Reality Check: Kunstlerism of the Week

Location: Clusterfuck Nation Blog

Jim's at it again, in some dizzying verbal pyrotechnics about the Greek economic crisis that has piled up worries larger than the Gyros in my favorite sandwich shop:

Europe is a sad case, really poignant, because it became such a darn nice corner of the world after the convulsions of the mid 20th century. Who, for instance, can spend two weeks walking the lovely ancient streets of Bruges or Orvieto, or Lisbon and not fall to their knees in overwhelming despair on return to the slum of Kennedy Airport? Europe rebuilt itself so beautifully after the war while America became a utopia of overfed clowns riding in clown cars around the plasticized cartoon outskirts of our ruined cities. Europe had wonderful public transit while America let its railroads rot away. European men went about their business in grown-up clothing while Americans men dressed like five-year-olds and got flames tattooed on their necks as though contemplating a barbarian invasion of Akron, Ohio.

As a Europhile who has often called Americans some variation of "blind, fat white people, racing toward the edge of an abyss in their SUVs," I agree. Should add "while chatting on their cell phones and watching action flicks on the car entertainment system."

Jim's only overstatements are as follows: 1) I happen to live in a nice, slowly reviving city, only hampered by a clownish city government and 2) Jim needs to go back to look at younger European men's clothing. Fashion crime has arrived, in the "I wear sports attire but don't play" variety we see in America, too, and baggy "doofus drawers" that threaten to fall down as soon as the cops begin foot pursuit of a thug.

That the Euro-zone is not immune to the stupidity and greed that led big finance to wreck the world economy, remains a profound disappointment to me. Maybe there exists no paradise beyond the warmth of family and friends in close community, the very localism that Kunstler champions and that will be the likely result of life after oil begins its terminal decline.

And for a while (here's the virtual world reference) we'll build fake paradises of code and pixels. Good luck with all that and may your power stay on.

Read the rest of "Euroland, The Horror Movie" here.