I read most of this, up to the point that it made me physically ill. How is it that so many people -- Democrats, at that -- don't understand the importance of getting behind Biden/Harris 100 percent in order to prevent the destruction of our country as we have known it?
This isn't the right question. Your presumption that getting behind a ticket that most democracy-loving Democrats don't like is the the way to salvation is as off-base democratically speaking as the things Thom is describing.
I’m open Suzanne. Teach me. Don’t just shoot me down, but help me understand how we can preserve our democracy via any other candidate. The most important goal, IMO, is to prevent ANY Republican from getting elected. Help me, please, to see how this can be accomplished.
Funny, I quibbled with myself about throwing in "funding." Back in my day, the Greens certainly weren't rich! But then I reviewed Thom's report, and maybe that's why funding was on my mind. I pick up 4 references to "rightwing billionaires," along with "these billionaires," "billionaire funders," "wealthy international elements," "billionaire network," "3 million Reichsmarks to the Nazi Party," "3 times more employees and a larger budget than the GOP," and a basic strategy of "corruption of public officials with promises of money and power!" There's horrible truth in there somewhere!
What is missing in the collective mind, is that most folk are caught up in the political war, that they can't see the forest for the trees.
The real problem is the DNC and associated subsets like New Democrats, or Third way or even No labels (a fraud perpetuated by the corporations-
The DNC and it's contributaries (did I invent a word?), is a business, one without a moral core, or an ideology, it is self serving, desperate for donor dollars, and its self imposed charter is to develop candidates, especially for President, who have earned their time, pacing in circles around the paddock,
proving their loyalty to the party, developing what the DNC, or rather the Chamber of Commerce, CFR, and international financial institutions (as Clinton loved to lawd) require of a Presidential candidate. And thus the haul old horses like McAuliffe,, Hillary, Biden (and that is all they have in the paddock, to the starting gate, putting their thumb on the scale for their favorite candidate, given todays cultural environment, they are backing the wrong candidate.
Today's world favors the progressive, the person who is not afraid to tackle the culture war that was launched by Republicans with the election of Nixon.
Democrats take pride in keeping their hands clean, when "they" go low, we go high" nonsense, which is essentially the cowards mantra, ceding the batttlefield to the enemy without firing a shot in return.
If Zelensky was of that mindset, Ukraine would be just another Soviet Republic, and that is what Trump is rebuilding,, but with the image of a Democracy, because people vote (for him and no one else), because opponents are poisoned or put in jail) That's the kind of Democracy Republicans want, oblivious to the historical fact, that once autocrats take the complete reigns of powers and after the eliminate the completion and wipe out or enslave the scapegoats, he then turns on his supporters, because they are the new threat to his or her power.
Remember Aung San Suu Ky, the Chomsky left, hailed her as a democratic martyr when she was imprisioned in Burma (Myanmar) who was released and then When she ascended to the office of state counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi drew criticism from several countries, organisations and figures over Myanmar's inaction in response to the genocide of the Rohingya people in Rakhine State and refusal to acknowledge that Myanmar's military has committed massacres.[10][11][12][13][14] Under her leadership, Myanmar also drew criticism for prosecutions of journalists.[15] In 2019, Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in the International Court of Justice where she defended the Burmese military against allegations of genocide against the Rohingya. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi
Ever heard the one about the perfect being the enemy of the good? Your purist response recalled to me that my least favorite subject at Berkeley was Philosophy; a reflection from nearly 50 years ago! A dorm mate had a saying: "That's so profound it's obscure!" I was actually an early organizer when the Green Party made the ballot in CA, and still treasure the 10 Key Values, giddy hopes and good company. But where is the organizing, funding, the Movement to activate some phantom "democracy-loving Democrats" into a Thing? Not to mention, this is an emergency.
Not only do the Democrats not have a good candidate, we don't have a visionary platform. I just answered Mary Beth about having debates.. Debates also could help to get ideas on the table.
We cannot afford to argue amongst ourselves. Debate, absolutely, but just now we need to stand strong together, if not FOR, at least against. This is indeed an emergency.
Mmerose and I seem to be about the same age. I’m guessing you younger. Can we deal with this emergency now, with a plan to raise a new crop for 2028? We can help guide them (or maybe they won’t need us) to a visionary platform. Ideas need to be brought to the table, but in my mind, the best idea is to prevent a Republican from getting into the White House. Any Republican! And I was one until four years ago.
"But an our-guy-isn’t-quite-as-detestable-as-your-guy strategy is the definition of risky." (Kimberley Strassel, WSJ). Rep Phillips is right in asserting that DNC needs to consider alternatives. Just being the unTrump may not cut it in 24. If Biden is the best option the Dems have, then democracy really is in trouble. I have been voting for 55 years. Just once I would like not to have to vote for the lesser of two evils.
You have lots of company, but the Democrats haven't groomed in possibilities, because society has changed, and they haven't. In fact the old core Democrats, (Rahm Emamuel, Pelosi, Clintons, and probably Schumer, hate progressives, because progressives scare them, any politician that is over 60 is from the era in which pols where Demopubs or Replicrats. With the dime being a reverse and an obverse, flip it and it is heads you lose, tails they win.
I am young in heart only, although ever youthful. No assurance Biden would win, so that's a reason not to settle on him. Let's see what else we can come up with, which is in line with what democracy would have us do. Odd that our democracy is being threatened by Republicans, and the preservers of it, the Democrats, are acting undemocratically.
Regarding "No assurance Biden would win, so that's a reason not to settle on him.":
There is an ambiguity here. This is OK if "not settling for him" is contained within the Democratic Party, and terminates if he is the nominee. If it leads to supporting an independent or third-party candidate, it is potentially deadly.
Our plurality-winning, one-choice-only ballot, creates a spoiler effect: In 2016 Green Party candidate Jill Stein took enough votes away from Hillary Clinton to put Donald Trump in the White House. Likewise, Ralph Nader put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000; Ross Perot put Bill Clinton in the White House in 1992; and Theodore Roosevelt, as Bullmoose candidate, put Woodrow Wilson in the White House in 1912. In the context of the one-choice-only ballot, voting outside the two-party duopoly is pernicious. Once Congress has finally mandated (through its Constitutional power) the ranked choice ballot (where you indicate your second choice, third choice, etc., candidate, and this enables instant runoff counts until a candidate collects a majority, not a mere plurality) in all Federal elections, the spoiler effect dies. Then, making whomever you prefer your FIRST choice, and not merely your ONLY choice, is perfectly fine, whether it is someone inside or outside the current duopoly. The current duopoly will then weaken and we will actually elect third party candidates.
I have to wonder whether any investigative reporter has researched the funding of Jill Stein's campaign in 2016? Was any substantial amount surreptitiously provided by American oligarchs? This kind of toxic politically behavior would be made irrelevant in the context of ranked choice voting.
Suzanne it is too late, not enough time and money to put together a coalition of people who can and will support anyone else in the Democratic party, it is a sad testament to the state of the Democratic Party, which i often lambast in the hope that somehow these criticism will break through the shield wall.
As regards a third party, if you have leaned yet, that in America which does not have a parliamentary system, a third party candidate is a vote for the fascists. Teddy Roosevelt created a Progressive (that was what is was named) third party and all it accomplished was making racist Democrat (Woodrow Wilson) for that is what the Democratic party was at the time. blue collar and racist, and it is not that anymore, that is the Republican party)
And Woodrow Wilson was pressured or bought to Bring America into what was Europe's war, which indeed with the rise of Hitler
Bingo again. The Democrats didn't bother with a platform in 2002. Biden ran as an anti Trump, and gathered 81 million votes. a virtual head of cabbage could have done the same. The media talking heads and professional Dems, keep pushing for the economic message and it loses every time. Bill Clinton won re election because of Newt Gingrich, Americans hated Newt, for nothing else than his betrayal of "family values", cheating on his cancer ridden wife while she was dying.
It was not the economy. It is for the plutocrats,but not the working class and here is why:
If you have a job, are paid what you consider a livable income, then you don't care about the economy. Those that are uneployed are living hand to mouth, and don't care that the President has bolstered the GDP, created jobs, beat inflation because they don't believe the accomplishments, because they are unemployed, living on the streets, or the good will of family and friends, and maybe able to squeak by with federal and state assistance.
It's the economy stupid is banal and useless if you have to try and remind people of your accomplishments as a closer.
As Machiavelli, pointed out, it is fear that rules the hearts and minds of people.
Humans don't remember or appreciate the good things you've done for them, they are ruled by fear.
The more well fed and comfy you are,the more you have to fear, and fear is created by making the threat personal.
