John Feffer - The Threat of Political Climate Change
It’s time for a movement to counteract
Bannon’s Movement, a global coalition that joins people and politicians in a
united, international effort to respond to the true global problems -- climate
change, endless war, and economic inequality -- that threaten to overwhelm us all.
Optimists and
pragmatists alike ultimately have faith that democracies are self-regulating
organisms, not unlike the Earth’s ecosystem. The planet has managed to survive
countless asteroid strikes, solar flares, and extreme weather conditions.
Democracy, too, will outlast Hurricane Donald and all the other examples of
extreme political weather, thanks, sooner or later, to woke voters and
resilient mechanisms of checks and balances.
Unfortunately, given
the malign impact humans are having on the planet, this analogy is far less
reassuring than it once might have been. Only the willfully ignorant expect
that some natural oscillation in global temperature or the Earth’s own
adjustments to its climate feedback loops will arrive in time to save us.
Humankind has clearly thrown a spanner into the works and now faces a
distinctly difficult, if not disastrous, future. Similarly, across the globe,
the electoral pendulum appears to be stuck on the side of reaction and the new
generation of right-wing populists could well be on the verge of changing the
political playing field, just as humans are in the process of irrevocably
transforming the planet.
Is India the frontline in big tech’s assault on democracy? By John Harris
'Academy for the Judeo-Christian West' to train next generation of nationalist and populist leaders
'Academy for the Judeo-Christian West' to train next generation of nationalist and populist leaders
Bolsonaro, Erdogan,
Putin, Trump, and their ilk should indeed be understood as the political
equivalent of global warming. Instead of deadly carbon, they spew hateful
invective and show a remarkable determination to destroy a far-from-perfect
status quo. Moreover, they are the product not of farting
livestock or extraterrestrial events but of the self-interested
acts of blinkered humans. In an increasingly restrictive political space,
liberals and progressives are looking ever more like so many polar bears on
ever fewer ice floes, with diminishing room for maneuver… read more:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176563/tomgram%3A_john_feffer%2C_the_rising_tide_of_the_populist_right/