Checking in on James Howard Kunstler

The article Bang-and-Whimper by James Howard Kunstler (Clusterfuck Nation) from a few months ago outlined the mindless and morally unhinged argument promulgated by people all across the political spectrum in the U.S. and Europe.

“The Woke-Marxist college kids are wailing over the actions of Israel in Gaza — as they will for anyone within their dumb-ass equation of victims-and-oppressors, especially involving brown and white people. It is a brutal operation in Gaza, for sure, but so was the Hamas act-of-war on October 7 that many want to forget about now. They still hold and torture hostages, you know.”

James Howard KunstlerLet’s see how Captain Kunstler is doing. Well, he’s an upstate hater of all that is downstate, but he sees eye-to-eye with Scott Greenfield, whom Kunstler would no doubt refer to a “Jew lawyer” in a moment of weakness or if he were in his cups. Kunstler himself is also Jewish, which goes a ways toward explaining his blind devotion to Israel, but is still a bit mysterious, if you’ve read other things he’s written. Still, a lot of the more interesting stuff he’s written is quite a ways in the past now. He’s been on a different track for a while now.

Both Kunstler and Greenfield acknowledge the “brutal occupation”, but also don’t think that one thing has anything to do with the other. Hamas does hold hostages, but there is no evidence at all that they are torturing them. Those that have been returned report that they’ve been treated as well as is possible within the strict confines of the mass-bombing and starvation campaign in Gaza. But Kunstler and Greenfield think that anyone who’s against Israel’s policies is a whiny idiot who’s too young and stupid to have an opinion worth respecting. The only people worth listening to are those who know you’ve got to “torture some folks”, as Obama once said.

Am I being unfair? Let’s see what else he has to say.

“I doubt that Israel wants to exterminate the Gazans, but at this point they would probably like to export them to other nations that share their Arab culture.”

Yup. Just “export” them to “other nations”. That would be ethnic cleansing. It doesn’t matter how you dress it up, Jim. Jim goes on to rehash that hoary old chestnut that the Palestinians won’t be happy until Israel has been wiped from the map—as if the Palestinians have anything approaching any leverage in this situation. He doesn’t seem to notice the irony that his preferred solution is to, wholeheartedly support the genocide of the Palestinians as the only via solution for Israel while accusing the Palestinians of being interested in a genocide that they have to hope of perpetrating. He’s accepted the calculus that it’s either one side or the other, so the Jews should have Israel, as far as Jim is concerned. His words, not mine.

Anything else, Jim?

“They might have turned their 40 kilometers of Mediterranean beach-front into a world-beating resort, but instead they spent billions in international aid building a tunnel network and purchasing arms to wage war against Israel.”

Oh, yes, this one! Scott Greenfield also likes this one: that the Palestinians were utterly free to build a paradise but instead used all of their energy to work toward their only goal: eliminating all Jews. That is, they neglected their own society and people, all for the overarching goal of eliminating all Jews from Israel. Pure fantasy. It utterly ignores what he stated at the top, which is the “brutal occupation”, which prevents anything from happening in Palestine that isn’t approved by Israel. And Israel approves of nothing. This argument is so spectacularly ignorant, mean-spirited, and self-serving that it takes your breath a way, just a bit.

“And what if Mr. Netanyahu launches a peremptory attack against southern Lebanon to destroy those bases?”

Well, one thing’s for sure, Jim. I know that you will think that it’s everyone’s fault but Israel’s when the world fries. Jim is nothing if not a good Republican, though. He’s 100% for Israel, against Hamas, but also against the war in Ukraine. To whit:

“[…] the stark reality is that Russia is in control of the tactical situation on the ground. The WEF syndicate’s project — fronted by NATO — to weaken Russia and eventually loot its resources is a flop.”

So why do I read Jim still? Well, you have to peek over the fence every once in a while. He’s still capable of quite cogent analysis when he’s not being a raging anti-Muslim, anti-woke racist.

“The hidden truth now is that the USA war blob needs to cut its losses in Ukraine and wants to bug out. The trouble is: how to do that in a way that does not amount to another gross American strategic humiliation? That’s Russia’s problem, too: how to adroitly work the conclusion of this fiasco in a way that doesn’t humiliate the USA to the degree that we resort to some new act of geopolitical insanity in compensation.”

See? That wasn’t so hard.