The danger is not that communism has returned wearing an old uniform, but that many of us - far too many - have forgotten the moral conditions that once made its promises recognizable as lies. A society begins to decay when envy is renamed justice, coercion compassion, hatred virtue, and violence merely the understandable language of the aggrieved. By then the political program is almost secondary. The real conquest has already occurred within the conscience, where men learn to excuse evil so long as it is committed against those they have first been taught to despise. No free society can survive indefinitely once truth itself becomes subordinate to grievance.
The answer for citizens of a constitutional republic is neither hysteria nor vengeance, but courage: to speak plainly when language is corrupted, to defend the rule of law even when it restrains our own side, to insist upon equal rights rather than favored classes, and to refuse participation in lies however fashionable they become. Liberty is not preserved by institutions alone. It survives only while free people possess the character to defend those institutions, the discipline to govern themselves, and the courage to say no when power demands that they say yes.
Here's what I don't understand, Thomas. Our host said, "Work is scarce and it’s nearly impossible to make a living at it, that is, pay for food and a roof over your head"
I don't necessarily disagree with our host but in my community I see evidence to the contrary. In my town out here in the burning heat soaked waterless American west, it seems like people have plenty of money to live comfortably. Everyone is driving around a new RAM or Ford truck pulling a fifth wheel. I see people constantly driving around my suburban neighborhood in lifted golf carts with cool mag wheels or in side by side SUVs. They are all walking around staring at $1200 I-phones with fancy data plans. At church the pews are empty because everyone is on their summer vacations before the school year starts, usually Disney World or Hawaii. They all drive newer cars than mine, many of them fancy Jeeps, Tahoes, Porsches and Corvettes. Many people sell their modest homes in my neighborhood and move 1/4 of a mile to another subdivision to buy a house that is bigger and fancier and costs a hell of a lot more in property taxes and heating and cooling than the little 2000 square foot shanty they weren't happy with.
Yeah, I know. They are all buried in debt, up to their foreheads. I get it. But here's the part I don't understand. How do they manage to make the monthly payments? They can't all be living on trust funds or parents inheritances. They have to have a job that produces some kind of income so they can pay the interest on all of their debt and loans.
If a new subdivision pops up with $500,000.00 lots (not including the price of the new home to be built) the lots are gobbled up and sold within weeks of opening.
I go to the gym every day for 1 hour on my lunch break. It's right across the street. The gym is packed with young men and women who, apparently, aren't working. When do they work? Where do they work? Do they work at all? When I have a day off on Tuesday, which has historically been a standard work day, the streets and stores are clogged with automobiles and shoppers, respectively, who are apparently NOT AT WORK. Doesn't any body work anymore? How are they surviving? They can't all be trust fund babies.
I would love to read an article written by our gracious host that describes how in the hell people are making enough money to fund the debt ridden lifestyles they are living and get his eloquent take on it. Food for thought Mr. Kunstler.
I understand the question you are asking, and I do not doubt what you are seeing. I would only be cautious about drawing a broader conclusion from it. America is an enormous and extraordinarily uneven country, and prosperity can be concentrated in remarkably small geographic pockets. I live in a very prosperous area myself that sounds an awful lot like yours. Even my community is eclipsed by adjacent areas of extraordinary wealth that make my town look like Hooverville. If my town and its adjacent communities were my only window onto the country, I might reach much the same conclusion you have.
But I also spend considerable time far upstate in New York, well north of Albany, in communities where the picture could hardly be more different. Double-wide trailers, old pickup trucks and modest incomes are the norm. These are hardworking, blue-collar people whose leisure might consist of a Saturday fishing on Lake Champlain (after their shift has ended) or taking the family to a local hamburger and ice cream stand for their weekly "big outing," not flying to Hawaii or spending a week at Disney World. They are no less representative of America than the people buying $500,000 building lots in your community, and there are vast stretches of this country that look much more like the former than the latter.
So I think the difficulty lies in extrapolating from what is immediately visible around us. A prosperous suburb can be an oasis of wealth and consumption surrounded by a much larger economic landscape that bears little resemblance to it. Travel a few hundred miles beyond such enclaves, particularly through rural America, Appalachia, the rustbelt or parts of the Northeast, and Kunstler's observation becomes considerably easier to understand. The interesting question may therefore be not “How can everyone afford this?” but “Which America are we looking at?”
There are different pockets of wealth across the U.S. for sure, but the things I see in my midwestern affluent suburb are:
- boomers have plenty of money, riding Harleys or driving convertibles around on Sundays, live in big houses
- Genx and Millinneals - a mixed bag of wealth, about half and half good/bad
- Genz - hating life - a handful working in white collar or skilled blue collar, most on the dole or rearranging carts at Walmart for $15 an hour
The biggest difference I've noticed now from my youth, especially post Covid, are the streets being empty after 8 PM. When Walmart closes at 11 PM, there is no shopping left, and just a couple of 1 AM bars are open for entertainment. It used to be busy from 5 AM (farmer types) to midnight, and plenty of traffic except when a blizzard hit. Now it's like stepping into an episode of the twilight zone, err, at twilight.
The bottom line to me is that between theft, grift, sick care and other rackets, the vulnerable have been fleeced and their pockets are empty. When you have nothing left to lose, extreme desperation sets in and things go sideways in a hurry. I imagine many of the younger "socialists" in this country are driven by the feeling "they're sticking it to the Man", making up for their own victimization.
Here's the kicker, Lee Vail. In the State of Utah the median household income is somewhere around $74,000 per year. HOUSEHOLD. Not individual. I make far more than that and because I don't suscribe to debt (I have a hatred of paying interest) I can't afford these "toys" that people adorn themselves with.
Ah, yes, but vengeance and retribution for the mayhem and social disruption that these disillusioned cretins have caused would be oh so satisfying. We're in trouble, plain and simple.
Are we? See my response to Thomas. People still have plenty of money to spend on frivolous things and the acquisition of junk.
Just down the street from me is a house I call the parking lot. The home has a couple and 2 teenage boys. The father drives around a big 1 ton RAM. His two sons each drive around a 2024 or new RAM half ton. Nice trucks. He also has a jeep, two side by side UTVs, a few dirt bikes and his woman drives around in a new Audi SUV.
This is the norm here in Utah. People still have money and they are managing to earn enough to pay the interest on their loans.
It means willingness to fight, kill and die for those institutions and beliefs. The unwillingness to do so is what allows the Leftist scum to proliferate.
Sidebar- How do you get the people willing to fight for liberty, freedom of choice when the never know what that means?
