If You Were Really Honest With Yourself, Are There Any Of These Issues That Wouldn't Be Helped By Dumping Capitalism?

[Post Change Note:

I added the "See Also" entries as promised. You can see them at the very bottom of this post.

Rest Assured that this new list could have been longer. And to paraphrase our Corrupter-n-Chief: There would be nothing wrong if I had actually put more down, but fortunately for you, I will refrain; and not just for brevity's sake; as the real pain of what is being ignored too much here, can be very hard to bear when collected like this.

And I also want to thank him for proclaiming "Business As Usual," as it is now practiced, as his true Brand. As much as it also pains me, to say this, he actually said something with a deeper truth to it; even if he wasn't actually aware of it. We'll take what we can get, right?

Hopefully everyone will take proper note of this development.
 
J.V.]


This is a big list of issues, but I want you to think for a moment about one thing related to them all, as you hold this big list up in front of you, on a virtual whiteboard (and there will be even more in an "See Also" section, after I'm done with this post):

A prominent guy in the shipping industry just indicated, in discussing the health of the shipping industry, that, for every uptick in our GDP, there is also two uptics in the amount of containerized traffic around the world. And that's just the transportation across the oceans.

Even if you allow that the diesels are running more efficiently, and they filter more particulates, that is still a pretty big environmental impact. And then there is, on both the shipping, and receiving ends, of this of course, a bunch more of putting, and taking, and delivering; not forgetting for a moment that a particular item has to go through several rounds of this (just think of all of the sub assemblies that go into a car assembly plant, or an aircraft manufacturing plant, or major consumer product assembly plant), with further processing/assembly steps involved, before it gets to a place where an item can be moved to a final consumer.

Then consider the amount of effort spent in both marketing the need for an item, as well as the packaging of it, cocommintant to the branding naturally, which bleeds from, and over, into the shipping of the item. All of that extra material, organic and otherwise, that then needs to be collected, and further transported again, so as to be available at all for reuse, or disposal.

If we didn't have Capitalism a major majority of all that effort, and at least a significant portion of the transportation effort, would be eliminated from the daily burden that not only we pay for, but the planet pays for, as well.

And it could be done simply by recognizing that we could re organize ourselves in whatever way that might better do the things remaining, that we really need doing, as well as the things we can decide, without marketing, to provide for ourselves, quite well enough I think; as in the things we need and want for our personal use. Perhaps more to the point, however, is that we could do this and also make so many more aspects of our lives meaningful again; precisely because we all would matter so much more in the communities that would need every able bodied worker they could get, in order to be as self sufficient as they can possibly be.

And this thought exercise would yield valuable results, even if Capitalism weren't a toxic, mutated thing (simply because it is so grossly inefficient, and wasteful); which it certainly is now. And made so by the effects of new, electrified instrumentality, it was never meant to handle, much less be able to perceive, and analyze correctly. And this also hardly takes into account what getting rid of all of the associated "Dangerous Competitions" (as in competing in ever more cutthroat markets, contending every more over diminishing resources. and, because of the first two, all of the weaponization races now that ever increasing instrumentality make possible)  that Capitalism fosters.

I use this as a preamble to the array of issues displayed here to suggest to you that we could have a lot of possible resource to work with if we (in mobilizing the nation just like we did in WW 2), indeed, wanted to do the things that would address the problems associated with what you see arrayed here. And even better, we could make it so that money then never again had to get in the way of actually accomplishing the things that the majority have stated, with their direct vote, is what needs to be accomplished.

The bottom line here is simply this: The answer to the question stated in this post is quite unequivocally no. There are none of them that wouldn't be helped because Capitalism is making all of them impossibly worse;  worse even than the dislocations that doing a change-over, that something new would create, would do; if for no other reason than sticking with Capitalism will, in my opinion, make dealing with catastrophic, global circulation changes, virtually impossible; along with the unlikely survival of ether much of civilization at all, or the species that depends on it.

