America: An "overfed clown in paramilitary drag, pretending to be powerful"

I just thought it was good, or at least most parts of it were....or it was good at description or modern-day U.S. (probably better than it is at analysis, etc)

One of THE great allegorical cold war era sci fi b-movies.

xp

also this ad has got to be losing exodus customers, jesus:

http://www.amconmag.com/ads/125x125.gif

(sorry wrong thread)

They began to occupy and modify the terrain of America in a way that lower classes never had been able to before—using the prime artifact of industrial civilization to accomplish that takeover, the car. They bought homes in the new subdivisions that were obliterating the rural hinterlands of the cities, and before long all the commercial accessories followed: the strip malls, the department stores, the fried-food huts, the cinemaplexes, the office parks, the Big Box store

v. well put, read his blog for better examples of same.
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/

(xpost: VINDICATION)

by Daniel J. Perry

(I say that from a place of love.)

I actually thought that was the best (and most insightful) part. In economic terms, the '50s were a time of relative egalitarianism. Income disparity was much less than it is now - the "lower orders" (as Kunstler quaintly refers to them) were making great strides relative to the richest. Quality of life was improving rapidly for the average person. Nowadays that has all reversed, and the average income is sliding while the top 1% of 1% continues to skim off a larger and larger share of the pie for themselves. There are a lot of possible reasons for this. There was a culture of shared sacrifice inspired by the experiences of WWII which made a highly progressive tax code politically feasible, and made it still unacceptable for CEOs to reward themselves out of all proportion to their employees. There were the effects of real economic expansion in the decades following the war, which tended to raise all boats, but most noticeably those of the working class. These are historical facts which Kunstler is not the first to note, but I think they bear repeating. Of course there are many other areas where we have made great strides since the '50s - such as civil rights, women's rights, etc. - but in economic terms, we have been falling behind.

dingdingdingdingdingding!!!! See also - McCarthyite witch hunts, cold war paranoia, the growth of the "military-industrial-complex" police state (CIA, FBI both feelin their oats in the 50s), etc.

Yes, there was McCarthyism in the '50s - but the McCarthyites lost. There was cold war paranoia - but not as much as there would be later. The '50s were not nearly as bad of a conformist wasteland as they have been presented by the Boomer generation, which is eager to present the self-serving view that they changed everything in the '60s.

That's not quite accurate. As this graph shows, blacks participated in the economic gains of the '50s. From 1950 to 1960, black median household incomes increased by almost 50%. Since 1970, they have been basically flat. So which decades saw real gains for those with dark-colored skin?

http://www.ed.gov/pubs/YouthIndicators/indfig14.gif

(But maybe that's just me.)

But as I was saying before, it's not a bad decade vs. good decade issue people. Can we not see that we have lost ground in some areas?

source: http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/society/A0834933.html

xpost: Sure, which is why Bush is bucking his constituency to try and allow millions of other people into the country who it is more politically palatable to economically exploit.

I don't think it's really fair to compare the civil rights standards directly between two decades, because they are starting from a different baseline. What would be more apt would be to compare the rate of progress during the 1950s compared to the rate of progress in another decade. In that comparison, I think the '50s come out very well indeed.

I'm with you on the filmmaking part - don't know about the journalism.

White MALES. Avg. pay for women at the end of the 1950's was 60% of the avg. pay for men. Today, it's about 75%

I don't think that the entry of more women into the workforce and an increase in their wages can entirely be blamed for the problem. For one thing, that chart shows "Family" income - so I think it shows the combined income from both wage-earners. If that's the case, then a two-income family is now struggling to maintain the same real standard of living that used to be possible from one income.

I suppose one could argue that jobs have not kept pace with the expansion of the work-force, but is that because the work-force has expanded too fast, or that jobs haven't expanded fast enough? And what causes the imbalance? Shouldn't more people working mean more money to spend on products which should mean more jobs? Of all the possible factors I don't think that increasing women's wages could really be isolated as the crucial factor.

Kunstler's bugbear of cheap oil seems to me a more likely culprit - the timing is right, after all. When did wages start to stagnate? Right around the same time that OPEC formed and US control of world oil industry was broken. Another possibility is globalization - in which the US exports jobs and debt, and imports cheap products and windfall profits for the capitalists and bankers that finance the outsourcing - causing widening income disparities between those who work for a living and those who simply invest.

his recent writing reveals his "bracing simplicity" for the reductive make-it-up-as-you-go-along cartooning it really is

Kunstler continues with his transmogrification into the Bo Gritz of the left

How bad is the situation 'out there' really? In my view, things are veering toward such extreme desperation that the US government might fall under the sway, by extra-electoral means, of an ambitious military officer, or a group of such, sometime in the near future. I'm not promoting a coup d'etat, you understand, but I am raising it as a realistic possibility as elected officials prove utterly unwilling to cope with a mounting crisis of capital and resources. The 'corn-pone Hitler' scenario is still another possibility - Glen Beck and Sarah Palin vying for the hearts and minds of the morons who want 'to keep gubmint out of Medicare!' - but I suspect that there is a growing cadre of concerned officers around the Pentagon who will not brook that fucking nonsense for a Crystal City minute and, what's more, would be very impatient to begin correcting the many fiascos currently blowing the nation apart from within. Remember, today's US military elite is battle-hardened after eight years of war in Asia. No doubt they love their country, as Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte loved theirs. It may pain them to stand by and watch it dissolve like a castle made of sugar in a winter gale.

Er, this is unmitigated bullshit.

If there is one thing the US military does not want, not for all the tea in China, it is direct responsibility for running the economy of the USA. They don't have a clue how to run our economy and they know it. As long as the weapons systems keep being funded, they will keep their guns pointed outward at the perceived enemies who lurk 'out there' past our borders. So much simpler that way.

Countdown to Momus

One of THE great allegorical cold war era sci fi b-movies.

― Geological fondue (nordicskilla), Monday, February 27, 2006 11:11 PM (3 years ago)

a giant one-eyed monster stampeding through japan. it was a little too crass for me.

― gear (gear), Monday, February 27, 2006 11:16 PM (3 years ago)

bahahahahahaha