It is the amygdala and pre frontal cortex.. Kn that war, the lizard brain (amygdala) of fight or flight, always wins
The democratic party, because it treasures staying above the frey, keeping their hands clean, wins.
The Weimar Republic of Germany, didn't want to descend into darkness either, and look how that turned out.
I missed the last of this. My bailiwick is what we-the-people can do. Another perhaps wrong question of where the funding is. Maybe it doesn't need funding but just some clever minds using the available tools for action now, including a coalition of millions as a Thing. Thom recommends me. Come see how smart the thinking is: https://suzannetaylor.substack.com.
I am not so sure I trust polls. Wasn't a red wave predicted in 2020?
The liberals and minorities who have their head screwed on right, know that a vote for any other than Biden, or even a non vote, is a vote for Trump
Unfortunately this country is full of myopic individuals, who have one issue and one issue either, be it green, black, brown. And have a need to shove the finger up the arse of those who have not totally appeased or submitted to them. True more can and should be done, and nothing is because of fecklessness, cowardice, corruption or complicity.
But this myopia, and single issue obsession, will only guaranteed a second tour for Trump, and thus lead to a full blown, GESTAPO, manned by volunteers, fanning out destroy the proponents of an inclusive, diverse, democratic America, and the state will be with them, with Trumps blessings ignoring the laws, just as Alabama is ignoring the Supreme Court, what a precedent, everyone with enough political power can now do just that, except POC, gays, women,, green warriors.
Excellent article. It encapsulates everthing and put things in proper perspective. I don't think that most people understand that maga is a right wing, white extremist movement that is well funded and organized.
You forgot people in a mosque, as much as i abhor Islam, I must admit that there are indeed well intentioned Muslims who are not misogynistic and homophobic fanatics
Just as their are well intentioned people of every faith, who are not fanatics.
Food for thought. If Trump is stating he is going to present evidence of fraud in the Georgia election this coming Monday at a press conference it shouldn't be a problem to have a quick and speedy trial set. In fact why don't we just setup a bench trial for that following day, Tuesday 8/22/2023 and end this insanity.
Let's take it one step further. He keeps saying everybody is on a witch hunt against him. Well, and with sincere apologies to the practitioners of Wicca, maybe they have found the evil witch!
I will be so grateful if someday I stop hearing those words. From the beginning, (even before 1st Impeachment?) so predictable, hackneyed; where is the phrase from, "the banality of evil?" To the extent it co-opts real victims, not just Wiccans but down to the local herbalist, it's even more offensive. (Any given 10-year-old girl whose shorts are short? Just a little witch....) I'm glad my blood pressure not being taken at the moment.
Our jurists are political cowards, and with the threats to their life coming from the Maggots, they have reason to be afraid, But am I asking too much to expect a judge, to risk martyrdom for democracy?
All the facets you wonderfully lay out in this blog all are found in Fascism. A dogma that has always melded the worst of racist, theocratic, misogynist, mythology with the worship of a return to a feudal economy.
A world that today’s Christian white males feel provides relief from the immiseration caused by the cynical billionaires they feel they too will be if only they could destroy them non-white “other”
Why Democrats refuse to label the Fascist loving Republicans what they are only demonstrates the power of their ruse on decent Americans.
Michael Moore wrote an interesting piece titled He's Lucky He Lives In America. He points out that in any other country, a failed leader who has attempted a coup and not succeeded, would be give a rope or a blindfold and either hanged or shot by a firing squad. Perhaps that reality would bring a little sanity back. We are a nation of laws and I truly hope the laws will hold and his reign will end soon!
We wouldn't want the losing good guys shot, now, would we! :) And part of the problem with the bad guys is, they never believe their evil is going to catch up with them anyway. The debate over the death penalty has shown conclusively that the punishment is futile as a deterrent.
Jaime Rankin said that Yes, we can know what is true. Court cases depend on evaluating truth. We need to make the discussion fact based. When someone says that Trump is the real President, ask how. Then ask why 60 cases failed to prove voter fraud. If they say they don't care, ask what they would do if a Democrat lost an election and asked other Democrats to help him stay in office. Ask, isn't that saying your vote won't be counted. Ask if they really would enjoy living under Putin and being poisoned if you didn't agree with him.
And if they still revere Putin and autocracy, suggest that democracy is not for them and they should move to Russia or Hungary.
In every interaction with news media politicians should be pressed for facts. Relentlessly. Leaving political discussion on the emotional level (especially with so many armed partisans) gives us no leg up to improve communication. We need to talk. We all need to appreciate the beauty of democracy where we can each freely pursue happiness.
The MAGA masses don't seem to have thought it through.
He is a pathetic, tortured , mentally unstable, weak person who only wants that which can hurt the most people, that he perceives have something he doesn’t, a heart and a soul.
He will punish anyone who has a heart and a soul. As will his followers.
His hate is for himself but he cannot hold it all it has to go out.
And because manipulation is one of his best skills , always by proclaiming his hostile victimhood, he attacks and snares others that recognize his hate as pain.
The law, time and history are rolling over Donald Trump. It's impossible for Americans to not get some of the residue on our shoes.
I hope that the picture becomes clearer as the legal process moves forward. These Reports are going to help us to grasp "why" for the crimes. The indictments certainly lay-out the who, what and where for the felonies.
Keep beating our democracy drum, Thom. It's time for Trump to pay the piper. We have to take care of each other in the meantime. Those grand jury participants did their duty---bless them all. Now that's integrity and being a good citizen of this country---two things Trump and his cult members do not value.
I don't know that many people know how to understand clarity. It seems like a lot of people embrace the rabbit hole and like being befuddled. I also think there is a lot of post covid trauma in this world that is not being understood as people go crazy over all sorts of things.
Spot on Linda about the embrace and trauma. Also, there are those who don't understand that he truly is a psychopath. I get that. When you have a conscience, it's hard to imagine being driven by pure unadulterated self-interest.
When push comes to shove and let's say Trump is the nominee, it's hard to imagine really really really that anywhere near a majority would vote for him. But we are in a mess of unworkability and it is a wake-up to deal with income inequality that makes enough people unhappy enough to try anything different from the status quo. It's system change we need, looking to our fundamentals, and not just struggling with those deck chairs on the Titanic
Julie: I don't want to disturb you or anyone else, but the reality we are facing, if that because of irreversible global warming, they will be no future,for our grandchildren and great grandchildren as we are staring a the end of the very short lived anthropocene.. I have eleven grandchildren and 9 great grandchildren, my grandchildren are adults now, and have to forge their own paths and deal with the future as it arises, as did I, my great grandchildren will have to do the same, if the end of the anthropocene doesn't catch up with them.
Read Adam Dorr's book, "Brighter: Optimism, Progress, and the Future of Environmentalism". It seems highly creditable to me, and it may given you reason to see a "brighter" prospect of a good future. Dorr is presenting the ideas from "Brighter" in a YouTube series, currently up to eleven episodes. He is director of a non-profit think tank called RethinkX, which has also produced YouTube presentations of this information in more detail, as well as books discussing four great and imminent disruptions: Energy, Transportation, Food, and Labor. The world seems to be on the verge of being remade.
Who is funding the non profit think tank? Could it be the carbon cabal, that sees it in their interest to downplay the problem.
So the world is on the verge of being remade:.
Well it is too late, we are past , way past, the tipping point, and if we froze all emissions now, it would be too late, the damage is done.
There is a point of no return, when you get past that point there is no turning back, and there is no heliocoptering in place either. True for air travel, true for disease, and humanity is a disease that has infected Gaia, and Gaia is shaking her head, as if saying I've had it with these lice.
I responded to this (16 hours ago, at the time of this note), but what I wrote somehow got placed in the thread 3 spaces to the left of where it should have been. Didn't want you to miss it.
This is good stuff, thanks. Looks like daily beast is doing some good work. Who ever heard of people like Tom Fitton - now we have. It's one great thing about the Georgia case how it wraps so many culpable actors into one narrative and one legal proceeding.
There is a Share button on this, and I used it. I'm not particularly involved in social media, but I do have FaceBook. Whether or not people will actually read it (I asked them, too, to refute it if they were able) is a huge question.