The referenced article quick list:

1:Drug overdose deaths top 70,000, drive down U.S. life expectancy

2:Rising seas threaten Norfolk Naval Shipyard, raising fears of 'catastrophic damage'

3:Heat waves, mosquito outbreaks, landslides: 6 ways climate change is hitting the U.S.

4:US farms are going bankrupt at an alarming rate. Trump’s trade war is partially to blame.

5:Retirement in America? Too Expensive

6:Which Industries Are Investing in Artificial Intelligence?

Drug overdose deaths top 70,000, drive down U.S. life expectancy

Rising seas threaten Norfolk Naval Shipyard, raising fears of 'catastrophic damage'

Heat waves, mosquito outbreaks, landslides: 6 ways climate change is hitting the U.S.

US farms are going bankrupt at an alarming rate. Trump’s trade war is partially to blame.

Retirement in America? Too Expensive

[Post Note: I have included this little tidbit from Priceonomics because, whether you realize it or not, one of my pet peeves about investment avenues of questionable social efficacy is not only illustrated here, it also shows you quite clearly how one aspect of that "bad social efficacy" is precisely related to costing us a great deal in diverted expertise. And I can say that because the top utilizer of AI, according to this report, is "Algorithmic financial trading;" not only the epitome of "Crunching numbers, just to get more numbers," but also a sector that can afford to outbid other folks who might need AI scientific, and engineering, talent. And of course, the sectors that would go the most begging would be exactly the kinds of basic science, materials research, and anything to do with weather forecasting, that would help the most in diverting the coming ecological disaster. J.V.]

Which Industries Are Investing in Artificial Intelligence

See Also:

7 New York hospitals that illegally billed sex-assault victims for their rape kits agree to settlement

Maryland high school football players accused of sexually assaulting teammates with broom

Border Agents Fired Tear Gas Into Mexico. Was It Legal

Why Tear Gassing Children Migrants Is Wrong -- Response to US Border Agents Using Tear Gas

Donald Trump Wasn't The Only President Who Used Tear Gas -- Talker

Chinese Scientist's Gene-Edited Babies Have Opened Pandora's box. Brace Yourselves

Opinion -- Before The Claims Of Crispr Babies, There Was China's One-Child Policy


CRISPR Gene Engineered Human Babies Immune to HIV, Smallpox and Cholera

Trump's new Russia deal defense -- Just business as usual

We Used To Give Thanks For Our Bounty (however illusionary).

 Now we give thanks for disaster not touching us too much this season, Even as we look for a way out.

I guess its a case of having our eyes "wide shut" for far too long. And now it has become a competition to see who can keep them shut, or pry them open, the best. A horrible competition of competing manipulations (with even myself trying to push vanity clicks into a system that refuses to hardly acknowledge my message at all  --  despite what over 25 years of intense systems analysis, and building, and repairing, some very tough situations, have given me in experience, in the very economic system I criticize now).

Perhaps it is this very sort of "shell shock," if you will, of surviving not having disaster touch you too much that puts us in a frame of mind that accepts whatever cold comfort we have now, continuously depreciated though that might be, and says, for a real case of "more's the pity," don't rock your leaking boat now, even if you do have a spare second from bailing things out as fast as you can.

I picked this list of related articles for the reason that they all flow from the questions asked by Tarence Ray, in his article, "A Way Out." And I picked his article because it really expresses the understandable frustrations of trying to fight "Big Money" as a non profit, public oriented organizing entity. Having done this sort of thing from various angles (joining the Democratic Party early on; volunteering for initiative drives, and then trying to do -- ineptly -- my own state initiatives, as well as the current quest for change that I have given myself, now that I can devote myself to it full time). After all of this, even during working full time, I can tell you I can empathize with Mr. Ray greatly. 

The problem is, as it was back a few decades when William Greider described in a series of books ("Who Will Tell The People," "Secrets Of The Temple," etc to name a few), traditional Liberalism does not work any more. And that is because "Big Money" won the class war they sought to keep the rest of us from thinking was something "reasonable" people would even want to talk about. And they won it because they will always have more money than Liberals have; not to mention the lack of moral compunction to limit themselves in what they are willing to do with that money. And so now you see a lot of electronic ink being flashed on screens indicating just how ready Liberals are now to get down and dirty with their opponents. Something I think still won't work, but even if it did, would we want to look in the mirror to see what we'd have to become to outdo these people at their own game?

