Interview, James Howard Kunstler
March 12th, 2008James Howard Kunstler is one of the most acid critics of the United States’ “non-negotiable” way of life (Vice President Dick Cheney’s words), of the “happy motoring utopia” (Kunstler). In a series of books and novels (The Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency, World Made by Hand), Kunstler has laid out a disturbing vision of a nation that is disconnected from the economic and political facts that govern its future.
America, it seems, has bought the Reagan-esque line that it is “morning in America,” and that the first of what will likely turn out to be several resource and geopolitical shocks to its role as global hegemon, the Mid-east sparked twin oil crises of 1973 and 1981, were aberrations, more attributable to the moral weaknesses and foibles of “liberal” America.
Kunstler counters that the incipient crises, principle among them being the peaking of world oil production, are real, and that Americans persist in their suburban and agro-industrial fantasy at their peril. Although I do not agree on some significant points of Kunstler’s thesis (or theses), I agree with his views on balance. I especially agree with him that the American polity has become unmoored from the political and economic realities that surround it.
Here, then, is an interview with Kunstler in which he outlines his views that I’ve pulled off of Youtube (hence the poor quality).
