Can We Find Unity in Collapse?

It’s just going to take a leap in human consciousness, that’s all.

This is not the kind of unity we want.

First, a huge thanks. I pleaded for paid subscriptions in my last article (not my style) and feel grateful for the dozen people who stepped up. Wow. In the last month I’ve added about 150 new subscribers overall, and I am thrilled to have each and every one of you. I’ve worked hard at this endeavor for years now, and readers and your conversations keep me going when I’m tired. And who’s not tired these days? I’m happy to have been able to publish four times this month. With my father’s recent death and need to relocate my mother, it’s been challenging. I’m thankful for my family, we’re staying tight in this difficult situation. Family and friends are what life is about.

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Humanity is in its greatest crisis ever, a culmination of sociopathic behavior endemic to our species which allowed to run free quickly yields psychopathic, murderous results. Such behavior is a feature, not an anomaly, for a significant percentage of Homo sapiens. Although our first thoughts may turn to Hitler and Nazi Germany as the penultimate horrifying example, the genocide in Gaza starkly illustrates our continued, consistent ability to commit what should be unthinkable crimes against other humans. Although our laughable main stream media brought to you by Big Pharma and ButtZentia^®, “The once a month injectable so you can be at peace with your big sorry ass because who and what you are don’t count ^TM,” rarely touches the subject, and genocide is a ubiquitous, continuous state of behavior.

Genocide in the 1948 Geneva Convention is defined as, “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Acts falling under the definition include: killing members of the group, causing serious physical or mental harm to members of the group, intentionally subjecting the group to living conditions intended to cause its physical destruction, in whole or in part, imposing measures aimed at preventing the birth of children within the group, and forcibly transferring children from the group to another group.

Thinking of Nazi Germany first also minimizes the historic crimes of other colonizing nations. Columbus sailed for Queen Isabella of Spain, initiating hundreds of years of brutal murder and colonization of the indigenous people of South and Central America and Mexico. The British subjugated India and installed Apartheid in South Africa. The Dutch committed crimes against humanity in the Congo for rubber. Severing workers’ hands for low production was popular. Better type faster as Big Boss monitors your keyboard strokes, people.

Fortunately, many dead worker’s severed hands have gone on to have great careers. This is the brilliance of capitalism.

However, the US, with the distinction of being the most powerful empire of all time whose wealth was built on genocide and slavery, deserves special accolades. Let’s face it. For an ambitious empire, the initial conquering of North America was not enough. We needed good slogans like “Manifest Destiny” and “American Exceptionalism” to morally justify continued brutal force to expand power. Slogans are hard, just think of the effort I put in on ButtZentia^®. Fortunately, the powerful mantra of bringing “Freedom and Democracy” is good for any occasion. Just ask any dead Iraqi.

Here’s a Snickers Fun Size list of random crimes for the purpose of this article. Oh, BTW, Snickers is a Mars brand linked to deforestation in African national parks from illegally growing cocoa in protected areas of the Ivory Coast and Ghana. In those parks and other protected areas, 90% or more of the land mass has been converted to cocoa. Chew on that. Fuck elephants, giraffes, and lions. Snickers^®®® really satisfies™™™. They also make Obit, um, I mean ORBIT^®®® gum. Sweet.

Tano-Offin forest under siege. Ghana’s deforestation is a result of massive population growth from 11.87 million in 1980 to 32.18 million in 2020, and slash and burn cocoa farms.

The town of Kyekyewere lies within Tano-Offin forest. Prospering, right? Cocoa farmers in West Africa receive just six percent of a chocolate bar's retail price. Photo by Awudu Salami Sulemana Yoda for Mongabay.

Elephant in the Bia Tano Forest Reserve. Enjoy your Mars candy bar. Photo by Rhett Butler for Mongabay.

But I digress. There are so many crimes of American Empire to choose from! Be sure to mention your favorites in the comments section! In 1845, we annexed Texas, resulting in the Mexican-American War. We stole Hawaii to further the interests of American-born sugar cane plantation owners. Our beloved CIA installed the brutal regime of the Shah of Iran for the interests of British Petroleum and trained his elite police force, the SAVAK, which disappeared dissidents for decades. We overthrew President Salvador Allende for having the temerity to advocate that Chile’s natural resources and industries belonged to his people. Imagine that. Nixon and Kissinger didn’t care for this, so the Chilean people got a steaming pile of Augusto Pinochet. With sensitivity and kindness, his military dictatorship persecuted, jailed, and tortured tens of thousands, clearing the way for the first experiment in neoliberal economics. We used the horror of 911 as pretext for the Iraq War — the excuse being weapons of mass destruction which didn’t exist — a lie forever staining the lips of and “legacy” of Colin Powell. International UN inspection teams had established there were NO WMDs. I listened to US weapons inspector Scott Ritter confirm this on MY PUBLIC RADIO STATION, for fuck’s sake, weeks before Congress SUBVERTED THE CONSTITUTION by giving the Dick Cheney puppet George W. Bush cosplay sack of dumb draft dodger carte blanche power to declare war.

Tell me they didn’t know the truth about the WMDs. Yeah, right.

Dolt. Liar. Pretender. Elected twice. Just brilliant. Getty photo.