The other articles are here to help show you some of the other reasons, though, why changing things is so hard. Almost impossibly hard even if "Big Money" wasn't always involved in direct opposition. The need for change, obviously, is there, that much is obvious even if the other side does deny and deny all of the time (not only because of the increasing corruption, but because so many can just not care anymore, being so high on whatever drug, be it money or some other). But changing a very complicatedly integrated complex system is no walk in the park; even if you think you really know what you are doing. And this is because the more complex a thing is, the harder it is to know just how all of the ripples that flow out from your change will affect the myriad of other subsystems that you might have no idea of, or only limited knowledge at best. A fact that gets much more exacerbated by the layers of change already imposed upon said overall system. You can, in fact, make things far worse with your change, than what the original problem was causing.

My bottom line, though, remains the same. There is a "Way Out." but it must necessarily involve a vastly comprehensive, and a totally rethought, new formulation of what a social/economic operating system should be, now that we are in the new age of electrified instrumentality; which is, I assure you, a fundamentally new operating environment.

So please. Don't just glance over these thumb nail pics. Take the time to read at least a couple of them. And think about how giving thanks the way we may be doing it now isn't going to be enough to keep this planet the living blue marble it is supposed to be. No, that is going to take some real sacrifice by all of us. And that is why I am talking about massive work stoppages all across the boards of American commercial enterprise. Because going about this from within "Business As Usual." has just become too obviously stacked against us.

What do you think?

The quick list of related articles:

1:A Way Out

2:Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe

3:“I Hereby Confess Judgment”

4:The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

5:What an unprecedented study found about 3D printing’s dangers

A Way Out

Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe

“I Hereby Confess Judgment”

The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

What an unprecedented study found about 3D printing’s dangers

How Can Any Of Us Working People Survive Doing "Business As Usual" Any Longer?

Because make no mistake here. We are in the position we are in now precisely because this is where "Big Money" has put us. Big money fighting for the right to do whatever it wants to the environment (especially as it relates to energy). Big Money telling us we need to fight wars to protect their various resource interests. Big Money fighting to produce the next money making weapons system (whether that is what might make us actually more secure or not). And Big Money wanting to keep all of its largess because that is, of course, the only way they'll have the reserves to pay their way into some sort of survivable enclave: whereupon you shouldn't be surprised when they start telling you that humanity needs the new "Elysium" space station. The one where they will get their ultimate gated community, to sit in orbit somewhere above it all as the rest of us wallow in the misery of so many problems we let them not only blow smoke up our butts about, but for which nothing was ever done to actually address.

Get this through your head. Nobody will win the next war. Nobody. Period.

It does not matter who might prevail in any nominal sense of battlefield victory. The resulting devastation to the entire world economy, let alone the further devastation done to the environment, will put all nations at great risk for any kind of continued survival.

The only thing that will save humanity now is to recognize that we have allowed the four dangerous competitions (for resources, markets, technological and military superiority), that Capitalism created, and now only makes worse, to fester to the point of boiling over. And it will only be by negotiating and end to them that we will survive. And I can tell you, without much fear of contradiction, that this will never happen until we rid ourselves of this horrible, toxic, monstrosity, we call Capitalism, for once and all.

The article reference list:
1:How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Plan

2:DESPITE RECORD SPENDING, THE U.S. MILITARY WOULD BE AT 'GRAVE RISK' IN A WAR WITH RUSSIA OR CHINA


3:HOW THE RICH WILL SURVIVE CLIMATE CHANGE DISASTER

How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Plan

DESPITE RECORD SPENDING, THE U.S. MILITARY WOULD BE AT 'GRAVE RISK' IN A WAR WITH RUSSIA OR CHINA

HOW THE RICH WILL SURVIVE CLIMATE CHANGE DISASTER

et

We Should Really Try For An Amicable Separation, But Not This One

And we could do that with a comprehensive, employee buyout. A buyout where we get to own everything together as working citizens of each community. And we could do that by issuing a bond from ourselves, to ourselves. And we would service that bond by making minimum livable wage payments to those who need it; set up a complete, single payer health care system, and provide free education to all (eliminating all debts in the process).

