Karl Denninger bows out

I've quoted Karl Denninger many times in these pages, but it looks like opportunities to do so will be severely limited in future.  He's closed down most of his online activities, providing a long farewell essay in which he makes clear his disgust, almost his despair at the way things are going.

I began to write, and ultimately set up the forum as well as a place for people to congregate, trade ideas, and hopefully get something of value -- and perhaps, just perhaps, coalesce into something worthwhile that might put a stop to this sort of garbage in the future.

That appears to have been a foolish dream.

It wasn't my first foolish dream; I've been a fool many times before -- and I'm sure it won't be the last time either.

You see, nobody wants to do anything about the real issues facing our nation and that we have as a people -- at least not in a productive way.  It's far more important and easier to take cheap shots, to play "gotcha" and to parade around bull**** than it is to face the facts about what our society has become, and when we play those games all we're doing is adding to the puerile and derelict nature of what our society has devolved into.

We're more-interested in whether Alec Baldwin said a bad thing on a NY Street than whether colleges are ripping off young adults.  We're more interested in going after people predicated on half-truths and outright lies than the bald-faced rip-offs and outrages that are served upon us daily by those who claim to be acting in our "best interest" -- and our own culpability for same, in that virtually every one of these people holds office and power only because we consent with votes cast at either the polls or the store.  It doesn't matter that the media intentionally placed their logo in a strategic fashion when George Zimmerman got out of a cop car to hide the back of his head so you couldn't see the gash that Trayvon Martin put there, and that was just one of the first half-truths and outright distortions presented in that case; we buy the products advertised on those "news" shows and watch those networks to this day.

Harry Reid struts around the Senate pontificating on evil Republicans even though his office and he personally knows that Medicare and Medicaid will bankrupt the country -- but he'll be dead first, so he doesn't give a damn nor will he put a stop to it.  Boehner and McConnell, for their part, are happy to make all sorts of noises about deficit spending, but then when the time comes to actually stop it they fold for the same reason -- they don't give a damn either as they expect they'll leave office before it all goes to Hell and it's very profitable for them and their friends to continue the charade.  Both sides of the aisle knew damn well that Obama was lying about virtually every respect of Obamacare and yet Pelosi literally said that Congress had to pass the law to know what was in it, which is a rank admission that she knew she was screwing the entire country.  You don't care either because she's still in office.  CEOs come on CNBC and other media channels to tout their "greatness" just as Mozillo did -- or for that matter Dick Fuld of Lehman who promised he was going to "burn the shorts."  When his own pants caught on fire instead who called him on that? 

Nobody.

What does it say about us when we're more-interested in whether Miley Cyrus is twerking with a foam finger than the rip-offs on Wall Street promulgated with HFT, blatant falsehoods spewed forth in Congressional testimony by Fed officials and outright lies by the head of the NSA?  What does it say about us when a Congressperson documents that they and the President lied about your health care, intentionally destroying your insurance coverage and relationship with your physician -- and yet they still sit in their offices drawing paychecks funded with your money, voluntarily handed over, more than four years later?

What does it say about us when we're too damn busy dredging up old bull**** to demand that the foundation of this nation actually mean something?  What does it mean when the most-important aspect of our lives is prattering about who's porking who (or who did pork who) instead of why we as a society tolerate grift on a wholesale basis to the point that 40% of our population gets a check that they literally steal from everyone -- including themselves and their children?

Maybe we all deserve what's happening and what's coming.  Maybe we deserve the sort of thing that's happening in the Ukraine.

There's much more at the link.

Mr. Denninger says he'll continue to "publish articles at my whim if events catch my eye".  I hope so - it would be sad to be completely bereft of his incisive commentary and wit.  Yet, I can also understand his near-despair at the lack of willingness to act on the part of the broader American people.  Far too few of us are willing to get out of our comfort zone and actively protest the lies, immorality and unconstitutional shenanigans of our political leaders.  Many more would be willing to do so if it weren't for the threat of being audited by the IRS, or pilloried in the press, or pressured by union goons, or any of the other tricks that the Left has used so often and so well.

I don't share Mr. Denninger's despair, because my faith teaches me that despair is a grievous sin.  Nevertheless, I believe as he does that very hard times are coming, and that what can't go on won't go on (as Stein's Law teaches us).  I believe that the gulf between the 'political class' and the rest of America is almost unbridgeable by now, and that the divide between the 'producers' and the 'consumers' is almost as rigid.  Sooner or later - my bet's on sooner - the former will no longer be able to produce enough to support the latter, no matter how rapacious and confiscatory the 'political class' may become with their demands.  When that happens, we're going to go through some sort of collapse, probably long-drawn-out and miserable rather than short, sharp and salutary.  What emerges on the other side will be different from the America we know today.  It'll probably be poorer, probably a lot more hamstrung by chains laid on it by the past . . . but please God, it'll be wiser than we've been over the past few decades.

I hope Mr. Denninger, and I, and all of us, will be here to help rebuild.  The country will need every man and woman of goodwill it can find.  I think he deserves our thanks for trying so hard, for so long, to open our eyes to the true dimensions of the crisis confronting us.  Certainly no-one's done more to help us brace for the coming storm.

Peter