Fascism also reduces truth/reality/facts-evidence-proof to utter irrelevance. One claim T. has been raising a lot lately is that he truly believed and believes that he won. In that context, I think it's useful to go back to the first Impeachment. When Zelinsky quibbled that there was no basis for investigating Joe Biden, T. said, never mind, just announce an investigation and leave the rest to me! (I didn't hunt up the exact quote, but I think I'm close.) This is habit and pattern of a criminal mind. T. doesn't for a second believe he won (therefore massive fraud - must be - has to be....). What he believes is that he can create the reality he wants. Whatever went on with Joe Biden in Ukraine T. doesn't know and cares less. Mary T. made this distinction yesterday, in the context of whether T. was feeling "the heat." She said something along the lines of, there was little capacity to experience anything adverse. (i.e., "reality" isn't real to him.) M. Scott Peck, 1983: "Interestingly,...Satan...does not understand science. Science is an antinarcissistic phenomenon. (Science) assumes a profound human tendency to self-deception, employs the scientific method to counteract it, and holds truth higher than any personal desire. Satan cannot understand why any beings would not want to deceive themselves. It ...finds human science incomprehensible." (p.108, "People of the Lie" First Touchstone edition, 1985)
That word income appears in the enbabling legislation of the income tax code, and on the IRS form 1040. Income is what investors and speculators receive, it is not reimbursement for labor.
Either congress or the IRS created a subterfuge, by requiring you to total up all your salarie and wages, plus benefits and write them down on your 1040, and if you don't or if you balk, there is a law that makes it a crime to not fie a 1040, and if you don't include all of your salary or wages and dividends/interest they get you for failing to disclose, Not because you broke the law for disclosing salary and wages, as there is none in the legislation, but because you filed a false (or rather incomplete 1040.
I
I personally don't play games, because I know I will lose, as so many already have, from Willie Nelson, to the first winner of Survivor, to a friend of mine.
The carbon cabal would be the last group to support RethinkX. The energy disruption RethinkX analyzes (and certainly advocates) will drive fossil fuels into bankruptcy, and all the sunk costs will become worthless.
You are quite correct that "the damage is done". The metaphor that Adam Dorr uses continually is a house on fire. The first response must be to put out the fire--completely. But that is not the complete response. Nothing the fire department does repairs the damage already done. Dorr discusses the technologies to repair the atmosphere, the land, and the oceans, once the "fire" has been put out..
Hold your skepticism in abeyance long enough to watch the YouTube presentations. Hopefully, that would pique your interest enough to motivate an in-depth reading of the (I think) more substantial look at the data supporting their thesis. Some disruptions are relatively small, like the disruption in photography that replaced (expensive) film with the ubiquitous photography we have on our smart phones, based on the charge-coupled device technology. A substantial one was the Internal Combustion Engine replacing the horse at the beginning of the twentieth century. This aggravated the carbon dioxide problem created by the eighteenth century disruption we call the industrial revolution.
(Note that the cities before the ICE disruption were drowning in horse manure, and that before the industrial revolution more than 90% of the world's population lived in what we today would call extreme poverty.) RethinkX discusses individually four interconnected technological disruptions: Energy (wind and solar plus batteries); transportation (EVs supplanting ICE cars plus fully autonomous self driving cars); food (precision fermentation to "brew" any desired biological molecule, together with cellular culture, grown with food produced by precision fermentation. Acquiring the stem cells that begin the cultures with not require the slaughter of any animals. Land freed from use by bankrupted conventional agriculture will involve an acreage equivalent to several continents, available for rewilding. Land currently used to feed animals destined for the slaughterhouse is largely responsible for the Anthropogenic Extinction. The food disruption will end that.); and Labor (artificial intelligence plus robotics: removing the shackles on production due to qualified labor shortage. Economics will need to move from the science of managing scarcity to the science of managing abundance. Something like UBI will be needed to complete the circle between supply and demand. I think there will be new study of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Education will be redirected from a focus on prospective employment to the individualized development of talents and interests.)
I know that these prospects will seem fantastic and utopian, but I think if you give them a fair consideration, you may find that your vision of the future will be considerably brightened. Looking forward to continuing the conversation,
We grasp for hope, for some savior be it a person or a change in attitude and habits, or new technology or organization. Life and even the stones under are feet are and have been in billions of years, at least since the super continent of Rodina.
Bill McKibbin didn't pull it out of his ass, but was quoting expert climatologists, that the tipping point was 350 ppm, that was over a decade ago, no one listened, and now we are over 400 ppm.
You are familiar with the point of no return. When you past the halfway point, it is no use in turning back if you encounter a problem, especially applicable to an airplane flight, or for that matter any trip.
I've seen various estimates to the time in which the anthropogenic extinction is barreling towards us, there is always hope, and sometimes that is all we have, if there is a remedy, then we don't have that much time, and certainly not enough time to turn things around with technology that man can devise, or to convince mankind to modify his behavior. Look at Russia and Gaza, Africa, the near east, far east, heck look at the world around us, even the people who comment here.
Such blatant hostility, especially when their recall of reality is confronted.
What concerns me (not for myself but my great grandchildren)
I would like to be optimistic, but considering human nature, it is almost impossible.
Do you know why people will climb into a 55 gallon drum, which the psychopath will seal.
Why people walk to their death, or stare at the inevitable in disbelief while their demise is imminent? Hope. Hope that at the last moment they will be rescued or the killer will change his mind.
There is a name for those soldiers, selected to storm through a breech in the walls of a city or fort, forelorn hope is that they were called,basically it was a suicide mission.
I am not dismissing RethinkXX or you, just saying that all considered do we have enough time, to free the land, stop slaughtering animals for protein, to migrate to abiogenic sources of power from biogenic sources? Do we? We do hope that when we awake in the morning, that we will find things like we left them. The alternative is so terrifying that we shudder, or we can be Zen, accept things as they are, hope for the future and continue living our lives today, doing our part, best we can, to slow the rush towards oblivion. Including RethinkXX. Remember we are fighting against vicious, hateful, fearful billionaires, and haters, who live in the present, true of humans in general.
Look at the task ahead. It took a thousand years for the population of the planet to double, then centuries, then a couple of decades,now it is over 8 billion and doubling at a geomatric rate. All of those hungry mouths. Fertilizer, in the 18th Century fertilizer was either guano, imported at great expense) or manure, which meant a lot of horses..
Now it is pumped out of the ground, refined and remanufactered while most of it winds up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the more mouths, the more demand for carbohydrates and protein, till as in Brazil, they are destroy the lungs of the planet, to feed more animals to slaughter to feed the hungry mouths, and planting grass to feed the cattle, or just replenish the nutrients in soil that enable modern monoculture. The cycle in entropic and we can't see it, the same way we couldn't see the world until we conquered the sky.
The goals are great, but first RethinkXX is going to have to change human nature, it's habits, it's needs, learn to delay gratification, to learn to dismiss peer approval or keeping up with the Jones's It will take a seismic shift in human behavior, considering the chaos in our face at this moment. How do we do that?
I hope so but at best, our efforts can help us extend the end of the anthropogenic. I hope so, and I act so, I have 9 great grandchildren and one great great grandchild. including a bisnieto which I simply adore.
I gave your statement a "like" not to imply agreement but as an acknowledgement of your sincere caring.
One point about population "over 8 billion and doubling at a geometric rate": When Paul Ehrlich wrote "The Population Bomb" in 1968 the process was much as you describe, but the tragedy of high child deathrate becoming much less common due to introduction of medicine; potential mothers becoming economically and intellectually emancipated from conservative cultures and having access to effective contraception; and populations moving from the countryside to urban areas, converting children from an economic asset as workers into an economic burden, no matter how much the parents love their children; there has been a powerful demographic transition lowering the birthrate. It has been largely global and continues to progress in the few remaining areas where it is not yet complete. There are some who worry now about population collapse because of an overshot. An ageing population balance is a demographic problem, though the Labor disruption Adam Dorr discusses in "Brighten" may alleviate it. (This will absolutely require something that may be called Universal Basis Income, funded by a tax on the commercial use of robots. Since Supply requires a commensurate Demand for the economic cycle to function, productivity having been liberated from the demographic limitation of trained labor may soar, and the UBI having replaced toil wages will necessarily soar also. A great portion of the Demand will be communal--principally restoring the health of the biosphere, and disrupting education to focus on individual interests and talents, free of economic need.)
The central power of the Disruptions that RethinkX has identified is economic: they are happening because the disrupted technologies are becoming increasingly noncompetitive--like the horse for transportation, or film for photography. Some of the incumbent technologies have vast remaining wealth (e.g., the fossil fuel industry), and the possessors of that wealth in desperation are using non-economic (corrupt) means to delay the inevitable (facilitated in the U.S. by that abomination called Citizens United, and the robust efforts of their principle political party, the Republicans, to thwart the will of the majority by crippling the elective process and employing comprehensive Big Lies (Joseph Goebbels would be proud to embrace them.) to gather a political following. Not that the Democratic Party is made up of angels: the Duopoly thrives. That's why my posts have concentrated on using the power of the Constitution to get Ranked Choice Voting (Destroy the spoiler effect and you fatally weaken the Duopoly.), and to tame this Supreme Court to enable political reform (crippling the corrupt and desperate efforts of the wealthy incumbent technologies.)