We would then run the economy as a managed affair, just as we did during WW2 (because we finally come to see the need for a complete mobilization), until we can do the investigation, and planning it will take to do the change to a better alternative than what we have now. One that will need only to keep track of participation, and resource flows, so that all this worry about "money" will eventually come to be seen as the foolishness it really is.

That being said, though, doesn't change the fact that he Right, and the Left, See things quite differently; something that is certainly very clear. And it would be easy to give in to our frustrations (both sides for the other), but that won't wash in the long run because a divided nation along those lines won't be able to lead the rest of the world in saving the planet, and like it or not, if we don't do it the right way (the only way it can be done in time), life as we know it is pretty much screwed.

Encouragement of the top X percent of the very rich to live someplace else (where X is whatever we negotiate it to be, but something concerning the top 1 to 5 percent of total wealth holders), on the other hand, is another matter altogether; even though we will have to give them fair compensation.

Just because we see things differently shouldn't change the fact that we are still all, because we're hoping to divorce ourselves from the top X, working people. And it doesn't matter if that's hourly for whatever rate, or salaried; even up to millions a year (its negotiable for criminy sakes). We are, for the most part, the folks that keep America actually functioning after all. A true functioning not because stocks are bought or sold. Or because other financial instruments get bought, or sold. Or because whole new categories of marketing strategies can now be employed on electrically expanding streaming channels (to get people addicted in new ways). Or because a new blockchain coinage has the bitcoin farmers warming up their servers again. No. Not because of any of that.

Functioning because actual, needed things get made, and delivered. Actual, needed services get performed. And actual information gets consumed by the folks who need to do the actual, unbelievably precious act of informed choice, we used to call voting.

We are seeing how this is becoming ever more difficult now precisely because, along with everything else, information has been made dear to the Nth degree (where Nth is only something Rod Serling could know the full extent of, if he really could report from the Twilight Zone), and thus jealousy hoarded, and meted out only when greater gain is anticipated.

And with that ever present monetization of all things, of course, comes the inevitable, hot house environment for corruption, and addiction, that easy money, for too few people, that puts the rest of us in great jeopardy.

Hence the list of related links below:

1: Divided We Stand -- The country is hopelessly split. So why not make it official and break up

2: How corporate cash bought higher education

3: After the Retail Apocalypse, Prepare for the Property Tax Meltdown

4: Facebook Knew Of Russian Interference In Early 2016 -- NYT -- Morning Joe

5: Study finds too much social media is making us feel lonely and depressed

Divided We Stand --

 The country is hopelessly split. So why not make it official and break up

How corporate cash bought higher education

After the Retail Apocalypse, Prepare for the Property Tax Meltdown

Facebook Knew Of Russian Interference In Early 2016 -- NYT -- Morning Joe

Study finds too much social media is making us feel lonely and depressed

These Four Stories Are Very Much Related

1. What should Progressives do Next?

2. Why was the Google Walkout so important?

3. America's problem isn't Tribalism, it is Racism?

4. Why do we still have institutionalized injustice

Let us take these one by one, but let's do it in reverse order, now that we've placed the list placed before us.

I want to take the last first for two reasons: First because it is as personal for me, as it is for the author of the fourth story, but also because it is my firm belief that Institutionalized Injustice is precisely what killed that poor young women. Only now it is far worse because we gave commercial entities all the rights, but none of the responsibilities, of citizenship.

