Oh my, such flattery. ;-) I blush.
I have talked about this last fall, right after the Election. Chunks of this article are from that earlier article.
Do you remember the book Microserfs?
The whole idea of reusable code blocks being like "legos" that could be snapped together in infinite combinations. I kind of view paragraphs like legos.
When I make one I like, I reuse it.
Tangential, sorry....
Election...
The graph came out a few days after the Election and the second I saw it I understood what it meant. Such elegant clarity, it's beautiful and historic.
It/s a 1,000 word explanation in a picture. It tells you everything you need to know at a glance. So, I enjoyed reusing it.
Here's the thing. It's about to become irrelevant. The CLIMATE CRISIS and the intensifying US/China WAR are going to completely transform US politics and Global politics.
It/s going to get HOT this year. In a way that people have no conception of. In a way that is going to be catastrophic globally.
The 22' Election was the last of the "old world". The 24' Election will be the first of the 'New". I'm not sure how that's going to play out. I don't think anyone can credibly say that anything is "for sure".
I wrote on this two years ago.
Here's what I argued then.
This is going to have Societal and Political Consequences
The “Great Climate Awakening” is coming fast and it’s going to be wrenching, disruptive, and harsh. At some point this decade the number and size of the Climate Disasters will be undeniable. It will become obvious to everyone but the willfully blind that Global Warming is “really real” and “really bad”. People will finally start to pay attention to the crisis and internalize what it means to them, how it’s going to affect their lives directly.
When they do. When everyone under 40, finally understands how screwed they are and how their future has been stolen. The reaction is going to be extreme.
Watch one of those “the end of the world is coming, and everything falls apart” movies for clues about the societal effects on populations from knowing for certain that “life as we knew it” is over. When everyone, “all at once”, understands that we are going to at least 3C now, and just how bad that’s going to be, people are going to react in a big way. Think suicides in huge numbers, casual murder, hedonism on epic scales, disengagement from the existing economic systems, and above all else, RAGE.
Republican America has made Climate Denial such an embedded part of their political identity that they cannot change their stance now, even if they wanted to. This has paid off for them for over 30 years, now it’s going to hang them.
When the Climate Awakening happens later this decade, people under 40, the ones who are going to have to live in the world our climate bomb is creating, are going to be filled with a lot of rage. They are going to burn with righteous anger and a blazing desire to punish the people who did this to them. That rage is going to dominate American and global politics by the end of this decade. 2031 is going to be a vastly different political landscape than 2021.
The climate politics of the late 20’s and early 30’s is going to be harsh and merciless. The young are not going to be forgiving or understanding. I expect trials and televised executions of oil company executives, people like Joe Manchin, those found guilty of ecocide, and anyone else the mob turns their rage on.
Review the French Revolution if you want a sense of what’s coming. Revolutions are sometimes necessary but that one ended with “The Terror” and then Napoleon. Angry vengeful people rarely create stable, functional political structures.
They are going to burn the Republican party to the ground and then piss on the ashes.
They are probably going to take over the Democratic party and use it as their vehicle to take power. But make no mistake, they are going to purge the party heavily in the process. It’s not going to be the party it is today.
Climate Action extremism is going to be the litmus test of acceptability. They are going to be angry and uncompromising and they are going to remake the party in their image.
Politics in the 30’s is going to be all about Climate Change and the attempts to create a world that can survive it.
Two years later I think it still stands. It/s just happening faster than I thought at that time.
Which, getting back to your query, is why I don/t have any ideas on the political situation. Other than "hold the line" until the Climate Crisis becomes clear and then try to channel the RAGE into FOCUSED ACTION.