"The real conquest has already occurred within the conscience, where men learn to excuse evil so long as it is committed against those they have first been taught to despise. No free society can survive indefinitely once truth itself becomes subordinate to grievance."
Despise Women, and you'll get what you are calling "vindictive feminism". every time.
White women have betrayed the white race by mating with brown and black men. A new super race of mulattos is being bread and will ultimately be the dominant human species on the planet. White people, however, are too stupid to understand that they are a vast minority on the global scale and in two or three generations will be an endangered species. I'll be long gone by that time but my children and grand children will live to see a time when they could be rounded up and sold off to be slaves, right here in the good ole USA.
Of course white women haven't done themselves any favors. My son is marrying a cute little Mexicana because, as he put it, American girls are "batshit crazy."
One admires the economy of the argument: two exclamation points doing the work that evidence apparently declined to undertake. You are, of course, perfectly entitled to believe that Donald Trump exemplifies hatred masquerading as virtue. But merely inserting his name into the discussion does not establish the proposition.
Indeed, you rather miss the point of what I wrote. The argument was not that one political faction possesses a monopoly on moral corruption. I explicitly said that citizens must defend the rule of law even when it restrains “our own side.” If you believe Trump violates that standard, make the case. Apply the principle to him. I have no objection whatsoever.
What you cannot reasonably do is answer a warning against subordinating truth to partisan grievance by offering, as your entire rebuttal, a partisan grievance unsupported by argument. That is less a refutation of my point than an inadvertent illustration of it.
it can happen, If Tucker Carlson tries to run a third party on the right, we end up with someone much worse than Obama as President and the tyrannical take over as the DSA just outlaws any political opposition and imposes its communistic dreams on America.
TC is the new Alex Jones. He will resonate deeply with a small fraction of the "not left". He and Candace are now on the fringes, impacting nothing and going nowhere.
If you look at TC and his cronies you will notice they share much with the communists, thinking the government can resolve problems. They are TDSers, RINOs, and most evil of all, Deep Staters, those that put preservation of the status quo or growth of the federal government as issue number one. The political spectrum is a circle, not a straight line.
Sidebar- Two parties, the far left communists which will absorb the RINO Deep Staters, and the Tea party-MAGA types, which will absorb the moderate Dems. Communists vs. anti-communists. All the decisions will be settled by 2029.
Regardless there is a lot to be angry about with the Republican Party. When they have majorities they refuse to take advantage of it and push their supporters desires such as for safe elections. In Illinois we have some rump group of controlled opposition that ignores the idea that Illinois is a Red state and literally sabotages any conservative that tries to run statewide guaranteeing that the Cook County machine can get away with whatever they want. In Texas the party is a Bush Globalist shit show doing everything it can to sabotage real conservatives. They spent $150 million AGAINST Ken Paxton in the primary. How many of you know that the Speaker of the Texas House insists on making Democrats committee chairmen over Republican members, delivering power to Democrats the voters never intended? Democrat James Talarico, the fruity little dork running to be the US Senator from Texas is chairman of several Texas House committees. Highly unusual but speaks volumes to the idea that too many places, even when majorities, the leaders of the GOP fight tooth and nail to be a controlled opposition in too many states. Grand Old Party my ass!
If only our forefathers had listened to George Washington when he admonished them to avoid foreign entanglements and PARTISAN politics. Nobody listened. What a mess they created for us.
"Kill them. Murder them. Let the streets soak in their red capitalist blood.” Statements like this always remind me of the saying of Maya Angelou: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time".
Before Trump launched his deeply unpopular war with Iran, gas was $2.50 a gallon, inflation was a memory, and the Democratic Party was in dire straits. Now, though, they are poised to win the mid terms and can go as far left as they like. Some communists, and some Islamists, will win this fall. That's what happens when you decide to throw you political fortunes into the trash can by launching an unnecessary, and disastrous war. W. Bush did the same thing with his war in Iraq, searching for WMD's that did not exist (outside of his imagination). Obama was elected as a direct result of Bush's folly. History really does repeat itself. It's a shame. Republicans will stay home and refuse to vote this fall, with very good reason. Frankly, gas is so expensive right now that it isn't worth spending the money to drive to and from a voting site.
Gas was more expensive under "Biden". Surely you are not in favor of Shias getting a nuke. One President has the courage to take on terrorists and globalism and your excuse for an opinion is to criticize? What good did your party ever do?
Gas went as high as $4.50 a gallon a few months ago. Saying, well, yeah, but it was slightly worse under Biden, so. . .is not a serious argument. As for "my party" I am not, and never have been, a Democrat. I don't like high gas and high inflation, no matter who is in office--and most Americans feel the same way.
As a schoolkid, they showed us the original black & white version of the movie, "Failsafe".....I see now that it was trauma-induced conditioning, as it seriously screwed my head up for weeks. As a society, we ALL have cultural PTSD. That's serious as shit, the more you think about it....
Boy, it would be terrible if those dastardly Iranians got nuclear weapons. Why, North Korea might follow suit! And then Pakistan, and China, and even Russia might develop nukes! That would be awful!
Are any of those other countries messianic death cults?
Even Pakistan, a Muslim country, is not a complete lunatic death cult believing some crazy nuclear war will have the last prophet crawl forth from a well in the company of Jesus.
Which says that most Americans are as undereducated as you are about the issues that matter. There are communists taking over the Dems and threatening the Constitution. The economy is collapsing due to Obama led de-industrialization. The communists have taken over the Deep Staters, the judiciary, major cities, crime has taken over cities, the press supports it all. If you were a fan of the USSR, you should be happy by what is happening.
I withheld my vote in 2016 from either candidate because I viewed it as a competition between Ds. The last two cycles have moved him an inch to the right while the opposition has moved a yard to the left.
The Donald is still a liberal at heart, holding more conservative positions than the RINOs. Weird, yes. Uni-Party, no.
"W. Bush did the same thing with his war in Iraq, searching for WMD's that did not exist (outside of his imagination)."
Revisionist claptrap. The Intel community, home and abroad, was in a closed loop analytical death spin that premised all reports with the assumption that Sadam had and would use WMDs (supported by his having them and using them against Iran). The information presented to the POTUS was universal in declaring WMDs in Iraq. Stop the BS about Bush imagining and lying. Start looking at your own, cloistered consciousness.
It also Ames you wonder what the intelligence community has told Trump, as he seems to be a sucker for what he is informed about. Is the CIA-FBI-DNI-MIC consortium of the Deep Staters corrupting everything? That has been going on since 1775 in one form or the other.
Is American ideology worth fighting for? We are being asked that right now.
After the Civil War, the Southerns had to take an oath of allegiance to the Union, then the United States of America. If the same requirement was put onto the politicos of today, I shudder to think of what the results would be.