It is personal for me because a drunk doctor back in the sixties, too inebriated to be able to do anything, and a hospital full of professionals, not certified for delivery, and not wanting to be sued, killed my younger brother (the delivery was delayed and he got caught up in his umbilical cord), even though it took six years for his "birth defect" to actually do him in -- and me having to hold him convulsing while mom drove, in a total panic, to another ER,  just to have him die a few minutes later. And now, years later, a totally bankrupted healthcare system almost dumped, literally, my older brother, a veteran of Nam, back on the streets of Graham Washington, with obvious mental illness, because none of the providers wanted to take the fiscal responsibility (and were it not for the dogged efforts of my younger sister Becky, they might have gotten away with it).

Sadly, "Institutionalized Injustice" is getting noticed more now precisely because it affects more and more of what used to be middle class whites. And that happened because of both the globalization of production (brought on by both great advances in containerized, very large scale, commercial logistics), as well as the electrification of skill, and capital itself, so that anything can be made virtually anywhere; and that because of all of these, and the trade deals that dropped so many trade barriers, have we seen the destruction of much of the middle class, which was just beginning to include minorities. And because of that we have lost the ability to afford healthcare at all as a nation (as delivered as a commercialized commodity anyway). Well... That and the new insatiability for profit that has become of all aspects of commercial endeavor these days (let alone for the drug industries, or capital formation industries -- which is what insurance companies really started out as).

What we are talking about here, really, is "marginalization," and the really unfortunate way that both Capitalism, and Racism, have to have it; something that should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone; assuming, of course, that you've been paying attention at all. As such, Mr. Serwer's article for the Atlantic is well put, for in a very important sense, the trivialization of Racism by calling it "Tribalism," as convenient euphemism, is to certainly be deplored. But there is an exception to be made here I think, in one important distinction: and that is to separate "tribalism" in that political sense, and look instead at it from the perspective of "The Economics of Scarcity" that Capitalism really is, and how that relates back to our primitive beginnings as ignorant, superstitious to a dangerous degree, and just plain vulnerable, animals in a cruel world; animals however who were given the anomaly of significantly increased mental capacity; capacity built atop the lower brain, and the extensive nervous system of the rest of the body, outside of the brain.

Capitalism made sense in its day, hundreds of years ago, because it represented an effective way, at least for us to start with, to organize skill, capital, and the markets, for the interplay of the first two, to start the process of raising both our general, and individual, levels of material well being; as well as our knowledge levels. Humanity, and the rest of life in general, paid a dear price for that advancement, as things actually developed, but the advancement did come.

Now that our instrumentality has changed so radically, however, over the centuries, and now most especially in the advancements of information processing, and automation, that old system has come to a very sorry pass indeed. And the really tragic thing is, with these new instrumentalities we could redefine how we do both work, and the equitable distribution of the fruits of any particular community's ability to do coordinated, and necessary, social production of goods and services, so that it need no longer be nearly so much a thing of enforced scarcity; that denial by default (usually by a powerful few that enjoy controlling things) that Capitalism must have in order to survive at all (because if it isn't dear in some way, or made to be appreciated as so, what value can it have in Capitalism).

Which brings us to the last two items.

People walking out as a matter of conscience now, from where they work is an amazing step of worker empowerment, from people who otherwise might not be so enthused of "Union Solidarity" as it used to be expressed; back in the days when the companies owned the towns, and every institution in them, including the police, and most of the local courts; as in the old mining towns. Timber Towns, or steel towns. Even the car towns after Henry Ford. Whatever kind of big production you might want to talk about. And back then they didn't just marginalize you, they beat you, hung you, or run you out of town tarred and feathered. Just like they would do with "Uppity Blacks" down south. Whatever the case, though, it is to be celebrated, and encouraged, but we must also acknowledge that there is more to this than meets the eye.

That first step is, and this is very important, only just one further step away from taking what "walking out" really signifies here: that simply stepping away from "business as usual," for a brief moment, is only the half of the full walk of what it takes to justify real commitment to a moral outrage. Outrage that cannot end with lip service to the commoditization of women, as well as their continual humiliation before people who think economic power gives them the right to behave as they damn well please. No, that horrible marginalization is only one aspect of the whole picture here, and you absolutely have to understand how it all integrates; because it is now just stacks and stacks of complex systems, social and otherwise, that must integrate in a completely new way, or we will all perish.

