Another Country

Picked this up via Database Debunkings: Jim Kunstler says in Another Country:

Take a good look at America around you now, because when we emerge from the winter of 2005 - 6, we're going to be another country. The reality-oblivious nation of mall hounds, bargain shoppers, happy motorists, Nascar fans, Red State war hawks, and born-again Krispy Kremers is headed into a werewolf-like transformation that will reveal to all the tragic monster we have become.

What we will leave behind is the certainty that we have made the right choices. Was it a good thing to buy a 3,600 square foot house 32 miles outside Minneapolis with an interest-only adjustable rate mortgage -- with natural gas for home heating running at $12 a unit and gasoline over $3 a gallon? Was it the right choice to run three credit cards up to their $5000 limit? Was I chump to think my pension from Acme Airlines would really be there for me? Do I really owe the Middletown Hospital $17,678 for a gall bladder operation that took forty-five minutes? And why did they charge me $238 for a plastic catheter?

Emphasis Mine

He follows up in The Vicious Pincer with:

The political allegiance of the American public will be fully in play. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, and we are likely to see the emergence of something new, perhaps something like the British National Party (BNP) which combines a very aggressive agenda on energy policy with overt fascism. The American people will be starved for action, too, and will be waiting for a man of action to embody their desperation. Let's hope that the characters who percolate out of this mess are not maniacs. The outrageously wealthy had better duck-and-cover -- the half-billion-dollar-CEOs, the $20-million-a-picture movie stars, perhaps even the relatively humble drivers of Hummers and Beemers. The sinking middle class will want to eat them.

Emphasis in Original

In other words, FASCISM. Looks like 2006 or 2007 could see the rise of fascism as the petite bourgeious take their revenge on the system. We are living in interesting times. Hope we have the courage to face the challenges of the times.