time for the friday edition of kunstler who delivers clear insight as usual, and in this case, about all of your favorites;

The loyal opposition is the party out-of-power in a polity that stands divided into two factions — assuming the polity can still function as such, which, apparently, it no longer can. Historically in the USA, this used to allow for the tempered regulation of changing conditions during two hundred years of a rapidly evolving techno-industrial economy that pumps out more goodies year after year while the population grows and grows.
Much of America, political leaders especially, assume that this arc of growing goodies and more people will just keep trending up forever. They are just plain mistaken about that. Rather, the whole industrialized, wired-up world is rolling over into the greatest contraction ever witnessed. The only thing that’s postponed the recognition of this reality is the profligate borrowing of money, or shall we say “money” — data entries that pretend to represent secure wealth. This amounts to borrowing from the future to pay for how you live today. Of course, the act of borrowing is based on the supposition that there will enough future productive activity to allow you to pay back your borrowings with interest. This is obviously not the case now, in the face of epochal contraction, especially of affordable energy to keep things running hot.
Thus, the US has decided to get through the approaching winter by setting its house on fire. The two political parties alternately in charge of things are driving around the burning house, stopping at intervals to run Chinese Fire Drills. We call these “elections.” Both parties pretend that the burning house is not a problem. Mr. Trump, aka the Golden Golem of Greatness, has taken “ownership” of the rising temperature in the burning house. “Hey, at least you’re not freezing now.” He and his party have been piling all the furniture inside the house on the fire, to keep the heat up, rather heedless that flames are starting to shoot out of the attic.


http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/feeling-the-heat-yet/