Kunstler Kritik

It’s worthwhile to reflect on the gleanings from Kunstler’s weblog, because it is actually a stellar example of the kind of madness that infects people’s perceptions these days.  Although Kunstler’s ideas are not without merit, he possesses the same irredeemable confusion about politics which Liberals madden their critics with at all times.  It’s best, then, to take some time and address both the good and the bad in this particular weird part of cyberspace.  Will it result in any enlightenment whatsoever?  That’s a question that I can’t currently answer.  I don’t want to mislead anyone, either.  I’m not writing this because I think he’s particularly important, but because he’s a good example of how ideas with merit can easily become awful mishaps thanks to stubborn and arrogant behavior.  He’s also a good inspiration for a lightning exposition of modern-day ills because people like him are tied so intimately up with them.

The pros of Kunstler’s writings are obvious.  He desires to take people back to a time when the scale of society wasn’t so impossibly complex, when real community was possible, and when life had some meaning beyond the endless drive to rank materialism, status seeking, and uninhibited lust and manifold other modern vices.  This is a splendid idea.  It’s a very good start that this man is willing to admit that the form of modern life is not desirable and that there are other possibilities to consider as alternatives.  That may sound too obvious to even bother with, but that’s not so.  Most Liberals will not admit such a thing.  They see the current system as the best of all possible worlds, generally speaking, and when ever they deign to find something wrong with it, it’s usually along the lines of “we only need to tweak this, and then everything will work right again.”  Examples of this purblind behavior would be on racial and socioeconomic tensions in America.  We are told ad nauseam that if only people had more opportunities or faced less discrimination, the harmonious society would be achieved with little trouble.  The truth is that society is too complex.  This leads to oligarchies dominating the government, wealth becoming highly centralized, and people becoming overwhelmed and impotent in their ability to truly change things.  Liberals do not admit this because their ideology leads them to believe that there simply cannot be another, better way of life, so they propose and endless array of technical fixes that are supposed to help out but they never achieve the desired or promised effect and so it then becomes time for more of the same.  Kunstler is to be commended for seeing, at least in part, that this system is not possible to be reformed in such a way that the majority could see a redress of grievances.  Apart from that, however, there are a great deal of misconceptions floating around in his, I suspect rather unhinged, mind.

Thus it is necessary to expose these misconceptions.  The cons are all to obvious but no less egregious for all of the good his ideas might inspire.  He has some severe blind spots and is never in a mood to have his views criticized.  This is a nasty combination of the Liberal introspection disability and self-conscious artistic narcissism.  But on my own site I fully intend to criticize that nonsense just how I see fit.  This is best done through offering examples of where he is just flat wrong.  First of all has to do with his idiotic predilection toward attacking Republicans; this is a tiresome and all-too-predictable partisan cop-out.  Has it, for all of these years, escaped his notice that the Democrats are just as corrupt, just as unjust, just as enslaved to ideology as those they criticize?  I find that hard to believe, but as Grigorius Mladikov said, “ideology makes you retarded.”  There couldn’t be a better case-in-point.  Liberals, of both the left-liberal (i.e. the Postmodern Left that dominates most institutions today) and the right-liberal (i.e. the Tea Party) along with everyone in between but otherwise on the spectrum, all share some common ‘sacred’ ideas that canno be questioned.  Everyone of moderate education is familiar with the institutions here:  Democracy, market economy, universal suffrage, and more that I don’t care to repeat.  They’re less aware, however, of the philosophical underpinnings of their system.  The idea that any act is acceptable so long as it harms no one (i.e. ‘harm-based morality’), the idea that material well-being is the ultimate goal in life, the idea that everyone is as good as the next one except of course as regards their material conditions (which are, by themselves, somehow supposed to be a judge of value), and other values are what Liberals take for granted as self-evidently true.  These are the values of the bourgeoisie and no one questions them because in our time there are no other classes – save the proletariat, but this is effectively diminished because it has for the most part adopted the values of the former.  But before I fly too wide of the mark, let it just be said that Kunstler doesn’t in the end fundamentally disbelieve in these values or he wouldn’t have been a Democrat for so long.  And that, in sum, is a perfect example of the confused or conflicted or contradictory way of modern Liberalism.  Sorry, James, but you have to jettison Liberalism in whole and for good, or it will in the end be useless.  Half-measures avail us nothing – that’s a lesson that drunks can get but you cannot.

Having addressed his problematic values system and critical thinking apraxia, I think it’s also more than germane to examine where his prescriptive solutions might leave something to be desired.  The most obvious thing that jumps to mind is his automobile fixation and his suburban fixation.  The automobile is not something that is going to vanish simply because he doesn’t like it, nor are people going to move back into the centers of cities simply because he thinks they should.  The idea that ‘it’s just that easy’ if only everyone saw it his way is the typical glib and unrealistic Liberal expectation.  There were reasons that the suburbs expanded as they did.  Minority crime in the inner city had a very influence on this, and it continues to be a relevant problem to this day.  Kunstler never admits this, nor will he, as this topic is one he hasn’t the courage or intellectual honesty to even begin to address.  Now, in the same vein, he has claimed that we all ‘subsidize’ the suburban way of life.  I can think of some other things we subsidize even more obviously.  Living in an American metropolis ruled by Liberals, I’ve seen firsthand how they have used the minority underclass as a weapon against tax-paying citizens.  We have an effective mestizo and negro breeding program going on, and it’s been happening for a very long time.  This is funded by tax-payers, these people receive what amounts to free everything in perpetuity, and even mentioning it in polite company is a no-no.  Talk about poisoning the well, they’ve created a problem of epic proportions and they won’t even allow its existence to be brought up.  But you can’t sweep reality under the rug for ever.  Not given the kind of conditions that we are now facing (to wit:  that gravy train’s drying up).  Kunstler has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to shut down debate on this and other issues, and that’s common behavior from all Liberals, but it doesn’t bode well for his credibility as an agent of change for the better.  Ignorance in regard to topics one ‘would rather not discuss’ doesn’t work out because social ills, if they are to be addressed at all, require honesty for that to be done.  But that’s not something we can ever hope for from him.  So in the end, I don’t think it’s unfair to view him as a very malicious individual who inhibits constructive reform, for all his airs of altruism.

This is a topic that could be expanded at length even beyond what has been done now, but I have a feeling that it’s best to keep things to a moderate length and leave some ideas for the next time.  I’ve tried my best to use Kunstler as a test case for why Liberalism is unworkable and all of the problems with it.  I will say as I summarize that I basically agree with Kunstler’s idea that a downscaled, communal society based on pragmatic assessment of human needs rather than endless consumption and all the evils that follow it is desirable and far superior to the kind of life we are now forced to lead.  But the agreements probably end there.  The continued adherence to Liberal values and praxis would have to be abandoned for any such project to work.  The kind of society that Kunstler wants (or, more accurately, wants in part and in coexistence with the continued existence of Liberal ideals) requires traditional values and religion.  Trust and cooperation cannot be faked or coerced, these things have to be genuine, and the paranoid and aggressive, not to mention spiritually bankrupt, Liberal way of life doesn’t permit that to exist.  I do not believe they will ever be made to see things this way, however, and mores the pity.  This reality in effect guarantees that the problems of the modern days, which Kunstler to his credit bemoans, will continue to spiral out of control and neither mainstream Liberal quick fixes nor Kunstleresque pipe dreams will be able to forestall the continued slow-motion collapse of civilization.