The End Game for Humanity
This is a solemn moment in America. Things have gotten quite serious. We're on the verge of losing not only democracy but the battle to leave a viable ecosystem for future generations. And I'm talking about the near, not distant, future.
Many of us are in denial about how serious our circumstances have become. I've had seemingly intelligent people ask me, what's so wrong with the status quo? People don't want to face unpleasant facts. We bury ourselves in unreality and distractions, we obsess over trivialities and shout down anyone who tries to harsh our mellow. How dare they try to wake us up!
We Americans have some unsavory facts to face and some wrenching changes to make, and soon, if our species is going to make it.
Our way of life is absolutely unsustainable.
We've known this for a long time. The environmental movement goes back at least as far as the early sixties. Silent Spring, the famous, ground-breaking environmental science book by Rachel Carson was published in 1962. The Earth Day movement started in 1970. Still the masses sleep. To many of us, if it ain't happening this week or next, it ain't happening.
Our entire culture is steeped in fantasy, denial and ignorance. Many, if not most, Americans are oblivious to how the Military Industrial Complex dominates our society and warps our democracy (just as Eisenhower warned).
Too many of us don't know our own history, and much of what we think we know is false. We've been lied to, propagandized, bamboozled and hustled. It's not surprising that so many of us don't understand class, race or privilege.
Don't be put off by the title of the following video. This is an important and extremely well done must-see video for every American citizen, in my humble opinion.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLgIIjnpZyU]
People need to be educated. That's up to us. Here's a handy tool for dispelling myth and revealing truth, Howard Zinn's phenomenal rendition of our actual history. Download a free copy of the real story of America, A people's history of the United States by Howard Zinn:
mobi format
https://libcom.org/library/peoples-history-of-united-states-howard-zinn
.pdf format
http://www.thegoyslife.com/Documents/Books/A%20People's%20History%20of%20the%20United%20States-%20Howard%20Zinn.pdf
Americans, perhaps understandably, do NOT want to look in the mirror and see with any clarity the horror of what we've become: war bringers and torturers, destroyers of worlds, worshipers of mammon.
We bomb the innocent. We start bogus wars on purpose. We sell democracy and justice to the highest bidders. We vote against our own interests or not at all. We tolerate corruption and criminality at the highest echelons of society. We punish the poor and exalt the rich. We ignore the scientific consensus on climate change, ocean acidification, rainforest destruction, non-renewable resource depletion and fossil fuel addiction. We ignore the many ways in which our society has gone terribly wrong – from the prisons to the schools to the halls of congress.
Too many of us are blind to the faults of Capitalism, Wall Street, Militarism, the Supreme Court, Congress and modern western culture. We treat politics as though it were just another game, just another team sport. We unquestioningly accept the propaganda and lies of the mainstream/corporate media. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, capitalism and our vaunted 'American way of life' are despoiling the world and making it unfit for human habitation and we just want to pretend it's not happening.
Bill Moyers is one of the brightest lights that still shine amidst the darkening death-spiral of American journalism. He's a liberal but hardly a radical. What he has to say about the present state of America and the world should alarm us all, but again, too few of us are paying attention. Let's change that.
[video:https://youtu.be/pFYb4gKEFl4]
Six media conglomerates control virtually all the information in the American mainstream, and the propaganda they ply us with 24/7 has been refined and optimized. Among other things, Americans have been brainwashed to hate socialism for all they're worth without understanding the first thing about it. There's a reason the billionaires hate it and have used their disinformation machine to make us hate it. It's not good for billionaires. But it can be very good for people.
In the following important video, Bill Moyers interviews Paul Krugman on the subject of Thomas Piketty's blockbuster book titled, Capital in the 21st Century. This is well worth your time. It clarifies the urgency of the moment and emphasizes the criticality of what we do now. This too, again imho, that should not be missed by any American citizen.
What the 1% Don't Want You to Know
[video:https://youtu.be/QzQYA9Qjsi0]
It takes an open mind and a sufficient understanding of scientific reality to realize that our way of life is absolutely unsustainable. Not a little unsustainable, not somewhat unsustainable or in need of a few tweaks here and there – but absolutely unsustainable and in desperate need of a major overhaul. We are at the end of the road for the old ways. A massive paradigm shift has been coming for decades, but if we can't hurry it along, if we can't manage to be more receptive and responsive, the chances are increasingly good that we'll kill ourselves off. Which of those things is it better to pull for? Change or no change? A paradigm shift or extinction?
