So-called capitalism is more like gravity, a set of laws that apply to and describe the behavior of surplus wealth, in particular wealth generated by industrial societies, which is to say unprecedented massive wealth. The human race never saw anything quite like it before. It became both a moral embarrassment and a political inconvenience. So among the intellectual grandiosities of modern times is the idea that this massive wealth can be politically managed to produce an ideal equitable society — with no side effects.Mr. Kunstler puts his finger on the fundamental conceit of so-called intellectuals in our time. Nothing but nothing should not be attempted and even the most ludicrous ideas had their legions of grasping dreamers, fools, moral midgets, sycophants, and conniving, lying power seekers.Hence, the bold but hapless 20th century experiment with statist communism, which pretended to abolish wealth but succeeded mainly in converting wealth into industrial waste and pollution, while directing the remainder to a lawless gangster government elite that ruled an expendable mass peasantry with maximum cruelty and injustice.[1]
Welfare for foreigners and parasites, Ponzi-scheme retirement systems, a classless society, world government, the end of the nation state and national borders, the inundation of the white race, the plundering of the productive, multiculturalism, the destruction of the Christian faith, an end to sex differences, the sacramentalization of sodomy, the vagification of the military, world government, and the worship of primitives, among other things – all mad policies pursued with a vengeance by a political class enamored of the powers conferred by the lawless, centralized, tax-glutted, propaganda-soaked state.
“If you can, you must” became the mantra of political leaders who had access to any economic surplus with never a sideways glance at the experience of millions in the Gulag, the laogai camps, and the killing fields.
The Age of the Dumbass had dawned with a vengeance.
Notes
[1] "Piketty Dikitty Rikitty." By James Kunstler, Clusterfuck Nation, 4/28/14.
This is, perhaps, the most efficient and effective description of our time that I have yet encountered.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Xealot. I appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteI obviously like Kunstler's take on surplus. Surpluses make for comfort and insulation from life's more unpleasant realities. Ironically, they led to the people who enjoyed the new untold luxury turning on the very system that generated the surplus. Apparently, insufficiently LARGE surpluses are proof that we have a a corrupt system and that it rewards greed. Fast forward to the present mendacious and delusional present.
Brilliant! An exerpt and link posted over at Crusader Rabbit.
ReplyDeleteExcerpt, that is...
ReplyDeleteThis is why I no longer feel welcome in my own homeland. This nation has changed so much that I no longer even recognize it. This is the brave new world everyone promised? This is the land of the free and the home of the brave? Not anymore it isn't. Now you have to be a politically correct jackass to get ahead. Disgusting.
ReplyDeleteI recommend Fred Siegel's Revolt against the Masses. How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class to you, Mr. Stout. The moronic initiatives and ideals that liberals chose early on were founded on their belief that the prophets of the Kingdom of Heaven, i.e., liberal seers, were "mired in the muck of America, a land of 'appalling slovenliness' and 'ignorance.'" (P. 17.)
ReplyDeleteAnd if a little blood should have to be shed to attain the liberal ideal, well then, so be it:
“I sympathize the first, the direct and single-minded attack [Red Revolution]. I believe it to have been necessary and inevitable in Russia. It may someday be inevitable in this country [United States of America]. I am not seriously alarmed by the sufferings of the creditor class, the troubles which the church is bound to encounter, the restrictions on certain kinds of freedom which must result, nor even by the bloodshed of the transition period. A better economic order is worth a little bloodshed.” - ~ Stuart Chase (American technocrat, economist, and engineer who is considered an intellectual father to the New Deal), A New Deal (The Macmillan Company, 1932), pp.155-156.
For some reason, these savants with such an elegant, refined view of the unfortunate need for a little skull cracking always seem to think it is "their sort" who will do the cracking and that the definition of who needs it will not happen to be expanded to include them "as operational necessities may require."
I reflect on my deficiencies as a human being and wonder how I am able to operate a toaster oven. These liberal @#$%s assume they can direct -- and change -- entire civilizations with nary a skinned knuckle anywhere.
This grandiosity makes it impossible to have an honest conversation with liberals, let alone manage the affairs of a decent, functioning society with them doing their best to subvert and betray the whole enterprise.
The left will have an epiphany courtesy of a giant two by four when reality finally intrudes. Unfortunately, it looks like they will take us all down with them.