kunstler presents his views on where we are and our near future, and i believe that he's got a good take on it all;

None of these shocks can be postponed anymore. The Left’s war on America’s psyche is over….

There is something about being detached from reality that makes it hard to go about your everyday business. In the quaint asylums of yore, it was understood that a few shocks to the system could bring lunatics out of a fugue state of derangement — a cold water plunge… an insulin hot-shot to induce convulsions… some electrodes placed artfully on select regions of the brain…. It looks like America is about to be treated to some shocks. Will they break the mass formation psychosis that styles itself unironically as “progressive politics?”

The first shock will be the painful recognition that Ukraine is not prevailing against Russia’s Operation Z, despite the combined efforts of the US news media and the Intel Community to put over that narrative. True, it took Russia more than a few days to overcome Ukraine’s NATO-fortified defenses, but now most of that has been neutralized, and we’re into the final weeks heading towards resolution — which will be a Ukraine that is unable to make any more trouble in that corner of the world.

That’s right, hard as it is to accept, Operation Z came down on Ukraine because it misbehaved badly, egged-on by delusional war-gamers in Washington, who could only pretend to support Ukraine once the real action started. No amount of chanting Putin-Putin-Putin availed to stop the grinding Russian advance. State’s Antony Blinken and DoD’s General Austin were in Kiev over the weekend on a face-saving mission. My guess: they tried to persuade Mr. Zelenskyy to throw in the towel. He may be too desperate and crazy to listen, but it’s truly game-over. The Russians will treat him with kid gloves, perhaps give him leave to settle in Miami and enjoy the American dream with the fortune he has squirreled away. There will be changes in the map. Ukraine will sink back into peaceful obscurity while the US and Europe have to struggle with the impoverishing blowback from wrecking the global trade settlement system.

The next shock will be the utterly predictable crash of global financial markets, which started last Friday and is looking to gain momentum this week. Watch it shove Ukraine clean off the media landing pages and the cable news chyrons. The Hang Seng and Shanghai exchanges closed today down respectively 3.7 and 5.1 percent. Pretty awesome. China unravels with its massive lockdowns, factory shutdowns, and shipping breakdowns. All because of more Covid, really? (I doubt it.) Europe’s markets are red all over this morning, surely fretting over the suicide pact with America to go “green” by energy starvation. The dirty secret is that nobody will be going “green” the way fantasists propose. Rather, we’ll be going medieval.........read more......