You've succinctly expressed a conclusion I arrived at some time ago, thanks in part to dialog on The Oil Drum twenty years ago. The one thing I would add is a point I keep bringing up on my Substack - the only viable path out of this societal box canyon we've entered is a replacement for coal/oil/natural gas. While renewables are coming on strong, we have a bottomless supply of deuterium and all it will take is one company, perhaps Helion, mastering fusion, in order for there to be another epoch of growth. This won't fix all the other overshoot problems, but societies that can afford the initial investment have some hope of continuing. Here in California it's possible to envision a future wherein we stabilize our fresh water supply with desalination, and fumble forward with something like a mid-20th century standard of living.
With twenty years on the Oil Drum, I'm surprised that you think the problems of excess energy can only be resolved by more energy, based even more strongly on technology.
Howard Odum taught us that as a complexity, technology is merely a form of emergy, or embedded energy. And alternative energy (I hesitate to call it "renewable", as it is currently soaked in oil) is not immune to that.
Joseph Tainter taught us that civilizations fall because the cost of maintaining their increasing complexity increases until they can no longer serve the needs of their citizens.
<sarc>Surely, if energy got us into this situation, it can get us out!</sarc>
Environment, energy, economy - if any two were stable, we could fix the other. None of them are stable. If we have as much fusion based electricity as we can use, the 99.98% of non-deuterium hydrogen we liberate from water can be employed to make ammonia, which can then become nitrogen fertilizer, or a hydrogen bond bearer suitable for pipeline transport. That's a very different world than the one we know, but our grandparents, who grew up riding streetcars, would likely find it pleasing.
We scamper back down to a 1942 standard of living, or Mother Nature knocks us from this limb we've climbed out on and we land somewhere like 1492. Nate Hagens talks about a 300 watt per capita society. Maybe at least some of us can make it there; imaging so beats the heck out of any of the doomer prognostications.
I don't see environment nor economy as being equal partners with energy.
Eliminate energy, both environment and economy go away.
I would describe your views as "techno-cornucopian". Maybe it will happen that way, but all evidence I've seen indicates not.
1492, I wish! James Hansen thinks that, by the end of this century, we'll be reduced to a few hundred thousand, clustered around the poles. We may be lucky to have ox carts on our seasonal migrations south and north.
With increasing climate instability, we may quickly lose the ability to have grain agriculture, which is the basis for civilization and economy, since other food does not survive a turn of the seasons.
We'll lose a quarter of our cognitive capacity by 2100 based on current CO2 emissions. I think the most likely survivors will be in the Andes and Himalayas, those are the environments that will eliminate outsiders not evolved for their rigors, the weak right away, and even the strong won't be able to reproduce. Anywhere else that remains habitable will be subject to waves of migration.
There won't be any survivors. Radioactivity, release from spent fuel ponds whose cooling system are disabled due to a dead grid, will kill all complex life forms on this planets. Likely around 2,100. The "Great Reset" is truly coming.
Honestly can't tell if you're being serious or humorous. If serious, give this link a try. It might help you shed some of that insane optimism. (h/t Jan Bloxham)
I'm am neither insane nor optimistic. There's a post from early February on my Substack entitled "Mourning Mankind". I don't see a way out, but perhaps some kids are going to ignore my jaundiced views and prove me wrong.
Two generations of fusion scientists have retired and a third will be doing so soon...The problem with fusion is that the energy necessary to control a fusion reaction is so great that it consumes the energy produced, and then some...I doubt that the laws of thermodynamics allow for any workarounds of this conundrum...
Go have a look at the particulars of Helion's system. The people retiring have been part of the Tokamak jobs program, not focused efforts to produce energy. The largely aneutronic solid state "dumbbell" style reactor Helion is using has almost nothing in common, other than fusion, with the toroidal containment methods.
Fossil fuels created the unsustainable population the planet now carries. With the shrinking of them comes inflation, destroyed economies, homelessness, migration and desperation. These set the table for autocratic rule. I'm an American and participated in No Kings Day. The anti-Trump protestors far outnumbered his supporters. Many recognize that particular danger. However, I doubt the majority of them are familiar with overshoot, the ultimate driver of the future.
