Eighty years ago French Philosopher Simone Weil told us everything we have to know about political parties :
“Therefore the essential tendency of all political parties is towards totalitarianism, first on the national scale and then on the global scale. And it is precisely because the notion of the public interest which each party invokes is itself a fiction, an empty shell devoid of all reality, that the quest for total power becomes an absolute need. Every reality necessarily implies a limit – but what is utterly devoid of existence cannot possibly encounter any form of limitation. It is for this reason that there is a natural affinity between totalitarianism and mendacity.”—
Weil, Simone. On the Abolition of All Political Parties (NYRB Classics) (pp. 15-16). New York Review Books. Kindle Edition
The material realities of nature are real enough, but the idea of them having their own "interest" (really ours, projected onto it by us) is, regardless of how useful, nonetheless a fiction and an error. Collective action isn't really "real" either. Action is real, and aligned action is very effective, but the attribution of that action to some particular collectivity is usually an error, usually one intended to *constitute* the intersubjectivity it pretends to report on.
I guess why someone said "Democracy" requires eternal vigilance, and I'm to lazy right now to google who said it - so not vigilant myself this morning.
I don't believe however in the opposite: some kind of magical society that has no judicial system without judges etc and institutions to protect the public good. An Ayn Randian based society would result in just more inverted Totalitarianism - ending up in oligarchic control and corporatism. Which is, I assume, not what you are implying but putting in my two cents here.
As usual in any human endeavor, there needs to be some kind of maintained balance - which is clearly what we don't have in the US right now.
As a species, we've abnegated the responsibility for our own lives to psychopaths posing as politicians. We're too lazy to save ourselves besides the TV's always thoughtfully there for us, what with the hamster wheel of football & soap operas, what more does diddums want? More popcorn? Softer sofa? Let's hear it for television! 1:45 minutes of it is right here: https://vimeo.com/10857606
Wow, it's funny you say that. Just from my own experience this last Sunday in my backyard of a few dozen observed church parking lots, you are so right. I have been watching that trend over the last year and only recently big leap in numbers, or people are each driving cars ha.
Interesting but not surprising. But also alarming, if the populace rallies behind a given theism, such as the Christian Right in the US, the country could very well end up becoming a theocracy. Chris Hedges wrote a book on this very topic. Personally I'm not against people practicing whatever religion or spirituality they want, but I do believe in the separation of church and state. But we may be headed in that direction - just needs a really good/effective demagogue to start the show.
I often wondered what had happened to mainstream media that made it okay to flat out lie and hide inconvenient truths and create a narrative of the author’s (or sponsor’s) liking. I read this article by Robert Malone on Substack about a year and a half ago and was instantly brought up to speed where some of the problems come from. It’s a good read if you have the time!
The MSM is owned by the financial elite - They hire editors who decide what to publish while the journalist / stenographers who've decided to remain soon learn that when the ''editor'' doesn't like and won't publish their writings they simply don't get paid.
I didn’t remember Udo Ulfkotte but looked him up. I can see the correlation. Seems regimes have changed over time but the government’s push for propaganda has not, nor the media’s appetite for it....!
Udo Ulfkotte owned up how he had been receiving payments to place his name under pre-written articles [by a well known brand of alphabet soup]
He wrote a book ''Gekaufte Journalisten'' which is hard to find in English [from memory they stopped the print]
Government's push for propaganda appears to have become a runaway train - Canberra submissively follows Washington's illogical narrative as if their next paycheck depended on doing so [which it does] and lets mention that Obama legalized the use of propaganda via the NDAA.
The Canberra government doesn't even rise to the occasion to counter that propaganda even when it was exposed as such by for example Andrew Wilkie who had his career as a senior analist for ASIO ruined as a direct result for revealing the truth about those non existing WMD's in Iraq.
The response to 9-11 was about a lot of things like for example launching PNAC which required a massive global propaganda campaign.
For example - Cheney's oil maps* were signed by many nations long before the lie based response to 9-11 here's the thing it required a propaganda campaign in order to get public ''approval''.
