James Howard Kunstler: The Earth Shifts

01-31-2011 • Kunstler.com

But it's not really up to us, no matter how many times Hillary Clinton says "uh," through her tightly pursed lips. And Barack Obama is kicking back like everybody else watching things beyond our control spin out on cable TV. Remember something else: these uproars in the Middle East are only the first stirrings of political reaction to a scarcity of key world resources, especially grain crops, which have never been in such short supply in modern times. And the part of this problem that isn't due to sheer population overshoot is almost certainly a result of climate change - which many idiots in the US congress refuse to acknowledge out of sheer obdurate stupidity. A word or two about last week's State of the Union speech. The platitudes were nearly too painful to bear: techno-magic and a zillion engineering PhDs will keeps us at the zenith of historic wonderfulness. Has anyone been to Youngstown, Ohio, recently? We're so full of shit about ourselves, our true condition, and our prospects, that you can see it through our eyeballs.