Capitalism was an unsustainable model for a tiny minority who benefitted, including a briefly created, now nearly extinct middle class, an anomaly in a much longer history of aristocracy versus serfs. Yes, I refer to capitalism in the past tense because the foundation on which it was built — the foundation of ALL wealth and material possession regardless of political system — was constructed from gouging the body of Mother Earth, disrupting her life support systems, toxifying her air and water, and giving her a fever that she shall survive, but quite possibly not you and me.

Capitalism has been a brief mirage stealing from having a viable future, and creating a mass delusion that we are above nature. It was built on the resources of coal and oil whose finiteness we have refused to acknowledge or use sparingly and wisely, just as we have refused to acknowledge their destruction of an Earth that naturally gravitates to balance, a Homo sapiens and elephant friendly world. Let me emphasize this. The Earth does not need our stewardship. The Earth needs us to stop fucking her up. It’s that simple.

The Keynesian version of capitalism put in place by FDR after the pigs of the 1920s plunged the country into The Great Depression at least came with reasonable economic equity and social safety nets. The virulent neoliberal version of capitalism which has swept the globe since the early 1970s has no human virtue whatsoever, a system far more grievous in human and planetary destruction that claims free markets and personal liberties, or freedom, are one and the same. They are not. In fact, with a 50-year track record of privatizing country after country’s natural resources and industries through force and violence, they are the exact opposite. This economic conspiracy has been for one purpose only, the creation of an environment in which multinational corporations can pillage The Commons at fire sale prices on our burning planet.

Suddenly, we Americans notice as the bastards come for their own. Duh. The problem has been here for over 50 years.

Setting aside the inherent unsustainability of any type of capitalism, the neocapitalist version, since the Reagan years, has bled out the ability of a family of four to live on one income. It’s been an insidious erosion as the rising oligarchy steals from a finite amount of available wealth, all extracted from the planet. Now, the vampires have come for their last available victims full force and pathetically, enough Americans were so ignorant as to vote for the disaster that is now dismantling not just the economy and social safety nets, but the dwindling hope to mitigate the harsh realities of overshoot and climate change that we are JUST BEGINNING TO FEEL.

Although Biden’s feeble, uneven attempts to slow climate change were far short of averting disaster, this election gave license to the most ignorant and hateful who care only for profiting from wealth built on death.

Either of our corporate election choices was destined to implode the planet. Neither the flaccid Democrats nor the vile Republicans provide the radical, emergency answers now needed. It was just a matter of how fast we hit bottom. We’ve been on an oily fun park ride, and now we’re heading for the house of horrors. Much of the damage we’ve done is simply irreversible. CO₂ will continue to warm the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Tipping points are falling, climate migration is under way, and the oligarchs are pedal to the metal, mowing down forests for cheeseburgers and chocolate bars. We are beyond politics now. They’re openly finishing us off, either with deliberation, or passivity. Salvaging what we can is up to you and me.

Trump and Musk are attempting to break everything in government, pretend it was government corruption and incompetence, then privatize the shit out of everything, providing a new opportunity to impoverish and enslave us further with far worse and more expensive services. It’s an old playbook foisted on us by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economics.

Finally, there are signs that anesthetized Americans are waking up, but the question becomes can we find unity? For all those that recognize climate change, there are huge numbers that still think it’s a lefty conspiracy, and far greater numbers are completely unaware of overshoot. Overshoot is critical to understand. There is only one sane, viable path forward. Degrowth is a plan that would allow us to work less, realize our humanity, and become stewards of the planet. You see, life isn’t about freedom, it’s about responsibility. In shouldering responsibility — taking care of our home and each other — lies achievement and in achievement lies meaning, and in meaning lies happiness.

A few nights ago, I watched a documentary about Canada’s vast boreal forests. Sandpipers stop over on their annual migration, and their most fearsome adversary is the peregrine falcon, the fastest animal on Earth. When attacked, the sandpipers take to the air in the thousands to confuse their enemy and protect each other. Safety in numbers. People, we have the numbers.

Inevitably, the falcon which can dive at blinding speeds over 200 mph claims a victim, but the flock goes on. We must flock and accept that some of us will pay the ultimate price to save as many and as much as possible. As in my last post — organize locally, boycott for the rest of your life, support unions, sick out and strike. Let me add one more. Support Greenpeace. They’re in a fight for their life in the US from a SLAPP lawsuit, an abbreviation for a strategic lawsuit against public participation. Consider those words and implications carefully. The suit is from Energy Transfer, a Dallas-based fossil fuel company. It’s in retaliation for supporting an indigenous community in North Dakota to defend against the Dakota Access Pipeline being rammed through the community, which will carry 750,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Such pipelines ALWAYS leak sooner or later, and jeopardize these people’s health and safety. It’s also a huge litmus test for your ability and mine to retain safe free speech. The remarkable environmentalist Max Wilbert (who writes Biocentric here) has suffered one of these suits by standing with the indigenous people of Thacker Pass, Nevada, over a massive lithium mining operation. I wrote of it, Showdown at Thacker Pass, in 2022. There is nothing green about lithium, and the operation is now destroying the environment and the burial grounds of these people’s ancestors.

It’s an incredibly important case, and SLAPP suits should be illegal, as the sheer force of money is putting us in the position of permanent economic hardship for speaking up for OUR planet.

Ultimately, the Earth decides everything. We must take her back.