Cheney's oil maps >>
Cheneys oil maps foreign suitors
The thing is that Russian and Chinese companies signed up with Cheney to profit from the invasion of Iraq.
Maybe have a look at this; not the most comprehensive and certainly not the best quality, but it backs your piece up (which is better) on how the media changed:
MSM Editors know full well what to publish and what will displease their masters.
Indeed it's all about full spectrum control and goes way back to the first world war and before that.
Since Warburg and Rotschild were mentioned in the clip....
It's always a good time to get the word out to the propagandized MSM watching masses to learn exactly who it was that bailed out a bankrupt Nazi party during the 1930's before the second world war and are still reaping the benefits of what happened during those dark days.
I don't believe that many people realize exactly how just about every single European nation liberated by the US became a US vassal state - Australia is no different - Every single nation that's not a US vassal state is automatically regarded as the enemy...a threat to US interests which is full spectrum control over every drop of water every grain of sand every square millimeter on the planet.
Another thing that occurred during the 1930's was governments ordering their citizens to hand over privately held gold bullion in exchange for a worthless piece of paper called a gold certificate.
So where did the gold end up? [with private bankers]
This becomes rather suspicious when you take into consideration that European nations were persuaded to have their gold bullions stored in the US [for safekeeping]
How did they know? [unsurprisingly when one learns who did the financing]
Now think of Venezuela who are having great difficulties in having their nations gold bullion repatriated and then think of the Russian Federation and the Chinese Republic both who happen to have significant amounts of gold bullion and are unsurprisingly in the Neocons crosshairs.
I cannot say much more; but have a couple of things... Because we are disarmed... we are thought of easy meat (UK and EU in general... not all)... just to get it off my chest; BUT HOW WRONG THEY ARE !.
Now .. regards your comment "I don't believe that many people realize exactly how just about every single European nation liberated by the US became a US vassal state - Australia is no different" ... God I wish you had not brought that up; because whilst the masses will believe that; there is also another European nation called the UK.
But I THINK and obviously bias being English; that we turned from a military power into a soft power... I MEAN JUST LOOK AROUND YOU (need to look slightly deeper than the MSM as you know); but who is pushing the Ukrainian conflict, who is attacking Syria.. which UK globalist parasitical puppets are the gob s.h.1t3s at the UN, GOP, WEF blah blah blah... WHO actually and publicly announced the WEF Great Reset") ?? ... no not Klaus Schwab; but this inbred King Charles of ours (look it up, if you do not believe me). Who runs the secret services like the MI6 and CIA ???? ... SURPRISE. Who has the history, the architecture in society to run all the dodgy stuff ???... a 300 year old state or one that dates back 10 x that ???...and so on and so on...
Last point regards your comment "This becomes rather suspicious when you take into consideration that European nations were persuaded to have their gold bullions stored in the US [for safekeeping]"... and mostly UK; but never mind that for now...
Your link on the bankers is well received; could this have been their first or second try at what is happening now ie a totalitarian takeover ??
The UK was never liberated by the US and the allies - The city of London and the crown corporation is at the heart of power - financial power = political power.
In the end financial power is one of the crucial ingredients for global domination.
As for - have they tried this before - I think it's multigenerational so it's ongoing.
As for the public and having personal weapons this is both a good and a bad thing.
The US citizenry have to be one the most armed up people on the planet - however when it comes down to loss of civil rights and freedoms - being armed up doesn't appear to have made a scintilla of a difference - while the uniformed - and not only in the US - are being equipped with numerous military style weapons and sadistical devices such as tasers to pepper sprays to sound weapons all the way to receiving crowd control training in the human rights violating apartheid state situated in occupied Palestine - all funded by the taxpayer.
In the case of the US - Being armed doesn't appear to make much difference however neither do I think it is a particularly bright idea to have a unarmed public while the authorities are shredding civil rights and freedoms like never before and while committing numerous war crimes for which they refuse to be held accountable. [Exceptionalism = Fascism]
There are many good arguments for being able to defend oneself against tyranny as that's what's really happening.