It will be up to Progressives now to find a way to forge a new alliance between the Libertarian Right, minorities, and their own base, so as to show everyone else that not only should there be an alternative, there can be an alternative; an alternative that empowers working people, no matter who they are, or what other fool thing they might believe in, so that we can get rid of the thing that pits working people against each other. And then we can begin to do what's right, because we are going to need everyone working on this. To not only save the environment by doing what it takes to both get the carbon out of the atmosphere, but also do the things that will shade Ice flows, and glaciers where needed, and maybe even eventually shading cities themselves. And beyond that to do the things that will let us construct the next great isthmus to full world participation in a migration to new habitats on the moon, in orbit around our sun, as well as onward to new solar systems. Something else we must do if we are to keep the planet habitable at all.

Progressives' plan for victory just took a gut-punch. Now what do they do?

Why the Google Walkout Was a Watershed Moment in Tech

America's Problem Isn't Tribalism—It's Racism

Losing Laura

See Also:
[Post Note: The wall your wave has hit is the fact that Liberals, who ought to be a great deal more open this this, don't want to recognize, any more than most any Republicans do, where true Progressivism should be right now; and that is at the forefront of accepting the inescapable conclusion that Capitalism is obsolete. Utterly. Completely, and without much further need of deliberative argument. It is past its use-by date by at least a century now, and if you were actually listening to Marshall McLuhan, or Harold Innis, back in the day, you would realize this implicitly.

If we argue our point from the position that we will get rid of Capitalism, and create a better, actually human oriented, as well technically, and practically, integrated operating system, into the new environment of systems complexity, and information moving at the speed of light, we can take economic issues away from the Right; arguing from the fact that this very expansion of our faculties demands a new kind of involvement in depth, redefining work, so as to blend living, and providing, into a balanced, and seamless whole; or to at least present this as a new ideal, worthy of working towards. 

In my opinion, only thus can we also take on the new responsibility of repairing the damage we have done to this planet, even as we work to repair so many centuries of terrible marginalization, of so many, either by ethnicity, or gender; the very marginalization you would expect from an old system that has to have the "economics of scarcity" in order to maintain itself at all. J.V.]

Where the Blue Wave Hit a Red Wall

[Post Note: And here's an example of just how far they are willing to go to lie to you inside of their propaganda. J.V.]

The big lie Republicans are telling this election

[Post Note: When are Progressives, or anybody else, for that matter, going to learn that we will never be able to outspend them on interest group political issues (the Seattle Carbon measure group was way outspent by outside energy interest groups). And for that reason alone will our message be diluted as it is drowned out by the saturation propaganda of the vastly more well financed, "Big Money," side. We must unite all minorities, and the Progressive Left, and The Libertarian Right, to take direct, massive, across the boards, peaceful work walkouts of as much of what makes America go as we can, for week long periods at a go, if necessary. And once every month if necessary. In my view, it is the only way we get real action on anything important for our survival. J.V.]

A mixed vote on global warming: Ballot measures lose, but Democrats gain power

The Madness Will Contine As Long As We Continue With 'Business As Usual.'

And it will not matter which party you put into power if you do not recognize this fact.

It is the money, and the system that supports it that is the main problem here. Everything flows from that because, well, you always "follow the money," don't you.

Just look at this recent list and feel both the shame, and the stupidity of what they represent:

1: We cannot support the veterans we have now properly (my brother is mentally ill now, in significant part, because of it), and yet we seem hell bent on putting more in harm's way.

2: We let "Big Money" frame most of the "debates" these days, why on earth would any decision on AI be any different?

3: Of course another big company is making less of anything substantial. Money made as electrons demands that the turn over rate, between the moment of commitment, of a unit of investment, to when it returns itself, and the premium required for its usage, become as ever closer to the speed of light as it can be; all human considerations be damned.

4: And further absurdity of absurdity, we put new carbon into the air at prodigious rates, just to have numbers create more numbers, in the best scheme devised to date, to illustrate just how far the dictum in item #3 above can be taken.

