School Teacher-In-Chief

James Kunstler's most recent version of what happened over the last 35 years (this is long but well-worth reading):

A creepy feeling ushers in President's Day this year as the suspicion grows that nobody in charge of anything knows what what to do next. The usual yin-yang consensus has solidified in congress along party lines, both equally idiotic. In the White House, Mr. Obama is under excruciating pressure to "do something" as systems unravel and economies augur into darkness. Amid all the anxiety and raging cluelessness, one thing is clear: we're doing everything possible to evade reality.

The reality we can't face is that one way of life is over and a new one is waiting to be born. It's been waiting, really, since the early 1970s, when God whacked the USA upside its head to announce that we'd outgrown our once-stupendous domestic supply of oil. I remember those fervid months following the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 (I covered the story as a young newspaper reporter.) The basic message was this: from now on we'll be running this show on other people's oil so we better start doing things differently. Back then, the not-yet-lost-in-a-fog-of-greed Baby Boom generation rolled up its tie-dyed sleeves and got to work doing a lot of forward-looking things: micro hydro-electric, passive solar houses, rural homesteading, the next generation of public transit (BART, the D.C. Metro), the first wave of urban gentrification....

Then, in 1979, the Ayatollah tossed out the Shah of Iran, we got another dose of oil problems, and a year later, President Jimmy Carter's clear-eyed view of the oil situation as "the moral equivalent of war" got overturned in favor of Ronald Reagan's dreadful Hollywood nostalgia projector. As usual in times of severe social stress, the public got delusional. Mr. Reagan was very lucky. During his tenure, two of the last great non-OPEC oil discoveries came into full production -- Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and the North Sea -- and took the leverage away from the Islamic oil nations who had been making us miserable with their threats, embargos, price-jackings, and hostage-takings.

Americans drew the false conclusion that Ronald Reagan was an economic genius (a similar thing happened in Great Britain with Margaret Thatcherism). The price of oil went down steeply while they were in office. Britain could kick back and enjoy it's last remaining industry, banking, on a majestic cushion of energy resources. The USA resumed its major post-war industry: suburban sprawl building. Reaganism got elevated to the status of a religion, though it was little more than a twisted version of Eisenhower-on-steroids. Under Reagan, WalMart embarked on its campaign to destroy every main street economy in the nation. The Baby Boomers came back from the land, clipped their pony tails, discovered venture capital, real estate investment trusts, securitization of "consumer" debt, and the Hamptons. Greed was good. (No, really....)

The first President Bush's Gulf War jolted the oil markets briefly, but Saudi Arabia was demonstrably on our side in that conflict, while the non-OPEC oil supply was goosed up by production from Mexico's giant Cantarell field. The slight economic shudder caused by the Gulf War was enough, though, to unseat Bush Number One in favor of the Boomer Bill Clinton. A puzzling figure in many ways, articulate and magnetic, Bill Clinton was hardly a reformer, surely not in terms of the national lifestyle. He was in so many ways an exemplar of it. He'd been governor of WalMart's home state (and his wife sat on its board of directors). He was a pure product of the New South, the sunbelt, with its economy literally driven by everything connected to cars -- new suburbs, malls, fast food huts, Nascar. He wasn't about to pull a Jimmy Carter and try to prepare the people for some harsh realities.

Baby Boomer greed went into overdrive during the Clinton years as the former hippies hit their mid-life career strides, epitomized in billionaire-worship and the eventual money-grubbing book deals both Clintons made on departure. Does anyone remember Mr. Clinton saying, even once, that an economy based on suburban sprawl building and car dependency might not be such a good thing? Of course not. Under Clinton, the SUV became our new national bird. The price of oil flat-out crashed while Clinton was in office, sinking to the $10-a-barrel range by the time he handed over the White House keys to Bush Number Two.

He has a lot more to say about Bush and Obama, that's right on target and that you need to go read (be sure to scroll down far enough).

Okay, James, I think you're right. So what is the solution?

As I've said more than once, I believe this basically honest and intelligent president will have to take on the role of the nation's hand-holding camp counselor or school teacher. When the time comes that he assumes this role, I think he'll do it pretty well, even though great pain and misery will be abroad in this land.

That's it? Oh. My. G....