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WELCOME TO THE NEW AMERICA!!

16K views 126 replies 24 participants last post by  MagVic CCT  
#1 ·
Putting this out there because everyone here needs to wake up to what is happening ffs.

One Man's Reality Check From "A Corner Of Flyover Red America"



by Tyler Durden
Apr 28, 2017 1:57 PM
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Authored by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

While the news waves groan with stories about "America's Opioid Epidemic" you may discern that there is little effort to actually understand what's behind it, namely, the fact that life in the United States has become unspeakably depressing, empty, and purposeless for a large class of citizens. I mean unspeakably literally. If you want evidence of our inability to construct a coherent story about what's happening in this country, there it is.

I live in a corner of Flyover Red America where you can easily read these conditions on the landscape - the vacant Main Streets, especially after dark, the houses uncared for and decrepitating year by year, the derelict farms with barns falling down, harvesters rusting in the rain, and pastures overgrown with sumacs, the parasitical national chain stores like tumors at the edge of every town.

You can read it in the bodies of the people in the new town square, i.e. the supermarket: people prematurely old, fattened and sickened by bad food made to look and taste irresistible to con those sunk in despair, a deadly consolation for lives otherwise filled by empty hours, trash television, addictive computer games, and their own family melodramas concocted to give some narrative meaning to lives otherwise bereft of event or effort.

These are people who have suffered their economic and social roles in life to be stolen from them. They do not work at things that matter. They have no prospects for a better life - and, anyway, the sheer notion of that has been reduced to absurd fantasies of Kardashian luxury, i.e. maximum comfort with no purpose other than to enable self-dramatization. And nothing dramatizes a desperate life like a drug habit. It concentrates the mind, as Samuel Johnson once remarked, like waiting to be hanged.

On display in the news reports about the mystery of the opioid epidemic is America's neurotic reliance on supposedly scientific "studies." Never before in history has a society studied so much and learned so little - which is what happens when you resort to scientizing things that are essentially matters of conduct. It rests on the fallacy that if you compile enough statistics about something, you can control it.

Opioid addiction is just another racket, a personal one, in a culture of racketeering that is edging toward truly epochal failure, for the simple reason that rackets are dishonest, and pervasive dishonesty is at odds with reality, and reality always has the final say.

The eerie thing about reading the landscape of despair is that you can see the ghosts of purpose and meaning in it. Before 1970, there were at least five factories in my little town, all designed originally to run on the water power (or hydro-electric) of the Battenkill River, a tributary of the nearby Hudson. The ruins of these enterprises are still there, the red brick walls with the roofs caved in, the twisted chain-link fence that no longer has anything to protect, the broken masonry mill-races.

The ghosts of commerce are also plainly visible in the bones of Main Street. These were businesses owned by people who lived in town, who employed other people who lived in town, who often bought and sold things grown or made in and around town. Every level of this activity occupied people and gave purpose and meaning to their lives, even if the work associated with it was sometimes hard. Altogether, it formed a rich network of interdependence, of networked human lives and family histories.

What galls me is how casually the country accepts the forces that it has enabled to wreck these relationships. None of the news reports or "studies" done about opioid addiction will challenge or even mention the deadly logic of Wal Mart and operations like it that systematically destroyed local retail economies (and the lives entailed in them.) The news media would have you believe that we still value "bargain shopping" above all other social dynamics. In the end, we don't know what we're talking about.

I've maintained for many years that it will probably require the collapse of the current arrangements for the nation to reacquire a reality-based sense of purpose and meaning. I'm kind of glad to see national chain retail failing, one less major bad thing in American life. Trump was just a crude symptom of the sore-beset public's longing for a new disposition of things. He'll be swept away in the collapse of the rackets, including the real estate racket that he built his career on. Once the collapse gets underway in earnest, starting with the most toxic racket of all, contemporary finance, there will be a lot to do. The day may dawn in America when people are too busy to resort to opioids, and actually derive some satisfaction from the busy-ness that occupies them.
 
#2 ·
Yeah, where I live everything is booming... growing... a constant state of construction from all the new office buildings, restaurants, and shopping centers. People come here who haven't seen this place in 10 years and don't recognize it. Average income in this county is like $80K/year.