In places like Michigan, I wonder if it makes any difference.
True. What they remember is what someone said to someone who heard from someone that said something. That human failing is not a new thing.... But it deserves ridicule.
The president could be seen bending over to peer at the floor of the Oval Office
US President George W Bush has sparked a political row by making a joke about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
At a black-tie dinner for journalists, Mr Bush narrated a slide show poking fun at himself and other members of his administration.
One pictured Mr Bush looking under a piece of furniture in the Oval Office, at which the president remarked: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere."
After another one, showing him scouring the corner of a room, Mr Bush said: "No, no weapons over there," he said.
And as a third picture, this time showing him leaning over, appeared on the screen the president was heard to say: "Maybe under here?"
If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought
John Kerry
Democratic Party challenger for the presidency
The audience at Wednesday's 60th annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association obviously thought the quips hilarious - there were laughs all round - but the next morning, in the cold light of day, things looked far less amusing.
The joke about the fruitless search for Iraqi WMDs so far, Washington's prime justification for the US-led invasion, has been branded as tasteless and ill-judged.
'Undermining' sacrifices
Mr Bush's election challenger Senator John Kerry described the president's attitude as "stunningly cavalier".
"If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought," he said in a written statement.
"Unfortunately for the president, this is not a joke."
The US has started four wars in the Middle East since 1991. None of them have worked out for us, and our latest war, with Iran, is doing great damage to our own economy, and fueling a resurgence of the Democratic Party--just like W. Bush's failed war in Iraq did. This is very basic stuff.
We will never know with certainty, but here is what I think happened. Military advisors often promise civilian heads of government amazing short, glorious wars that end very quickly, in total victory, and transform the head of state into a War Hero. For example, people literally brought picnic baskets and opera glasses to the Battle of Bull Run. Why, those brave Union men would whip those dirty, backwoods "rebels" with ease and the war would be over in afternoon! It was something to gaily watch, with family and friends, a pleasant summer afternoon. It didn't turn out that way for the Union, if memory serves. . .we are six months into the war with Iran as a write this.
There is still a way out of this mire. More than 50 million voting age Christians either do not vote or are not even registered. They have been “misindoctrinated” by many of our church leaders into believing that misunderstood, separation of Church and State, meant that spirituality must not get involved with civic matters, especially government. This has led to the surrendering of our government, our children’s education, our morals, to the Godless. We allowed the Godless to take over, not by their legitimate election wins, but by our refusing to identify the real enemy and by standing down and not exercising our moral obligation to vote out Godless politicians. We have the numbers to keep our government out of the hands of these Godless terrorists, we just don’t know it. We have been erroneously taught that we should “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” means that we should stay out of politics altogether. God not only appointed prophets and spiritual leaders, He also appointed kings and rulers. We have forgotten our obligations to insure that our government is not handed over to the Godless, simply by shirking our duties to lead our congregations, guiding and encouraging them to examine closely our political candidates, and vote accordingly. Instead, we now have the likes of Mamdani at he helm of our largest and very influential city. The Islamic terrorist invasion is taking over because too many Christians have been convinced that standing down, is somehow “being spiritual”! Wake up Christians, this is ours to loose. Do not surrender to the Godless followers of Satan.
There is no such thing as "separation of Church and State" in the US. The phrase comes from a private letter Jefferson wrote and is not enshrined in the Declaration or Constitution. Anti-Christians used the phrase to make Americans believe that it was somehow codified law and that states and local governments couldn't be explicitly Christian. This is patently untrue, as most states had established religions at the time of the founding.
Indeed, I think the founding fathers would be horrified to see how far we've strayed from Christian/Western Civ. traditions in our running of this great clusterfuck of a country. There is little doubt that various foreign influences have promoted this, but we must call these out for the treason they are.
States had established religions where the clergy was funded through tax/tariff money. The only prohibition is against the federal government having an established religion for the entire country.
Freedom of religion means that the government cannot make laws restricting any form of religion from being practiced. Of course, it has been interpreted as to enforce that, the government must not show acceptance and approval of any one religion. Or religion at all. A hard nut to crack, government with no source of authority for its morality. So anything goes. America of the 21st century.
Actually, most religions created states. Massachusetts, Puritans, Rhode Island, Roger William’s brand of Puritan, Connecticut, another form of Puritans, Maryland, Catholics, Pennsylvania, Quakers, North Carolina, Scottish Catholics.
As you are so quick to point out all the communists in the Democrat party, flock cameras and the like are going up at a feverish pace and your new 2027 car will be tied into the same data center. Communists are chump change to what is really coming
I think that Rich Mohlman, above, and Casey Jones are BOTH correct. It's not an either/or, it's a both/and... But as True Commie as Bernie is, he's OLD, and Jewish, and a peace-nick, hippie from barefoot backwoods pothead Vermont. Bernie is not a "clear-and-present-danger", or a violent, direct threat. Mandami, on the other hand, is YOUNG, Muslim, and a violence-talking, imminent threat. IMHO. So if he's still alive in 5 years, then that will be PROOF that "9/11 was an inside job". ....I'm recalling an old right-wing joke from the 1991 "1st Gulf War": "God bless our military, especially our snipers"....
A favorite verbal assault coming from the TDS crowd compares Trump to Hitler, but I see Mandami as the 1916 - 1928 version of Hitler.....
"Despite what your mama told you, sometimes, violence does solve problems"....
We need to get serious, homicidal serious, before the suicidal empathy of the Left prevails....know what I'm suggesting?....IMHO....
We, the press and MAGAites are making a big error, allowing this shit to go on. Remember McCarthy? These people want one thing, central control of our lives.
An example, trying to get free food markets. So they can control the flow of food to the people. You think CBDC is a take over, food is the ultimate.
1985 VW Golf diesel, and 1990 Ford Ranger with roll up windows...the 1996 Cummins Dually as a backup. There are Luddites, and then there are manly Luddites....
Over the weekend news media reported on Mamdani's opposition to voter ID. At the same time, Mamdani now requires official NYC-issued ID to shop at his discount grocery stores.
Publicity starved AOC was on Youtube or something similar over the weekend injecting herself with some kind of hormones that are part of harvesting one's eggs for freezing. The implication being that she intends to run for La Presidente and will postpone having children or have surrogates in order to not interfere with her sure to be brilliant governance.
Saw a few click baits regarding that performative theater actress... Didn't bite, but wasn't surprised she's going for the drama queen title once again.
Is it just me, or does Hasan Piker appear to be the left's Charlie Kirk? If so, the difference in persona and temperament of their respective followers speaks volumes.
