Ill winds are blowing our way

 

Every day now the news feels like a cold wet smack in the face. Below are some examples. 

 

The Biden agenda slogs along under-performing in the eyes of most Americans. But his administration is beset with mostly inherited impossibly difficult problems not of their own making. Yet the failure of his 'progressive' agenda is thrown in our faces daily without mentioning that it is explicitly due to two Repubs in Demo clothing, especially one coal baron- senator from West Virginia who pretends to be a Democrat but really intends to wreck any Democratic Party agenda and any hopes of their surviving the next election cycle.

 

 

 

Omicron

 Covid-19 Delta has mutated into something even more  contagious - Omicron. As we wait to find out how bad it will be, Republican politicians and their media continue to sow discord specifically intended to lower Biden's popularity. Especially malicious is conflating requirements to get vaccinated, wearing masks indoors and taking common sense precautions as violating Constitutionally protected rights. This as their hand picked Supreme Court takes those very rights away from women.

 

 

Meanwhile armed wackos, young and old, continue to sporadically reap carnage in homes, schools, work places and Black neighborhoods (AKA “hoods”) everywhere. Plus in many cities dystopian zones have sprung up composed of the homeless, mentally ill and/or addicted. The police departments in cities feel understaffed and unappreciated with calls for “defunding”(that mostly never materialized). As a reaction 'the finest' seem to be engaged in an informal unacknowledged work slowdown allowing crime rate to soar thus building support for another Nixonian type call for law 'n order. All the videos we saw of summary executions of Blacks now forgotten.

 Inflation has returned despite assurances from the Demo party economists that it wouldn't. Nothing peeves the average Joe and Jill Normal more than prices going up (even as their incomes also rise). And to add insult to injury some store shelves are suddenly as bare as old Mother Hubbard's cupboard of something they need badly (like for me, cat food) as the pandemic continues to cause bottlenecks in the global supply chain. Inflation will surely be a handy noose to hang the Demos by for past expenditures as well proposed ones (except $$$ for the military). Inflation is more complicated than simply too many dollars chasing too few goods (demand pull). You have monopolistic 'price management', the Fed creating money to juice the economy, all kinds bottlenecks in the supply chain and pandemic induced increases in labor costs passed to on consumers (cost push).

 

 

 Helping to boost our military budget (see above) Vladimir Putin is threatening to invade and reclaim a big chunk of the old USSR, the Ukraine, while crafty old Xi Jinping has his eye on Taiwan. With all three sides here armed to the teeth with thermonuclear weapons and advanced delivery systems, we never know how close we are to WWIII which would make the Climate Crisis look like merely a picnic on a warm day.

 

 

 

 

 

 As bad as these things are, they can be seen as   temporary maladies. But for us in the USA something very sinister looms. An underlying threat that academics and Constitutional experts continue to flash red light warnings on - the machinations underway in Republican controlled states re: the survival of our democracy. A host of Republican controlled state legislatures are rewiring their state's election apparatus to not only make it more difficult to vote but commandeering the formerly non-partisan vote counting apparatus. Only Congress can step in and head off this threat to the very foundation of our imperfect but so far operational democracy, and again Joe Manchin stands in the way.

 

 

 

 

Then there is the really big one, the Climate Crisis. It is unfolding before our very eyes as our weather gets weirder and worsens (tornado swarms in winter, fire season all year, melting glaciers). The much ballyhooed COP26, in which the powers that be (minus one D. Trump) would finally get serious about global warming, was a big fat flopperoo. 195 nation's governments couldn't agree on jack shit. What a surprise. Commitment and follow-through at the top of each country's power structure is vital. Yet only with top down strongly enforced, far reaching and ambitious collectively embraced measures will we have any chance of slowing down the warming to avoid catastrophic mass extinctions (including us). Stopping it is now impossible. Our only chance now is mitigation. The entire world's 195 nations must be weaned from using fossil fuel as an energy source – and soon!.. Each nation's leader premier, prime minister, president, king or whatever the hell they call themselves must commit to a politically sensitive course of action; and they won't. They are politicians therefore they are afraid to or they may lose their jobs.

 

  Politicians, also known as our leaders (and all we have presently) are exactly the wrong ones to lead in such a crisis. Politicians, democratic or autocratic, are temporal actors who must survive in whatever political arena in which they exist. The system culls for ego-driven, alpha types. The ones at the top have managed through a mix of tenacity, verbal skills, charm, guile and often sheer ruthlessness to get to the top of of their particular dung heap of a political hierarchy.

 

 

Their survival as top dog depends on among other things in keeping their respective population materially pacified - or at least subdued through fear and/or cynicism. This as well as managing effective tactics against their internal political opponents. Also finally and importantly they must keep their respective capitalism-driven economies perking along well enough to maintain some degree of popular quiescence. Unfortunately these manifold immediate concerns always eclipse long term considerations or slowly emerging crises - like the overheating of an entire planet. Hence COP xxx (whatever number we are at) always tragically fails to deliver.  

The question is will we pull out of this civilizational nosedive or not?.