It's questionable at best whether humans survive the predicament we have created. Even without the threat of nuclear conflict, ever more extreme weather patterns and soil depletion threaten agriculture, as does the loss of fossil fuels to support that industrial agriculture. Plants and animals are unable to cope with the speed of change. There are a few trying to build local communities of diverse skills to survive, but regardless we are looking at a horrific, sudden collapse of population over just a handful of decades. This as permafrost melts poised to release more GHGs than we have pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
The ignorance of the majority of the populace, and the selfishness of the ruling class seal our fate. Those who see these things have little or no power to affect change at the scale or speed necessary.
Compared to the reign of dinosaurs, evidence of human existence in the geologic records will be a scant, thin layer.
"evidence of human existence in the geologic records will be a scant, thin layer."
Bronze.
In "The World Without Us", Alan Weisman thinks that bronze statuary may last a million or more years. As it turns out, Homo sapiens peaked in the Bronze Age — at least to the bonobos, canids, or cetaceans that may recreate civilization over the next million years.
Let's hope our statues serve as a warning sign, rather than a goal to strive for.
Well said (except for the part about Ukraine). Being invaded or being at war will always greatly distort politics. The US and its allies during WW2 were also much more fascistic than normal.
Just a couple of additional notes:
The collapse of modernity will be global and affect all complex societies, not just the US and Europe. China and the BRICS will not be exempt.
You're right about the lack of meaningful input from voters, but sometimes there comes an inflection in politics when an election matters a lot. I think it is safe to say that the US would look a lot different now if Kamala Harris were president instead of Trump. "Normal" politics would not prevent collapse, of course, but it might have prevented the slide into the dictatorship we are now entering. The 2024 election was probably the last one (at least at the national level).
Weird reading your texts in full agreement, then meeting a random bit of Russian propaganda. The Ukraine thing gave me whiplash. I recommend interrogating your sources on that subject with a more critical eye.
Yes, an unexpected link from B, which kind of ruined the piece for me. I'm no expert in Ukraine society and its leaders but I don't think any one nation should be picked out like that, especially as the list of fascism symptoms is, as admitted, arbitrary.
I did. You admitted you don’t know much about Ukraine, then dismissed a viewpoint you found uncomfortable. That’s exactly why I suggested informing yourself. If I were you, I would thank Natasha below for trying to make an effort and help.
This wikipedia page uses the word "nazi" 141 times. "There is broad agreement among observers that at its formation in Spring 2014, the Azov Battalion was associated with Neo-Nazi and far-right ideas, including through the use of symbolism and the political associations and statements of its leaders and cadre."
Some background on Ukrainian "integral nationalists" Before the Second World War, the Muslim Brotherhood forged ties with the Nazis against the British. Not surprisingly, all the anti-colonialist movements of the time (including India’s M.K. Gandhi) naturally turned to the Axis in search of an ally. In general, they distanced themselves as soon as they had verified their racism on the spot. However, the Brotherhood benefited from subsidies from the Third Reich during the years [2] and maintained these links throughout the war. When, at the Liberation, the British and American secret services took over many Nazi leaders and recycled them in their "Cold War" against the Soviets, they also took over the governance of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was therefore quite natural for the CIA to bring together Gerhard von Mende, the Nazi specialist in Islam in the Soviet Union, with Saïd Ramadan, the son-in-law of the Brotherhood’s founder. Ramadan had been in charge of a program on Pakistani public radio [3], so the CIA placed him in Munich at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. There, he hosted a program for Soviet Muslims and met Stepan Bandera, leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and his right-hand man, Yaroslav Stetsko, the former Ukrainian Nazi Prime Minister. It was precisely the "Banderists" (referred to as "Ukrainonazis" by the Kremlin, but calling themselves "integral nationalists") who carried out the 2014 coup ("EuroMaidan") against the elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych [4].
When in 2007 Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko designated Roman Shukhevych as a Hero of Ukraine, he brought new heat into the debate in Ukraine and in the international community about the role played by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) during the Nazi invasion and occupation of Ukraine from 1941 forward. Yushchenko also honored radical OUN leaders Iaroslav Stets’ko in 2007 and Stepan Bandera in 2010 for their roles in Ukrainian nationalist activism. Shukhevych is a flashpoint because he was both a leader of the OUN and, from 1941 to 1943, an officer in German military units (battalion Nachtigall and Schutzmannschaft battalion 201). His activities during this period provide additional evidence for the view that the OUN actively collaborated with Nazi military, and participated in mass murder against Jews and other atrocities. Per Anders Rudling provides a detailed account of Shukhevych’s history in “The Cult of Roman Shukhevych in Ukraine: Myth Making with Complications”
The Russian trolls are here. There is no merit to their nonsense. Russia is not threatened by NATO or Ukraine in any meaningful way prior to the invasion. Accusing others of nazism or fascism is a typical move in Kremlin's rhetorical arsenal, in which they cherry pick examples of "nazism" to justify aggression. But Russian aggression is blatantly imperialistic and fascistic - the accusation is only a deflection. Putin's fascist regime is waging a genocidal war on its neighbor, which has been brutalized and controlled by Russia in the past and wishes to escape this subjugation. The nature of this conflict and the Russian propaganda narratives are well-documented in scientific literature. Any claims to the contrary are either obfuscatory or ignorant.