We still have an opiate problem. Still have slums. Still have 'depressed areas'.
 
#3 ·
Same here @Half_Crazy.

People can still have purpose if they choose to.
Sometime the work to achieve success elsewhere is hard, but is always attainable for the determined. I came from a poor family and had little hope of becoming anything but I decided to work very hard and put myself through school. I had to work sh!t jobs along the way but I made it. I now make well into the six figure salary range and am still going to school and working full time. My kids are adults now and have noticed how I choose to live and they have also chosen to attain purpose through making their own way. I can make their early adult lives pain free but they don't want me to. What seemingly hopeless people really need is to pay attention to the good examples and then make life happen.

That's all I've got to say about that.
 
#4 · (Edited)
Something else.... This recently dawned on me while driving to work.
The people who spend the most money on alcohol, lottery, drugs, and cigarettes are the people who have the lowest income level.

People who drink and smoke the most are the people who can afford it the least. Add to that $40 a week in lottery tickets. If your yearly expenditure for tobacco, lottery, and beer is more than your expenditure for fuel and food... you're f**ked up.

I refuse to make excuses for heroin addicts, "Oh they are depressed about the economy" or "addiction is a disease". WRONG! Muscular Distophy, Multiple Sclerosis, and Leprosy are diseases.... Alcoholism and drug addition are not. I know this because I WAS A HEROIN ADDICT and a RAGING ALCOHOLIC. Now people are "addicted to sex". BULLSH!T! You cannot control your urges, you don't have a disease. You don't "catch" drug addition from shaking hands with a drug addict.

There is only ONE way to quit anything... you must CHOOSE NOT TO DO IT. Period. If you put as much effort into finding a job, getting a better job, or learning a skill as you do picking your numbers, finding some drugs, getting beer, and making lame-assed excuses for your circumstances, you would have a better life.

If you live in a place where "there ain't sh!t here" then maybe you should GO SOMEPLACE ELSE.

Just talkin' to ya.
 
#5 ·
Something else.... This recently dawned on me while driving to work.
The people who spend the most money on alcohol, lottery, drugs, and cigarettes are the people who have the lowest income level.

People who drink and smoke the most are the people who can afford it the least. Add to that $40 a week in lottery tickets. If your yearly expenditure for tobacco, lottery, and beer is more than your expenditure for fuel and food... you're f**ked up.

I refuse to make excuses for heroin addicts, "Oh they are depressed about the economy" or "addiction is a disease". WRONG! Muscular Sclerosis is a disease, Leprosy is a disease.... Alcoholism and drug addition are not. I know this because I WAS A HEROIN ADDICT and a RAGING ALCOHOLIC. Now people are "addicted to sex". BULLSH!T! You cannot control your urges, you don't have a disease. You don't "catch" drug addition from shaking hands with a drug addict.

There is only ONE way to quit anything... you must CHOOSE NOT TO DO IT. Period. If you put as much effort into finding a job, getting a better job, or learning a skill as you do picking your numbers, finding some drugs, getting beer, and making lame-assed excuses for your circumstances, you would have a better life.

If you live in a place where "there ain't sh!t here" then maybe you should GO SOMEPLACE ELSE.

Just talkin' to ya.
Truth.
 
#6 · (Edited)
I wasn't going to mention it but @Half_Crazy has inspired me to share more.

I too was addicted. Mine was crystal meth for ten years and alcohol for twice that. I also smoked cigarettes. I did these addictions while going to school and work and always paying my bills. One day I realized that it was just making my dreams harder to achieve so I quit cold turkey everything but alchohol. I had to do some praying to get past that one. Take that however you want, but I agree. None of that is a disease. My point, we can do what we decide to do.

Yeah, I prematurely said "that's all I've got to say about that". Now I think I may have even more. I am off today with no homework so I'm sure my mind will come up with more to share. ;)
 
#124 ·
For you it wasn't a disease for me it is I was 13 years old smoked a joint and my life went to hell it became totally grafted into drugs. For 27 years I used. Remember one mans experience does not entail everyone's we are all different. When we come to the place that we relize this then we can start to heal from this spiritual deadliness in this country.
 