You say: "The goals are great, but first RethinkXX (sic) is going to have to change human nature, it's habits, it's needs, learn to delay gratification, to learn to dismiss peer approval or keeping up with the Jones's It will take a seismic shift in human behavior, considering the chaos in our face at this moment. How do we do that?" These points you would find are effectively rebutted by RethinkX and particularly by its research director Adam Dorr in his book, "Brighter". The driving force is new, clean economic disruption of incumbent technologies (that were necessary in their time to lift the world out of poverty--the Industrial Revolution--but at the cost of terrible damage to the biosphere. The disrupting technologies will enable stopping the damage and making the necessary restorations. I urge you again to read the books to see if you may find their arguments persuasive, so that you may be rationally comforted by a “Brighter” perspective.
Your discussion of human psychology recalled for me Steven Pinker’s book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature—Why Violence Has Declined”. Despite the tragic aberration of the first half of the twentieth century, Pinker documents the long-term trend has been a comprehensive decline of violence of all kinds; from murder rates, to abuse of animals, to human slavery, among other categories. Pinker makes the case that this follows from the alleviation of poverty, once almost universal. It seems that the “improvement” of human psychology (lessening of sociopathy) is the effect of improvement of the human condition rather than being a weakly hopeful cause.
My opinion on population growth is based on what is known, world wide.
Yes America does not have a replacement ratio of 2.1 per couple,, with women being educated and liberated from their yoke of nanny, house and sex sevant, they are taking control of their own lives. I can't bear a child, but I think (I said think) that I experienced the next best thing, the most severe abdominal pain that rendered me immobile and hunched over.
It was a case of food poisoning. I had attended a homecoming in a church in the woods of
Ashley Co,ARk in 1962,, table was spread with food in the hot afternoon. I ate too much potatoe salad, and later I was hunched over with pain, that came first in 15 minute intervals, then later down to 5. Excruciating, hats off to women, to endure that and come back for more, amazing.
As regards population doubling. We had essentially the same situation about 6 or 7 years ago, and it has doubled, whereas it took decades, centuries and millenia to double.
Yes America and Europe are experiencing a population decline, but America and Europe have educated women, who have freedom that women in Muslim countries, India, and Africa don't have, and there the population is increasing.
Look at Gaza, despite being overcrowded, despite poverty and food insecurity, men must have orgasmic release, and now there are too many fish in the punch bowl. Same with India. Men who can't support themselves, marry and have children whom they can't support, much less educate.
Technology alone is not the answer. And I am not even considering jobs, it is getting to the point that the only jobs available for humans is hard and/or dangerous labor, and what is the effect of that (and even those are scarce) especially in Africa and Muslim countries.
The result is mass migration north (including America, as central and south America is majority Catholic, and true believers at that (I lived in Panama for three years, my 2nd wife is Panamanian) Catholics are basically ordered to breed, and breed they do. It is the Church's way of achieving dominance, a numbers game.
So here we have robotics, AI and technology, replacing humans, and what happens then?
Humans without jobs,idle hands, and with the leitmotif of libertarianism and the Republican party being "if you don't work you don't eat", and a nation of idle hands, and a visceral hatred of UBI and government subsidy for people, not corporations, what do you think will happen,
We have been watching a foebringer in the last 6 years. Not a pretty picture.
We and Europe may reduce our population, but the rest of the world, the undeveloped world, and the women are subjugated world, is taking up the slack.
My wife says, almost in a parody of physics, that energy is not destroyed, and obesity is the storage of energy. If I lose 20 lbs, somewhere someone else gained 20 lbs.
And I haven' delved into the future of life on earth. Last summer was a preview. When he wet bulb temperature reaches 95 degrees fahrenheit, life can not be sustained, and so it was in some parts of the world, last year and he year before, especially along the coast of the Red Sea.
More people, more consumption of protein and grain, not to mention by products of trees like palm oil, or denuding the rain forests for grass to feed beeves. Or lumber for houses and vanity pobjects.. Then we dig in the earth for minerals that eventually pollute the atmosphere, make it warmer, while poisoning our soil and water, not to mention the air, in those unlucky communities where such toxins are produced to meet human demand..
The earth is not a cornucopia, when they exploit one area, the move on to another, and now we have massive earth moving and transportation machines, the damage being done, not to mention the shrinking worlds water table, is at least going to throw the polar axis off.
Not farfethed, are you aware that most fresh water lies under the earth in a giant ocean, not uniform of course. Saudia Arabia tapped into it, to turn the desert green with grain, and they pumped so much that the land collapsed, hazarding their drinking water supply. To compensate they have invested billions in desalination plants on the Red Sea.
Our problem is that we look for a savior, be it a person, an idea or technology.
The problem is human behavior, it must be modified, and I don't know how to do that, religion certainly is not the answer, in fact it exacerbates the problem. Ideology, politics also part of the problem.
Mankind being what they are fearful, needy, gullible, greedy and driven by hormones, aggressive and sexually needy and driven. We are the instruments of our own misery and destruction.
Yes technology has made life better for some of us. Heck I live better than Henry VIII, I don't have his costumes and trappings and I don't command a country, to safeguard my power and position, and I can't kill my enemies without recourse, but I have a heat pump, vehicles that can take me anywhere, any time I want, telecommunications, entertainment on demand. I may not have the trappings of a King, but I sure live better, eat better, have a clean and comfortable home which he didn't have.
Nobility had a four poster bed with a canopy, not for looks, but to catch the insects and critters that fell from the roof.
But it all comes at a cost. Our parents created a debt, that we are paying for (and I am not talking about money, though that applies), and our children will inherit a debt,customs, expectations, needs, that we incurred.
Having said all that. I am still hopeful, but is it a forlorn hope, of the squads that were first through castle walls when breached.? I do live as if there is a tomorrow, I have to, I have the evidence of Jonestown, Waco, Heavens Gate, and the innumerable "pending acopalypse that have occured over time. I remember the airy fairy's celebrating or fearing the end times, on Dec 21st 2012.
Thanks to the tilt of our planet, there is a precesson of the Equinoxes and about every 2,500 years there is a helical rising of a constellation, altogether there is a long year (25,000 years) in which one after and another, every 2,500 years a different constellation rises where the sun also rises. Till Dec 21st, we lived in the age of Pisces (two fish, the Christian symbol ..bible is if anything astrological, even the TeNACH (OT) mentions the Zodiac (mazzeroth).
In Luke, this Jesus is asked when he will reappear and he says follow the man carrying the pitcher of water (Aquarius) into the (astrological) house that he enters. that is he arising of the astrological house of Aquarius. Well here we are, and the world is on fire.,but it has always been on fire.
The Mayans predict the end of the age of Pisces and the rise of the age of Aquarius, and the simpletons thought that the Mayans were predicting the end of the world.
I am not so foolish and gullible to be sucked into such group think, but all the signs are we are in trouble, but just don't know or can predict the due date.
Give me a heads up on RethinkXX please. Does the XX have anything to do with a matriarchy. I'm all in favor of that, as the XY has really screwed the goose, testosterone is a toxic and aggressive hormone.
There is a difference between a pessimist and a nay sayer. A pessimist assesses the world in they live based on observants of past human behavior. A nay sayer is by definition one who says no.
I read most of this, up to the point that it made me physically ill. How is it that so many people -- Democrats, at that -- don't understand the importance of getting behind Biden/Harris 100 percent in order to prevent the destruction of our country as we have known it?
This isn't the right question. Your presumption that getting behind a ticket that most democracy-loving Democrats don't like is the the way to salvation is as off-base democratically speaking as the things Thom is describing.
I’m open Suzanne. Teach me. Don’t just shoot me down, but help me understand how we can preserve our democracy via any other candidate. The most important goal, IMO, is to prevent ANY Republican from getting elected. Help me, please, to see how this can be accomplished.
Vote Democrat for sure, but have debates to decide who that candidate will be.
Funny, I quibbled with myself about throwing in "funding." Back in my day, the Greens certainly weren't rich! But then I reviewed Thom's report, and maybe that's why funding was on my mind. I pick up 4 references to "rightwing billionaires," along with "these billionaires," "billionaire funders," "wealthy international elements," "billionaire network," "3 million Reichsmarks to the Nazi Party," "3 times more employees and a larger budget than the GOP," and a basic strategy of "corruption of public officials with promises of money and power!" There's horrible truth in there somewhere!