Being critical of NATO or acknowledging the complexity of this conflict does not make someone a 'Russian troll.' That's exactly the kind of dismissive, absolutist rhetoric that shuts down honest debate and reinforces echo chambers.
NATO may present itself as defensive, but its track record — from Yugoslavia to Libya to Iraq via member states — shows it's hardly a passive actor on the global stage. It has expanded eastward for decades despite assurances to the contrary, and to pretend this context is irrelevant is intellectually dishonest.
You don't need to endorse Russian actions to recognize that branding all dissenting views as Kremlin propaganda is a lazy and dangerous way to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths. If we're going to call out propaganda, let's do it across the board — including ours.
And for the record: I won’t indulge in any further conversation if that’s the tone you’ve chosen to use.
Instead of "trolls" let's be adults? Russia tells us it was being threatened by NATO exercises in Ukraine and the build up of Ukrainian troops attacking ethnic Russians living in the east of Ukraine. And that Ukraine failed to implement the Minsk agreements to federalise the eastern Oblasts. And you have the arrogance to dismiss these legitimate issues, amongst many others, with a toss away "trolls" insult !?
"start a radically new form of governance in your home town"
This is possibly the easiest "freedom" to achieve, within the legal constraints of corporate law.
You can form a co-op, and thus, your own micro-governance.
At least in British Columbia, the Cooperative Associations Act is incredibly freeing, imposing few of society's "hard red lines" and severely limiting the power of money.
Of course, as with all good anarchies, that requires the willing consent of participants. If any one of them "layers up" because they don't like something, the whole thing can come crashing down — voice of experience, here.
As the recent calamity of Mountain Equipment Co-op shows, all a co-op needs is a compliant "on the take" board to put the whole thing back into the hands of the capitalists, stiffing the egalitarian Members at least $5,000,000.
The Players of the Great Game are busy creatively destroying The Game. The Players always have better ideas, derived from riffs on the old stream of ideas repackaged for sale anew. The Players build things up and knock them down. It's so exciting and heroic. We are living through the long demise that started centuries ago. Come what may, we still have today. Perhaps we can be kind, maybe even thankful—if we are fortunate enough. Yes, it's relative and none of us knows what life was like hundreds of years ago. We are WEIRD, pacified, and domesticated people in the Northern Anglosphere. We will nurse our addictions for a while longer if we willy-nilly avoid a strategic nuclear war. We will talk about, listen to stories, witness the events of the day, and do whatever we are compelled to do. Like the police detective in the film 'The Drop' says to the bartender, "No one ever sees you coming, do they, Bob?" Those of us who are enamoured by our understanding of things can lean in and whisper that to fate. No one wants to be prescient; we want to hang on to programmed dreams. Ordinary people will continue to suffer as they always have, yet revel in the wonder of it all. At least someone, or something, has a plan, and we can do what we must. https://youtu.be/HddbbLOvkIw?si=o6C3BoLEZnm-7hjE
Mussolini also edited Avanti, the socialist/communist paper in Italy, for a lengthy span before he started his Fascist movement. He was a contemporary of Lenin's and an admirer, at least at some point. He called himself the "Lenin of Italy" in 1919. Anywho, synthesizing Mussolini's beliefs is an interesting exercise because of this.
It's nice to read honest and reasonable appraisals.
I particularly liked the idea of our problems being decades in the making, although we can always choose a date further back. To be honest there's no starting point, although the end of WW2 was a reset of sorts (by the victors).
The other idea I find fascinating with your commentary is the fragility borne out of complexity. Maybe the decline will eventually move from the "slowly slowly" to the all at once, or maybe it'll continue in ebbs and flows for decades, as unlikely as it seems.
The total disconnect of the elites, and the existence of their Armageddon bunkers, doesn't presage anything good.