And then we wonder why, as history has clearly shown, election cycle after election cycle, nothing much hardly ever does get solved, after any term elections, midterm or otherwise, no matter which party is elected. That's a big part of why the cynicism has gotten so bad in the past, isn't it? And even though the participation energy is high now, on both sides, does either side really think they're going to fix any of the individual problems they usually fixate on (without any thought of how things need to be integrated very carefully, now that we are in such a new, and complexly interconnected, electrified operating environment)? Let alone fix what is going to kill most of life as we know it?

And the really sad part here is that you do know, deep down, exactly how futile the whole exercise will be without a fundamental shift in not only what we perceive the problem to be, but how we go about fixing it.

Acknowledging that, though, would require that you take your own, partial responsibility, for the knowledge, and then to feel the moral obligation to  accept, and take on, the personal sacrifice that doing the right thing now demands (the kind of thing Google employees did in walking out, en mas, just recently, because selfish, impulsive behavior -- just the kind of thing advertisers love -- towards woman must never be tolerated, but then... if women can still be commoditized, like everything else is being done to, is that first "walk out" just a first step in putting human values first?).

That's the real choice people will be facing tomorrow. The same choice as yesterday. And the same choice after the election. I can only hope that doing the right thing will eventually catch on to a much larger degree.

See Also:

Veterans haven't received GI Bill benefits for months due to ongoing IT issues at VA

We Must Mobilize As A Nation To Meet This Threat

You know damn well what is going to start happening once multiple catastrophes start occuring in direct response to extreme weather, as well as to the indirect catastrophes that will occur because of the strain weather related incidents will have on all other aspects of political, and economic life (all those dangerous competitions that will eventually have nukes going off to add to the pollution). Big money will run for whatever cover it can, even as it continues to deny the truth of environmental science. And in the social turmoil that will result, government will be faced with an awful need to resort to draconian means to force compliance in getting people to try and address the destruction in any meaningful way; a need that will come into direct confrontation with the buildup of terrible passions, and rage, that we already see now with so many groups of working people; people who feel used, abused, and ignored, for far too long. It isn't going to be pretty at all. Not at all.

We could avoid this, though, if we chose to act now, when we still have at least some chance of trying to work with each other, in some, at least partially, accommodating way, so that we can all have most of what is important to a decent life; even despite the coming difficulty. We could do that because we chose to do it, and weren't forced into it by desperately crumbling circumstances; where panic, fear, and all of the other terrible emotions that are so hard for us to control, take over, and our ability to reason, and to care for each other, get blown away.

This is a real, coming threat. It is not an illusion. It is not some gimmick by an covetous interest group to just make more money, or more political power, and would be plainly seen as such if we could only, also realize, that not only is this mutated monster of an economy responsible for creating the environmental devastation, it is the most significant impediment to doing something about it in the first place. And that is why we must take on the added difficulty of replacing it, while we work to make our atmosphere able to radiate heat back into space as well as it used to be able to do; you know, before we started defecating where we live on an industrial scale; because some people just couldn't stand having a little less profit every year to prevent such stupidity.

So the question comes down to this simple truth: Will you choose to act while you still have the real possibility of choice, or will you just continue to sit on your ass and do the virtual nothing you've been doing as a part of your blind compliance to things as they are, and the cold comfort you have for even the marginal life you have now. The one with little meaning, real connection, or a real chance for you, as a person, to define your own sense of value, and not the one the mutated system would impose upon you.

Please I urge you. Think very carefully about this. Everything we have, or will ever be able to have, is riding on this decision. And it won't matter at all if you are a Right Wing person, or a Left Wing person, or just some other member of a significant belief system. You will be just as screwed as everybody else.

Isn't half a loaf, for each of us, occasionally, better than no loves for any of us, or anything else living, for that matter? 

Startling new research finds large buildup of heat in the oceans, suggesting a faster rate of global warming

Study: Freak summer weather and wild jet-stream patterns are on the rise because of global warming

What’s Another Way to Say ‘We’re F-cked’?

Insect populations are declining around the world. How worried should we be?