Re totalitarian takeover - Trade agreements with sovereignty shredding ISDS provisions are another way of manipulating and controlling a government whom's policies are not in line with the financial agenda of the multinational financial elite.
Indeed we're pretty much on the same page but thanks I'm tempted to provide a little more background information just in case there's other people reading who would like to get up to the same page.
Nothing. "The news" is the inner life of property, performed as a cosmic drama. It was never intended to provide information, but to shape and motivate what the ownership class thinks and feels.
Many years ago I graduated and began to practice law. After s short time I learned from personal experience that what Caitlin asserts in paragraph two is true and immediately withdrew from practice. Best decision I every made!
Human nature is remarkably consistent throughout the ages. The human species is also remarkably ingenious and adaptable. The human race will continue, albeit maybe at a reduced total number and a reduced standard of living. The future of human existence may become grueling, violent, and short once again, but it will continue.
The human population is apparently reducing itself already; people don't need to have 12 children in order to end up with 6 living ones anymore and rising GDPs in 'developing' counties, and the education and emancipation of women leads to lower birth rates. China is already shrinking as people chose a higher standard of living. Some are starting to say we need to give incentives to women to have the required numbers of babies (and therefore penalties for those women who don't do their duty) in order to pay our pensions and healthcare in ageing populations.
Instead we could be planning how to live without capitalisms need for constant growth. People could live in smaller towns where we knew and cared for each other with healthier and independent OAPs. There'd be less nationalism and no proxy wars. But Caitlin is right; we're programmed and socialised for consume consume consume more more more. We could very easily stop destroying the earth and give back huge amounts of land for actual rewilding (not the fake kind with farmed animals) and wild, free animals would roam about the planet.
But we'd have to get out of the mindset that humans are meant to dominate and control and be just another species doing its thing.
Maybe things can get better once Musk and Bezos can terraform Mars for all the rich, smart, tech-lovin' folks and they all go there and leave us the hell alone. (Sigh... I gotta dream, right?)
Seriously though -- very well stated as always, Caitlin. Thanks for helping to guide us toward that 2nd adulthood!
Thing will never improve until we start working together and collectively develop the back bone plus matching mental acumen to turn things around in our favor.
As it is we're all scared of the uniformed and armed bullies with all their taxpayer funded sadistic tortuous equipment - I don't blame anyone for being scared - ''while there are many noble reasons to advocate that the people use nonviolent struggle, the most strategic one is this: by using violent means, we will have chosen the very type of struggle in which our opponents excel. Their superiority is unquestionable at this time''.
We really need to start working together - much like - If we don't hang together surely we'll all hang separately.
For starters It appears crucial to become the dominant voice on various media outlets so that the official narrative is at least challenged with the truth.
Fair call - however I cannot be advocating for a bloodbath.
This is one of the reasons why the uniformed should be convinced to side with the people - In the end - they're all under oath to protect us and not the interests of outside entities like the WHO and it's logic defying pandemic treaty.
In reality there is no requirement to re form us for the sake of humanity. That’s heading to yet another collective. So far a failed solution.
Let’s consider instead the lowest common denominator as the solution. That’s each of us. It’s not the rules we make between us which are the problem, (and you state the problem as it is) it’s the authoritarian tendency which seizes so many people who think they know better. Let them know better on their tiny plot of land and let them leave us to know better on ours. The summary is don’t hurt other people and don’t take their stuff. Lots of faux philosophy to find other routes but leave us the fuck alone is pretty compelling.
“Let them know better on their tiny plot of land and let them leave us to know better on ours.”
In general, I’m with you on this (especially what you say about the authoritarian tendency of many people). With regard to our separate small plots of land, it gets a little more complicated if my tiny plot of land is on the river upstream from your plot and I decide to make a pig farm or a coal mine. So the only way a “live and let live” philosophy works well is if everyone else is committed to it as you are. And that requires us to have live and let live as a basic collective value (which is usually so obvious to everyone that it doesn't even need to be stated). No priests or kings are needed to formalize and enforce that value. English common law evolved essentially from the process of neighbors working things out together over many generations. It can be done. Unfortunately, once the process is formalized by creating a sitting legislature to endlessly spin out laws, things go to hell. As the cliche goes, no one is safe when the legislature is session.