And who is responsible for the de-industrialization of the country? All the environmental nut jobs under Obama wanting manufacturing to be done in Mexico, and East Asia.
Look at what is destroying the country’s economy, and you will find Democrats in any direction.
Like Fascism, the term Communism is a convenient Swiss Army Knife term that has largely lost its meaning in these confused times. For that matter, so has Capitalism.
Obama’s bailing out the too big to fail banks with everyone else’s money was not Capitalism. Permitting Private Equity to cannibalize one sector after another of our society is Capitalism gone mad.
Bringing millions of illegal aliens into this country to drive down the cost of labor even further is not Communism. It’s a standard feature of Free Market Capitalism. So now they are here, and they are alien to us not only in culture but in their expectations and their notion of a good society.
Fighting Communism – whatever that even means any more – does not address the problem. The problem is Predatory Capitalism, that continues to transfer wealth from working people to ever fewer alpha capitalists at the top of the food chain. Unless and until that dynamic is reversed more and more of its victims, both imported and domestic, will find radical alternatives attractive.
Restore a system in which energetic, creative working people can have a decent life again and alternatives to Capitalism will lose their appeal. That’s really the only solution.
Exactly what are those alternatives to capitalism you are referring to? What is your solution? How do you destroy the evils of government from infecting the free market, the requirement of capitalism to operate well?
The failures, the outflow of capitalism’s competition, have to have a second, third chance to succeed. Our government has halted that with its welfare mentality. Also, government wants to deal with just a few contractors, suppressing the wide looking entropy that capitalism needs to stop cronyism stemming from the government. Capital needs competition, not the suppression of competition.
"Restore a system in which energetic, creative working people can have a decent life again and alternatives to Capitalism will lose their appeal. That’s really the only solution."
Howard,
Unfortunately THAT is a wet-dream, not a viable solution. The viable solution requires, as foretold by history, rivers of blood, decades of hell, and untold misery. Think Ukraine in the 1920's...Think of the Fatherland's tender handling by the "Mighty Eighth", think the Jacobin Terror. It is the human condition.
The distinction you're making between Capitalism and Predatory Capitalism doesn't have much substance. Capitalism at its foundation is a system that harnesses greed to produce productivity, meaning greed is fundamental to its operation. A system founded on greed is liable to be predatory in pretty much the same way a forest fire is liable to burn forests.
It's the dream of every capitalist to become a monopolist. In our own time, the oligarch Peter Thiel has bluntly said "competition is for losers". Capitalists need government in order to safeguard their property and enforce their contracts, but a government that represents everyone is a government that might limit greed and predation. And so, the natural tendency is for capitalists to collude to control government, keep the parts of it that serve them, turn as much of it as possible into an engine for enabling greed, and paint anything that might resist greed for the sake of ordinary people's ordinary lives as communism and therefore elementally EEE-vil. Thus we have today's situation, where basically the entire economy consists of five or six gargantuan monopolies that are busy trying to turn themselves into two or three titanic monopolies, where everyday people own nothing and have to pay a monthly subscription fee for their oxygen.
For capitalism to serve everyone and not just a few oligarchs with obscene wealth requires a politics capable of disciplining the system. For the past 40 or 50 years the only actors capable of discipling Congress, the presidency or the courts have been capitalists themselves. There's really not much more that's required to understand why everyday life has become so shitty for everyone. Nothing matters because nobody's efforts amount to anything, so people squabble over petty nonsense and culture-war bugaboos while oligarchs bathe in champagne. If you want a really impressive idea of what can be accomplished when capitalists are disciplined by a government determined to control their greed, look no further than China. Capitalism there fires on all cylinders and the benefits roll out to the entire population, for two reasons: one, because the government sets and enforces policies that reward productive activity rather than speculation, and two, because no amount of money, not even billions of dollars, will buy you a Chinese politician. The USA could learn a lot from the example set by the Chinese Communist Party.
Forest fires are part of nature. That you would utilize such an inept analogy is telling. Which is why, "The USA could learn a lot from the example set by the Chinese Communist Party," is unsurprising.
This may come a shock to you, but the CCP is a monopoly.
Government is too stupid to run an economy, too political, and too evil in its quest for power.
Economies need to be free-wheeling, uncontrolled and competitive to control the market place. Government should be collections of wise outputs of capitalism to make decisions on strategies and not tactics. The America of today is running real estate developers, bar tenders, MDs, and old farts with no economic experience for office.
"the government sets and enforces policies that reward productive activity rather than speculation"
You mean like building empty cities? With dangerous sub-standard buildings?
I will say they can very quickly build large projects, there are some very impressive bridges to nowhere as well as huge solar farms in the Gobi Desert.
The danger is not that communism has returned wearing an old uniform, but that many of us - far too many - have forgotten the moral conditions that once made its promises recognizable as lies. A society begins to decay when envy is renamed justice, coercion compassion, hatred virtue, and violence merely the understandable language of the aggrieved. By then the political program is almost secondary. The real conquest has already occurred within the conscience, where men learn to excuse evil so long as it is committed against those they have first been taught to despise. No free society can survive indefinitely once truth itself becomes subordinate to grievance.
The answer for citizens of a constitutional republic is neither hysteria nor vengeance, but courage: to speak plainly when language is corrupted, to defend the rule of law even when it restrains our own side, to insist upon equal rights rather than favored classes, and to refuse participation in lies however fashionable they become. Liberty is not preserved by institutions alone. It survives only while free people possess the character to defend those institutions, the discipline to govern themselves, and the courage to say no when power demands that they say yes.
Language corruption. Migrants the winner IMHO of a tightly crowded field. Birds and bugs migrate; people make choices. And even Our People play along.
Here's what I don't understand, Thomas. Our host said, "Work is scarce and it’s nearly impossible to make a living at it, that is, pay for food and a roof over your head"
I don't necessarily disagree with our host but in my community I see evidence to the contrary. In my town out here in the burning heat soaked waterless American west, it seems like people have plenty of money to live comfortably. Everyone is driving around a new RAM or Ford truck pulling a fifth wheel. I see people constantly driving around my suburban neighborhood in lifted golf carts with cool mag wheels or in side by side SUVs. They are all walking around staring at $1200 I-phones with fancy data plans. At church the pews are empty because everyone is on their summer vacations before the school year starts, usually Disney World or Hawaii. They all drive newer cars than mine, many of them fancy Jeeps, Tahoes, Porsches and Corvettes. Many people sell their modest homes in my neighborhood and move 1/4 of a mile to another subdivision to buy a house that is bigger and fancier and costs a hell of a lot more in property taxes and heating and cooling than the little 2000 square foot shanty they weren't happy with.