What is missing in the collective mind, is that most folk are caught up in the political war, that they can't see the forest for the trees.
The real problem is the DNC and associated subsets like New Democrats, or Third way or even No labels (a fraud perpetuated by the corporations-
The DNC and it's contributaries (did I invent a word?), is a business, one without a moral core, or an ideology, it is self serving, desperate for donor dollars, and its self imposed charter is to develop candidates, especially for President, who have earned their time, pacing in circles around the paddock,
proving their loyalty to the party, developing what the DNC, or rather the Chamber of Commerce, CFR, and international financial institutions (as Clinton loved to lawd) require of a Presidential candidate. And thus the haul old horses like McAuliffe,, Hillary, Biden (and that is all they have in the paddock, to the starting gate, putting their thumb on the scale for their favorite candidate, given todays cultural environment, they are backing the wrong candidate.
Today's world favors the progressive, the person who is not afraid to tackle the culture war that was launched by Republicans with the election of Nixon.
Democrats take pride in keeping their hands clean, when "they" go low, we go high" nonsense, which is essentially the cowards mantra, ceding the batttlefield to the enemy without firing a shot in return.
If Zelensky was of that mindset, Ukraine would be just another Soviet Republic, and that is what Trump is rebuilding,, but with the image of a Democracy, because people vote (for him and no one else), because opponents are poisoned or put in jail) That's the kind of Democracy Republicans want, oblivious to the historical fact, that once autocrats take the complete reigns of powers and after the eliminate the completion and wipe out or enslave the scapegoats, he then turns on his supporters, because they are the new threat to his or her power.
Remember Aung San Suu Ky, the Chomsky left, hailed her as a democratic martyr when she was imprisioned in Burma (Myanmar) who was released and then When she ascended to the office of state counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi drew criticism from several countries, organisations and figures over Myanmar's inaction in response to the genocide of the Rohingya people in Rakhine State and refusal to acknowledge that Myanmar's military has committed massacres.[10][11][12][13][14] Under her leadership, Myanmar also drew criticism for prosecutions of journalists.[15] In 2019, Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in the International Court of Justice where she defended the Burmese military against allegations of genocide against the Rohingya. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi
Ever heard the one about the perfect being the enemy of the good? Your purist response recalled to me that my least favorite subject at Berkeley was Philosophy; a reflection from nearly 50 years ago! A dorm mate had a saying: "That's so profound it's obscure!" I was actually an early organizer when the Green Party made the ballot in CA, and still treasure the 10 Key Values, giddy hopes and good company. But where is the organizing, funding, the Movement to activate some phantom "democracy-loving Democrats" into a Thing? Not to mention, this is an emergency.
Not only do the Democrats not have a good candidate, we don't have a visionary platform. I just answered Mary Beth about having debates.. Debates also could help to get ideas on the table.
We cannot afford to argue amongst ourselves. Debate, absolutely, but just now we need to stand strong together, if not FOR, at least against. This is indeed an emergency.
Mmerose and I seem to be about the same age. I’m guessing you younger. Can we deal with this emergency now, with a plan to raise a new crop for 2028? We can help guide them (or maybe they won’t need us) to a visionary platform. Ideas need to be brought to the table, but in my mind, the best idea is to prevent a Republican from getting into the White House. Any Republican! And I was one until four years ago.
"But an our-guy-isn’t-quite-as-detestable-as-your-guy strategy is the definition of risky." (Kimberley Strassel, WSJ). Rep Phillips is right in asserting that DNC needs to consider alternatives. Just being the unTrump may not cut it in 24. If Biden is the best option the Dems have, then democracy really is in trouble. I have been voting for 55 years. Just once I would like not to have to vote for the lesser of two evils.
You have lots of company, but the Democrats haven't groomed in possibilities, because society has changed, and they haven't. In fact the old core Democrats, (Rahm Emamuel, Pelosi, Clintons, and probably Schumer, hate progressives, because progressives scare them, any politician that is over 60 is from the era in which pols where Demopubs or Replicrats. With the dime being a reverse and an obverse, flip it and it is heads you lose, tails they win.
I am young in heart only, although ever youthful. No assurance Biden would win, so that's a reason not to settle on him. Let's see what else we can come up with, which is in line with what democracy would have us do. Odd that our democracy is being threatened by Republicans, and the preservers of it, the Democrats, are acting undemocratically.
Suzanne,
Regarding "No assurance Biden would win, so that's a reason not to settle on him.":
There is an ambiguity here. This is OK if "not settling for him" is contained within the Democratic Party, and terminates if he is the nominee. If it leads to supporting an independent or third-party candidate, it is potentially deadly.
Our plurality-winning, one-choice-only ballot, creates a spoiler effect: In 2016 Green Party candidate Jill Stein took enough votes away from Hillary Clinton to put Donald Trump in the White House. Likewise, Ralph Nader put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000; Ross Perot put Bill Clinton in the White House in 1992; and Theodore Roosevelt, as Bullmoose candidate, put Woodrow Wilson in the White House in 1912. In the context of the one-choice-only ballot, voting outside the two-party duopoly is pernicious. Once Congress has finally mandated (through its Constitutional power) the ranked choice ballot (where you indicate your second choice, third choice, etc., candidate, and this enables instant runoff counts until a candidate collects a majority, not a mere plurality) in all Federal elections, the spoiler effect dies. Then, making whomever you prefer your FIRST choice, and not merely your ONLY choice, is perfectly fine, whether it is someone inside or outside the current duopoly. The current duopoly will then weaken and we will actually elect third party candidates.
I have to wonder whether any investigative reporter has researched the funding of Jill Stein's campaign in 2016? Was any substantial amount surreptitiously provided by American oligarchs? This kind of toxic politically behavior would be made irrelevant in the context of ranked choice voting.
I
Suzanne it is too late, not enough time and money to put together a coalition of people who can and will support anyone else in the Democratic party, it is a sad testament to the state of the Democratic Party, which i often lambast in the hope that somehow these criticism will break through the shield wall.
As regards a third party, if you have leaned yet, that in America which does not have a parliamentary system, a third party candidate is a vote for the fascists. Teddy Roosevelt created a Progressive (that was what is was named) third party and all it accomplished was making racist Democrat (Woodrow Wilson) for that is what the Democratic party was at the time. blue collar and racist, and it is not that anymore, that is the Republican party)
And Woodrow Wilson was pressured or bought to Bring America into what was Europe's war, which indeed with the rise of Hitler
Bingo again. The Democrats didn't bother with a platform in 2002. Biden ran as an anti Trump, and gathered 81 million votes. a virtual head of cabbage could have done the same. The media talking heads and professional Dems, keep pushing for the economic message and it loses every time. Bill Clinton won re election because of Newt Gingrich, Americans hated Newt, for nothing else than his betrayal of "family values", cheating on his cancer ridden wife while she was dying.
It was not the economy. It is for the plutocrats,but not the working class and here is why:
If you have a job, are paid what you consider a livable income, then you don't care about the economy. Those that are uneployed are living hand to mouth, and don't care that the President has bolstered the GDP, created jobs, beat inflation because they don't believe the accomplishments, because they are unemployed, living on the streets, or the good will of family and friends, and maybe able to squeak by with federal and state assistance.
It's the economy stupid is banal and useless if you have to try and remind people of your accomplishments as a closer.
As Machiavelli, pointed out, it is fear that rules the hearts and minds of people.
Humans don't remember or appreciate the good things you've done for them, they are ruled by fear.
The more well fed and comfy you are,the more you have to fear, and fear is created by making the threat personal.
It is the amygdala and pre frontal cortex.. Kn that war, the lizard brain (amygdala) of fight or flight, always wins
The democratic party, because it treasures staying above the frey, keeping their hands clean, wins.
The Weimar Republic of Germany, didn't want to descend into darkness either, and look how that turned out.
I missed the last of this. My bailiwick is what we-the-people can do. Another perhaps wrong question of where the funding is. Maybe it doesn't need funding but just some clever minds using the available tools for action now, including a coalition of millions as a Thing. Thom recommends me. Come see how smart the thinking is: https://suzannetaylor.substack.com.
I am not so sure I trust polls. Wasn't a red wave predicted in 2020?
The liberals and minorities who have their head screwed on right, know that a vote for any other than Biden, or even a non vote, is a vote for Trump
Unfortunately this country is full of myopic individuals, who have one issue and one issue either, be it green, black, brown. And have a need to shove the finger up the arse of those who have not totally appeased or submitted to them. True more can and should be done, and nothing is because of fecklessness, cowardice, corruption or complicity.
