Serendipity Will Not Save Us

We have little hope that Trump will do anything to solve Climate Destabilization, but in the back of my mind I was hoping that this severe disruption to oil (a la the Iran War), might push nations to move towards sustainable energy sources... sadly, this is far from the reality.

Blowing up oil facilities and tankers just releases a lot of that carbon directly into the environment (pollution + emissions), and the fuel used to launch warships/rockets/etc just adds on top of it all. Meanwhile, China instantly reduced its oil imports by 50% (which is 5% of the world's oil usage) and on the surface that looked amazing...only to find it replaced it with COAL burning.

People...we are out of time for climate action, we are already beyond some thresholds for severe repercussions, and every month we do not act we draw closer to existential ruin. We are still fighting oil and imperial wars when we should be weaning ourselves from all fossil fuels and facilitating world cooperation.

I semi-joke all the time that we're just dumb apes, but can we at least go out with a modicum of dignity, and not from needless stupidity? Can we at least live long enough to create sentient robots to carry on doing science and exploring the Universe once we've desolated our only habitable planet? Or are all of you okay with just flinging feces at one another and having our last accomplishment be the first quadrillionaire.

The Empire Has Fallen

I think Trump has successfully defeated America:

• He has culturally poisoned generations of minds
• drained all our scientists and academics of research positions and funding, causing "brain drain,"
• destroyed the dollar as both the World Reserve Currency and the Petro-Dollar,
• humiliated our military in multiple entanglements,
• despite defunding every useful program, he has still managed to make the government insolvent,
• de-legitimized the Rule of Law and our Institutions,
• sabotaged the relationships with our closest allies,
• shook down the world with tariffs and elevated mafioso politics,
• created supply chain disruptions everywhere,
• exploded the price of everything.

Weep or rejoice, the Empire has fallen. What America becomes (post-empire) is something yet to be written. The rise of STRUCTURALISM must occur! We can't rely on personalities, religions, or these half-baked, social-darwinist economic delusions (i.e. Capitalism) to be the basis of society. We need to base policy on science, the greater-good, sustainability, reduction of suffering, and approach all of this holistically. We need a system that makes good use of evolutionary processes and not constant revolutionary reactions or pendulum swings. We need a system that accounts for the Human Condition, and assumes that it will be challenged by despots, corruption, and zealots... it must be resilient; incentivizing good actors and enabling good outcomes, while mitigating bad outcomes and punishing bad actors. The STRUCTURE of the system -itself- must lead to flourishing.

"Make me do it!"

 

There is a fabled conversation with FDR that goes something like this:
Activists:    “Mr. President, you must do this for the working people.”

Roosevelt:  “I agree. I think you’re right. I want to do it.” (Pause)

                    “But you’ll have to make me do it.”

Now, this is cute story and all, and intends to make the point that the public needs to be involved in civic action... but, well to be blunt, it's a BS excuse for politicians to NOT do their job.

The voters did their job, they voted you in, they raised money, they knocked on doors and had conversations with their neighbors... once you're in office it's YOUR f-ing job to get the stuff written up and passed. It's YOUR job to handle impeachments or keep other branches of government in check. It's YOUR job to convince or create pressure on your "colleagues" to vote your way. It's your job to stop the abuse of power and the abuse to the people.

People are checking out of the political system because no matter who they get in office, things just get worse and they don't want to hear that there "was no mandate from the people" or whatever nonsense is coming out of politicians' mouths. Show us that you've exhausted all your tools before coming back to the people. Sometimes people do need to take to the streets, but I don't think these politicians have wielded the power we've given them to do what we've asked them to do.

Say Everything But The Obvious About Venezuela

Just want to point out a few things that are intolerable about the "war" on Venezuela:

1) Obviously the act itself is a grab for oil and resources, to benefit the President and his rich friends. (This does not benefit the US or Americans.)

2) Senators and House members that say how outraged they are... YOU are the people in the Constitution who are in charge of removing a rogue President! Don't be outraged, do your F-ing job!

3) Elected Officials AND Media pundits whose only criticism is that "they aren't implementing this well," or "we haven't received assurances he will stop at Venezuela." Hmm, how about the fact that Trump is invading a SOVEREIGN country and saying he is going to steal THEIR resources! I'm not sure it's the minutia you should be focused on.