Kunstler: US is now the Wile E. Coyote nation (i.e. run off the cliff edge)

[JohnyCanuck]

Event Horizon

There's a particular moment known to all Baby Boomers when Wile E. Coyote, in a rapture of over-reaching, has run past the edge of the mesa and, still licking his chops and rubbing his front paws in anticipation of fricasseed roadrunner, discovers that he is suspended in thin air by nothing more than momentum. Grin becomes chagrin. He turns a nauseating shade of green, and drops, whistling, back to earth thousands of feet below, with a distant, dismal, barely audible thud at the end of his journey. We are Wile E. Coyote Nation.

Is there anyone in the known universe who thinks that the US financial system is not fifty feet beyond the edge of the mesa of credibility?

Nothing will avail now. Not even if Sirhan Sirhan were paroled at noon today and transported directly to the West Wing with a .44 magnum in each hand (and a taxi driven by the Devil waiting outside to take him to the US Treasury and the offices of the Federal Reserve).

It's hard to imagine what kind of melodramas were unspooling on the Hamptons lawns this weekend, while everybody else in America was watching Nascar, or plying the aisles of BJs Discount Warehouse for next week's supply of mesquite-and-guacamole flavored Doritos, or having flames and chains tattooed on their necks, or lost in a haze of valium and methadrine.

SNIP

This process is really out of control now. The bottom line is the comprehensive bankruptcy of the United States. The Republican Party under George Bush will be known as the party that wrecked America (release 2.0). Painful as it is, Americans had better get a new "Dream" and fast. It better be a dream based on the way the universe actually works, which is to say an operating procedure run on earnest effort and truthfulness rather than merely trying to get something for nothing and wishing on stars. We might begin symbolically by evacuating Las Vegas and calling in an air strike on the loathsome place -- to register our new reality-based attitude adjustment.

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/07/event-horizon.html

[hobbit709]

1. Except unlike Wile E. we don't have the ability to recover in the next frame

[gratuitous]

2. This is outrageous!

Wait, what was the guy saying about mesquite and guacamole flavored Doritos? I forgot what I was going to say.

[ixion]

3. just had a discussion like this with my dad... it went like this

to paraphrase:

ixion: We need to go back to growing food locally, because our current infrastructure was based on cheap fuel, which is no longer available.

dad: we've got plenty of fuel here, we're just not using it.

ixion: you mean ANWR and the Gulf...

dad: and tar sands and coal...

ixion: that will only buy us time.

dad: Well, I like being able to go to the grocery store and get whatever I want any time of year.

ixion: yeah, so do I, but that's becoming unsustainable, so we're going to have to rethink it.

dad: I don't want to do that. I like the way things are now...


And so on, and so it will go as we run over the edge of the cliff.

[trof]

6. "Things will always be the way they've always been,

because they've always been that way, so they always will be that way."

Most all of my friends are also doing the ostrich thing.
Heads firmly buried in the sand and still thinking everything's gonna be OK.

[woodsprite]

4. A more accurate description - The Lemming nation. n/t

[Champion Jack]

5. Big difference is Wile E. Coyote never got hurt

[caffeinefwee]

7. what about Sylvester the cat

Always trying to eat Tweety and getting bashed by grandma.