Monday, September 15, 2008

Kunstler on "the party that wrecked America" and a top that needs to spin again.


Earlier today I emailed a very good blog article by James Howard Kunstler, journalist and author, regarding the Republican party, "the party that wrecked America," as he tags them, and I must agree with that tag. These last nearly eight years have been very bad for this country. Kunstler’s opening sentences:

"It turns out the real hurricane blew through Wall Street last week, not Galveston. This morning, Manhattan is strewn chest-deep with the debris of banking and at this hour (seven a.m.) nobody knows how far, deep, and wide the damage will spread."
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/09/a-ripe-moment.html

You may want to read Kunstler’s excellent article first before reading my friend and guest blogger, Ricky Kendall’s comments to the article. Ricky’s comments today were too good to just be deleted from my email. His comments deserve to be shared–as do those of James Kunstler.

Ricky’s response:

Linda,

Good grief. I was almost convinced to vote for McCain/Palin after reading the article and the comments! I have to agree that it would be nice to watch the Republicans struggle to dig us out of this horrible mess we are in. To be perfectly honest, I don't think either party is going to have fun trying to weld the economy back together again. The author is absolutely correct when he speaks of what we have to offer this world in products. We have none. I always wondered exactly what the consumer, information and high tech economies were all about. Out of these three, only one has a real product that you can carry home in a box and that would be the high tech economy and the software produced. Unfortunately even that software is put into a physical, hold in your hand existence using disks, cases and inserts made in another country. Even my Sunraze are made up of products that are all made in another country. I just put it all together to create my art.


Do we make anything anymore? We all consume like crazy but very few of us create anything to replace the energy at our end. The logo for my business when I cut my CD, was Power of Balance. When we receive an object, whether purchased, stolen, or as a gift, we should replace it with something. I don't mean that we should hand over a hand made trinket to the cashier along with our hard earned money. We should put something of a physical nature out there to replace it. Create something and sell it, give it as a gift or just plant a flower. The Native Americans were very well aware of this.

Humanity is a part of the earth and we are here because the planet has allowed it. Nature will be the final decision maker when it comes to our retaining our existence here. Even great economists say that an economy has a life of its own. They have no idea how true this is. Instead of letting it do as it should by letting it have that life, the politicians have screwed around with it to the point that it no longer can survive and it will crumble. There are very powerful rewards when things are in balance. Right now our economy is like a top slowing down, losing momentum and ready to fall over, fly off the table and come to a grinding halt, silent and still. We will have to start over and hope to learn from this mistake. I don't know that humanity ever learns much from its past mistakes because we just keep making the same ones over and over, mostly because of greed.

What does it take to get a top spinning again? You can't lift it to its correct position without product and you won't spin it with invisible string. We will have to go back to basics and start over. We need to create what we need to survive here, in this country. In the event that all other nations turn their backs on us, we need to have the capacity to take care of ourselves. As things stand now, such an event would be akin to the great USA being hit by a moon sized meteorite.

Thank you for sending me that great article. It was inspiring and informative. It is the first time I have seen a commentary that actually brought up the fact that we no longer produce. It was refreshing.

~Ricky

Note: You can hear Ricky Kendall’s CD at
http://cdbaby.com/cd/rickykendall
"Cultured big city jazz rock with a country flair"


~Linda

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