But this myopia, and single issue obsession, will only guaranteed a second tour for Trump, and thus lead to a full blown, GESTAPO, manned by volunteers, fanning out destroy the proponents of an inclusive, diverse, democratic America, and the state will be with them, with Trumps blessings ignoring the laws, just as Alabama is ignoring the Supreme Court, what a precedent, everyone with enough political power can now do just that, except POC, gays, women,, green warriors.
Excellent article. It encapsulates everthing and put things in proper perspective. I don't think that most people understand that maga is a right wing, white extremist movement that is well funded and organized.
I , for one , have been trying hard to unsee the atrocity of the far right vultures in our country.
I’ve known that these mercenaries were gearing up for whatever is destructive to our way of life.
But I kept hoping the criminal chaos of their
leader, might push this back.
But the Republicans of today have an energy that we’ve not matched thus far .
The ingredient is a reckless hatred for anyone that tries to infringe their right to destroy.
This is a cancer on democracy.
Make no mistake their hatred of anyone who doesn’t support them is massive.
And they have family Christmas cards with pictures of a family , each member with an automatic weapon , including little children .
Their resistance to curtailing the availability
of automatic weapons from crazies like themselves is notorious.
Why would these people be so opposed to removing weapons used to shoot up kids in classrooms.
People in a Synagogue.
People in a Church.
None of these people are important to their cause , the cause for unchecked hatred. Not kids , not Jews, Not African American churchgoers.
None of these people are donators to their nefarious, No, Evil Cause.
These are people who have become brainfilthed by a sick and twisted
You forgot people in a mosque, as much as i abhor Islam, I must admit that there are indeed well intentioned Muslims who are not misogynistic and homophobic fanatics
Just as their are well intentioned people of every faith, who are not fanatics.
Food for thought. If Trump is stating he is going to present evidence of fraud in the Georgia election this coming Monday at a press conference it shouldn't be a problem to have a quick and speedy trial set. In fact why don't we just setup a bench trial for that following day, Tuesday 8/22/2023 and end this insanity.
Good point! He's basically saying he has his conclusive defense ready to go!
Let's take it one step further. He keeps saying everybody is on a witch hunt against him. Well, and with sincere apologies to the practitioners of Wicca, maybe they have found the evil witch!
I will be so grateful if someday I stop hearing those words. From the beginning, (even before 1st Impeachment?) so predictable, hackneyed; where is the phrase from, "the banality of evil?" To the extent it co-opts real victims, not just Wiccans but down to the local herbalist, it's even more offensive. (Any given 10-year-old girl whose shorts are short? Just a little witch....) I'm glad my blood pressure not being taken at the moment.
"The banality of evil" comes from Hannah Arendt
Evil may be banal, but it is sure destructive and deadly to all life, not just humans.
Our jurists are political cowards, and with the threats to their life coming from the Maggots, they have reason to be afraid, But am I asking too much to expect a judge, to risk martyrdom for democracy?
All the facets you wonderfully lay out in this blog all are found in Fascism. A dogma that has always melded the worst of racist, theocratic, misogynist, mythology with the worship of a return to a feudal economy.
A world that today’s Christian white males feel provides relief from the immiseration caused by the cynical billionaires they feel they too will be if only they could destroy them non-white “other”
Why Democrats refuse to label the Fascist loving Republicans what they are only demonstrates the power of their ruse on decent Americans.
Michael Moore wrote an interesting piece titled He's Lucky He Lives In America. He points out that in any other country, a failed leader who has attempted a coup and not succeeded, would be give a rope or a blindfold and either hanged or shot by a firing squad. Perhaps that reality would bring a little sanity back. We are a nation of laws and I truly hope the laws will hold and his reign will end soon!
We wouldn't want the losing good guys shot, now, would we! :) And part of the problem with the bad guys is, they never believe their evil is going to catch up with them anyway. The debate over the death penalty has shown conclusively that the punishment is futile as a deterrent.
Jaime Rankin said that Yes, we can know what is true. Court cases depend on evaluating truth. We need to make the discussion fact based. When someone says that Trump is the real President, ask how. Then ask why 60 cases failed to prove voter fraud. If they say they don't care, ask what they would do if a Democrat lost an election and asked other Democrats to help him stay in office. Ask, isn't that saying your vote won't be counted. Ask if they really would enjoy living under Putin and being poisoned if you didn't agree with him.
And if they still revere Putin and autocracy, suggest that democracy is not for them and they should move to Russia or Hungary.
In every interaction with news media politicians should be pressed for facts. Relentlessly. Leaving political discussion on the emotional level (especially with so many armed partisans) gives us no leg up to improve communication. We need to talk. We all need to appreciate the beauty of democracy where we can each freely pursue happiness.
The MAGA masses don't seem to have thought it through.
Continued....
Narcissistic Devil.
He knows who he is .
We know who he is .
He is a pathetic, tortured , mentally unstable, weak person who only wants that which can hurt the most people, that he perceives have something he doesn’t, a heart and a soul.
He will punish anyone who has a heart and a soul. As will his followers.
His hate is for himself but he cannot hold it all it has to go out.
And because manipulation is one of his best skills , always by proclaiming his hostile victimhood, he attacks and snares others that recognize his hate as pain.
The law, time and history are rolling over Donald Trump. It's impossible for Americans to not get some of the residue on our shoes.
I hope that the picture becomes clearer as the legal process moves forward. These Reports are going to help us to grasp "why" for the crimes. The indictments certainly lay-out the who, what and where for the felonies.
Keep beating our democracy drum, Thom. It's time for Trump to pay the piper. We have to take care of each other in the meantime. Those grand jury participants did their duty---bless them all. Now that's integrity and being a good citizen of this country---two things Trump and his cult members do not value.
I don't know that many people know how to understand clarity. It seems like a lot of people embrace the rabbit hole and like being befuddled. I also think there is a lot of post covid trauma in this world that is not being understood as people go crazy over all sorts of things.
Spot on Linda about the embrace and trauma. Also, there are those who don't understand that he truly is a psychopath. I get that. When you have a conscience, it's hard to imagine being driven by pure unadulterated self-interest.
When push comes to shove and let's say Trump is the nominee, it's hard to imagine really really really that anywhere near a majority would vote for him. But we are in a mess of unworkability and it is a wake-up to deal with income inequality that makes enough people unhappy enough to try anything different from the status quo. It's system change we need, looking to our fundamentals, and not just struggling with those deck chairs on the Titanic
Downright chilling! I’m so fearful for my grandchildren and great grandchildren!
Have no patience for the enablers of this insanity 🤬
Julie: I don't want to disturb you or anyone else, but the reality we are facing, if that because of irreversible global warming, they will be no future,for our grandchildren and great grandchildren as we are staring a the end of the very short lived anthropocene.. I have eleven grandchildren and 9 great grandchildren, my grandchildren are adults now, and have to forge their own paths and deal with the future as it arises, as did I, my great grandchildren will have to do the same, if the end of the anthropocene doesn't catch up with them.
Bill,
Read Adam Dorr's book, "Brighter: Optimism, Progress, and the Future of Environmentalism". It seems highly creditable to me, and it may given you reason to see a "brighter" prospect of a good future. Dorr is presenting the ideas from "Brighter" in a YouTube series, currently up to eleven episodes. He is director of a non-profit think tank called RethinkX, which has also produced YouTube presentations of this information in more detail, as well as books discussing four great and imminent disruptions: Energy, Transportation, Food, and Labor. The world seems to be on the verge of being remade.
Who is funding the non profit think tank? Could it be the carbon cabal, that sees it in their interest to downplay the problem.
So the world is on the verge of being remade:.
Well it is too late, we are past , way past, the tipping point, and if we froze all emissions now, it would be too late, the damage is done.
There is a point of no return, when you get past that point there is no turning back, and there is no heliocoptering in place either. True for air travel, true for disease, and humanity is a disease that has infected Gaia, and Gaia is shaking her head, as if saying I've had it with these lice.
Bill,
I responded to this (16 hours ago, at the time of this note), but what I wrote somehow got placed in the thread 3 spaces to the left of where it should have been. Didn't want you to miss it.
Use this relationship map track the 19 people charged by Fani WIllis in the Georgia county case against Trump. It has been updated today with details on 14 likely co-conspirators. https://thedemlabs.org/2023/08/17/relationship-map-trumps-unindicted-co-conspirators-in-georgia/
This is good stuff, thanks. Looks like daily beast is doing some good work. Who ever heard of people like Tom Fitton - now we have. It's one great thing about the Georgia case how it wraps so many culpable actors into one narrative and one legal proceeding.
