asg70 wrote:I know it comforts you to think that, but it's not really true.
Why not? Both stand for the continuation of the existing and unsustainable paradigm we are living under. They're both right-wing fascists more concerned with increasing their own money/power than with being actual leaders. They're both compulsive liars. They're both tyrants seeking more control over the lives of everyone else, for their own personal gain. They're both ass-branded company spokespeople beholden to Wall street, K-Street, and the Pentagon. They both serve the dynastic banking families manipulating the U.S. economy and who have captured the political process. They both have sordid histories and connections with Russian oligarchs and various corrupt dealings with the fossil fuel, nuclear, and defense industries. Both were hated by a majority of Americans, and by voting for one candidate instead of the other, people weren't necessarily voting for the candidate they picked, but
against the other candidate.
Neither candidate came close to representing the views of the American people, and it shows, because once again, the largest plurality of potential voters was casting no vote at all.
Here are some of the ways they are different though:
-Before the election, Trump had never committed mass murder as Hillary had helped arrange for Libya as Secretary of State
-Whereas Hillary openly admitted she wanted to wage more wars, Trump has been the first president since Jimmy Carter not to start a new war this far into his term, in spite of all the threats, showmanship, and strutting
-Trump is much less intelligent or careful than Hillary, even if he may be every bit as cunning and manipulative
-Hillary actually won the popular vote, and Trump didn't
Assange had something to say on the subject:
“Well, you’re asking me, do I prefer cholera or gonorrhea,”“We know how politics works in the United States. Whoever – whatever political party gets into government is going to merge with the bureaucracy pretty damn fast. It will be in a position where it has some levers in its hand. And so, as a result, corporate lobbyists will move in to help control those levers. So it doesn’t make much difference in the end.”When it comes to issues like peak oil and climate change, I fail to see how either candidate would make much of a difference. Trump may be more beholden to the fossil fuel cartel than Hillary, but Hillary's proposals were not radical enough to make a dent in the overall outcome either, and given her history, her sincerity is very much in question anyway. She is no Jimmy Carter even, and we need today someone willing to be far more radical than the right-leaning centrist and CFR lackey that Jimmy Carter was.
But what happens AFTER the uprising?
Good question. The chaos an uprising creates can go in all kinds of directions, good and bad. The pro
is their unpredictability and randomness.
The treatment is worse than the disease.
Not always. The U.S. after the revolt against Britain is sort of a success story, but not the only one. Sometimes the uprising isn't at all violent and is a model success story, such as modern Iceland:
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/icelands-banksters-sentenced-74-years-prison-prosecution-u-s/But Iceland actually has a half-assed functioning legal system that hasn't been as thoroughly corrupted as the too-big-to-fail U.S. has, so that left this option available to them.
The problems of this world are far deeper than your fixation on class-warfare, Toecutter.
Maybe so, but class warfare is a component of and intertwined with each and every one of those problems, and they are probably not solvable without also addressing the grotesque level of social stratification that exists. Privatized profits and socialized externalities is a way of life in most of the world now. Even Warren Buffet readily admits that there is a class war underway, and that his class is the one winning.
Sure, there's the rich and powerful, but then there's everyone else who ASPIRE to be rich and powerful.
Not everyone aspires to be rich and powerful. Once basic needs are met with a little left over to build up some stability and enjoy life, it isn't that hard for one to find happiness. Most people will never even get the chance to have this modest amount of wealth, precisely because of the rich and powerful hogging the world for themselves and keeping this unattainable for the majority of humanity, which in turn, helps perpetuate the desire to be rich and powerful and to consume.
Guess what the rich and powerful do. They consume. And the planet suffers as a result.
...and that is precisely the reason for my screeds. This is exactly what I've been saying. And this consumption is at the very heart of the problem of resource depletion.
The more Toecutter relates his story the more I see someone who is seething with anger not due to the world not meeting the challenge of peak oil or global warming, but simply due to envy.
