The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

In the new era of extreme global turbulence we have entered, it may be impossible for the US to enjoy domestic security without clamping down our borders and severely restricting trade, travel, and immigration. I'm not saying I like the idea or relish the idea of America isolating itself prophylactically from the rest of the world, but it may become necessary, whether we like it or not. All it would take to push us over that line is one more major act of terrorism.

I don't know how to account for the lack of terrorist activity in the US since the fall of 2001. Perhaps our national security agencies have performed heroically without grandstanding. (I imagine the FBI and CIA have been working sedulously.) Maybe the terroristas are less well-organized than their publicists would like us to believe. Maybe they have been hoarding their assets for the outbreak of Jihad-o-rama -- which I believe is coming down sooner or later. Maybe we have just been lucky.

But there are too many genies out of their bottles in the world. Anti-Americanism is growing in South America. Brazil's new leftist president wants to restart that nation's nuclear weapons program. Chemical and bio-warfare agents are much cheaper and easier to make, and many unreliable regimes are working on them. VX nerve gas let loose in a major city could kill a million people in one event. Infected human smallpox "martyrs" can easily enter the US and circulate in public places. Even after 9/11 the number of shipping containers actually inspected by customs agents stands around five percent.

Sealing the US against these threats would eventually mean opting out of the global economy as we have experienced it in recent decades. It seems to me that many of the relationships that make up that global economy are on the verge of unraveling anyway, and that America is going to have to become a more self-reliant nation. If so, we will be a much less-affluent nation -- and that may be inevitable, too, whether we like it or not.

In any case, we're going to have to drastically reform and revise the way we live here. If we are not able or willing to decommission suburbia in an orderly way, the US may dissolve in far-reaching economic paralysis and social upheaval. Political leaders have done a poor job of preparing Americans for this future, and I wonder if there has ever been a more complacent public in any great nation.