Your laying into the fake politics and the media propaganda is fine and I'm on board but your exhortations to wake/grow up are unfortunately let down by your apparent belief in the climate catastrophe scam (as distinct from environmental care), really just another of their invented enemies tricks to dragoon us. That you believe that evidence free one but not the others looks odd. Love what you do though.
I call it 'selective skepticism.' Easy to criticize other people's beliefs, not so easy to criticize our own. Not unusual really. Most people operate that way.
I enjoy debating people who consider the world their backyard. It was 100 deg. F in Stantaigo Chile over the WINTER there as well as melt point in Antarctica. Interesting how
"None of the world’s worst people are in prison. Most of them are quite wealthy and respected, because they benefit from the abusive status quo that laws are set up to protect."
I call this the "wealthy white American male syndrome." They're immune to prosecution and jail time. I'll bet my last dollar that the Trump Derangement Syndrome folks are going to be crying when the bad Orange Man walks free and never spends a day in jail... But just look at what the laws were set up to protect. It's not the ordinary folk.
They'll explode from all the built up pressure of never looking in the mirror or even halfway considering that they did it to themselves by abandoning their base.
This gets into some critically important ground that needs further exploration. Caitlin rarely emphasizes the environmental crises bearing down on us, which are more important than all the social and international justice stuff she focuses on--but those don't get enough play from the honest perspective she takes, and are closely connected to the environmental crises--it's about a culture based on domination trying to devour everything in its path.
Nate Hagens has done a series of interviews on what he calls The Great Simplification, many of them well worth watching/listening. But his flaw in my opinion, is a notion that the current human behavior driving all this is inherent, that all creatures strive to maximize energy use--he doesn't recognize the degree to which a minority of powerful sociopaths--and the narrative they craft and push-- are driving all this. And that there IS an alternative, that humans are not inherently hung up on maximizing consumption Here Caitlin hints that this element of the dominant culture, first of all was deliberately crafted by Bernays et al, to keep the economy going strong, and secondly has a lot to do with EGO. That can use some further exploration.
Eighty years ago French Philosopher Simone Weil told us everything we have to know about political parties :
“Therefore the essential tendency of all political parties is towards totalitarianism, first on the national scale and then on the global scale. And it is precisely because the notion of the public interest which each party invokes is itself a fiction, an empty shell devoid of all reality, that the quest for total power becomes an absolute need. Every reality necessarily implies a limit – but what is utterly devoid of existence cannot possibly encounter any form of limitation. It is for this reason that there is a natural affinity between totalitarianism and mendacity.”—
Weil, Simone. On the Abolition of All Political Parties (NYRB Classics) (pp. 15-16). New York Review Books. Kindle Edition
Sorry, you get things badly wrong. This is the Big lie at the heart of the Neoliberal Disaster, parading under the banner of "public choice theory":
"the notion of the public interest which each party invokes is itself a fiction"
The commons are real. The public interest is real. Collective action is real.
The fact that totalitarians have invoked it to justify their twisted reality does not per se mean it is sham.
The material realities of nature are real enough, but the idea of them having their own "interest" (really ours, projected onto it by us) is, regardless of how useful, nonetheless a fiction and an error. Collective action isn't really "real" either. Action is real, and aligned action is very effective, but the attribution of that action to some particular collectivity is usually an error, usually one intended to *constitute* the intersubjectivity it pretends to report on.
You may want to read Polanyi's classic text "The Great Transformation".
I guess why someone said "Democracy" requires eternal vigilance, and I'm to lazy right now to google who said it - so not vigilant myself this morning.
I don't believe however in the opposite: some kind of magical society that has no judicial system without judges etc and institutions to protect the public good. An Ayn Randian based society would result in just more inverted Totalitarianism - ending up in oligarchic control and corporatism. Which is, I assume, not what you are implying but putting in my two cents here.