You're falling into the fallacy of mistaking my disgust for envy. I don't want what the rich have. I do want enough to create, and I do want to be able to earn without being fed off of by the already rich, because thus far, everything involuntarily extracted from me as a consequence of me working to try to support myself, would have been more than enough to fulfill my goals.
My ecological footprint is extremely low for an American. I have no desire to increase it. If by some miracle I ended up with a large windfall of money, I wouldn't use it to consume. I'd use it to further reduce any need to consume, as I have been doing steadily, even if I may not have gotten me to my personal goals.
I read shit like this and I can't help but turn back to Ibon's many diatribes about the Overshoot predator. This whole then vs. now bullshit is ignorant of the larger tableau of history. Sure, in many respects the US is post-peak prosperity in terms of wage-gaps, cost of healthcare, real-estate, and higher education. But compare that to, let's say, the 1800s prior to germ theory, with no child labor laws, robber barons, and multiple bubbles poppes with bank-runs where people lost all their saving (no FDIC), or having to survive through the multiple world-wars of the 20th century. The 3rd world is still clamoring to skip over the border to the US to the point where immigration is a chronic political hot-poato and you still want to portray the US as such a terrible place? Worse than it used to be a few decades ago, yes, terrible, no. What you see as raison d'être to start a revolution seems to come from more of an entitlement-mentality.
The problems that are brewing are not related to class-warfare. They're existential. Ya know, that whole overshoot and die off thing. Malthus, ya know?
I feel entitled to the right to exist without being exploited every step of the way. And tat right shouldn’t just be for myself, but for everyone. That's not the same as feeling entitled to a 20th century middle class existence. I only mentioned such a middle class existence earlier back to illustrate what the median American has lost WHILE the overall per capita resource footprint has only increased. Something is rotten about that. All of this over-consumption and waste is increasingly not benefiting the average person.
The Overshoot predator is waiting, but it hasn't struck yet, even though it looked like 2008 was it at the time. We're awash in more resources than ever, but the gains have not been distributed equitably and it has not made the majority of the population better off anywhere near in proportion to the wealth it has provided. It also won't last. Overshoot is not just an issue of population. The Earth could likely sustain double or more the current population if they were all at the living standard of a sub-Saharan African living a bare subsistence lifestyle, not that this would be desirable.
The lifeboat ethics we have to deal with are twisted and warped, and are not exclusively the result of nature, but of man-made problems stemming from the greed of a few.
Imagine a lifeboat with seats for 100. We only have 80 people on a sinking ship that need to board it, but 1 person insists on using half the lifeboat to save all of the most valuable things taken off of the ship so they can keep them, and another 7 insist on using the rest of the lifeboat to do the same AND by doing so have exceeded its weight capacity anyway. The rest of the 72 people that don’t get to board it are expected to just drown and tolerate it and chided as being in the wrong if they get violent over it, as the lifeboat slowly sinks anyway. THAT is the actual situation we find ourselves contemplating as we stare at the present and the future. Class warfare is inseparable from this dilemma, and if we had rational and/or real leadership, the solution would be obvious.
The immigrants often come to the U.S. as a consequence of their countries having been brought to ruin by U.S. meddling. In the case of South and Central America, the war on drugs has been the major driving factor behind the turmoil generated when taken in the context of the U.S. backed coups that have deprived these people of self determination and a national identity of their own. In the case of Mexico, more Mexicans are leaving the U.S. back to their home country than are entering here, just to give you an idea of the level of desperation and deterioration already present here.
The U.S. is far from the worst place to live, but being less terrible than most does not make a thing good. As far as impact on the world and number of innocent people killed, it is undeniable that the U.S. is among the worst butchers in history, and that includes WWII-era Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Mao’s China.
Having run out of other nations to conquer, the U.S. has turned its sights inward at conquering its own people in every aspect of their existence, for profit.
