Our Turn? (James Howard Kunstler)

[Tace]

James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

Mar. 29, 2010 -- Nations go crazy. It's terrifying when it happens, especially to a major nation with the ability to project its craziness outward. We look back on the psychotic break of Germany in 1933 and still wonder how the then-best-educated population in Europe could fall under the sway of a sociopathic political program. We behold the carnage and devastation left in the wake of that episode, and decades later you still can do little more than shake your head in bewilderment.

China had a psychotic break in the 1960s in its "cultural revolution," provoked by the mad neo-emperor Mao. He sent cadres of Chinese baby boomer youths rampaging across the land, turned every institution upside down, and let millions starve. Mao's China lacked the ability then to export this mischief, but enough of his own people suffered.

Cambodia was the next humdinger of a national nervous breakdown when the Paris-educated classic marxist Pol Pot decided to make the world's biggest omelette by cracking a million eggs. He took everybody wearing eyeglasses, everybody who appeared to have a thought in his or her head, and sent them out to the bush to be worked to death, or shot in ditches, or disposed of otherwise. The mounds of skulls remain to tell the tale.

Lately we've had the Hutu-Tutsi genocides in Rwanda, the craziness in former Yugoslavia, the cruelty of Darfur, the international suicide-bomber craze (including today's blasts in Moscow). Surely, I've left a few out... but these are minor episodes compared to what may be coming next.

more

http://worldnewstrust.com/index.php?option=com_flexicontent&view=items&cid=134:commentary-wnt-reports&id=7615:our-turn-james-howard-kunstler

[Daveparts still]

1. Nations don't go Crazy

Systems break down,the Nazi's came to power because of a weak balkinized democracy. Too many parties too many individual goals which made the democracy ineffective.

The cultural Revolution was a party purge just like Stalin's purges in the 30's you are loyal comrade but are you loyal enough?

Pol Pot was a Chinese backed Communist taking revenge on Russian backed Vietnamese Communists.

It's too easy to say "well the world just goes crazy sometimes" there are reasons why these things happen. Reasons why they happen and reasons why they can be prevented

[murray hill farm]

2. Kunstler...

Has been excellent lately. He is always my first read on Monday mornings...and has been really on target of late.

[Demeter]

3. Reagan Was America's Psychotic Break--and W Was His Legacy

Unfortunately, although the man is dead, the madness lives on.