State of the Union
The fog of
chatter about Federal Reserve money-printing shenanigans, currency wars,
fiscal intransigence, exchange rates, and alphabetized rescue
operations conceals the central reality of the historical moment: that
all industrial economies now face epic contraction, even rip-roaring
China in its absurd and spectacular bid to become the latest drive-in
utopia. The so-called advanced nations of the world are all sliding
toward something less than they wish to be, and the so-called developing
nations will backslide further into poverty and anarchy where
development will never happen.
The implacable contraction
underway is the simple result of growing scarcity of cheap oil, the
master resource. Thus, in a world where fantasy has replaced analysis,
the propaganda channels brim with false news of America's coming "energy
independence" and the rebirth of domestic manufacturing, the coming
electric car fleet, and space tourism. There is also chatter among the
paranoid that an imagined elite has deliberately engineered American
collapse for fun and profit, with sideshows about the Department of
Homeland Security promoting social upheaval in order to make a show of
putting it down. This is all bullshit concealing the futile machinations
of people so unfortunate as to hold political office in an unraveling
they can't control. Where control is no longer possible, paranoid
fantasies fill the vacuum of wishing for control.
One
thing you can be sure of: the current sociopolitical weather will
change. A front will blow through and sweep the fog away. So many
circles of hazard are spinning around events that some fast-turning
object will come off its axis and start smashing all the fantasies. When
that happens, it will be every community for itself, and where there
are no real communities -- for instance, the vast matrix of suburban
noplaces that America emergently composed itself out of in a tragic
quest to become its own televised fantasy -- we'll discover the dark
side of the "liberty" that so-called conservatives endlessly invoke, in
all its screaming eagle iconography.
Not since the Civil
War (1861 - 65) has anything bad of this scale happened within the
United States itself and the public is unprepared despite our total
immersion in the on-screen ersatz heroics of avatars such as Dwayne
Johnson. The terrible convulsion of the 1860s was preceded by a
political time much like ours is now, with figures (calling them leaders
is inaccurate) of no conviction backpedaling furiously toward strife.
Remember these things if you tune in to watch President Obama move
his lips on Tuesday amid the incessant applause in the House chamber.
He'll speak the words "climate change" and the hall will rock with
thunderous handclapping -- but it won't mean anything because both the
president and the people have no intention of changing the way we live.
Mr. Obama will cheerlead for economic growth and he will be talking out
of his ass. It's the nature of this contraction that economic growth is
absent. You can have plenty of economic activity -- especially if you
re-form (literally) the systems we depend on, such as farming, commerce,
medicine, and transportation -- but it won't be expressed favorably in
the GDP stats or the balance sheets of CitiGroup and Morgan Stanley.
At the core of this contraction is the disappearing act of real
capital -- that is, accumulated wealth -- for the excellent reason that
we are squandering what remains of it in the futile effort to keep
living the way we do. But it will be vanishing fast, contrary to the
view of such fantasists as David Leonhardt, Washington bureau chief of The New York Times -- catch him on the current Slate Political Gabfest -- who thinks that the Growth Fairy is about to land on the south lawn of the White House.
The State of the Union Address is happening in a peculiar quiet
moment when all the financial brushfires of the time have been reduced
temporarily to a smolder that conceals the full involvement of the roots
under the surface. Our economic system is burning down. Nobody wants to
talk about the system that will have to replace it, which I call a
world made by hand.
The fortunate few will be those who
have already established themselves in an authentic community of helping
hands, who have some tools -- and I don't mean Adobe Photoshop or the
latest iPhone app -- and laid in some bits of silver and gold.