Some people scoff at the word 'revolution' because they've been programmed that way, but it's a fine word to describe what's needed and what's coming. Not all revolutions are violent and this one won't be, that's ridiculous. This is strictly and explicitly a political revolution, a peaceful and legal uprising – but an uprising nonetheless. Those of us who see the writing on the wall are going to attempt to turn American democracy to the people's and humanity's needs and best interests. As Bernie says over and over, it can only work if we rise up by the millions. Young people have little choice and everything to lose. They are the ones who will suffer most from our failure to turn it all around. We need for them to turn up at the polls and cast their votes for Bernie Sanders, a new way forward and a hopeful future for generations to come.
We have one last chance to rise up and make the necessary changes to assure the continuation of civilization and our species. Some call this hyperbole, and I suppose that gives them comfort, but it's not. Our present circumstances are scary as hell. The prospect of the continuation of life on earth, at least for humans, could hardly be more precarious. When the smartest and best informed among us become alarmed, it's time to sit up and take notice.
Reversing global warming will take a World War II level of mobilization. It is the work of tens of millions, not hundreds of thousands.
Van Jones
"America has no functioning democracy at this moment." ~ Jimmy Carter
As Carl Sagan and Noam Chomsky attest, we've become a culture that celebrates ignorance and distrusts intellectuals, and as a consequence, many of us don't know what the hell is going on. Why on earth would we want to pay attention to what the smartest people on the planet have to say?
If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.
Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not Robots
So Hawking, no doubt one of the smartest people alive, advocates wealth redistribution. How radical! But he's smart and he's right and he's not alone. Radical problems require solutions.
Here's another smart but hardly radical person saying radical things about the present circumstances. We ignore the smartest among us at our peril.
President Jimmy Carter: “The United States is an Oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.”
Of the politicians we are presented with for the coming elections, only Bernie Sanders represents a break from the past. Only Bernie is not beholden to the Big Money interests. Only Bernie has the judgment and clarity of vision to lead us into a tricky and dangerous future. Bernie Sanders is the only one calling for us to rise up and fight back against the greed-crazed billionaires who are driving us off the fossil fuel cliff.
[video:https://youtu.be/pUzJqvsN5_4]
[video:https://youtu.be/eXZk5gVa--0]
Mother Nature's not giving us any second chances.
Bernie is right. We can only fight back if we rise up by the millions. If we don't, we lose. Mother Nature's not giving us any second chances. This one's for all the marbles. If Exxon wins, we're sunk.
I see it as the task of any liberal or progressive to try to wake people up. We need a critical mass of people who are awake and paying attention if we're going to save ourselves from our unfortunate tendency toward planetary destruction. Maybe we won't be able to in the end. But we can't know that. We have to try.
Some people think that supporting Bernie is a risk, but it's a risky universe. There is no safe bet. We need to be fearless and take a chance on doing something profoundly good. We need to at least try to turn things around.
It's obvious that a great awakening is taking place. But time is running out for climate change and many other of the problems we face.
NEWSFLASH! Bernie Sanders has now accumulated more individual donations at this point in the race than any candidate in history.
“Brothers and sisters, now is not the time for thinking small.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders
Comments
Hey OPOL
Great to see you here at C99.
Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons
A good one OPOL
I read it at GOS or Great White Satan this morning but I like having it here. I do find it encouraging that so many people are listening to what Bernie has to say. Ignorance and denial may have peaked out as people of good spirit with a brain in their head have to live in this insane 'world as we find it'. The lesser evil school of politics just doesn't cut it when things get this insane. FDR had a good point about fear and I hope people are able to see beyond the fear that is pumped daily at them from both the Democratic and Republicans. Varying degrees of insanity and evil are not at all a democratic choice. Extorting your vote with lies and fear is not what democracy looks like.
Shaz!!!!!!!!!!!!
You made me laugh out loud literally.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Shout it loud, brother...
wake them up! Thanks OPOL.
Thanks everybody.
Good to be here.
Hey OPOL, how is this different than "more and better democrats"
I ask that sincerely, not sarcastically.