There is a Share button on this, and I used it. I'm not particularly involved in social media, but I do have FaceBook. Whether or not people will actually read it (I asked them, too, to refute it if they were able) is a huge question.
Fascism also reduces truth/reality/facts-evidence-proof to utter irrelevance. One claim T. has been raising a lot lately is that he truly believed and believes that he won. In that context, I think it's useful to go back to the first Impeachment. When Zelinsky quibbled that there was no basis for investigating Joe Biden, T. said, never mind, just announce an investigation and leave the rest to me! (I didn't hunt up the exact quote, but I think I'm close.) This is habit and pattern of a criminal mind. T. doesn't for a second believe he won (therefore massive fraud - must be - has to be....). What he believes is that he can create the reality he wants. Whatever went on with Joe Biden in Ukraine T. doesn't know and cares less. Mary T. made this distinction yesterday, in the context of whether T. was feeling "the heat." She said something along the lines of, there was little capacity to experience anything adverse. (i.e., "reality" isn't real to him.) M. Scott Peck, 1983: "Interestingly,...Satan...does not understand science. Science is an antinarcissistic phenomenon. (Science) assumes a profound human tendency to self-deception, employs the scientific method to counteract it, and holds truth higher than any personal desire. Satan cannot understand why any beings would not want to deceive themselves. It ...finds human science incomprehensible." (p.108, "People of the Lie" First Touchstone edition, 1985)
... I doubted I could ever add anything to a thorough Hartmann report... but this has been eating at me for years so I will put it here:
>> may we drop the word
CLASS and replace it with the real word INCOME ? It is time
That word income appears in the enbabling legislation of the income tax code, and on the IRS form 1040. Income is what investors and speculators receive, it is not reimbursement for labor.
Either congress or the IRS created a subterfuge, by requiring you to total up all your salarie and wages, plus benefits and write them down on your 1040, and if you don't or if you balk, there is a law that makes it a crime to not fie a 1040, and if you don't include all of your salary or wages and dividends/interest they get you for failing to disclose, Not because you broke the law for disclosing salary and wages, as there is none in the legislation, but because you filed a false (or rather incomplete 1040.
I
I personally don't play games, because I know I will lose, as so many already have, from Willie Nelson, to the first winner of Survivor, to a friend of mine.
..so
CLASS=a day @ school ?
...a seat on a train ?
...an
unmentionable ?
I have no idea what you are talking about.
Bill,
The carbon cabal would be the last group to support RethinkX. The energy disruption RethinkX analyzes (and certainly advocates) will drive fossil fuels into bankruptcy, and all the sunk costs will become worthless.
You are quite correct that "the damage is done". The metaphor that Adam Dorr uses continually is a house on fire. The first response must be to put out the fire--completely. But that is not the complete response. Nothing the fire department does repairs the damage already done. Dorr discusses the technologies to repair the atmosphere, the land, and the oceans, once the "fire" has been put out..
Hold your skepticism in abeyance long enough to watch the YouTube presentations. Hopefully, that would pique your interest enough to motivate an in-depth reading of the (I think) more substantial look at the data supporting their thesis. Some disruptions are relatively small, like the disruption in photography that replaced (expensive) film with the ubiquitous photography we have on our smart phones, based on the charge-coupled device technology. A substantial one was the Internal Combustion Engine replacing the horse at the beginning of the twentieth century. This aggravated the carbon dioxide problem created by the eighteenth century disruption we call the industrial revolution.
(Note that the cities before the ICE disruption were drowning in horse manure, and that before the industrial revolution more than 90% of the world's population lived in what we today would call extreme poverty.) RethinkX discusses individually four interconnected technological disruptions: Energy (wind and solar plus batteries); transportation (EVs supplanting ICE cars plus fully autonomous self driving cars); food (precision fermentation to "brew" any desired biological molecule, together with cellular culture, grown with food produced by precision fermentation. Acquiring the stem cells that begin the cultures with not require the slaughter of any animals. Land freed from use by bankrupted conventional agriculture will involve an acreage equivalent to several continents, available for rewilding. Land currently used to feed animals destined for the slaughterhouse is largely responsible for the Anthropogenic Extinction. The food disruption will end that.); and Labor (artificial intelligence plus robotics: removing the shackles on production due to qualified labor shortage. Economics will need to move from the science of managing scarcity to the science of managing abundance. Something like UBI will be needed to complete the circle between supply and demand. I think there will be new study of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Education will be redirected from a focus on prospective employment to the individualized development of talents and interests.)
I know that these prospects will seem fantastic and utopian, but I think if you give them a fair consideration, you may find that your vision of the future will be considerably brightened. Looking forward to continuing the conversation,
Don
We grasp for hope, for some savior be it a person or a change in attitude and habits, or new technology or organization. Life and even the stones under are feet are and have been in billions of years, at least since the super continent of Rodina.
Bill McKibbin didn't pull it out of his ass, but was quoting expert climatologists, that the tipping point was 350 ppm, that was over a decade ago, no one listened, and now we are over 400 ppm.
You are familiar with the point of no return. When you past the halfway point, it is no use in turning back if you encounter a problem, especially applicable to an airplane flight, or for that matter any trip.
I've seen various estimates to the time in which the anthropogenic extinction is barreling towards us, there is always hope, and sometimes that is all we have, if there is a remedy, then we don't have that much time, and certainly not enough time to turn things around with technology that man can devise, or to convince mankind to modify his behavior. Look at Russia and Gaza, Africa, the near east, far east, heck look at the world around us, even the people who comment here.
Such blatant hostility, especially when their recall of reality is confronted.
What concerns me (not for myself but my great grandchildren)
I would like to be optimistic, but considering human nature, it is almost impossible.
Do you know why people will climb into a 55 gallon drum, which the psychopath will seal.
Why people walk to their death, or stare at the inevitable in disbelief while their demise is imminent? Hope. Hope that at the last moment they will be rescued or the killer will change his mind.
There is a name for those soldiers, selected to storm through a breech in the walls of a city or fort, forelorn hope is that they were called,basically it was a suicide mission.
I am not dismissing RethinkXX or you, just saying that all considered do we have enough time, to free the land, stop slaughtering animals for protein, to migrate to abiogenic sources of power from biogenic sources? Do we? We do hope that when we awake in the morning, that we will find things like we left them. The alternative is so terrifying that we shudder, or we can be Zen, accept things as they are, hope for the future and continue living our lives today, doing our part, best we can, to slow the rush towards oblivion. Including RethinkXX. Remember we are fighting against vicious, hateful, fearful billionaires, and haters, who live in the present, true of humans in general.
Look at the task ahead. It took a thousand years for the population of the planet to double, then centuries, then a couple of decades,now it is over 8 billion and doubling at a geomatric rate. All of those hungry mouths. Fertilizer, in the 18th Century fertilizer was either guano, imported at great expense) or manure, which meant a lot of horses..
Now it is pumped out of the ground, refined and remanufactered while most of it winds up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the more mouths, the more demand for carbohydrates and protein, till as in Brazil, they are destroy the lungs of the planet, to feed more animals to slaughter to feed the hungry mouths, and planting grass to feed the cattle, or just replenish the nutrients in soil that enable modern monoculture. The cycle in entropic and we can't see it, the same way we couldn't see the world until we conquered the sky.
The goals are great, but first RethinkXX is going to have to change human nature, it's habits, it's needs, learn to delay gratification, to learn to dismiss peer approval or keeping up with the Jones's It will take a seismic shift in human behavior, considering the chaos in our face at this moment. How do we do that?
I hope so but at best, our efforts can help us extend the end of the anthropogenic. I hope so, and I act so, I have 9 great grandchildren and one great great grandchild. including a bisnieto which I simply adore.
I gave your statement a "like" not to imply agreement but as an acknowledgement of your sincere caring.
One point about population "over 8 billion and doubling at a geometric rate": When Paul Ehrlich wrote "The Population Bomb" in 1968 the process was much as you describe, but the tragedy of high child deathrate becoming much less common due to introduction of medicine; potential mothers becoming economically and intellectually emancipated from conservative cultures and having access to effective contraception; and populations moving from the countryside to urban areas, converting children from an economic asset as workers into an economic burden, no matter how much the parents love their children; there has been a powerful demographic transition lowering the birthrate. It has been largely global and continues to progress in the few remaining areas where it is not yet complete. There are some who worry now about population collapse because of an overshot. An ageing population balance is a demographic problem, though the Labor disruption Adam Dorr discusses in "Brighten" may alleviate it. (This will absolutely require something that may be called Universal Basis Income, funded by a tax on the commercial use of robots. Since Supply requires a commensurate Demand for the economic cycle to function, productivity having been liberated from the demographic limitation of trained labor may soar, and the UBI having replaced toil wages will necessarily soar also. A great portion of the Demand will be communal--principally restoring the health of the biosphere, and disrupting education to focus on individual interests and talents, free of economic need.)