The current wars, especially the recent flare up between Israel and Iran (the Brookings ref is gold, but there's many more on so many subjects), combined with the creeping autocracies of Europe and North America, again, it's like waking up from a dream to wonder if this democratic experiment was just a narrative to acquiesce the populace while the inequalities went parabolic? And we've been self obviously bankrupt since '08, but no one wants to hear this, preferring to hold on to their lottery ticket (ex. Pensions) and pauper money.
If collapse is well underway why have the Brics nations brought millions out of poverty and into the middle classes?
This USA logic needs to be recognised for the gaslit nonsense it is.
The USA is not sustainable. The rest of the world is.
When the funding of war is placed before the people's needs then you have the USA and it's unsustainability. The global south places people's needs ahead of war. That is sustainable.
All of human industrial civilizations is unsustainable because it is made possible by draw down of finite non replenishing resources dug up from the ground.
In Beyond Civilization, Daniel Quinn used the term "hierarchicalism" to embrace the many phenomena you accurately describe.
About time too..
You've succinctly expressed a conclusion I arrived at some time ago, thanks in part to dialog on The Oil Drum twenty years ago. The one thing I would add is a point I keep bringing up on my Substack - the only viable path out of this societal box canyon we've entered is a replacement for coal/oil/natural gas. While renewables are coming on strong, we have a bottomless supply of deuterium and all it will take is one company, perhaps Helion, mastering fusion, in order for there to be another epoch of growth. This won't fix all the other overshoot problems, but societies that can afford the initial investment have some hope of continuing. Here in California it's possible to envision a future wherein we stabilize our fresh water supply with desalination, and fumble forward with something like a mid-20th century standard of living.
Read Entropy by Jeremy Rifkin. His look at the facts around an alternative approach to energy will sober us all up.
With twenty years on the Oil Drum, I'm surprised that you think the problems of excess energy can only be resolved by more energy, based even more strongly on technology.
Howard Odum taught us that as a complexity, technology is merely a form of emergy, or embedded energy. And alternative energy (I hesitate to call it "renewable", as it is currently soaked in oil) is not immune to that.
Joseph Tainter taught us that civilizations fall because the cost of maintaining their increasing complexity increases until they can no longer serve the needs of their citizens.
<sarc>Surely, if energy got us into this situation, it can get us out!</sarc>
Environment, energy, economy - if any two were stable, we could fix the other. None of them are stable. If we have as much fusion based electricity as we can use, the 99.98% of non-deuterium hydrogen we liberate from water can be employed to make ammonia, which can then become nitrogen fertilizer, or a hydrogen bond bearer suitable for pipeline transport. That's a very different world than the one we know, but our grandparents, who grew up riding streetcars, would likely find it pleasing.
We scamper back down to a 1942 standard of living, or Mother Nature knocks us from this limb we've climbed out on and we land somewhere like 1492. Nate Hagens talks about a 300 watt per capita society. Maybe at least some of us can make it there; imaging so beats the heck out of any of the doomer prognostications.
I don't see environment nor economy as being equal partners with energy.
Eliminate energy, both environment and economy go away.
I would describe your views as "techno-cornucopian". Maybe it will happen that way, but all evidence I've seen indicates not.
1492, I wish! James Hansen thinks that, by the end of this century, we'll be reduced to a few hundred thousand, clustered around the poles. We may be lucky to have ox carts on our seasonal migrations south and north.
With increasing climate instability, we may quickly lose the ability to have grain agriculture, which is the basis for civilization and economy, since other food does not survive a turn of the seasons.
https://ecoreality.substack.com/p/how-did-we-get-here
We'll lose a quarter of our cognitive capacity by 2100 based on current CO2 emissions. I think the most likely survivors will be in the Andes and Himalayas, those are the environments that will eliminate outsiders not evolved for their rigors, the weak right away, and even the strong won't be able to reproduce. Anywhere else that remains habitable will be subject to waves of migration.
There won't be any survivors. Radioactivity, release from spent fuel ponds whose cooling system are disabled due to a dead grid, will kill all complex life forms on this planets. Likely around 2,100. The "Great Reset" is truly coming.
Indoor cooling pools do that, outdoor ponds I don't think so. But I do wonder what happens when they get dry ...
Honestly can't tell if you're being serious or humorous. If serious, give this link a try. It might help you shed some of that insane optimism. (h/t Jan Bloxham)
https://adannoone.wixsite.com/positivelydoomed/post/let-s-be-realistic-reclaiming-pessimism
If humorous... well played sir.