"What are we to do? Rise up and start fighting back. As Bernie says, he can’t do it alone. If all we do is elect him and then sit back and expect him to do it, we’re sunk. It’s the uprising, the grassroots movement to not only elect Sanders but to also fill the house and senate with politicians who will work with him and continue to be involved at the citizen level that’s important. This is what Bernie is exhorting us to do. Yes, Obama said the same thing but then he turned his back on the grassroots on day one and took up the banner of the establishment 1%. We know Bernie won’t do this. Bernie and his grassroots movement is for real."
more better people!
what we need are more "regular" people that understand our history, that understand the system and the way that it's rigged, that are willing to join together to put things right.
if bernie is cultivating those people and mobilizing them with appropriate messages and demands - good on him.
I see the Sanders campaign as an opportunity to break out of
politics as usual. It seems an opportunity worth grabbing to me. I don't see him as a savior or a panacea, but he's at least trying to get people to stand up and fight back against the billionaire class. What alternative do we have? I'm convinced he will at least try to do something different and better. I find the prospect of a president NOT beholden to Big Money, the fossil fuel industry and mega corporations enticing. Will that be enough to tip things toward a government for the rest of us and save us from ourselves? I don't know but it's the only shot at it I see on the horizon. Show me a better revolution and I'll take it.
Yep, there it is...
What I have been saying
all along too!
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
i see the sanders campaign as effective culture jamming...
he is taking the tools and brands of the corporate billionaire class and using them against the interests of the 1%.
if i had my druthers, lots of people would be supporting jill stein, whose positions on a number of critical issues are better than bernie's.
on the other hand, precious few americans will ever know who jill stein is because she has been effectively erased by the 1%'s 5 billion dollar spectacle machine.
for those folks that wish bernie had run as an independent (and, i fully admit to being one of them) - the thousands of people who have been mobilized to support an agenda that could begin to make the change that we want and need would probably never have heard of bernie sanders.
i wish bernie success in attaining the democratic nomination, he is helping the right movement to take power.
Thanks for cross posting this here OPOL
I did comment on it over at what Shaz is now calling the Great White Satan, but if you are now cross posting here, I would rather not have to fight with the comment formatting over there. It is a night mare on the eyes.
I urge everyone to watch the videos that OPOL has embedded.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
OPOL, you put everything together very well, thanks,
I really wished that the video you showed "Race baiting 101" would be listened to in Europe. Because not only people here in the US should be aware of what is going on in their own country and the world, but most Europeans as well, whose middle class is still much, much better off than the white lower middle class in the US. Yet both sides don't know or see each other that way.
It's especially important, because Europe takes over so much from the US propaganda induced "fears". It is as greedy as American's privileged are, as willing to sell out their morals, as helpless in controlling the international corporate powers that control their social lives, political elections and laws. It's just a couple of things over there that still work somewhat, but I see it unravel. Actually I see it happening and worsening very fast. Racism may look differently in Europe, but it will show up in its ugliness much worse in Europe than it might be here.
The brutality of the police state, the US is in, is not really understood over in Europe, I think. Upward mobility in the US is still believed in my many Europeans, downward mobility for whites in the US not imaginable by Europeans. The three tier system the video is talking about, unknown in Europe. Europeans don't know about how horrible miserable the fate of most poor whites, who immigrated or were sent over to the US, really was. People still come to the US believing in the US leadership role in science and research. German scientist at least in my generation believed in it. It may fade away a little bit, but still the US can keep up its face due to the enormous amounts of money, the corporations pour into "their own research laboratories" at the universities.
I can't see that a system change in the US is still possible by means of a peaceful political revolution. In which countries have you seen such peaceful revolutions? I am not advocating for violence, how could I. There is enough violence already "institutionalized" here. So much so, that you lose hope it can be changed "with reasonable non-violent means". A mass movement is so difficult to generate. For example all the videos that show the police is just lusty to beat and kick and taser people who are not violent and already arrested, is horrifying. Some idiot police guy said that the best they can do to control their violence addicted officers is to demand them to wear body cameras. Well, dude, how about to outlaw tasers and take them away from police officers? Why are there always hordes of police officers ready to kick in or seemingly uninterested to stop another officer to brutalize a person? Not only do you need to demilitarize the police officers, but also to take the so-called harmless weapons, like taser guns, away from them. It's just one tiny example. How many unjust war activities could be reduced by not selling weapons? Why can't that be controlled?