The central power of the Disruptions that RethinkX has identified is economic: they are happening because the disrupted technologies are becoming increasingly noncompetitive--like the horse for transportation, or film for photography. Some of the incumbent technologies have vast remaining wealth (e.g., the fossil fuel industry), and the possessors of that wealth in desperation are using non-economic (corrupt) means to delay the inevitable (facilitated in the U.S. by that abomination called Citizens United, and the robust efforts of their principle political party, the Republicans, to thwart the will of the majority by crippling the elective process and employing comprehensive Big Lies (Joseph Goebbels would be proud to embrace them.) to gather a political following. Not that the Democratic Party is made up of angels: the Duopoly thrives. That's why my posts have concentrated on using the power of the Constitution to get Ranked Choice Voting (Destroy the spoiler effect and you fatally weaken the Duopoly.), and to tame this Supreme Court to enable political reform (crippling the corrupt and desperate efforts of the wealthy incumbent technologies.)
You say: "The goals are great, but first RethinkXX (sic) is going to have to change human nature, it's habits, it's needs, learn to delay gratification, to learn to dismiss peer approval or keeping up with the Jones's It will take a seismic shift in human behavior, considering the chaos in our face at this moment. How do we do that?" These points you would find are effectively rebutted by RethinkX and particularly by its research director Adam Dorr in his book, "Brighter". The driving force is new, clean economic disruption of incumbent technologies (that were necessary in their time to lift the world out of poverty--the Industrial Revolution--but at the cost of terrible damage to the biosphere. The disrupting technologies will enable stopping the damage and making the necessary restorations. I urge you again to read the books to see if you may find their arguments persuasive, so that you may be rationally comforted by a “Brighter” perspective.
Your discussion of human psychology recalled for me Steven Pinker’s book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature—Why Violence Has Declined”. Despite the tragic aberration of the first half of the twentieth century, Pinker documents the long-term trend has been a comprehensive decline of violence of all kinds; from murder rates, to abuse of animals, to human slavery, among other categories. Pinker makes the case that this follows from the alleviation of poverty, once almost universal. It seems that the “improvement” of human psychology (lessening of sociopathy) is the effect of improvement of the human condition rather than being a weakly hopeful cause.
I appreciate your comment, and likewise.
My opinion on population growth is based on what is known, world wide.
Yes America does not have a replacement ratio of 2.1 per couple,, with women being educated and liberated from their yoke of nanny, house and sex sevant, they are taking control of their own lives. I can't bear a child, but I think (I said think) that I experienced the next best thing, the most severe abdominal pain that rendered me immobile and hunched over.
It was a case of food poisoning. I had attended a homecoming in a church in the woods of
Ashley Co,ARk in 1962,, table was spread with food in the hot afternoon. I ate too much potatoe salad, and later I was hunched over with pain, that came first in 15 minute intervals, then later down to 5. Excruciating, hats off to women, to endure that and come back for more, amazing.
As regards population doubling. We had essentially the same situation about 6 or 7 years ago, and it has doubled, whereas it took decades, centuries and millenia to double.
Yes America and Europe are experiencing a population decline, but America and Europe have educated women, who have freedom that women in Muslim countries, India, and Africa don't have, and there the population is increasing.
Look at Gaza, despite being overcrowded, despite poverty and food insecurity, men must have orgasmic release, and now there are too many fish in the punch bowl. Same with India. Men who can't support themselves, marry and have children whom they can't support, much less educate.
Technology alone is not the answer. And I am not even considering jobs, it is getting to the point that the only jobs available for humans is hard and/or dangerous labor, and what is the effect of that (and even those are scarce) especially in Africa and Muslim countries.
The result is mass migration north (including America, as central and south America is majority Catholic, and true believers at that (I lived in Panama for three years, my 2nd wife is Panamanian) Catholics are basically ordered to breed, and breed they do. It is the Church's way of achieving dominance, a numbers game.
So here we have robotics, AI and technology, replacing humans, and what happens then?
Humans without jobs,idle hands, and with the leitmotif of libertarianism and the Republican party being "if you don't work you don't eat", and a nation of idle hands, and a visceral hatred of UBI and government subsidy for people, not corporations, what do you think will happen,
We have been watching a foebringer in the last 6 years. Not a pretty picture.
We and Europe may reduce our population, but the rest of the world, the undeveloped world, and the women are subjugated world, is taking up the slack.
My wife says, almost in a parody of physics, that energy is not destroyed, and obesity is the storage of energy. If I lose 20 lbs, somewhere someone else gained 20 lbs.
And I haven' delved into the future of life on earth. Last summer was a preview. When he wet bulb temperature reaches 95 degrees fahrenheit, life can not be sustained, and so it was in some parts of the world, last year and he year before, especially along the coast of the Red Sea.
More people, more consumption of protein and grain, not to mention by products of trees like palm oil, or denuding the rain forests for grass to feed beeves. Or lumber for houses and vanity pobjects.. Then we dig in the earth for minerals that eventually pollute the atmosphere, make it warmer, while poisoning our soil and water, not to mention the air, in those unlucky communities where such toxins are produced to meet human demand..
The earth is not a cornucopia, when they exploit one area, the move on to another, and now we have massive earth moving and transportation machines, the damage being done, not to mention the shrinking worlds water table, is at least going to throw the polar axis off.
Not farfethed, are you aware that most fresh water lies under the earth in a giant ocean, not uniform of course. Saudia Arabia tapped into it, to turn the desert green with grain, and they pumped so much that the land collapsed, hazarding their drinking water supply. To compensate they have invested billions in desalination plants on the Red Sea.
Our problem is that we look for a savior, be it a person, an idea or technology.
The problem is human behavior, it must be modified, and I don't know how to do that, religion certainly is not the answer, in fact it exacerbates the problem. Ideology, politics also part of the problem.
Mankind being what they are fearful, needy, gullible, greedy and driven by hormones, aggressive and sexually needy and driven. We are the instruments of our own misery and destruction.
Yes technology has made life better for some of us. Heck I live better than Henry VIII, I don't have his costumes and trappings and I don't command a country, to safeguard my power and position, and I can't kill my enemies without recourse, but I have a heat pump, vehicles that can take me anywhere, any time I want, telecommunications, entertainment on demand. I may not have the trappings of a King, but I sure live better, eat better, have a clean and comfortable home which he didn't have.
Nobility had a four poster bed with a canopy, not for looks, but to catch the insects and critters that fell from the roof.
But it all comes at a cost. Our parents created a debt, that we are paying for (and I am not talking about money, though that applies), and our children will inherit a debt,customs, expectations, needs, that we incurred.
Having said all that. I am still hopeful, but is it a forlorn hope, of the squads that were first through castle walls when breached.? I do live as if there is a tomorrow, I have to, I have the evidence of Jonestown, Waco, Heavens Gate, and the innumerable "pending acopalypse that have occured over time. I remember the airy fairy's celebrating or fearing the end times, on Dec 21st 2012.
Thanks to the tilt of our planet, there is a precesson of the Equinoxes and about every 2,500 years there is a helical rising of a constellation, altogether there is a long year (25,000 years) in which one after and another, every 2,500 years a different constellation rises where the sun also rises. Till Dec 21st, we lived in the age of Pisces (two fish, the Christian symbol ..bible is if anything astrological, even the TeNACH (OT) mentions the Zodiac (mazzeroth).
In Luke, this Jesus is asked when he will reappear and he says follow the man carrying the pitcher of water (Aquarius) into the (astrological) house that he enters. that is he arising of the astrological house of Aquarius. Well here we are, and the world is on fire.,but it has always been on fire.
The Mayans predict the end of the age of Pisces and the rise of the age of Aquarius, and the simpletons thought that the Mayans were predicting the end of the world.
I am not so foolish and gullible to be sucked into such group think, but all the signs are we are in trouble, but just don't know or can predict the due date.
Give me a heads up on RethinkXX please. Does the XX have anything to do with a matriarchy. I'm all in favor of that, as the XY has really screwed the goose, testosterone is a toxic and aggressive hormone.
brilliant ‼️ you have given encouragement to a true naysayer
There is a difference between a pessimist and a nay sayer. A pessimist assesses the world in they live based on observants of past human behavior. A nay sayer is by definition one who says no.