If you would've told me 20 years ago that we would have to fight other human beings to stem the extinction of all of humanity over money, I would have thought you were insane.
@StillIRise1963
>"I used to think the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address these problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation, and we scientists don't know how to do that." - James Gustave Speth
@StillIRise1963
You are so right, I remember reading about things like torture during the inquisition, horrible race crimes, and the criminal shenanigans of monarchies, thinking “I’m so glad humans have evolved beyond that” haha jokes on me
@StillIRise1963
I remember some years ago making a similar point about the political cycle. It was just after t-rump was elected.
"If just after WWII you had told people that their grandchildren would be living in a world where fascists openly controlled the USA, Israel and UK, and the leader of the free world was a German Woman, they would have locked you up in an asylum."
@StillIRise1963
Complete opposite for me. At least 35 years, thinking we would do exactly that. Money has enabled the arms race like nothing else, and every ideology and wishful thinking crumbles in its wake.
@StillIRise1963 yep, who knew 20 years ago. In hindsight, 1995, when Gingrich shut down the government for three weeks, that's my dividing line. That's when the environmental mitigation needed to really get going, but didn't. By the time the Supreme Court inserted themselves into the 2000 Florida election we were already on the downhill slide politically & environmentally.
@StillIRise1963
On the one hand, I'm both surprised & charmed that you were such an idealist (by which point I was already 53 & jaded). On the other hand, I'm wondering what wonderland you were living in, to have been seeing things through such rose-colored glasses. 20 years ago, we were still in San Diego, & the right-wing stupids were rabidly fighting the elegant wind turbine 'farms', claiming they caused cancer & killed birds. (They didn't care about birds one iota.)
@lolonurse I'm not going to dignify your utter condescension and arrogance in your pathetic inability to read and need for superiority in a toot. Goodbye sad person.
@StillIRise1963
I apologize for inadvertently upsetting you. I was feeling very warm towards you, thinking you are either a fair amount younger than I am, or that I just was more suspicious of people's nature. I'm not sure why it came across in a different way to you - it seemed we were on a similar wavelength. I wish you peace & health.
@StillIRise1963
About 24 years ago, author Naomi Klein (among others) predicted the coming of an event horizon for the (by now) ultra-concentrated wealth due to deregulation and megamergers.
Even the most alarmist of them back then didn't predict it arriving at the same time as the #climateCrisis bill was coming due, and how much of the world would completely and absolutely ignore it, even while it's literally killing them.
@StillIRise1963 the WTO fights in America happened around the turn of the bad century. That’s exactly what those anarchists were fighting against then.
@StillIRise1963 TWW: There is but one moment, all things and all time exist in this moment. In life you are given to know as much of the moment as you can perceive. *We started raising kids. After all the work and demonstrations we believed in the change. We protected our kids and got them through school and left activism to other younger people but they faced much higher barriers with more attractive distractions. Aware of much more risk people now face new challenges and will prevail. OWOP
@TCatInReality@StillIRise1963 Al Gore won that election because he won Florida but Roger Stone led the Brooks Brothers Riot to get the people in MDC to stop counting.
Oh, and Third Party Ralph Nader got 97,000 votes in Florida way more than the 500 or so votes in MDC that supposedly tipped it to Bush.
So, no, Gore didn't lose because he was a climate kook. He won and the GOP stole it.
But the fact is Gore was a prominent environmentalist long before 2000. See below from Wikipedia. I know people who thought he was a climate kook at that time.
I'm not saying that alone caused his loss. I'm saying some people knew billionaires were going to destroy the planet more than 20 years ago (the original tweet)
We can all be right. Gore, like all people, can have multiple facets to his identity.
But your point is taken. I retract the "largely" from my statement that his loss was largely due to being viewed as a climate kook. Perhaps more a factor in my area than a national trend.
@philip_cardella@StillIRise1963
Facts are important, so here's a fact check on the FL count. We'll never really know and likely Bush would have won the recount that was stopped.
Nader is a spoiler, which we see in every election. If Gore lost votes to him, it's because he left his flank open.
If FL was unfair, the two places I lay blame are Jeb Bush's voter suppression efforts and the SCOTUS decision. Both perfectly legal (if morally questionable).
@TCatInReality@StillIRise1963 facts do matter and "nobody can say for sure" isn't the same thing as Bush won. Not remotely. It's no longer particularly relevant so I'm not going to find the arguments as to why Gore won straight up but there's no question the Brooks Brothers Riot played a role in stopping the recount. How it would have turned out is speculation -- which is illiberal by definition.
Stone is a nasty piece of work, but it was the SCOTUS that stopped the recount, not Stone.
And spoilers like Nader play an imoortant role in pressuring the two main parties.
And while it pains me greatly, Bush was certified winner and duly sworn in. He won. Gore's acceptance of that is one of the greatest examples of rule of law in the country's history.
@TCatInReality Gore was wrong to give up. I used to agree with you by the way but the more I've studied US history the more I see how wrong he was. Saying just because the Supreme Court ruled legally (which I believe is actually debated) doesn't mean it's right or rule of law, btw. Plessy v Ferguson was legally decided and it was wrong and anti rule of law. So was Dobbs and Citizen United.
That said I think we can move on from this and still get along. 😁
Gore was a southerner who chose not to be divisive.
At the time (and for the most of his first year in office) my and a lot of people's impression was that Dubya would be incompetent and laugh at him and then his presidency would be over.
THEN 9/11 happened and he was destroying the Geneva Conventions and invading Iraq for oil.
If Gore or anybody had knew how vile things would turn, then he should have tried harder
This also relates to younger generations who weren't around for last century claiming everything has been the same since Reagan.
It hasn't.
There were always conflicting views held by both parties, but there remained the political sense that we were all on the same team. This was probably due to the very recent demise of the USSR and the residual feeling that we could have a nuclear war at the drop of a hat.
@Hawkmoon@TCatInReality Agreed that the fall of the USSR was a major factor here. We no longer had a common enemy. But I think Citizens United also played a massive role--because it allowed the KGB successor GRU and other Russian agencies and oligarchs to buy their way into our elections and exploit the thing some historians argue actually caused the fall of the USSR as much as anything-- the Internet--and our "liberal" ideals like freedom of speech against us.
@Hawkmoon@philip_cardella
Certainly it's always debatable when a trend "started". But causing government shutdowns and literally changing the language used to describe Dems, Gingrich was certainly a factor. I suggest you read a bit more about his history.
@TCatInReality@Hawkmoon There's an argument to be made that the inherent contradictions in American (classical) liberalism are built into the Constitution and the Framers represented it. But Reagan really represents a moment when the oligarch class seized control--in no small part by exploiting foreign policy issues, which had traditionally been mostly bipartisan.
There's no layer of hell deep or hot enough for Gingrich.
@Hawkmoon@philip_cardella
Yeah, but then you said:
"he would be incompetent and laugh at him and then his presidency would be over. THEN 9/11 happened and he was destroying the Geneva Conventions and invading Iraq for oil."
@StillIRise1963 Nah... in 2003 (that is 20 years ago) I saw all this shit coming like a train but no one in my area believed me (even my parents didn't)... Of course I was also a sick child but what's some details between friends...
BUT!
It matters not if it is insane or not, what matters is we can do this and we got this ✊
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