Suffice to say, you know where I place most of the blame on the country becoming corrupt? THE AMERICAN VOTER!!!!! Reagan sold the right on the myth of trickle-down economics and it has now permanently embedded itself in the skulls of anyone sitting under a red pixel in the US demographic map. They continue to vote against their best interests again and again. The country wasn't stolen. It was GIVEN AWAY because the american voter is DUMP AS ROCKS, which is why we have dummy presidents like GW and Trump labelled "populist". They're populist because the american voter is, pound for pound, stupid to the point of being incapable of running a functional democracy (OK, democratic republic). No conspiracies needed.
Not all Americans were stupid in this sense. In fact, the majority of eligible voters did not even vote for Reagan, only a plurality. Americans did not overwhelmingly reject Carter’s admittedly modest proposals, either, as another forum member pointed out in the previous part of this topic. And those who were succored in by Reagan were manipulated and convinced their country wouldn’t be taken from them. Being scammed out of something is not the same as giving it away.
A conspiracy may not be needed to explain this, but it doesn't mean it wasn't present, either. In fact, conspiracies are a fact of life in politics, at every level. Those hostages that were kept by Iran? Bush Sr. played a role in their captors holding them. What impact do you think that may have had on the 1980 election?
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/04/09/reagan-bush-ties-to-iran-hostage-crisis/If you can't accept the necessity of having to live with less and are still feeling entitled to your piece of classic 20th century prosperity I'd say you are ultimately fighting a losing battle.
I’ve been living with less. Whatever consumption I do is out of necessity, and not out of frivolity. I’d like to reduce that further but I am not in a position to do so at this time, as there are initial expense and initial consumption of large ticket items that I currently cannot afford to result in a reduction that will take a period of years to be realized when accounting for the embodied energy of the items to be bought.
That's just it. NOBODY is going to accept a powerdown, period, not even you.
Compared to the average J6P, I already have. I don’t eat meat with most meals and subsist mainly on fresh produce, sourced locally when possible. I drive extremely rarely, using a velomobile I built for more than 99% of my transportation. When I was living on my own, I split a small apartment with 2 other roommates, with less than 700 sq ft between the three of us, and the electricity we purchased was produced with renewable energy with the bill kept low. I don’t even shower everyday, but only as needed. I don’t buy hardly anything that falls outside of a basic need other than parts/tools for my projects where money permits. The amount of trash I would generate in an entire month would fill one small grocery bag. I did without central heating and air conditioning to save money, but had the residence I was living in been built to be comfortable without those things, it wouldn’t have been a major sacrifice.
It’s really not that hard.
How many times have I called you out that you're in the anger stage of grief???
Doom is a dilemma, not a fixable problem.
Doom is highly probable, but not inevitable. The future is unknown. 2008 taught me that.
The dilemma stems from who should do the sacrificing, who should be kicked off the lifeboat. Today, there’s still enough room, regardless of whether or not that will hold true tomorrow, but a selfish few insist on using the lifeboat instead to preserve their toys, trinkets, and things stolen from the sinking Earth ship, which will possibly condemn other fellow humans to death, certainly more than would be the consequence directly imposed by nature alone.
You say I’m in the anger stage, but I’ve long ago accepted that oil will peak, before I ever was on this board, that the peak was indeed inevitable. Light sweet crude production peaked in 2005. Unconventional production of oil extended the overall peak outwards to whatever date it ends up being. That is acceptance.
You haven't articulated a way for us to get through the population bottleneck. All you've done is rattle of a list of class-based grievances. That's it. You're devoid of ideas other than busting shit up in an orgy of violence ala Joker.
That’s not true. For many years on these forums I’ve explained that we can be using renewables, electric vehicles, mass transit, dietary changes, home improvements, cultural changes and reductions in consumption of goods all to reduce ecological footprint, oil consumption, and resource consumption. Whether or not you think these ideas are workable or realistic doesn’t change the fact that they are ideas none the less, or that they may make an impact if tried.
