The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle
Commentary on the Flux of Events
Welcome to the horse latitudes of politics and economics. Nothing stirs in the hot still air. The big lake appears mirror calm. Will Americans remember this as the last golden summer before their world changed?
The frantic floating hustle we call the economy -- this tenuous network of shit service jobs, ridiculously overpaid executives, easy credit for the discreditable, discount merchandise made half a world away, mandatory commuting across a spiritually toxic landscape of cancerous real estate development -- the whole demoralizing jury-rigged vessel appears to keep chugging along on this still water. No sails required, after all. It's powered by cheap oil.
But great forces are underway beyond the horizon, like a powerful punishing storm.
Violence escalates in Israel and the Palestinian territories. This time there will be no more talk of cease fires and resumed peace negotiations. The two sides have utterly depleted their tiny funds of trust in the abstract idea of mutual good intentions. The Palestinian suicide bomb squads are finally beyond the control of the Palestinian authorities. Before long, the acts of provocation and retaliation will draw other Muslim states into the conflict. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, perhaps Egypt, Iraq. Israel has the military capacity to fend them off, if not completely defeat all of them. But not in a way that will warm the hearts of the so-called international community. And when they are humiliated, the Muslim states will next turn their ire on Israel's chief ally, the US. "Why are you still selling them cheap oil?" the others will ask Saudi Arabia. "The best friend of our enemy is our enemy."
The US, meanwhile, will have desperately tried to stay out of the conflict, hoping that the Israelis can defend themselves, and hoping (foolishly) that events will not alter international oil market relations.
If a squeeze is put on America's oil umbilical cord to the Mideast supply points, our country will find a pretext to enter the military conflict, with the short-term goal of occupying the Arabian peninsula and controlling the oil resources there. This will be a vain enterprise for several reasons. One is that there aren't enough American troops to prevent fatal sabotage to the delicate infrastructure of oil extraction: the well-heads, the pipelines, the terminal facilities, etc. They can be blown up and crippled too easily, and there will be no shortage of volunteers to do so. Another reason is that while Saudi Arabia is of supreme importance to America's bottomless oil thirst, it is not the only source of our oil imports, and under the scenario I am drawing, other suppliers to the international oil markets will also be disrupted or disabled, including Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, and the former Soviet republics deep along Asia's vast middle where many US oil companies have pinned their hopes for future extraction. The US military is not going to occupy all the lands once briefly conquered by Alexander the Great.
The catch to all this (and, like the famous Catch-22, it's some catch) is that America in its current economic and logistical configuration cannot tolerate even a minor interruption in its super-colossal oil import stream. If the scenario above were to play out, then all bets are off for the world's highest standard of living. Forget about the stock market, forget about "consumer confidence," forget about leisurely vacations to theme parks, forget about all the frozen tater tots you can cram down your craw, forget about easy credit for the unworthy, forget about normal life as it was known in that fantasy era that lasted fifty years after World War Two.