Yeah, I know. They are all buried in debt, up to their foreheads. I get it. But here's the part I don't understand. How do they manage to make the monthly payments? They can't all be living on trust funds or parents inheritances. They have to have a job that produces some kind of income so they can pay the interest on all of their debt and loans.
If a new subdivision pops up with $500,000.00 lots (not including the price of the new home to be built) the lots are gobbled up and sold within weeks of opening.
I go to the gym every day for 1 hour on my lunch break. It's right across the street. The gym is packed with young men and women who, apparently, aren't working. When do they work? Where do they work? Do they work at all? When I have a day off on Tuesday, which has historically been a standard work day, the streets and stores are clogged with automobiles and shoppers, respectively, who are apparently NOT AT WORK. Doesn't any body work anymore? How are they surviving? They can't all be trust fund babies.
I would love to read an article written by our gracious host that describes how in the hell people are making enough money to fund the debt ridden lifestyles they are living and get his eloquent take on it. Food for thought Mr. Kunstler.
I understand the question you are asking, and I do not doubt what you are seeing. I would only be cautious about drawing a broader conclusion from it. America is an enormous and extraordinarily uneven country, and prosperity can be concentrated in remarkably small geographic pockets. I live in a very prosperous area myself that sounds an awful lot like yours. Even my community is eclipsed by adjacent areas of extraordinary wealth that make my town look like Hooverville. If my town and its adjacent communities were my only window onto the country, I might reach much the same conclusion you have.
But I also spend considerable time far upstate in New York, well north of Albany, in communities where the picture could hardly be more different. Double-wide trailers, old pickup trucks and modest incomes are the norm. These are hardworking, blue-collar people whose leisure might consist of a Saturday fishing on Lake Champlain (after their shift has ended) or taking the family to a local hamburger and ice cream stand for their weekly "big outing," not flying to Hawaii or spending a week at Disney World. They are no less representative of America than the people buying $500,000 building lots in your community, and there are vast stretches of this country that look much more like the former than the latter.
So I think the difficulty lies in extrapolating from what is immediately visible around us. A prosperous suburb can be an oasis of wealth and consumption surrounded by a much larger economic landscape that bears little resemblance to it. Travel a few hundred miles beyond such enclaves, particularly through rural America, Appalachia, the rustbelt or parts of the Northeast, and Kunstler's observation becomes considerably easier to understand. The interesting question may therefore be not “How can everyone afford this?” but “Which America are we looking at?”
There are different pockets of wealth across the U.S. for sure, but the things I see in my midwestern affluent suburb are:
- boomers have plenty of money, riding Harleys or driving convertibles around on Sundays, live in big houses
- Genx and Millinneals - a mixed bag of wealth, about half and half good/bad
- Genz - hating life - a handful working in white collar or skilled blue collar, most on the dole or rearranging carts at Walmart for $15 an hour
The biggest difference I've noticed now from my youth, especially post Covid, are the streets being empty after 8 PM. When Walmart closes at 11 PM, there is no shopping left, and just a couple of 1 AM bars are open for entertainment. It used to be busy from 5 AM (farmer types) to midnight, and plenty of traffic except when a blizzard hit. Now it's like stepping into an episode of the twilight zone, err, at twilight.
The bottom line to me is that between theft, grift, sick care and other rackets, the vulnerable have been fleeced and their pockets are empty. When you have nothing left to lose, extreme desperation sets in and things go sideways in a hurry. I imagine many of the younger "socialists" in this country are driven by the feeling "they're sticking it to the Man", making up for their own victimization.
Ten percent of three hundred fifty million people is still a lot of people who have too much time and money.
Why they want to up their investment in an area with dwindling water and energy for cooling is pu
Good point. Acknowledged. I certainly don't see all or know all. Just my water starved little corner of the globe.
One of the sane voices still in the USA today, thank you Cankerpuss.
Here's the kicker, Lee Vail. In the State of Utah the median household income is somewhere around $74,000 per year. HOUSEHOLD. Not individual. I make far more than that and because I don't suscribe to debt (I have a hatred of paying interest) I can't afford these "toys" that people adorn themselves with.
"Live not by lies."
Ah, yes, but vengeance and retribution for the mayhem and social disruption that these disillusioned cretins have caused would be oh so satisfying. We're in trouble, plain and simple.
Are we? See my response to Thomas. People still have plenty of money to spend on frivolous things and the acquisition of junk.
Just down the street from me is a house I call the parking lot. The home has a couple and 2 teenage boys. The father drives around a big 1 ton RAM. His two sons each drive around a 2024 or new RAM half ton. Nice trucks. He also has a jeep, two side by side UTVs, a few dirt bikes and his woman drives around in a new Audi SUV.
This is the norm here in Utah. People still have money and they are managing to earn enough to pay the interest on their loans.
It means willingness to fight, kill and die for those institutions and beliefs. The unwillingness to do so is what allows the Leftist scum to proliferate.
Sidebar- How do you get the people willing to fight for liberty, freedom of choice when the never know what that means?
"The real conquest has already occurred within the conscience, where men learn to excuse evil so long as it is committed against those they have first been taught to despise. No free society can survive indefinitely once truth itself becomes subordinate to grievance."
Despise Women, and you'll get what you are calling "vindictive feminism". every time.
"we’re here to destroy the White race, bitch."
White women have betrayed the white race by mating with brown and black men. A new super race of mulattos is being bread and will ultimately be the dominant human species on the planet. White people, however, are too stupid to understand that they are a vast minority on the global scale and in two or three generations will be an endangered species. I'll be long gone by that time but my children and grand children will live to see a time when they could be rounded up and sold off to be slaves, right here in the good ole USA.
Of course white women haven't done themselves any favors. My son is marrying a cute little Mexicana because, as he put it, American girls are "batshit crazy."
A .45 helps, too.
Thomas, “hatred virtue”, you have just described Trump!!
One admires the economy of the argument: two exclamation points doing the work that evidence apparently declined to undertake. You are, of course, perfectly entitled to believe that Donald Trump exemplifies hatred masquerading as virtue. But merely inserting his name into the discussion does not establish the proposition.
Indeed, you rather miss the point of what I wrote. The argument was not that one political faction possesses a monopoly on moral corruption. I explicitly said that citizens must defend the rule of law even when it restrains “our own side.” If you believe Trump violates that standard, make the case. Apply the principle to him. I have no objection whatsoever.
What you cannot reasonably do is answer a warning against subordinating truth to partisan grievance by offering, as your entire rebuttal, a partisan grievance unsupported by argument. That is less a refutation of my point than an inadvertent illustration of it.