#7 ·
It doesn't matter where you're from or how you were brought up. If you have the internal drive to make things better for yourself and those around you there is no better place to make it happen than right here in the USA. The complete opposite also holds true. Meaning if you're down and out and can't pull yourself up then end up on a multi-decade downward spiral digging a hole so deep it takes you the rest of your life to climb out, there is no better place to make it happen than right here in the USA.

People of average or better intelligence have the ability to choose their path. Some never dig holes and some do. Some that dig holes eventually climb out. Others are still digging when the walls cave in. There are far too many people that have no interest in doing whatever it takes to make things better for themselves and those around them. Personally, I once felt for many of those people. Nobody knows my story because I don't share it. Lets just say after making it here when I put on my 20-20 hindsight vision I no longer feel the same way for "those people". Maybe life has made me a prick or maybe I simply respect it for what it is?

You can't help those that have no interest in spending their time making things better for themselves.
 
#8 ·
Speechless. Thanks for sharing that guys. I was never an addict but did cocaine and crack both. Did crystal meth too. Luckily I made the right choices without hitting rock bottom.
 
#9 ·
You have all hit the nail on the Head. Life is full of choices that can boost you up or bring you and others down. If you work hard to make something in life than whatever happens is your responsibility. If you spend your entire life on booze, drugs and avoiding doing anything to support yourself then you somehow become EVERYONE's responsibility.

Growing up with six sisters and two brothers I am grateful that all but one of us has made something of themselves and not ending up being a burden on society. Then there's that one sister that choose the drugs, booze and everything that comes with it. Ya, one of those people in society that is everyone's problem, WTF. She basically took my parents golden years away and i'm sure even years off their life. Now at 58 years old she is in such poor physical and mental health that she somehow got total government disability and will spend the rest of her days making a few of my other sisters lives miserable. It's sad how one individual cause so much pain in soo many others lives. Many think it's not their fault that it's a disease. I say BS, it's all about choices.
 
#10 ·
My family is full of alcoholics, I have a very addictive personality, however, I choose not to drink every waking hour, I love the taste of liquor but drink once in a while, some times I do drink at night to go to sleep, but I know when to switch to soda and will not drive drunk. Drugs, never did anything more than Mary Jane.... Started when I was 12 quit at 13, have had a taste here and there, nothing like the stuff I smoked many years ago.

Gambling, I look as entertainment, if I'm gonna go out most likely gonna blow at least 200 bucks, I will gamble that, but truth be told, been to a casino 3 times, lottery play once in a while and will spend no more than $5.

Smoking, I smoked 3-4 ciggs a day, I quit smoking cigarettes when the price got over $100 carton and BATF wouldn't let me import them any more....

I agree with half crazy, I see people everyday who "can't afford" to feed their family, but their smoking $12 pack of cigs a day, going to bars every night, and **** their hope of becoming a millionaire in lotto....

These people drive me crazy, you got a kid at home starving while your out spending the money that could be feeding them, but make sure you run and get your food stamps....
 
#11 · (Edited)
Oh wow, this is enlightening, knowing i am conversing with a bunch of hoodlums riding motorcycles... The stereotype is true as to you bunch of malcontents and hats off to you guys turning your personal lives around and noting more righteous than a fallen man.

In my youth, I was a bit of the bad boy and to changed the path and just lucky I didn't have an addictive personality. Later, hunted those that provided the poisons and those victimizing others to pay for their habits.

You guys did not have an easy path back from the dark side, congrats as it was no easy trek I am sure...
 
#14 ·
Oh wow, this is enlightening, knowing i am conversing with a bunch of hoodlums riding motorcycles... The stereotype is true as to you bunch of malcontents.
Being an addict or a drunk does not make you a hoodlum.
None of this had anything to do with motorcycles.
Malcontent is defined as a person who is dissatisfied and rebellious -- or a person who is complaining and making trouble.

When I was a drunk and/or addict I wasn't harming anyone but myself, I wasn't dissatisfied, rebelling against anything, and I didn't make trouble... so... I really have no idea what the f**k you're talking about.

As for it being "no easy path", if you haven't kicked heroin cold turkey you have no idea how difficult it is.

Your post, just like the original post, is a word salad of bullsh!t.
 
