Call it the Triple Crisis. That’s apt enough. The parts: politics, energy, biosphere (climate). Each looks like a complete crisis, all by itself, but actually is generated by and linked to the other parts. This is why each is thoroughly intractible. Holistic thinking is required and we don’t do holistic thinking. Only compartmentalized thinking is permitted discourse. Besides it would mean changing our Way of Life (of driving around in cars all the time) and that is Non-Negotiable.
Coming back on line after having been sick–(which is why I didn’t post last week, it was really that bad)–is a bit of a shock. Events have advanced ahead of schedule. First, my browser tells me that the PATRIOT Act–the great Undead of legislation, is re-passed, with all but a few Dems signing on to kill the Republic. My own (Dem) delegation voted death.
Drowned like a baby–you gotta love Rethug imagery–in a bathtub indeed!
I drop by The Grand Moff Texan and see that the US Army is stocking up on depleted uranium munitions. The war for Iran (he thinks) is on. So forget all my happy predictions of two weeks ago. And it is nuclear war, for that is what DU is: No blast or fire, but all the nuclear contamination of a real bomb, contained in an artillary shell. Clearly we are in a race against time–how much devastation shall the empire cause before it is brought down? How much can the world sustain? The golden dome of Samara is only the beginning. You have no idea what is about to be lost.
There and here.
There will be a price. The price is blood. But my crystal ball says little more about that. Except: Your tears will be in vain. I say now–get used to what you have created. The soft-landing scenario has passed.
On political blogs we talk about politics. But if this week’s passage of the undead-PATRIOT Act does not render politics irrelevant, then the exterior constraints–specifically the War for Oil, will take care of that. In fact, the real reason the P*** Act was re-passed is that the War is going to entail some unpopular measures, and it will require the whole force of the police and military, unencumbered by due process and rule of law, to hold the populace down. Open intimidation. Soft style: Anybody can be sent to Guantanamo as a terrorist–and will be. Hard style: Guns in your face. Hard or soft, it is coming. The War for Oil is going to possess everyone’s attention, in one way or another, for the US is about to be committed to it totally. No aspect of life will be unaffected. Most Americans will not notice until their cars are short of gas and their children are being sent off to die in far-away (oil) countries, but that day nears. If we go ahead against Iran, that day comes this summer.
It will continue until there is not enough oil to feed the war machine. Here’s a question: In the absence of any economy, is there enough American oil–Prudhoe and the rest–to keep the War Machine going?
It becomes very hard for the left to articulate a political program, because to explain its rationale means mentioning the unmentionable, specifically, that survival is going to become a local affair. As oil goes off line, our national economy will collapse, and with it our national infrastructure. There are actually good things we could do, such as revitalize the railway network, but unless there is a cartel making money out of it, it just won’t happen, and even then we only support the wasteful and the destructive, not the efficient and conserving.
Context: This week we are seeing national food-labeling legislation designed to outlaw (state protections of) honest food labeling: Our national government is wholly malign.
It is not going to change in November’06 unless the Dems tap an as yet undiscovered reservoir of sanity and competence. I think that is as likely as the Saudis finding a second Ghawar.
Committed to oil, we are committed to increasing climate change. If you are sentimental, there is something you should do. Record the biosphere in your area. Write about it, photograph it, paint it, video-tape it–no don’t do that, that’s pointless–make a record that is durable. The unsentimental fact is that the biosphere in your region is likely to simplify: Plant species will die under the stress of weather they are not meant for, but they will not be replaced by more suited species, for there will not be time: Climate zones will be shifting too quickly. The short word for this is desertification. In geological terms, a lot of new niches are about to be created to be filled (in geological, not human, time) by new, not-yet-existing species. This is an exciting time for geologists of a million years hence.
The excitement for us, of course, is somewhat different, as we procede, willingly, to wreck everything we have known and loved.