I'm am neither insane nor optimistic. There's a post from early February on my Substack entitled "Mourning Mankind". I don't see a way out, but perhaps some kids are going to ignore my jaundiced views and prove me wrong.
Two generations of fusion scientists have retired and a third will be doing so soon...The problem with fusion is that the energy necessary to control a fusion reaction is so great that it consumes the energy produced, and then some...I doubt that the laws of thermodynamics allow for any workarounds of this conundrum...
Go have a look at the particulars of Helion's system. The people retiring have been part of the Tokamak jobs program, not focused efforts to produce energy. The largely aneutronic solid state "dumbbell" style reactor Helion is using has almost nothing in common, other than fusion, with the toroidal containment methods.
Fossil fuels created the unsustainable population the planet now carries. With the shrinking of them comes inflation, destroyed economies, homelessness, migration and desperation. These set the table for autocratic rule. I'm an American and participated in No Kings Day. The anti-Trump protestors far outnumbered his supporters. Many recognize that particular danger. However, I doubt the majority of them are familiar with overshoot, the ultimate driver of the future.
It's questionable at best whether humans survive the predicament we have created. Even without the threat of nuclear conflict, ever more extreme weather patterns and soil depletion threaten agriculture, as does the loss of fossil fuels to support that industrial agriculture. Plants and animals are unable to cope with the speed of change. There are a few trying to build local communities of diverse skills to survive, but regardless we are looking at a horrific, sudden collapse of population over just a handful of decades. This as permafrost melts poised to release more GHGs than we have pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
The ignorance of the majority of the populace, and the selfishness of the ruling class seal our fate. Those who see these things have little or no power to affect change at the scale or speed necessary.
Compared to the reign of dinosaurs, evidence of human existence in the geologic records will be a scant, thin layer.
"evidence of human existence in the geologic records will be a scant, thin layer."
Bronze.
In "The World Without Us", Alan Weisman thinks that bronze statuary may last a million or more years. As it turns out, Homo sapiens peaked in the Bronze Age — at least to the bonobos, canids, or cetaceans that may recreate civilization over the next million years.
Let's hope our statues serve as a warning sign, rather than a goal to strive for.
Remember, we are the inventors of waste. We’ll leave ample heaps of trash. I presently see sentience in all creatures, great and small.
According to Weisman, even plastic will degrade into indistinguishable hydrocarbons well before bronze even begins to degrade.
As to "sentience", I agree, and have clarified my comment.
Well said (except for the part about Ukraine). Being invaded or being at war will always greatly distort politics. The US and its allies during WW2 were also much more fascistic than normal.
Just a couple of additional notes:
The collapse of modernity will be global and affect all complex societies, not just the US and Europe. China and the BRICS will not be exempt.
You're right about the lack of meaningful input from voters, but sometimes there comes an inflection in politics when an election matters a lot. I think it is safe to say that the US would look a lot different now if Kamala Harris were president instead of Trump. "Normal" politics would not prevent collapse, of course, but it might have prevented the slide into the dictatorship we are now entering. The 2024 election was probably the last one (at least at the national level).
Weird reading your texts in full agreement, then meeting a random bit of Russian propaganda. The Ukraine thing gave me whiplash. I recommend interrogating your sources on that subject with a more critical eye.
"a random bit of Russian propaganda" how do you know? What's your sources?
Yes, an unexpected link from B, which kind of ruined the piece for me. I'm no expert in Ukraine society and its leaders but I don't think any one nation should be picked out like that, especially as the list of fascism symptoms is, as admitted, arbitrary.
...or, maybe, it's time to document yourself a bit?
https://x.com/HavryshkoMarta/status/1933858132351975585
Perhaps you didn't read my comment.
I did. You admitted you don’t know much about Ukraine, then dismissed a viewpoint you found uncomfortable. That’s exactly why I suggested informing yourself. If I were you, I would thank Natasha below for trying to make an effort and help.
I decried the picking out of one country on the basis of a definition of fascism that B admitted was his/her own definition. That's all.