As usual in any human endeavor, there needs to be some kind of maintained balance - which is clearly what we don't have in the US right now.
Led by a senile gerontokakistocracy, owned by same. The Human Consciousness is stuck in Georgian Times... die/ peasants/pissants/die...
Yep, gerontocracy and kakistocracy... Them's fighting words all right. https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com/p/fighting-words
You nailed this one Caitlin. It comes down to the human heart. Sadly I don't see that changing outside of a miracle.
A current underappreciated trend is people increasingly going back to church, recognizing we need a Saviour because we can't save ourselves.
“…we need a savior because we can’t save ourselves.”
Isn’t that exactly what our rulers want us to believe?
As a species, we've abnegated the responsibility for our own lives to psychopaths posing as politicians. We're too lazy to save ourselves besides the TV's always thoughtfully there for us, what with the hamster wheel of football & soap operas, what more does diddums want? More popcorn? Softer sofa? Let's hear it for television! 1:45 minutes of it is right here: https://vimeo.com/10857606
Wow, it's funny you say that. Just from my own experience this last Sunday in my backyard of a few dozen observed church parking lots, you are so right. I have been watching that trend over the last year and only recently big leap in numbers, or people are each driving cars ha.
Interesting but not surprising. But also alarming, if the populace rallies behind a given theism, such as the Christian Right in the US, the country could very well end up becoming a theocracy. Chris Hedges wrote a book on this very topic. Personally I'm not against people practicing whatever religion or spirituality they want, but I do believe in the separation of church and state. But we may be headed in that direction - just needs a really good/effective demagogue to start the show.
It comes down to the idiot classes who strive, ultimately. Moral perfectionism is slavery to someone else's dream, nothing more.
I often wondered what had happened to mainstream media that made it okay to flat out lie and hide inconvenient truths and create a narrative of the author’s (or sponsor’s) liking. I read this article by Robert Malone on Substack about a year and a half ago and was instantly brought up to speed where some of the problems come from. It’s a good read if you have the time!
https://open.substack.com/pub/rwmalonemd/p/advocacy-journalism-is-propaganda?r=eygz9&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
The MSM is owned by the financial elite - They hire editors who decide what to publish while the journalist / stenographers who've decided to remain soon learn that when the ''editor'' doesn't like and won't publish their writings they simply don't get paid.
Then there are gekaufte journalisten.
Remember Udo Ulfkotte?
I didn’t remember Udo Ulfkotte but looked him up. I can see the correlation. Seems regimes have changed over time but the government’s push for propaganda has not, nor the media’s appetite for it....!
Udo Ulfkotte owned up how he had been receiving payments to place his name under pre-written articles [by a well known brand of alphabet soup]
He wrote a book ''Gekaufte Journalisten'' which is hard to find in English [from memory they stopped the print]
Government's push for propaganda appears to have become a runaway train - Canberra submissively follows Washington's illogical narrative as if their next paycheck depended on doing so [which it does] and lets mention that Obama legalized the use of propaganda via the NDAA.
The Canberra government doesn't even rise to the occasion to counter that propaganda even when it was exposed as such by for example Andrew Wilkie who had his career as a senior analist for ASIO ruined as a direct result for revealing the truth about those non existing WMD's in Iraq.
The response to 9-11 was about a lot of things like for example launching PNAC which required a massive global propaganda campaign.
For example - Cheney's oil maps* were signed by many nations long before the lie based response to 9-11 here's the thing it required a propaganda campaign in order to get public ''approval''.
Cheney's oil maps >>
Cheneys oil maps foreign suitors
The thing is that Russian and Chinese companies signed up with Cheney to profit from the invasion of Iraq.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/maps-and-charts-of-iraqi-oil-fields/ - Charts of Iraqi Oil Fields
look at the list of foreign suitors part 1&2.
