the streets by March.

And how would you describe yourself? You do such a superior job of illuminating the subtleties in human interaction, perhaps you could advance a theory on what makes you tick.

[outcast]

I read him only sporadically now. His doomer rant's wearing thin. Still funny at times, but ultimately just getting old. The threadbare reactionary rants about peak oil (yeah, right. We're at 40 bucks, looking at possibly 30, near term?) are in keeping with his creepily bigoted reaction to the Gaza pummeling.

Kunstler is a doom monger, nothing else. He started in '99 with Y2K, but when that didn't pan out he moved onto PO. Check the link in my sig to see where it all began.

[Carlhole]

He's at his best when he takes on the sheer gaudiness, useless extravagance and aesthetic wasteland of American life and values. He has really been funny at times - something like a New Urbanist, permaculture version of Hunter S. Thompson. But lately he just seems to be another cursing grouch.

[BlisteredWhippet]

All of you are wrong. Ultimately, Ad homs don't mean anything. Thirdly, we can wax philosophic about what is going on the the Middle East, but moral absolutes are no longer useful. Its total war. It breaks down to existential dilemmas. The arabs had their land sold out from under them- boo hoo- and then they lost the initiative and consequently their right to force unilateral terms of existence. Hamas represents their failure to accept compromised terms of existence. Sucks, but, what are you gonna do? Out-reproduce the enemy? That appears to be the strategy.

The fact is that Hamas shot XX,000 missles into Israel, and now Israel counterattacks. So fucking what? This is a zero-sum game now. Israel knows an integrated society would simply lead to being overrun. This is how cultures survive - or die- by expressing their existential title by force. The arabs would merely ram their religion and culture down everyone's throat. No, they'd say- we're secular- as they play hypnotic prayer music 7x daily.

Can't say I blame the Israelis. If Cuba were firing missles into the US I don't think we'd think twice. That Israelis stole land 60 years ago- well, what are you gonna do? What is anyone going to do?

I'd cry about 1000 Palestinians but, we've got 6.0x10[sup]9[/sup] impending deaths. All precious little babies at one time or another, I'm sure.

[threadbear]

You obviously don't understand the nature of the conflict, the history of the region, Whippet. Also, your vision of the future would reduce us all to orcs. We have to start to empathize more, fear a little less, and raise each other up.

[seldom_seen]

In the unhealed Jewish heart, Arabs became Nazis

He's right about the Arabs becoming Nazis.

This is the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem meeting with Hitler. Now obviously the Mufti isn't part of the Aryan brotherhood. So what sort of similar interests could these nice gentlemen share?



Our Mufti was able to round up 20,000 men to become the muslim division of Nazi Germany's SS. Where they were able to get about wacking jews across Croatia and Hungary. In 1945 Yugoslavia indicted the Mufti on war crimes but he fled to Egypt.



Today, it is above all the Islamist movement Hamas which has taken up the heritage of the Mufti of Jerusalem. This Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood not only persistently undermines every possible point of departure for a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict, it has also adopted the antisemitism of the Nazis in its 1988 Charter.

[cbxer55]

I used to read his site every monday. Not anymore.
Tired of his ultra-left secular-progressive spiel.
Removed him from my favorite list in December.

[oddone]

Whippet,
FYI Palestinian women give birth to average 5.5 children. That's world top 10. A demographic bomb. maybe the world economic collapse (aka "maybe" recession so far) is a blessing in disguise for sivilisation...

And the solution for a mostly sivilised society is to bulid fences. Just like in US.

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

I haven't been able to read his stuff for a while. You are right on threadbear.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Whippet,
FYI Palestinian women give birth to average 5.5 children. That's world top 10. A demographic bomb. maybe the world economic collapse (aka "maybe" recession so far) is a blessing in disguise for sivilisation...

And the solution for a mostly sivilised society is to bulid fences. Just like in US.

Tend to agree.

Humans are territorial species after all.

Key to survival in overshoot environment is in defending still habitable territories and ends are justifying means here.

So whats the solution to ME?

Fence them off and let them eat sand, to put it in plane English.
However there is no need to send our troops there.
Cordone sanitarie policy will do.

[Ayame]

So whats the solution to ME?

Fence them off and let them eat sand, to put it in plane English.
However there is no need to send our troops there.
Cordone sanitarie policy will do.

Well I don't know for the whole of ME but for Gaza just turn off the power. I'm all for it since it's my taxes that pay for their energy supplies (I found out several months ago). I go to work everyday so that Gazans who sit about and do practically nothing apart from eat food aid, procreate, burn stuff in protest at something in the street or blast rockets into Israel can have fuel. Also our stupid PM just pledged another £20million in aid to Gaza! As if the people of the UK are not struggling enough loosing our homes and trying to get by. Most Gazans don't have jobs so they can easily spend their time rebuilding their homes. Just recycle guys! and yeah, I'm sure they'd do the same for us if the situation were reversed [sarc]

Don't get me wrong I'm not Jew lover or whatever I just can't understand the people of Gaza get such an easy ride: food aid, fuel paid for by EU, 80% don't have to work etc.