by James Kunstler -- Clusterfuck Nation
The sheer weight and inertia of American life kept our systems on their feet through 2005, despite a worsening economic climate and some harsh body blows, like the hurricanes that pounded oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. In a way, some perverse law of sociopolitical physics seemed to concentrate all the year's destructive potential in the devastation of New Orleans, Biloxi, and other Gulf Coast towns -- while the mighty din of motoring and cheeseburger sales roared on elsewhere without pause from Cape Cod to Catalina.
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Here in the USA, I predict that we will be diverted by a fantastic circus of congressional hearings and court proceedings. It will be scandal-o-rama for the Bush administration and the Republican party. The domestic spying issue will be a huge stink (I recognize I defended it on this blog), but it raises issues that our political system cannot digest right now. The Abramoff scandal is going to be huge and may take down twenty congressmen. Karl Rove will probably join Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the indictment pen for the Valarie Plame incident. Tom Delay is going to have a very ugly trial in Texas, and senate majority leader Bill Frist may end up being prosecuted for stock sale irregularities. These shows may so successfully entertain the public -- and the cable news impresarios -- that we will fail to notice the rising predicament of oil and gas prices and the cratering of the suburban sprawl economy (just as Watergate -- a very satisfying melodrama for those of us who were young reporters in 1973-4 -- diverted the United States from the first throes of the oil crisis). All this activity will tend to degrade the standing of the Republican party to "junk" status. But there is no sign that the Democrats offer an alternative world-view to the "non-negotiable American way of life."
Political circuses will not completely divert the middle class from its own suffering, as their mortgages devour what is left of their financial lives. But as they sink in fortune and hope, I predict we will see a turning of all the recent celebrity envy -- and the infotainment value spun off it -- into a vicious hatred of the rich and famous and a new desire not to emulate them, but to punish them. Look out, Nicole Ritchie and the Donald Trump. The grandchildren of Ozzie and Harriet will be looking to eat you for dinner starting in 2006.
http://worldnewstrust.org/modules/AMS/article.php?storyid=2009