Fantastic! Great post.
"Communism is just the icing on that fruitcake."
;-)
The monster will eat Bernie, too, but it will elevate him as a martyr in memoriam.
Bernie is a cuck.
it can happen, If Tucker Carlson tries to run a third party on the right, we end up with someone much worse than Obama as President and the tyrannical take over as the DSA just outlaws any political opposition and imposes its communistic dreams on America.
TC is the new Alex Jones. He will resonate deeply with a small fraction of the "not left". He and Candace are now on the fringes, impacting nothing and going nowhere.
He's an idiot.
If you look at TC and his cronies you will notice they share much with the communists, thinking the government can resolve problems. They are TDSers, RINOs, and most evil of all, Deep Staters, those that put preservation of the status quo or growth of the federal government as issue number one. The political spectrum is a circle, not a straight line.
Sidebar- Two parties, the far left communists which will absorb the RINO Deep Staters, and the Tea party-MAGA types, which will absorb the moderate Dems. Communists vs. anti-communists. All the decisions will be settled by 2029.
Think TC has marginalized himself to a great degree.
Regardless there is a lot to be angry about with the Republican Party. When they have majorities they refuse to take advantage of it and push their supporters desires such as for safe elections. In Illinois we have some rump group of controlled opposition that ignores the idea that Illinois is a Red state and literally sabotages any conservative that tries to run statewide guaranteeing that the Cook County machine can get away with whatever they want. In Texas the party is a Bush Globalist shit show doing everything it can to sabotage real conservatives. They spent $150 million AGAINST Ken Paxton in the primary. How many of you know that the Speaker of the Texas House insists on making Democrats committee chairmen over Republican members, delivering power to Democrats the voters never intended? Democrat James Talarico, the fruity little dork running to be the US Senator from Texas is chairman of several Texas House committees. Highly unusual but speaks volumes to the idea that too many places, even when majorities, the leaders of the GOP fight tooth and nail to be a controlled opposition in too many states. Grand Old Party my ass!
That is what happens when someone is so obviously on the payroll of a foreign country like Qatar.
Qatar the one playing all sides against the middle.
If only our forefathers had listened to George Washington when he admonished them to avoid foreign entanglements and PARTISAN politics. Nobody listened. What a mess they created for us.
What a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into!
Have you noticed how the WEF/Transnational gangsters captured MSM are the biggest cheerleaders for this assault on the constitution?
AKA, globalists. Does anyone notice the dumkopfs in the EU and their continuing failure to help the European folks? Is the EU the future?
"Kill them. Murder them. Let the streets soak in their red capitalist blood.” Statements like this always remind me of the saying of Maya Angelou: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time".
Goes right along with "Death to America."
Think about the attitude of the Ayatollahs of Iran about their dissenters.
If it acts, smells and looks like a Muslim, it is probably a Muslim.
Before Trump launched his deeply unpopular war with Iran, gas was $2.50 a gallon, inflation was a memory, and the Democratic Party was in dire straits. Now, though, they are poised to win the mid terms and can go as far left as they like. Some communists, and some Islamists, will win this fall. That's what happens when you decide to throw you political fortunes into the trash can by launching an unnecessary, and disastrous war. W. Bush did the same thing with his war in Iraq, searching for WMD's that did not exist (outside of his imagination). Obama was elected as a direct result of Bush's folly. History really does repeat itself. It's a shame. Republicans will stay home and refuse to vote this fall, with very good reason. Frankly, gas is so expensive right now that it isn't worth spending the money to drive to and from a voting site.
Gas was more expensive under "Biden". Surely you are not in favor of Shias getting a nuke. One President has the courage to take on terrorists and globalism and your excuse for an opinion is to criticize? What good did your party ever do?
Gas went as high as $4.50 a gallon a few months ago. Saying, well, yeah, but it was slightly worse under Biden, so. . .is not a serious argument. As for "my party" I am not, and never have been, a Democrat. I don't like high gas and high inflation, no matter who is in office--and most Americans feel the same way.
But you like death to America and crazy messianic cults getting nukes and developing Icbm's capable of delivering the payload?
One nuke in the right spot will definitely ruin one's day.
As a schoolkid, they showed us the original black & white version of the movie, "Failsafe".....I see now that it was trauma-induced conditioning, as it seriously screwed my head up for weeks. As a society, we ALL have cultural PTSD. That's serious as shit, the more you think about it....
1964 was also the same year "Dr. Strangelove" was released.
Lotta stuff going on then.
Boy, it would be terrible if those dastardly Iranians got nuclear weapons. Why, North Korea might follow suit! And then Pakistan, and China, and even Russia might develop nukes! That would be awful!
Are any of those other countries messianic death cults?
Even Pakistan, a Muslim country, is not a complete lunatic death cult believing some crazy nuclear war will have the last prophet crawl forth from a well in the company of Jesus.
Which says that most Americans are as undereducated as you are about the issues that matter. There are communists taking over the Dems and threatening the Constitution. The economy is collapsing due to Obama led de-industrialization. The communists have taken over the Deep Staters, the judiciary, major cities, crime has taken over cities, the press supports it all. If you were a fan of the USSR, you should be happy by what is happening.
You mean the UNI-party, Mark?....Trump voted Dem longer than he's been a Repub....remember?
I withheld my vote in 2016 from either candidate because I viewed it as a competition between Ds. The last two cycles have moved him an inch to the right while the opposition has moved a yard to the left.
The Donald is still a liberal at heart, holding more conservative positions than the RINOs. Weird, yes. Uni-Party, no.
Click on it to open it up all the way
"W. Bush did the same thing with his war in Iraq, searching for WMD's that did not exist (outside of his imagination)."
Revisionist claptrap. The Intel community, home and abroad, was in a closed loop analytical death spin that premised all reports with the assumption that Sadam had and would use WMDs (supported by his having them and using them against Iran). The information presented to the POTUS was universal in declaring WMDs in Iraq. Stop the BS about Bush imagining and lying. Start looking at your own, cloistered consciousness.
It also Ames you wonder what the intelligence community has told Trump, as he seems to be a sucker for what he is informed about. Is the CIA-FBI-DNI-MIC consortium of the Deep Staters corrupting everything? That has been going on since 1775 in one form or the other.
Is American ideology worth fighting for? We are being asked that right now.
After the Civil War, the Southerns had to take an oath of allegiance to the Union, then the United States of America. If the same requirement was put onto the politicos of today, I shudder to think of what the results would be.
In places like Michigan, I wonder if it makes any difference.
Not Ames, makes
Mister Penny, that was decades ago; the average American can't remember last week.
