Every monday morning, some of us wait with bated breath for James Kunstler's new essay on his website, http://www.kunstler.com/. (You always have to scroll down to the 'Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle' part of the website. I wish he'd fix that so I could link it directly.) He always presents his own entertaining and insightful take on what's happening, from his unique 'new urbanist, peak oil' perspective. Here's a sample from last week's essay, but go and see for yourself.
Mr. Obama deserves credit for a lot of things, but perhaps most amazingly his ability to see "hope" in a public so demoralized by their own bad choices that the USA scene has devolved to a non-stop Special Olympics of everyday life, where absolutely everybody is debilitated, deluded, challenged, or needs a leg up, or an extra buck, or a pallet on the floor, or a gastric bypass, or a week in detox, or a head-start, or a fourth strike, or a $150-billion bailout. There's a lot of raw material from sea to shining sea, admittedly, but how do you re-shape it into a population guided by a sense of earnest purpose, with reality-based expectations, with habits of delayed gratification and impulse control, and a sense of their own history? That will be quite a trick. Many of us -- myself included -- will be pulling for Barack. Maybe the power of his rhetoric and his sheer buff physical presence can whip this republic of overfed clowns into shape.
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