Weeds too are precious in the Great Transition. Especially when they frame Mother Moon.
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We’re Evolving to a New World
14 FebAbout the Truth and Traditions Party USA
In response to peak oil, climate change, and continuing economic crises, we’re organizing a Truth and Traditions Party in all 50 states this year, 2011, so that we can hold primaries and run or endorse candidates in all 435 Districts for the US House of Representatives in 2012. Our modest aim is to become a “decisive” or log-jam breaking party in the House. If, for example, there were 214 Republicans elected and 209 Democrats, our 12 TNT Representatives could exert great leverage for Truth, Traditions, Transition legislation – and against the tremendous waste encouraged by big corporations feeding at the trough of big government.
No2War
13 FebThis sign is by Jersey Joe, aka Rime. It used to be seen by 1000s of people a day as they drove West out of New York City from the Holland Tunnel. It’s no longer there; the building was demolished. But the aspiration hangs in the air.
Revolution, New Style, aka Transition
12 FebDumbeks along the Mississippi
The people of Egypt are writing a new chapter in the book of revolution. The story is by no means complete. We have no way of knowing how deep the changes will go. Mubarak has stepped down. But just what it means that the “higher council of the armed forces will lead the nation,” as Mubarak’s hand-picked VP has said, we don’t know. Nor, I suspect, does that higher council, or the protesters.
What does that mean for US here in the USA? Yes, it means the Middle East and Northern Africa are in transition and we’ve got to change our foreign policy. But that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is here, on the ground, in the USofA. What do we do about OUR government?
No, we’ve not been living under a state of emergency for three decades. And, yes, we do have democratic elections, local, state, and federal. But one can’t help but believe that the fix is in. Writing in The New York Times (of all places), Bob Herbert observes:
While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.
We are being ruled by a class of people that is out of touch with life on the ground, and that has enough money that they need no longer walk the same soil with the rest of us. They look like us, talk like us, and walk like us. But more and more, they are less and less like us. They are becoming aliens. Our alien overlords.
How do we get out from under them? We don’t want violence, we don’t want bloodshed. But we want to turn the country around and march to the future, not admire our accomplishments in the mirror of the past. Those accomplishments were built on abundant resources and those resources are becoming scarce. Even as the oil runs out, the peoples of Asia, Africa, and South America are calling for their just share of the world’s resources. The world is changing and the Democrats and the Republicans in the USofA don’t know it. They’re doing their damnedest to keep the old machines running.
What happens when those machines run out of oil?
We can’t wait for them to wake. What can we do now to reclaim our lives and our future? And how to we regain control of our political system? The Egyptians have made their move in a political system that has far less room for movement than our system has. Let’s not let our relative freedom trick us into believing we can rest secure in business as usual. To quote Bob Herbert again, “the Egyptians want to establish a viable democracy, and that’s a long, hard road. Americans are in the mind-bogglingly self-destructive process of letting a real democracy slip away.”
The Egyptians have begun the arduous, but fulfilling task of rebuilding their society from the ground up. Let’s take their new beginning as a call for us to emulate them and do the same in our world.
The American Economy is Grinding to a Halt
7 FebRichard Heinberg is posting drafts from his new book in progress, The End of Growth (New Society Publishers). “The Sound of Air Escaping” explains why the American economy is grinding to a halt, with little chance of continuing forward on its present path. He observes:
During the 1930s, industrialized countries were in the early stages of their shift from an agrarian coal-based rural economy to an electrified, oil-based, urban economy—a shift that required enormous infrastructure investments (in new highways, airports, dams, and power lines) that would ultimately pay off handsomely for a nation on the verge of realizing a consumer utopia. All that was needed to initiate the building of that infrastructure was credit—grease for the wheels of commerce. Government got those wheels rolling by taking on debt, with private companies increasingly taking up the lead after World War II. The expansion that occurred from the 1950s through 2000, as that infrastructure was built out and put to use, easily justified the government pump-priming that initiated the process. Interest payments on the government debt could be paid through growth of the tax base.
Now is different. … both the U.S. and the world as a whole have passed a fundamental crossroads characterized by increasing scarcity of energy and crucial minerals. Because of this, strategies of growth that worked spectacularly well in the mid-to-late 20th century—via various forms of business and technological development—have reached a point of diminishing returns.
He concludes:
If the Keynesian remedy doesn’t cure the ailment but merely extends the suffering (while increasing government debt to truly toxic levels), the medicine of austerity may have such severe side effects that it could kill the patient outright. Both sides—left and right, the socialists and free-marketers—assume and hope to the point of desperation that their prescription will result in a rapid return to continuous economic growth and low unemployment. … that hope is futile.
There is no “silver bullet,” no magic solution that will turn back the clock to an era of abundant resources and easy growth. For now, all that governments can do is buy time through further deficit spending—ideally, using that time to build infrastructure that will continue to function in the coming era of reduced flows of energy and resources. Meanwhile, we must all find ways to come out from under a burden of debt that will otherwise crush us. The inherent contradiction within this prescription is obvious but unavoidable.
The entire chapter is online as MuseLetter #224; you can also download a PDF (214 KB).
Under Construction
4 FebWe just started building this joint, so bear with us while we creating something out of nothing. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments.
Thanks,
Bill (aka kubla) & Charlie
Walk Like an Egyptian: Protest the Fat Cats
4 FebWriting in The Nation, Johann Hari spells out this fantasy:
Imagine a parallel universe where the Great Crash of 2008 was followed by a Tea Party of a very different kind. Enraged citizens gather in every city, week after week—to demand the government finally regulate the behavior of corporations and the superrich, and force them to start paying taxes. The protesters shut down the shops and offices of the companies that have most aggressively ripped off the country. The swelling movement is made up of everyone from teenagers to pensioners. They surround branches of the banks that caused this crash and force them to close, with banners saying, You Caused This Crisis. Now YOU Pay.
And he goes on to point out that it has happened:
This may sound like a fantasy—but it has all happened. The name of this parallel universe is Britain. As recently as this past fall, people here were asking the same questions liberal Americans have been glumly contemplating: Why is everyone being so passive? Why are we letting ourselves be ripped off? Why are people staying in their homes watching their flat-screens while our politicians strip away services so they can fatten the superrich even more?
And so a dozen British citizens decided to start protesting against Vodaphone, which had managed to to gull the government into forgiving £5 billion in taxes:
That first protest grabbed a little media attention—and then the next day, in a different city, three other Vodafone stores were shut down in the northern city of Leeds, by unconnected protests. UK Uncut realized this could be replicated across the country. So the group set up a Twitter account and a website, where members announced there would be a national day of protest the following Saturday. They urged anybody who wanted to organize a protest to e-mail them so it could be added to a Google map. Britain’s most prominent tweeters, such as actor Stephen Fry, joined in.
Could this happen in the USofA?
Peak Oil and Financial Decline
1 FebThe Nation has posted a video by James Howard Kunstler on Peak Oil and Our Financial Decline:
From the description of the video:
Kunstler suggests that “cheap abundant energy” has facilitated ever-increasing industrialization for centuries. But now that society is in a period of self-destructive capital accumulation, he expects debt to increase as abundance in energy drops. The tremendous amount of accumulated debt, “a by-product of cheap abundant energy,” will mean that in the future governments will be less able to make investments in socially-beneficial programs.
He also criticizes the US environmental movement for shying away from the problem of energy. The movement is unable to talk about walkable neighborhoods, smaller cities or investing in rail or water transit, an “intellectual failure of the culture to have a coherent conversation from people who ought to be leading” such a conversation.
Truth and Traditions 