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Kunstler: “This Is Exactly What You Get In A Culture Where Anything Goes & Nothing Matters”

“This is exactly what you get in a culture where anything goes and nothing matters.”

Published

4 months ago

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Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com.

In a nation afflicted by fads, crazes, manias, and rages, mass murder is the jackpot for nihilists – begging the question: why does this country produce so many of them?

Answer: this is exactly what you get in a culture where anything goes and nothing matters. Extract all the meaning and purpose from being here on earth, and erase as many boundaries as you can from custom and behavior, and watch what happens, especially among young men trained on video slaughter games.

For many, there is no armature left to hang a life on, no communities, no fathers, no mentors, no initiations into personal responsibility, no daily organizing principles, no instruction in useful trades, no productive activities, no opportunities for love and affection, and no way out. This abyss of missing social relations is made worse by the everyday physical settings for everyday lives based on nothing: the wilderness of parking lots that America has turned itself into. Such is the compelling myth of the New World as a wilderness that we obliged ourselves to re-enact it, minus nature, including human nature, especially what may be noble and sacred about human nature.

The old truism sticks: when nothing is sacred, everything is profane, and what could be more profane than slaughtering your fellow humans en masse, for no good reason? Just because you felt like it at the time? Another time, you might feel like scarfing some tacos, or checking in on the free porn sites, or tweaking some crushed-up oxycontin. One message from the culture of anything-goes-and-nothing-matters comes through loud and clear: if it feels good, do it! And if you feel bad, do something to make yourself feel better.

The wonder is that the way we live these days hasn’t turned more people into homicidal maniacs, considering how many are out there feeling bad in this grotesque landscape of incessant motoring, vivid purposelessness, and lost aspiration — unless these bloody skirmishes are the precursor to some more general outbreak of murderous havoc. It’s not hard these days to imagine the political animus ratcheting up to something like a new civil war. If it works out that way, it will be the most psychologically confused political event of modern history.

The Walmart is the perfect setting for these ceremonies of nihilist wrath. The sheer size of these places makes the “consumers” inside feel small, and informs them that they are at the mercy of colossal forces for their pitiful daily needs, their Hot Pockets, their disposable diapers, their roach spray. The shooter is just a momentary concentration of everything else grinding the dignity and meaning out of American lives. The bad karma in these dynamics compels some periodic release. Cue some young man jacked on his own hormones and a comic book conception of human power relations.

I’m not persuaded that a ban on gun sales will do anything to prevent more of these deadly episodes because there are already too many firearms loose in America. But it is probably necessary to make some kind of statement, say a ban on military-type weapons, and I rather expect that will happen. But the political process of recognizing what really ails this society is mired in bad faith, idiocy, and neuroticism. And the political actors are signaling their ineptitude clearly, which only adds to the sweeping demoralization of everybody else.

We await a restructuring of American life into real communities of people working together at things that matter, and it will require the demise of the things that have worked so hard to destroy all that, namely, the tyranny of the giants, the town-killing Walmarts, the suffocating monster of government, the media manipulators of reality, the too-big-to-fail banks. The people alone won’t loosen the grip of these monsters and, honestly, they lack the will to even imagine life without all that.

But history onrushing will do it for them, first in the form of a financial fiasco that upsets the meaning of what “money” is, and all the instruments calibrated in it; and then with an economic collapse of supply lines and activities that we can’t afford to carry on anymore.

The people may have to be dragged kicking and screaming into that new disposition of things, just because it’s so hard to let go of what you’re used to. Something like this appears to be underway now in global business and markets. For a while, it will only add to the confusion. Clarity is a lagging effect.

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Culture

Hilarious: Leftists Triggered By Trump Candy Bars

Published

3 days ago

on

11 December, 2019

Steve Watson

Making confectionery great again

Candy bars made and sold by a small family-run business have triggered leftists into a frothing frenzy because they are adorned with President Trump’s smiling face.

Making confectionery great again, the treats were spotted in John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York by liberal author Malcolm Nance, a noted ‘muh Russia’ conspiracy theorist:

Nance’s snowflake fan club then piled in:

The candy is made and sold by New York-based Astor Chocolate, an American family run business in operations since the 1950s.

Astor describes the candy as “1.75 oz Belgian milk chocolate bar inaugural design to commemorate our 45th President Donald Trump.”

Of course, it’s nothing new. There was no problem with this when the savior was President:

Lets enjoy more of the triggering:

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The Infantilization of Popular Culture

The invasion of the man-babies.

Published

1 week ago

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4 December, 2019

Why are superhero movies so popular?

Why are millennials regressing back to an infantilized state of permanent adolescence?

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Watch: Lefty BBC Comedian Booed Off Stage For Tired Brexit ‘Jokes’

Published

2 weeks ago

on

3 December, 2019

Steve Watson

Insulted crowd, and said “what you need here is far right comedians”

Update – A longer video of the incident has emerged:

A comedian who regularly appears on BBC programming was booed off stage and had food thrown at him within minutes of the beginning his routine because he spoke negatively about Brexit and Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The tail end of Nish Kumar’s appearance was filmed by members of the audience at a charity cricket lunch in London. The footage shows Kumar refusing to leave the stage, and having to be escorted off.

“I know you want me to leave but I’m not going to do it.  Absolutely not.” Kumar can be heard saying in the video.

He was also reported to have bragged to the crowd that he was doing the event for free, but they should have paid a “far right” comedian to do the performance, which incensed the audience even more.

“It was the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen,” attendee Jon Austin told the Telegraph.

“It was Brexit straight away.  He came on and he killed the audience.  It took less than a minute. People were booing him.  He had bread rolls thrown at him.” Austin added, saying the event in aid of disabled children “wasn’t the place” for politics.

Kumar was also said to have made a joke about himself either looking like a terrorist or a Brazilian, depending on the angle.

When the crowd quickly turned, Kumar reacted by insulting them, calling them “Thick”. “He said ‘what you need here is far right comedians’,” Mr Austin said, adding “‘Far right’ – it was just deeply offensive.”

Kumar is known for routinely appearing on boring BBC panel shows where ranting about Brexit is somehow considered ‘comedy’. He also fronts a ‘comedy’ show called Mash Report on the BBC, where he parrots this kind of material ad nauseum.

In other words, he operates in a total bubble. Put him out in the real world in front of a crowd of middle-aged cricket fans, and this is what happens.

This perfectly underscores how sick British people are of being told what the ‘right’ way of thinking is by establishment hacks like Kumar. All he does is use comedy as a coat for imposing his political beliefs on others. It is simultaneously a horrendous misuse of the art form, and a smarmy declaration of moral superiority.

Kumar sardonically addressed the incident on Twitter, writing “In my defence, it was only one bread roll and it missed me.”

He also posted a YouTube video of Bob Dylan laughing at newspaper reports that people had walked out of one of his concerts after booing him.

It can only be inferred that the suggestion here by Nish is that the people just don’t understand greatness when they see it.

The problem, however, is that Bob Dylan is undoubtedly one of the greatest artists of his time, whereas Nish is a guy who appears on scripted panel shows and at corporate events because he’s not talented or liked enough to score real comedy gigs.

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