Maybe have a look at this; not the most comprehensive and certainly not the best quality, but it backs your piece up (which is better) on how the media changed:
https://odysee.com/@Starseed:6/The-Truth-about-the-Mainstream-Media:0
I've gone down the rabbit hole seen much of that previously - reminds me of that time the Canadian PM delivered an identical speech to that of AU PM John Howard - https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=eaZeQ2qUBs4
MSM Editors know full well what to publish and what will displease their masters.
Indeed it's all about full spectrum control and goes way back to the first world war and before that.
Since Warburg and Rotschild were mentioned in the clip....
It's always a good time to get the word out to the propagandized MSM watching masses to learn exactly who it was that bailed out a bankrupt Nazi party during the 1930's before the second world war and are still reaping the benefits of what happened during those dark days.
I don't believe that many people realize exactly how just about every single European nation liberated by the US became a US vassal state - Australia is no different - Every single nation that's not a US vassal state is automatically regarded as the enemy...a threat to US interests which is full spectrum control over every drop of water every grain of sand every square millimeter on the planet.
Another thing that occurred during the 1930's was governments ordering their citizens to hand over privately held gold bullion in exchange for a worthless piece of paper called a gold certificate.
So where did the gold end up? [with private bankers]
This becomes rather suspicious when you take into consideration that European nations were persuaded to have their gold bullions stored in the US [for safekeeping]
How did they know? [unsurprisingly when one learns who did the financing]
How bankers helped the Nazis - https://www.smh.com.au/business/how-bankers-helped-the-nazis-20130801-2r1fd.html
History: Hitler was Financed by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England - https://www.globalresearch.ca/history-of-world-war-ii-nazi-germany-was-financed-by-the-federal-reserve-and-the-bank-of-england/5530318
Now think of Venezuela who are having great difficulties in having their nations gold bullion repatriated and then think of the Russian Federation and the Chinese Republic both who happen to have significant amounts of gold bullion and are unsurprisingly in the Neocons crosshairs.
I cannot say much more; but have a couple of things... Because we are disarmed... we are thought of easy meat (UK and EU in general... not all)... just to get it off my chest; BUT HOW WRONG THEY ARE !.
Now .. regards your comment "I don't believe that many people realize exactly how just about every single European nation liberated by the US became a US vassal state - Australia is no different" ... God I wish you had not brought that up; because whilst the masses will believe that; there is also another European nation called the UK.
But I THINK and obviously bias being English; that we turned from a military power into a soft power... I MEAN JUST LOOK AROUND YOU (need to look slightly deeper than the MSM as you know); but who is pushing the Ukrainian conflict, who is attacking Syria.. which UK globalist parasitical puppets are the gob s.h.1t3s at the UN, GOP, WEF blah blah blah... WHO actually and publicly announced the WEF Great Reset") ?? ... no not Klaus Schwab; but this inbred King Charles of ours (look it up, if you do not believe me). Who runs the secret services like the MI6 and CIA ???? ... SURPRISE. Who has the history, the architecture in society to run all the dodgy stuff ???... a 300 year old state or one that dates back 10 x that ???...and so on and so on...
Last point regards your comment "This becomes rather suspicious when you take into consideration that European nations were persuaded to have their gold bullions stored in the US [for safekeeping]"... and mostly UK; but never mind that for now...
Your link on the bankers is well received; could this have been their first or second try at what is happening now ie a totalitarian takeover ??
The UK was never liberated by the US and the allies - The city of London and the crown corporation is at the heart of power - financial power = political power.
So who has control over all that finance? To give an idea perhaps read ''The City of London'' https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/the-city-of-london/
In the end financial power is one of the crucial ingredients for global domination.
As for - have they tried this before - I think it's multigenerational so it's ongoing.
As for the public and having personal weapons this is both a good and a bad thing.
The US citizenry have to be one the most armed up people on the planet - however when it comes down to loss of civil rights and freedoms - being armed up doesn't appear to have made a scintilla of a difference - while the uniformed - and not only in the US - are being equipped with numerous military style weapons and sadistical devices such as tasers to pepper sprays to sound weapons all the way to receiving crowd control training in the human rights violating apartheid state situated in occupied Palestine - all funded by the taxpayer.
