The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

The now-perfunctory alarms have been sounded and we're waiting for whatever the Fourth of July brings. The truth is that many Americans feel absolutely impotent in the face of asymmetrical terrorist threats. This seems to me consistent with the fact that there's not really much we can do about it. Do we arrest every olive-skinned person carrying an attache case on K Street in downtown Washington, D.C.? I don't think so. Do we assign every citizen over seven years old to guard a public monument or a piece of civil infrastructure?

So, in the best American tradition, we party on and cross our fingers.

But the inability to act to control one's destiny invariably produces depression.

Meanwhile, the US economy (and hence US dominated "globalism") unwinds like a foreordained narrative. Our corporations are rackets run by chiselers. Our daily business is the construction of redundant discount chainstores selling merchandise made by virtual factory slaves half a world away, to be bought on credit by people with poor records of repaying loans. The collective hallucination that America is the safe haven of world investment is also about to dissolve, and when it does, the value of the dollar will fall, perhaps by a lot. We are not prepared for this.

For many, Independence Day will be spent stuck in cars on horrible collector highways in a desperate search to entertain children who have lost the capacity to play by themselves.

Repeat after me: "We're number one. We're number one."