#12 · (Edited)
What triggered all this for me was a guy in a convenience store. He bought 2 packs of cigarettes and a 6 pack of beer... then he put the $4.62 or whatever the change was in his gas tank. I thought, "That's 2 gallons of gas. Not going far on that". After that I was driving and thought about who spends the most on beer and cigs... those who can least afford to. I've been there.

Took a bus from Colorado Springs to Washington DC. On the last day I had to choose... something to eat or a pack of cigarettes... I bought the cigarettes and went hungry. When I got to DC I had 2 cigarettes, no money, and hadn't eaten in 20 hours. I was so happy to see my girlfriend waiting for me... I knew she would feed me and I knew she would have cocaine too.
 
#15 · (Edited)
I was doing well in my life, 4 kids, wife and step daughter both in college, I was the only one working, no debts, wife took care of kids, life was great.....

Then I got arrested for stuff I've done many years before....

I was looking at felonies..... I spent alot of money on a lawyer, that I didn't want to get involved, but was the only way out of a future of prison, working off the books, or for min wage with assholes and **** over my head....

The judge was not pleased...... He cursed in open court when all of the charges were dropped....... Yea I took the easy way out by using the right lawyer....

I have way to much to lose and that's what keeps me from doing stupid things, and I always tell people, a man with nothing to lose is the most dangerous thing in the world....
 
#21 ·
I

Then I got arrested for stuff I've done many years before....

The judge was not pleased...... He cursed in open court when all of the charges were dropped....... Yea I took the easy way out by using the right lawyer....

Now, lucky for many, I didn't lose my job, family or things...
Ya, Life is complicated and often times there are no easy answers. I am glad to hear your family is doing well but as far as your "things" hopefully that if you harmed others by your past discretion's you somehow use these things to give something back to society.
 
#16 ·
If you did the crime... . You should do the time.

No excuses.
 
#17 ·
If you did the crime... . You should do the time. No excuses.
I so want to agree with that... but people change. The person who did those crimes might be dead and gone, replaced with a guy who is a family man, harming no one, committing no crimes, and truly regrets what he did in the past. Punishing the new person for what the old person did a long time ago, might not be the prudent thing to do, as it would be like punishing his wife, his children, his boss, his parents, his siblings... It's not so cut and dried, is it?
 
#19 ·
To me it is.

Uoubdid the crime you do the time. No excuses.

Boo hoo I've changed...tell that to the victim of the crime.

So let's say the crime is a hit and run. The wife and family of the victim suffer. Let the wife and family of the victim suffer. It's not fair to anyone. And it sucks. But at the end of the day why should the crime go in punished?
 
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#23 ·
If you committed a crime there was a victim. Direct or indirect.

It would be a shame I agree for your wife and kid to suffer for your actions.

Think of this as well. The only reason you are wherebyoubare in life todaybis because you evaded your punishment.
 
#32 ·
If you committed a crime there was a victim. Direct or indirect.

It would be a shame I agree for your wife and kid to suffer for your actions.

Think of this as well. The only reason you are wherebyoubare in life todaybis because you evaded your punishment.
Are you b saying b that b we are all b better off for him avoiding his punishment? I b would rather have him and the family where they are today than interrupt everyone's happiness for b something that happened a decade ago.
 
#24 ·
I didn't evade ****, I was arrested a decade after the fact, and the ADA dropped the charges after seeing I was person who was a productive member of society. Thankfully your not a prosecutor or many people with a checkered past would be in jail...

Please stay in Canada...
 
#25 ·
I don't know your crime and I never said jail is a suitable punishment for your crime.

All I am saying is you committed a crime and because you managed to dodge the charges for a decade you now had the means to avoid punishment. I wonder if the same outcome would have happened say a month after your crime. I doubt it.

Like I said. With the criminal record you deserve to have due the crime you admit to committing you never would have achieved the status you enjoy on life now.

Truth hurts.

And yes I will stay in Canada thank you.
 
#26 ·
I don't know your crime and I never said jail is a suitable punishment for your crime.

All I am saying is you committed a crime and because you managed to dodge the charges for a decade you now had the means to avoid punishment. I wonder if the same outcome would have happened say a month after your crime. I doubt it.

Like I said. With the criminal record you deserve to have due the crime you admit to committing you never would have achieved the status you enjoy on life now.