In the case of the US - Being armed doesn't appear to make much difference however neither do I think it is a particularly bright idea to have a unarmed public while the authorities are shredding civil rights and freedoms like never before and while committing numerous war crimes for which they refuse to be held accountable. [Exceptionalism = Fascism]
There are many good arguments for being able to defend oneself against tyranny as that's what's really happening.
Re totalitarian takeover - Trade agreements with sovereignty shredding ISDS provisions are another way of manipulating and controlling a government whom's policies are not in line with the financial agenda of the multinational financial elite.
Whilst you explain it better... I think we are saying the same thing are we not ?
Indeed we're pretty much on the same page but thanks I'm tempted to provide a little more background information just in case there's other people reading who would like to get up to the same page.
Nothing. "The news" is the inner life of property, performed as a cosmic drama. It was never intended to provide information, but to shape and motivate what the ownership class thinks and feels.
"Remember the *Maine*!"
Many years ago I graduated and began to practice law. After s short time I learned from personal experience that what Caitlin asserts in paragraph two is true and immediately withdrew from practice. Best decision I every made!
Human nature is remarkably consistent throughout the ages. The human species is also remarkably ingenious and adaptable. The human race will continue, albeit maybe at a reduced total number and a reduced standard of living. The future of human existence may become grueling, violent, and short once again, but it will continue.
The human population is apparently reducing itself already; people don't need to have 12 children in order to end up with 6 living ones anymore and rising GDPs in 'developing' counties, and the education and emancipation of women leads to lower birth rates. China is already shrinking as people chose a higher standard of living. Some are starting to say we need to give incentives to women to have the required numbers of babies (and therefore penalties for those women who don't do their duty) in order to pay our pensions and healthcare in ageing populations.
Instead we could be planning how to live without capitalisms need for constant growth. People could live in smaller towns where we knew and cared for each other with healthier and independent OAPs. There'd be less nationalism and no proxy wars. But Caitlin is right; we're programmed and socialised for consume consume consume more more more. We could very easily stop destroying the earth and give back huge amounts of land for actual rewilding (not the fake kind with farmed animals) and wild, free animals would roam about the planet.
But we'd have to get out of the mindset that humans are meant to dominate and control and be just another species doing its thing.
Oddly optimistic, yet sad given humanity's potential to not have such a dystopic future.
And who's to say it did not happen before, many times over.
The word, 'Privilege' means 'Private Law'.
Maybe things can get better once Musk and Bezos can terraform Mars for all the rich, smart, tech-lovin' folks and they all go there and leave us the hell alone. (Sigh... I gotta dream, right?)
Seriously though -- very well stated as always, Caitlin. Thanks for helping to guide us toward that 2nd adulthood!
Thing will never improve until we start working together and collectively develop the back bone plus matching mental acumen to turn things around in our favor.
As it is we're all scared of the uniformed and armed bullies with all their taxpayer funded sadistic tortuous equipment - I don't blame anyone for being scared - ''while there are many noble reasons to advocate that the people use nonviolent struggle, the most strategic one is this: by using violent means, we will have chosen the very type of struggle in which our opponents excel. Their superiority is unquestionable at this time''.
We really need to start working together - much like - If we don't hang together surely we'll all hang separately.
For starters It appears crucial to become the dominant voice on various media outlets so that the official narrative is at least challenged with the truth.
Our opponents will choose violent struggle, whether we choose it or not.
It's not as if they got to where they are by playing fair.
Good point.
Fair call - however I cannot be advocating for a bloodbath.
This is one of the reasons why the uniformed should be convinced to side with the people - In the end - they're all under oath to protect us and not the interests of outside entities like the WHO and it's logic defying pandemic treaty.
Lawmakers and soldiers swear to uphold the Constitution.
The Constitution, however, has long been a dead letter.
True however to be clear are we talking about the same constitution? [AU]
Trade agreements with their ISDS provisions are sovereignty shredding all on their own.
I'm in the US but it wouldn't matter. The state does what it wants.
Thank the universe for cosmic radiation.