True. What they remember is what someone said to someone who heard from someone that said something. That human failing is not a new thing.... But it deserves ridicule.
Indeed, it doesn't help that they lied to us about what they found.
The burn pits in Iraq went on for years and caused all sorts of terrible Gulf War syndrome problems.
“They” thought there were WMDs in Iraq. What if there were? Before the war, no one knew for sure. Hindsight is 20/20, the slogan of the know-it-alls.
What I was trying to say is they found them and all the precursor ingredients used to make them, which they spent years burning.
Bush's Iraq WMDs joke backfires
President Bush in Oval Office
The president could be seen bending over to peer at the floor of the Oval Office
US President George W Bush has sparked a political row by making a joke about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
At a black-tie dinner for journalists, Mr Bush narrated a slide show poking fun at himself and other members of his administration.
One pictured Mr Bush looking under a piece of furniture in the Oval Office, at which the president remarked: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere."
After another one, showing him scouring the corner of a room, Mr Bush said: "No, no weapons over there," he said.
And as a third picture, this time showing him leaning over, appeared on the screen the president was heard to say: "Maybe under here?"
If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought
John Kerry
Democratic Party challenger for the presidency
The audience at Wednesday's 60th annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association obviously thought the quips hilarious - there were laughs all round - but the next morning, in the cold light of day, things looked far less amusing.
The joke about the fruitless search for Iraqi WMDs so far, Washington's prime justification for the US-led invasion, has been branded as tasteless and ill-judged.
'Undermining' sacrifices
Mr Bush's election challenger Senator John Kerry described the president's attitude as "stunningly cavalier".
"If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought," he said in a written statement.
"Unfortunately for the president, this is not a joke."
Every person that served in Congress the Senate and White House for the last 60 years bears responsibility for the current situation.
Because Democrats have never lied about past and present Republicans, even to the point of having special Dossiers rolled out.
They are so above the fray they would never use something to attack an "enemy" even at the cost of damaging the US, its interests, and reputation.
As you point out, there is no “very good reason”. Republics are lost through apathy.
Like many, You are not grasping what is going on in the Middle East.
The US has started four wars in the Middle East since 1991. None of them have worked out for us, and our latest war, with Iran, is doing great damage to our own economy, and fueling a resurgence of the Democratic Party--just like W. Bush's failed war in Iraq did. This is very basic stuff.
I wonder who convinced Trump to start the war, and what evidence was used?
We will never know with certainty, but here is what I think happened. Military advisors often promise civilian heads of government amazing short, glorious wars that end very quickly, in total victory, and transform the head of state into a War Hero. For example, people literally brought picnic baskets and opera glasses to the Battle of Bull Run. Why, those brave Union men would whip those dirty, backwoods "rebels" with ease and the war would be over in afternoon! It was something to gaily watch, with family and friends, a pleasant summer afternoon. It didn't turn out that way for the Union, if memory serves. . .we are six months into the war with Iran as a write this.
Try Barbara Boyd of Promethian Action for another view. I personally prefer her analysis over Susan KiKinda's.
They're twin sisters so the difference is mainly in presentation
There is still a way out of this mire. More than 50 million voting age Christians either do not vote or are not even registered. They have been “misindoctrinated” by many of our church leaders into believing that misunderstood, separation of Church and State, meant that spirituality must not get involved with civic matters, especially government. This has led to the surrendering of our government, our children’s education, our morals, to the Godless. We allowed the Godless to take over, not by their legitimate election wins, but by our refusing to identify the real enemy and by standing down and not exercising our moral obligation to vote out Godless politicians. We have the numbers to keep our government out of the hands of these Godless terrorists, we just don’t know it. We have been erroneously taught that we should “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” means that we should stay out of politics altogether. God not only appointed prophets and spiritual leaders, He also appointed kings and rulers. We have forgotten our obligations to insure that our government is not handed over to the Godless, simply by shirking our duties to lead our congregations, guiding and encouraging them to examine closely our political candidates, and vote accordingly. Instead, we now have the likes of Mamdani at he helm of our largest and very influential city. The Islamic terrorist invasion is taking over because too many Christians have been convinced that standing down, is somehow “being spiritual”! Wake up Christians, this is ours to loose. Do not surrender to the Godless followers of Satan.
There is no such thing as "separation of Church and State" in the US. The phrase comes from a private letter Jefferson wrote and is not enshrined in the Declaration or Constitution. Anti-Christians used the phrase to make Americans believe that it was somehow codified law and that states and local governments couldn't be explicitly Christian. This is patently untrue, as most states had established religions at the time of the founding.
Indeed, I think the founding fathers would be horrified to see how far we've strayed from Christian/Western Civ. traditions in our running of this great clusterfuck of a country. There is little doubt that various foreign influences have promoted this, but we must call these out for the treason they are.
Well said.
The meaning of all that is that the Government can't force us to believe a certain religion?
Is that a question?
Yes. I'm giving the Constitutional Law.
States had established religions where the clergy was funded through tax/tariff money. The only prohibition is against the federal government having an established religion for the entire country.
Freedom of religion means that the government cannot make laws restricting any form of religion from being practiced. Of course, it has been interpreted as to enforce that, the government must not show acceptance and approval of any one religion. Or religion at all. A hard nut to crack, government with no source of authority for its morality. So anything goes. America of the 21st century.
Actually, most religions created states. Massachusetts, Puritans, Rhode Island, Roger William’s brand of Puritan, Connecticut, another form of Puritans, Maryland, Catholics, Pennsylvania, Quakers, North Carolina, Scottish Catholics.
One of your best, Mr. Kunstler. Bravo!
As you are so quick to point out all the communists in the Democrat party, flock cameras and the like are going up at a feverish pace and your new 2027 car will be tied into the same data center. Communists are chump change to what is really coming
No, they're not. They're the Engine.
I think that Rich Mohlman, above, and Casey Jones are BOTH correct. It's not an either/or, it's a both/and... But as True Commie as Bernie is, he's OLD, and Jewish, and a peace-nick, hippie from barefoot backwoods pothead Vermont. Bernie is not a "clear-and-present-danger", or a violent, direct threat. Mandami, on the other hand, is YOUNG, Muslim, and a violence-talking, imminent threat. IMHO. So if he's still alive in 5 years, then that will be PROOF that "9/11 was an inside job". ....I'm recalling an old right-wing joke from the 1991 "1st Gulf War": "God bless our military, especially our snipers"....
A favorite verbal assault coming from the TDS crowd compares Trump to Hitler, but I see Mandami as the 1916 - 1928 version of Hitler.....