Truth hurts.

And yes I will stay in Canada thank you.
We will never know, will we?
Lol stay friendly.
 
#27 ·
Actually, go with me here...
Lets say I was arrested, the ADA didnt drop the charges, and I ended up with a nice long record,and jail time... I would have lost my job, my step daughter wouldnt have gone to college, wife may be on welfare, etc... Without me around to correct all of the children, some may have turned into drug addicts/alcoholics or some type of criminal, and further ended up like a piece of trash perpetuating the life of a low life criminal... Where would I be, possibly working some no where job, becoming one of the assholes this thread was started about, using and abusing

Instead, I didnt go to jail, my step daughter did graduate from college, she has a husband and a baby, extremely successful, takes vacations frequently. Youngest son signed up for military, youngest daughter always high honors, and has a good head on her shoulders, oldest son sorta a moron (always has to be one), working on him becoming a welder, since thats something he likes doing, none are dirt bags, none do drugs.. and im still working for the same company, helping others in my community, and have no worries about the law.

Guessing my lawyer and the ADA did the wrong thing?
 
#28 ·
Judge not lest ye be judged.... Let he who is without sin cast the first stone...
No, wait, maybe we should apply the eye for an eye thing?
No, wait, maybe we should turn the other cheek?
I'm so confused...

How about we just trust that our judicial system did its job and justice has been served in proper measure? Sound good to you guys?

See? This is why you can't share anything personal on here. Someone will grab it and judge you for it. Good thing I don't give a free flyin' f**k what people think. You may feel free to judge me all your pompous asses want to.
 
#39 · (Edited)
Thank goodness, I was worried that your sensitive side was becoming exposed. The congrats was sincere as I dealt with the damage done for over three decades to include dealing with the wake of the destruction left behind. Attended many a autopsy of family members and others that became unwilling victims of another's path of destruction. Did the job of placing those responsible into the system set up to deal with the consequences...

Witnessed the results firsthand and more often than not, it is cut and not so dry. Fortune and/or better choices at the right time, may have kept you from a worse path. Others not so lucky...

To hear your story was refreshing and not the norm from my point of reference. Your literal interpretation of my attempt at sarcastic wit, sensitive. As I was riding long before and found myself in a courtroom facing a Jury for just that, riding a HD. But I digress...

But life has a funny way of turning things around, if one is true to ones self.

More BS Word salad for you to chew on... Got a garden full and other threads to serve.
 
#30 ·
Guessing he didn't read my post...

It's ok, I agree somewhat... There are those who haven't the will to change, and require institutional rehabilitation, there are those like me, who have the ability to become something more, I was successful, I paid my bills, taxes, contributed to my community, government, and helped others...

If there was a victim, I would hope someone be arrested within days, not over a decade... I wasn't hiding, lived at the same address for 12 years, worked on the books for a company that I still work for today. I would hope the person who has committed a crime against a person, would be judged for the crime they have committed.

I guess the ADA felt, I was no danger to anyone and domesticated enough that more damage would be done to my kids and my family if I were locked up, and dropped the charges...

Oh and to piss off him off even more, I didn't even get probation, my name is clean like nothing ever happened... I just spent a few days dealing with BS.
The world would be so much safer if they had thrown you in prison and you had become a career criminal... :banghead::banghead:
 
#35 ·
Ya like, I coulda lost my job, wife, and kids, start a life of real crime, lay waste to towns, destroy people's lives, go in and out of jail some more, knock some people around for their **** so I could get my next fix....

I shouldn't have turned out like I did.... I'm sorry to society for growing up and becoming a productive member not a drain, some Canadian who didn't inhale tells me this.
 
#38 ·
And the judge was simply infuriated because ada dropped all the charges and as he put it... "I want something to stick to this ****in kid" in open court... hes like this guy, you do crime to do time... Guess what... That ****ing asshole got his...
 
#40 ·
Thread title is in error - there is nothing, fundamentally, new about any of the stuff in the OP.

Thank God there is not a lot of it where I live.
 
#41 ·
Clean and sober for a few years here, 29 if you must know. Really doesn't matter to anyone but me and those who I deal with on a daily business. Someone will always judge me. I could care less.