Yes but… not so sure about your solution.
In reality there is no requirement to re form us for the sake of humanity. That’s heading to yet another collective. So far a failed solution.
Let’s consider instead the lowest common denominator as the solution. That’s each of us. It’s not the rules we make between us which are the problem, (and you state the problem as it is) it’s the authoritarian tendency which seizes so many people who think they know better. Let them know better on their tiny plot of land and let them leave us to know better on ours. The summary is don’t hurt other people and don’t take their stuff. Lots of faux philosophy to find other routes but leave us the fuck alone is pretty compelling.
“Let them know better on their tiny plot of land and let them leave us to know better on ours.”
In general, I’m with you on this (especially what you say about the authoritarian tendency of many people). With regard to our separate small plots of land, it gets a little more complicated if my tiny plot of land is on the river upstream from your plot and I decide to make a pig farm or a coal mine. So the only way a “live and let live” philosophy works well is if everyone else is committed to it as you are. And that requires us to have live and let live as a basic collective value (which is usually so obvious to everyone that it doesn't even need to be stated). No priests or kings are needed to formalize and enforce that value. English common law evolved essentially from the process of neighbors working things out together over many generations. It can be done. Unfortunately, once the process is formalized by creating a sitting legislature to endlessly spin out laws, things go to hell. As the cliche goes, no one is safe when the legislature is session.
Your laying into the fake politics and the media propaganda is fine and I'm on board but your exhortations to wake/grow up are unfortunately let down by your apparent belief in the climate catastrophe scam (as distinct from environmental care), really just another of their invented enemies tricks to dragoon us. That you believe that evidence free one but not the others looks odd. Love what you do though.
You think we don't see a new bot account performing this same song and dance on every post for the fossil fuel rights owners?
sigh I think you confirm my point with your attack on me.
I call it 'selective skepticism.' Easy to criticize other people's beliefs, not so easy to criticize our own. Not unusual really. Most people operate that way.
I enjoy debating people who consider the world their backyard. It was 100 deg. F in Stantaigo Chile over the WINTER there as well as melt point in Antarctica. Interesting how
media ignored it.
Thinking about media content as cartoon show is useful indeed.
The daytime television or "soap opera" framing is also very useful.
Brings a new dimension to Biden falling from stairs and losing memory.
Last two paragraphs were excellently stated. Great work.
"None of the world’s worst people are in prison. Most of them are quite wealthy and respected, because they benefit from the abusive status quo that laws are set up to protect."
I call this the "wealthy white American male syndrome." They're immune to prosecution and jail time. I'll bet my last dollar that the Trump Derangement Syndrome folks are going to be crying when the bad Orange Man walks free and never spends a day in jail... But just look at what the laws were set up to protect. It's not the ordinary folk.
They'll explode from all the built up pressure of never looking in the mirror or even halfway considering that they did it to themselves by abandoning their base.
I love you Jane : )
Quote: Everyone wants change and nobody wants to change.
ABSOLUTELY and THIS is the CORE of the PROBLEM!
re: consuming the ecosystem: they still fantasize about 'virtual' consumption (subscriptions, intellectual property, copyrights ...) ...
This gets into some critically important ground that needs further exploration. Caitlin rarely emphasizes the environmental crises bearing down on us, which are more important than all the social and international justice stuff she focuses on--but those don't get enough play from the honest perspective she takes, and are closely connected to the environmental crises--it's about a culture based on domination trying to devour everything in its path.
Nate Hagens has done a series of interviews on what he calls The Great Simplification, many of them well worth watching/listening. But his flaw in my opinion, is a notion that the current human behavior driving all this is inherent, that all creatures strive to maximize energy use--he doesn't recognize the degree to which a minority of powerful sociopaths--and the narrative they craft and push-- are driving all this. And that there IS an alternative, that humans are not inherently hung up on maximizing consumption Here Caitlin hints that this element of the dominant culture, first of all was deliberately crafted by Bernays et al, to keep the economy going strong, and secondly has a lot to do with EGO. That can use some further exploration.