Yes we did read your comment "I'm no expert in Ukraine society and its leaders" so here's some homework for you:-
a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Brigade
This wikipedia page uses the word "nazi" 141 times. "There is broad agreement among observers that at its formation in Spring 2014, the Azov Battalion was associated with Neo-Nazi and far-right ideas, including through the use of symbolism and the political associations and statements of its leaders and cadre."
b) https://www.voltairenet.org/article222272.html
Eighty years after the Great Victory: Europe has once again fallen in the shadow of Nazism
c) https://www.voltairenet.org/article220630.html
Some background on Ukrainian "integral nationalists" Before the Second World War, the Muslim Brotherhood forged ties with the Nazis against the British. Not surprisingly, all the anti-colonialist movements of the time (including India’s M.K. Gandhi) naturally turned to the Axis in search of an ally. In general, they distanced themselves as soon as they had verified their racism on the spot. However, the Brotherhood benefited from subsidies from the Third Reich during the years [2] and maintained these links throughout the war. When, at the Liberation, the British and American secret services took over many Nazi leaders and recycled them in their "Cold War" against the Soviets, they also took over the governance of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was therefore quite natural for the CIA to bring together Gerhard von Mende, the Nazi specialist in Islam in the Soviet Union, with Saïd Ramadan, the son-in-law of the Brotherhood’s founder. Ramadan had been in charge of a program on Pakistani public radio [3], so the CIA placed him in Munich at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. There, he hosted a program for Soviet Muslims and met Stepan Bandera, leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and his right-hand man, Yaroslav Stetsko, the former Ukrainian Nazi Prime Minister. It was precisely the "Banderists" (referred to as "Ukrainonazis" by the Kremlin, but calling themselves "integral nationalists") who carried out the 2014 coup ("EuroMaidan") against the elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych [4].
https://www.voltairenet.org/article218395.html
d) https://undsoc.org/2022/01/04/bandera-shukhevych-and-memory-debates-about-the-ukrainian-nationalist-movement/
When in 2007 Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko designated Roman Shukhevych as a Hero of Ukraine, he brought new heat into the debate in Ukraine and in the international community about the role played by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) during the Nazi invasion and occupation of Ukraine from 1941 forward. Yushchenko also honored radical OUN leaders Iaroslav Stets’ko in 2007 and Stepan Bandera in 2010 for their roles in Ukrainian nationalist activism. Shukhevych is a flashpoint because he was both a leader of the OUN and, from 1941 to 1943, an officer in German military units (battalion Nachtigall and Schutzmannschaft battalion 201). His activities during this period provide additional evidence for the view that the OUN actively collaborated with Nazi military, and participated in mass murder against Jews and other atrocities. Per Anders Rudling provides a detailed account of Shukhevych’s history in “The Cult of Roman Shukhevych in Ukraine: Myth Making with Complications”
No, it seems you didn't read my comment. It was not about being an armchair expert on any particular country.
The Russian trolls are here. There is no merit to their nonsense. Russia is not threatened by NATO or Ukraine in any meaningful way prior to the invasion. Accusing others of nazism or fascism is a typical move in Kremlin's rhetorical arsenal, in which they cherry pick examples of "nazism" to justify aggression. But Russian aggression is blatantly imperialistic and fascistic - the accusation is only a deflection. Putin's fascist regime is waging a genocidal war on its neighbor, which has been brutalized and controlled by Russia in the past and wishes to escape this subjugation. The nature of this conflict and the Russian propaganda narratives are well-documented in scientific literature. Any claims to the contrary are either obfuscatory or ignorant.
Being critical of NATO or acknowledging the complexity of this conflict does not make someone a 'Russian troll.' That's exactly the kind of dismissive, absolutist rhetoric that shuts down honest debate and reinforces echo chambers.
NATO may present itself as defensive, but its track record — from Yugoslavia to Libya to Iraq via member states — shows it's hardly a passive actor on the global stage. It has expanded eastward for decades despite assurances to the contrary, and to pretend this context is irrelevant is intellectually dishonest.
You don't need to endorse Russian actions to recognize that branding all dissenting views as Kremlin propaganda is a lazy and dangerous way to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths. If we're going to call out propaganda, let's do it across the board — including ours.
And for the record: I won’t indulge in any further conversation if that’s the tone you’ve chosen to use.
They don't think like me, ergo, they're trolls. Nice.
Instead of "trolls" let's be adults? Russia tells us it was being threatened by NATO exercises in Ukraine and the build up of Ukrainian troops attacking ethnic Russians living in the east of Ukraine. And that Ukraine failed to implement the Minsk agreements to federalise the eastern Oblasts. And you have the arrogance to dismiss these legitimate issues, amongst many others, with a toss away "trolls" insult !?
