Kunstler: The Road To Ruin

We're seeing a crisis of authority on top of a crisis of capital, and it will probably lead to a crisis of legitimacy -- by which I mean a catastrophic loss of faith that this society can govern itself at any level. Leadership across the board has failed, in government, in business, in what used to be called the press, and in education. Leadership in every sector went along with the program, marveling stupidly at their society's ability to get something for nothing.

The general public did not perform any more honorably -- due to whatever failure of civic norms they operate within -- and indeed the nation as a whole may deserve all the suffering it faces. But however bad the general public's behavior, or dark their fate, a failure of civic norms is ultimately a failure of leadership, which is about clearly stating the boundaries and terms of behavior. When anything goes, nothing matters. Since that was our leaders' attitude, the public did what it naturally does: it follows the example set by leadership.

We haven't begun to see where all this will lead yet. Since what is happening is basically the evaporation of trillions of dollars in supposed wealth. At the very least we're likely to see an impoverished nation very soon short of money to buy necessities. Historically this is known as a ruinous deflation. The last time America went through such an experience was the Great Depression of the 1930s. Like this situation, it came at the end of an extraordinary expansion of credit -- loans largely made in that day for the purchase of stock "on margin."

One difference between then and now is that in 1929 a relative small minority of Americans were involved in stock purchases. Today, a relative large number of ordinary citizens own overpriced houses bought using extraordinarily risky loans, and a large number of institutions such as pension funds, banks, hedge funds, and money markets own fraudulent securities based on these house loans, worth a fraction of their face value. Some other differences this time around: in the background is a "real" economy of depleting natural resources (oil, soils, aquifers, etc) and the systematic disassembly of an industrial manufacturing infrastructure. In the 1930s, many people could return to family farms and get by, even with little money. Today there are far fewer family farms.

The nation is acting just now like a crowd of bystanders watching a car wreck that has nothing to do with them -- as though they were just occupying the Nascar grandstand on a particularly bad day. They'll discover soon that it's their own society that's hit the wall out there on the track. It raises the question, under the circumstances, as to whether the next presidential election will have any legitimacy.

From www.kunstler.com

The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Reese Bobby: [walks into the classroom] Excuse me, darling. I'm Reese Bobby. I'm here for career day with my son, Ricky.
10-year-old Ricky: Dad!
Reese Bobby: Hey there, boy! Man, you got big. How long's it been? Three, four months? 10-year-old Ricky: Ten years.
Reese Bobby: Ten years? Man, I gotta lay off the peyote. [puts a cigarette in his mouth] Schoolteacher: Mr. Bobby, there's no smoking in here.
Reese Bobby: Oh, it's all right, darling, I'm a volunteer fireman. Okay, I am a semi-professional racecar driver and an amateur tattoo artist. Classmates: OOO0HHHH!
Reese Bobby: And the first thing you gotta learn if you're gonna be a racecar driver, is that you don't listen to losers like your know-it-all teacher here.
Schoolteacher: Okay, I think that's enough.
Reese Bobby: Your teacher wants you to go slow, and she's wrong because it's the fastest who get paid and it's the fastest who get laid. Classmates: [they all cheer]

Ricky Bobby: Wait, Dad. Don't you remember the time you told me "If you ain't first, you're last"?
Reese Bobby: Huh? What are you talking about, Son?
Ricky Bobby: That day at school.
Reese Bobby: Oh hell, Son, I was high that day. That doesn't make any sense at all, you can be second, third, fourth... hell you can even be fifth.
Ricky Bobby: What? I've lived my whole life by that!

Ricky Bobby: Hey. I lost my license. That's why I'm on the bus... I'm delivering pizzas. Man on the Subway: Mothafucka, what makes you think I care? Shut the fuck up!
Ricky Bobby: I- I've just telling you that 'cause, like I said, I lost my license. I've just been having a lot of problems lately. Man on the Subway: Problems? I don't want to hear about your damn problems! Everybody's got problems! My momma got problems she just lost her leg! My cousin Pookie just lost a testicle! My dog just threw up somebody's finger! That's a problem! Ricky Bobby: I really regret opening my mouth and talking to you.

Ricky Bobby: I've sent in my application to the Real World. So I'm hoping to hear back from that. I'm putting A LOT of my eggs into that basket, the MTV basket. I'm also thinking about getting a gun, and dealing crack. Being a crack dealer. Not like a mean crack dealer, but like... like a nice one. Kinda friendly like, "hey, what's up guys? Want some crack?" I'm just waiting on those two things to flesh themselves out.

NVDL: This is a great movie that illustrates just how chronically f-d up the human condition has become. It's so bad that at times you're not sure if real life is being parodied or simply represented. That's ba-a-a-a-ad.