"Despite what your mama told you, sometimes, violence does solve problems"....
We need to get serious, homicidal serious, before the suicidal empathy of the Left prevails....know what I'm suggesting?....IMHO....
I will add that Piker dude needs high-speed lead poisoning right now.
We, the press and MAGAites are making a big error, allowing this shit to go on. Remember McCarthy? These people want one thing, central control of our lives.
An example, trying to get free food markets. So they can control the flow of food to the people. You think CBDC is a take over, food is the ultimate.
U
S
S
R, here we come.
"your new 2027 car will be tied into the same data center" 2027 car? No thanks.
My daily drivers are '96 and '02. I'm looking at a 2006 to replace the '96. I've been called a Luddite but hey if the shoe fits.
Saint,
1985 VW Golf diesel, and 1990 Ford Ranger with roll up windows...the 1996 Cummins Dually as a backup. There are Luddites, and then there are manly Luddites....
Over the weekend news media reported on Mamdani's opposition to voter ID. At the same time, Mamdani now requires official NYC-issued ID to shop at his discount grocery stores.
Publicity starved AOC was on Youtube or something similar over the weekend injecting herself with some kind of hormones that are part of harvesting one's eggs for freezing. The implication being that she intends to run for La Presidente and will postpone having children or have surrogates in order to not interfere with her sure to be brilliant governance.
Saw a few click baits regarding that performative theater actress... Didn't bite, but wasn't surprised she's going for the drama queen title once again.
Yep, Bernie is part of the Mensheviks who were eaten by the Bolsheviks.
Here is a historical trace of where we are now and it is frightening:
https://escapekey.substack.com/p/kennedy
Is it just me, or does Hasan Piker appear to be the left's Charlie Kirk? If so, the difference in persona and temperament of their respective followers speaks volumes.
Piker is the anti-Kirk.
Our plutocracy, and the resultant economic conditions for average Americans, make socialism and communism inevitable.
And who is responsible for the de-industrialization of the country? All the environmental nut jobs under Obama wanting manufacturing to be done in Mexico, and East Asia.
Look at what is destroying the country’s economy, and you will find Democrats in any direction.
And now those Democrats are turning into communists.
Like Fascism, the term Communism is a convenient Swiss Army Knife term that has largely lost its meaning in these confused times. For that matter, so has Capitalism.
Obama’s bailing out the too big to fail banks with everyone else’s money was not Capitalism. Permitting Private Equity to cannibalize one sector after another of our society is Capitalism gone mad.
Bringing millions of illegal aliens into this country to drive down the cost of labor even further is not Communism. It’s a standard feature of Free Market Capitalism. So now they are here, and they are alien to us not only in culture but in their expectations and their notion of a good society.
Fighting Communism – whatever that even means any more – does not address the problem. The problem is Predatory Capitalism, that continues to transfer wealth from working people to ever fewer alpha capitalists at the top of the food chain. Unless and until that dynamic is reversed more and more of its victims, both imported and domestic, will find radical alternatives attractive.
Restore a system in which energetic, creative working people can have a decent life again and alternatives to Capitalism will lose their appeal. That’s really the only solution.
Exactly what are those alternatives to capitalism you are referring to? What is your solution? How do you destroy the evils of government from infecting the free market, the requirement of capitalism to operate well?
The failures, the outflow of capitalism’s competition, have to have a second, third chance to succeed. Our government has halted that with its welfare mentality. Also, government wants to deal with just a few contractors, suppressing the wide looking entropy that capitalism needs to stop cronyism stemming from the government. Capital needs competition, not the suppression of competition.
"Restore a system in which energetic, creative working people can have a decent life again and alternatives to Capitalism will lose their appeal. That’s really the only solution."
Howard,
Unfortunately THAT is a wet-dream, not a viable solution. The viable solution requires, as foretold by history, rivers of blood, decades of hell, and untold misery. Think Ukraine in the 1920's...Think of the Fatherland's tender handling by the "Mighty Eighth", think the Jacobin Terror. It is the human condition.
The distinction you're making between Capitalism and Predatory Capitalism doesn't have much substance. Capitalism at its foundation is a system that harnesses greed to produce productivity, meaning greed is fundamental to its operation. A system founded on greed is liable to be predatory in pretty much the same way a forest fire is liable to burn forests.
It's the dream of every capitalist to become a monopolist. In our own time, the oligarch Peter Thiel has bluntly said "competition is for losers". Capitalists need government in order to safeguard their property and enforce their contracts, but a government that represents everyone is a government that might limit greed and predation. And so, the natural tendency is for capitalists to collude to control government, keep the parts of it that serve them, turn as much of it as possible into an engine for enabling greed, and paint anything that might resist greed for the sake of ordinary people's ordinary lives as communism and therefore elementally EEE-vil. Thus we have today's situation, where basically the entire economy consists of five or six gargantuan monopolies that are busy trying to turn themselves into two or three titanic monopolies, where everyday people own nothing and have to pay a monthly subscription fee for their oxygen.
For capitalism to serve everyone and not just a few oligarchs with obscene wealth requires a politics capable of disciplining the system. For the past 40 or 50 years the only actors capable of discipling Congress, the presidency or the courts have been capitalists themselves. There's really not much more that's required to understand why everyday life has become so shitty for everyone. Nothing matters because nobody's efforts amount to anything, so people squabble over petty nonsense and culture-war bugaboos while oligarchs bathe in champagne. If you want a really impressive idea of what can be accomplished when capitalists are disciplined by a government determined to control their greed, look no further than China. Capitalism there fires on all cylinders and the benefits roll out to the entire population, for two reasons: one, because the government sets and enforces policies that reward productive activity rather than speculation, and two, because no amount of money, not even billions of dollars, will buy you a Chinese politician. The USA could learn a lot from the example set by the Chinese Communist Party.
"...a forest fire is liable to burn forests."
Forest fires are part of nature. That you would utilize such an inept analogy is telling. Which is why, "The USA could learn a lot from the example set by the Chinese Communist Party," is unsurprising.
This may come a shock to you, but the CCP is a monopoly.
Government is too stupid to run an economy, too political, and too evil in its quest for power.
Economies need to be free-wheeling, uncontrolled and competitive to control the market place. Government should be collections of wise outputs of capitalism to make decisions on strategies and not tactics. The America of today is running real estate developers, bar tenders, MDs, and old farts with no economic experience for office.
"the government sets and enforces policies that reward productive activity rather than speculation"
You mean like building empty cities? With dangerous sub-standard buildings?
I will say they can very quickly build large projects, there are some very impressive bridges to nowhere as well as huge solar farms in the Gobi Desert.