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January
16
2021

Signs and Wonders
James Howard Kunstler

In case you don’t know what condition our condition is in, the name for it is a crisis of legitimacy. Four years of seditious harassment by a “Resistance” within-and-without the US Government culminates in the janky election of a mentally incapable grifter… run by whom? Does anyone seek to know who, exactly, is pulling Joe Biden’s strings? My guess would be…duh… Barack Obama and his posse. When will he be outed? Maybe today… or next week at the latest. Heads will explode to see liberalism’s bowling trophy fall off the national mantelpiece. If you think Nancy Pelosi is running around in a hebephrenic fugue state now, just wait.

A crisis of legitimacy means that citizens have lost faith in their institutions, that is, in the armature of agreements and procedures for running this society. Do you have any idea how much damage RussiaGate did to the country? The three-year-long mind-fuck perpetrated by the highest officials of the FBI and the CIA ruined whatever was left of their reputations. Not only are citizens not safe from the powers of life-and-death vested in these agencies, but they know that officials who wield that power recklessly won’t be held responsible when acting outside the law. Are we any better now than the Russians under Leonid Brezhnev?

UkraineGate and the first Trump impeachment it spawned was a CIA operation that used CIA agent Eric Ciaramella and Intel Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson (a former DOJ RussiaGate player) to cover up the influence-peddling crimes of Joe Biden’s family behind a smokescreen of perfidy fanned over the nation by the notorious RussiaGate liar, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). The State Department assisted in that op, and now the whole country knows that they are also ethically unreliable.

In both of these gigantic flimflams, the president could not get any satisfactory scrutiny of the injuries attempted against him, because the ops were run by the very agencies needed to provide that scrutiny over unlawful official behavior. Did the DOJ and its stepchild, the FBI, show any interest in the recent voting irregularities, or is it just convenient to let it all slide so they can answer to a new president, with a clear and urgent interest in burying the matter?

Is it any wonder that a huge chunk of the population doesn’t believe the election was on-the-level? Federal law enforcement has not revealed the identities of exactly who incited the invasion of the Capitol building — and do you believe who The New York Times and CNN claim it was: white supremacist Nazis? Has it not occurred to the “winner” and his handlers that such a public mood of distrust will thunder through our national affairs going forward?

It’s late in the game but something appears to still be in play, and the Resistance is keenly aware of it: a trove of declassified documents laying out their crimes against their own countrymen. Nothing has stuck to the Resistance because they controlled the levers of adjudication. What if, under the extraordinary conditions of the moment, those levers are transferred to one arm of the government that has not disgraced itself: the military? I wrote in this blog more than once in recent years that political disorder could lead to this. Has that moment come?

Thousands of troops are billeted in and around Washington DC now. Why is that? The figment of more white supremacists coming to reenact last week’s incident at the Capitol? I don’t think so. A BLM / Antifa riot, like the ones staged in cities (including Washington DC) all through the summer and fall? (Weren’t they mostly peaceful?) Or is something else up, something that will mark an epochal shift in the fortunes of the USA?

Did you catch Joe Biden on TV last night? Did his appearance fill you with the sweet, warm unction of reassurance? Or did you get the impression that I got: of a near-mummy in a state of panicky confusion, sent from his hidey-hole out to a podium to give an impersonation of someone in authority? I didn’t believe the performance for a minute. The poor schlemiel is headed straight into history’s discontinued merchandise bin. He will probably wonder what awful vanity propelled him down the memory hole as he descends into the darkness… but his memory preceded him down the memory hole and he will have forgotten how the whole thing started. His exit will be a merciful one compared to the people who trussed him up and shoved him onstage to flesh out their lame narrative.

 

 

James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation. His novels include World Made By Hand, The Witch of Hebron, Maggie Darling — A Modern Romance, The Halloween Ball, an Embarrassment of Riches, and many others. He has published three novellas with Water Street Press: Manhattan Gothic, A Christmas Orphan, and The Flight of Mehetabel.

 

kunstler.com