Joe asks for more "better people", but then we have to ask, why are "most people" not better? What's the psychology of people's dark side all about, because we have all our good sides as well? I think it's easy to despair and there are few people, who don't tell us to never despair. But we do and when we fight that downward spiral, we start "believing" and are then ridiculed for it or used by masterfully deceitful activities of anybody making their living of selling themselves to serve the PR machinery of corporations and political elites.
Thanks for being here.
Thanks for the thoughtful and thought provoking comment.
Sometimes we don't know what's possible until we try. Can a peaceful democratic uprising turn things around? I don't know that for a fact. It just seems to me that we have to try. I'm not willing to accept the status quo and now that I see a sliver of a chance of fighting it, I can't resist. It's not the time to give up. Making an honest man president seems to me a damned good idea whatever the limitations of that might be. I think we'll certainly never control the armaments trade as long as our leaders on on their payroll. I would love to see a president NOT owned by the militarists or the corporatists or the billionaires. What ever its limitations might prove to be it would have to be a major improvement over rule by corporations and insanely rich people. So Bernie actually gives me hope. The first I've had in a while.
excellent post OPOL, but getting Bernie elected is only
the first small step. I honestly believe it might come down to we the people having to take to the streets, a general strike, the likes of which Americans don't seem to have the stomach for. Maybe, just maybe if we got Bernie elected and our asshat reps refused to enact any of his agenda...what? I can dream, can't I?
I shave my legs with Occam's Razor~
Yes, it might.
And I would support that completely. We need to do whatever it takes, anything and everything. We just can't tolerate more of the same.
I not only support it...
I think it has to happen for any real change to be possible. Our representatives don't represent us, they don't listen to us, they vote how they please, and not how we want them to, any number of things prove that--gun control, public option, the upcoming TPP...and what is it going to take before we rise up and let these people know we're not having it?
I shave my legs with Occam's Razor~
Great video.
learn something new every day. I saw this at dk, but I didn't open it. I go through spells where absolutely nothing at dk is of interest, and I'm going through one now. So thanks for posting this here and giving me a second chance to read your diary.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
well
I am supporting Clinton for the standard reasons.
It has nothing to do with "not wanting to look in the mirror"
Don't fight the stream - Tyr Anasazi
what are your standards? /nt
well
The main one is that I am not convinced Sanders can win. The polls that are cited to suggest that he can win, may not be representative of where America ends up. Romney, a seemingly bad candidate with no plan for the economy, got 47%.
The Republicans have yet to attack Sanders for being a socialist and a pacifist.
He has yet to put forward a tax plan which will cover the spending he wants to do.
If his numbers hold up after he has announced what marginal rate of tax he wants, it would be a different story.
Don't fight the stream - Tyr Anasazi
well, well ...
see what I think about your standards here. I think I highlighted the important part for easier readability.
GideonAB, I'll be following
the tax plans of Clinton, Sanders, and Stein to post before the Dem Primary Debates (if they are available).
Interestingly, your concern seems to be 'the opposite of mine.' From what I've heard thus far, I have no reason to believe that his tax plan will be very radical, if that's what concerns you. He's alluded to closing some tax loopholes, which is supported by most Dems, and even many Republicans. Hopefully, there will also be a substantial raising of the marginal tax rate (for the top income brackets, and for corporations).
Anyhoo, with the Iowa caucus not that far off, all the Presidential candidates will soon have to cough up some substantive policy details on their tax reform plans.
Or, at least, I 'think' they will.
(Some may have, I've not had a chance to get back to this topic for the past week, or so.)
For now, I will not bother with O'Malley's policy stances, since he's a former DLCer like FSC, and has almost no support, statistically. That would change, if FSC implodes, and O'Malley becomes her corporatist neoliberal proxy--which is not entirely out of the realm of possibility, IMHO.
Have a good afternoon, Everyone!
Chris Hedges, Journalist/Author/Activist, Truthdig, 9/20/2015
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
what are "the standard reasons" for supporting Clinton? n/t
Only connect. - E.M. Forster
Well
Could you be more specific, please?
Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons