Jim Kunstler's post this week hammers Sen. Chuck Grassley for a moronically naive statement he made about conservation, a remark indicative of a national ignorance about energy supply and demand. Whether the state of denial if willful or simple blind stupidity isn't going to change the effect -- we're unprepared to make the hard choices necessity demands, to conserve energy resources and transform the American way of life into something less gross and more sustainable. Ever the bubbly pessimist, Kunstler presumes that we'll have reality forced upon us willy nilly, and the shock of the coming oil crisis is likely to be proportional to the extent of our denial. We're already one or two acts into the unfolding tragic drama, and Iraq is a major plot point. America, the tragic hero, has gone to war to secure the world's second largest oil reserves and preserve the American way of life that depends on all that oil. Thousands of troops die. The insurgents bomb away. The country isn't secure. Things are too messy, and it might be time to cut and run. Murmurs of regret over having gotten involved at all are whispered among the chattering, nattering bourgeois nabobs and TV bobbleheads. But we will stay the course, won't cut and run, things won't get much better, and more people of all colors will continue being shot and blown up. Inevitably a day will arrive when the last American humvee pulls out of Iraq, and none of us will be sure what it is we're leaving. Will the semblance of an Iraqi government see us kindly, with warmness in their hearts, and befriend us with oil gratuities? Into what other dangerous and oily parts of the world will we have to inject our military manhood after that to compensate for the unstable mess we left in Iraq? How long will American the great be able to fund the massive armed forces required to maintain energy dominance before the financial house collapses? And why at this point would we expect any other world power to cooperate with our cowboy antics? Why wouldn't they be just as likely to collude against and corner the raging beast, seeing as the world's biggest and greediest energy fatty is the good ol' USA? Like hogs in the slop, we're preoccupied with eating and snorting and spinning and covering ourselves in muddy lies. But there won't be hiding from the truth. Great nations rise and fall. The sun rises, then sets. What goes up, must come down. Spinning wheel got to go round.