"start a radically new form of governance in your home town"
This is possibly the easiest "freedom" to achieve, within the legal constraints of corporate law.
You can form a co-op, and thus, your own micro-governance.
At least in British Columbia, the Cooperative Associations Act is incredibly freeing, imposing few of society's "hard red lines" and severely limiting the power of money.
Of course, as with all good anarchies, that requires the willing consent of participants. If any one of them "layers up" because they don't like something, the whole thing can come crashing down — voice of experience, here.
As the recent calamity of Mountain Equipment Co-op shows, all a co-op needs is a compliant "on the take" board to put the whole thing back into the hands of the capitalists, stiffing the egalitarian Members at least $5,000,000.
https://breachmedia.ca/mountain-equipment-chaos
Oh well. The Act is still good law, but that just blatantly shows money's disregard for laws it doesn't like.
https://substack.com/@stevenberger/note/c-126091443
The Players of the Great Game are busy creatively destroying The Game. The Players always have better ideas, derived from riffs on the old stream of ideas repackaged for sale anew. The Players build things up and knock them down. It's so exciting and heroic. We are living through the long demise that started centuries ago. Come what may, we still have today. Perhaps we can be kind, maybe even thankful—if we are fortunate enough. Yes, it's relative and none of us knows what life was like hundreds of years ago. We are WEIRD, pacified, and domesticated people in the Northern Anglosphere. We will nurse our addictions for a while longer if we willy-nilly avoid a strategic nuclear war. We will talk about, listen to stories, witness the events of the day, and do whatever we are compelled to do. Like the police detective in the film 'The Drop' says to the bartender, "No one ever sees you coming, do they, Bob?" Those of us who are enamoured by our understanding of things can lean in and whisper that to fate. No one wants to be prescient; we want to hang on to programmed dreams. Ordinary people will continue to suffer as they always have, yet revel in the wonder of it all. At least someone, or something, has a plan, and we can do what we must. https://youtu.be/HddbbLOvkIw?si=o6C3BoLEZnm-7hjE
Mussolini invented “Fascism.” Therefore, we should respect his definition:
“Everything within the State.
Nothing outside the State.
Nothing against the State.”
Mussolini also edited Avanti, the socialist/communist paper in Italy, for a lengthy span before he started his Fascist movement. He was a contemporary of Lenin's and an admirer, at least at some point. He called himself the "Lenin of Italy" in 1919. Anywho, synthesizing Mussolini's beliefs is an interesting exercise because of this.
Great essay!
It's nice to read honest and reasonable appraisals.
I particularly liked the idea of our problems being decades in the making, although we can always choose a date further back. To be honest there's no starting point, although the end of WW2 was a reset of sorts (by the victors).
The other idea I find fascinating with your commentary is the fragility borne out of complexity. Maybe the decline will eventually move from the "slowly slowly" to the all at once, or maybe it'll continue in ebbs and flows for decades, as unlikely as it seems.
The total disconnect of the elites, and the existence of their Armageddon bunkers, doesn't presage anything good.
The current wars, especially the recent flare up between Israel and Iran (the Brookings ref is gold, but there's many more on so many subjects), combined with the creeping autocracies of Europe and North America, again, it's like waking up from a dream to wonder if this democratic experiment was just a narrative to acquiesce the populace while the inequalities went parabolic? And we've been self obviously bankrupt since '08, but no one wants to hear this, preferring to hold on to their lottery ticket (ex. Pensions) and pauper money.
Great read as always 👍🏼
https://open.substack.com/pub/veejaytsunamix/p/when-innovation-becomes-domination
Yarp... https://open.substack.com/pub/stephenthair/p/what-if-the-trumpists-really-believe?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=wxx11
If collapse is well underway why have the Brics nations brought millions out of poverty and into the middle classes?
This USA logic needs to be recognised for the gaslit nonsense it is.
The USA is not sustainable. The rest of the world is.
When the funding of war is placed before the people's needs then you have the USA and it's unsustainability. The global south places people's needs ahead of war. That is sustainable.
All of human industrial civilizations is unsustainable because it is made possible by draw down of finite non replenishing resources dug up from the ground.
Recommend reading “The Killing Joke” series on Ice-9’s Substack.
There are answers out there …in the UK, Wales is in the process of legislating to prevent autocracy with a simple but innovative legal solution…
https://justhinkin.substack.com/p/has-wales-found-the-solution-to-autocracy?r=3cs2wr