Nor have I advocated the idea that an orgy of violence is the only way, even if it may become necessary at some point in the future if it doesn’t become the direct consequence of failed policy.
So how long before you start blowing up cell phone towers ala Derrick Jensen?
Derrick Jensen had a very apt quote regarding this:
”A very poor kid came up to me after a talk and said 'I want to go blow up a factory.' I asked how old he was and he said 17. I said 'have you ever had sex?' He said 'no.' I said 'just remember if you get caught you aren't going to have sex for twenty years at least.' That's not saying that one person having sex is worth the salmon. I'm not saying it's a reason not to act, I'm saying don't be stupid.”Being stupid is not on my list of things to do. You’re the only one here who keeps talking about the prospect of going postal or anything similar, almost as if that’s what you’re wanting. Perhaps that would validate you?
I know extremism when I read it and
Do you really? Your own writings have their own extremist tendencies, and you seem to be blind to them.
I'm not going to validate you as you keep sliding towards some tragic ending.
I’m not seeking your validation. This website, judging by the responses I received here, given that they seem genuine and honest opinions regardless of their status of right or wrong, is not a place I would come to for validation. I won’t find it here, and that is not why I post here.
As for some kind of tragic ending, it wouldn’t be much of a change from the way my life has been anyway, not that I am seeking that kind of ending. Color me surprised that you seemed to show any concern at all.
Look, few if any here are happy with the status quo. What we dislike about it and what we'd like to see happen are gonna be different. But what I don't want to see is the few posters of this site to devolve to the point where we're openly rallying and brainstorming towards any lawbreaking activity. That's where I draw the line.
There is no law and order. The elites act unrestrained. Julian Assange and his treatment is a canary in the coal mine for the status of law and order in the Western world.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/assange-in-court/The lack of proper legal procedure and the dereliction of duty of those within the UK’s justice system is par for the course in the U.S. as well. In fact, the U.S. is now proven to be the driving force behind the series of events, when those who correctly stated such were once accused of being “conspiracy theorists” for claiming he’d be extradited to the U.S. if he stepped foot outside the embassy and that the rape allegations were false and had no backing and were only being used as a pretext.
I have a friend that is being targeted for prosecution/persecution as we speak, not to the level that Assange is, but I know for a fact that this friend didn’t commit the assault he is accused of since we were working on an aluminum body for a custom 3-wheeled electric vehicle we designed at the time the “victim” claims he assaulted her. He has had an ankle monitor for over a year now after being locked up for more than a month and needing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on bonds+lawyers to get out, AND he has proof exonerating himself that the court just isn’t interested in pursuing without him coughing up endless money he doesn’t have, all because some angry rich old Jew bitch wants to take the inheritance his deceased father left him because she is jealous she wasn’t left any of it. We already know there is no x-rays or medical records of the “injury”. We already know this bitch stole a suitcase full of money his father on his death bed told her to give to him, and then donated it to the very police department who arrested him, before starting her accusations. As events similar to this continue to happen to more and more people innocent of any wrongdoing, the faith in the justice system and in America’s governing institutions will continue to deteriorate, and with perfectly valid reason. I’m sure there’s millions of other people who were or are in similar circumstances.
If you don’t want crazed maniacs running around posing a threat to your safety, then you should be advocating for the restoration of law and order, which would mean many corrupt people in high places being hauled away. Unfortunately for us little people, the law enforcement apparatus exists not to protect us from crazed maniacs in the street, but to protect the policy makers from prosecution and to further enable their graft, to shake down people for money for “crimes” that have no direct victim, and to protect the haves from the have nots. Try living in the hood sometime. The crazed maniacs run wild and free already, and the police will generally not have any interest in protecting you from them, as they’re too busy looking to fine someone doing 1 mph over the speed limit, incarcerate some college kids for using recreational drugs, or lock up some single mother stealing infant formula because she won’t have her next check until the first of the month.
The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson
