Miles of ‘ink’ are being spilled about this current kakistocracy and power grab by as disagreeable a clutch of inept powergrabbers imaginable. I have little original to add.
I just read Jordan Thomas’ WHEN IT ALL BURNS, Firefighting in a Transformed World, out soon on Riverhead Books. The timing is both great and horrible. He is an anthropologist who spent a season in the early 2020s as an elite hotshot wildland firefighter. It is a terrific, and terrifying, read. He makes the connections not simply between the untenable environmental degradation that we (humans, but specifically, greedy and ignorant and racist humans) have created and exacerbated in the West and elsewhere, but he also demonstrates the root of our current climate instability to the earliest European invaders of the continent—the Spanish Catholics who preceded the westward pioneers. All of these arrivistes waged war on the indigenous population, tribes that had worked in harmony and connection with the natural environment for eons. The arrogant misjudgment about how others (Others) used controlled burning as well as the deliberate strategy to hobble and destroy the Natives by removing their food, their crops, their language, their ceremonies and traditions, and their land: together these racist and greedy approaches set in motion the white abuse of and disconnect from the natural world.
It’s no surprise that the fuel industry is a villain in this tale, but seeing how our hubristic ignorance about traditional harmonic relationships with the earth, and our vulnerability to incurious acceptance of misleading, dishonest, or simply inaccurate information—how they connect to our inability to recognize, address, and redress generations of pillaging and mismanagement. The death of nuance has served none of us but the rich and greedy.
As I’ve tried to stay sane by limiting the ceaseless shock-and-shriek reactive noise in my timelines, my neighborhood, my mind, I’ve tried to listen where I can to hear how there might be some not-apocalyptic aspect to this current fuck show. What I’ve come to realize is that almost everyone I’ve encountered who isn’t upset is almost exclusively dwelling in the FoxNews/rightwing world. I’m hearing the same phrases repeated, whether in the men’s locker room at the gym or on the pages of conservative people I follow. It hit me last night that these aren’t folks who are smarter or possess a better understanding of economic issues than I do: No, they’re all parroting the same dismal drivel, the outright lies and delusional revisionism spewed constantly on State Media.
Nowhere and no one else is looking and listening to this craven bullshit and saying, ‘This has solid theory underpinning it.’ Everyone recognizes it’s madness, reckless, malevolent—except, that is, the organs who pump up Trump’s dumptruck of smut. And the significant portion of our nation who cannot distinguish the difference between what they’re told to believe and the reality outside their screens. I don’t believe the WaPost or NYTimes are purely objective; I see their slant and understand that there are other, more-hidden weights upon the scales, pressures from the bosses. But: they are within spitting distance of fact and objective reality. Same for the AP, AlJazeera, BBC, etc. Anywhere BUT the FoxWorld & its unhinged offshoots, you will see a degree of consistent engagement with the chicanery and inept fuckery frothing from this adminstration, chock full of former (current?) FoxWorld personalities. Loudmouthed fealty to Trump seems more important than skills, knowledge, or actual adult abilities.
In When It All Burns, Thomas discusses the breakdown in understanding and comprehension. The rich and powerful, the fuel industry specifically, control the politicians, the conversation, the misinformation. The money they make cannot be matched by well intentioned local agencies, and so they drive policy, conversation, and process. One significant shift—the significant shift, the pivot point and launch of the downward spiral of our nation—occurred in 1986 when Fox News launched. Supporting big business, the men who run the corporations that run our nation: that is Fox’s mission. Dumbing down and leading the rest of us by the nose. The success and spread of Murdoch’s propaganda machine, its harmful effects on the country, the brutal success of its destructive war on fact and truth: it has ravaged our national character. The number of people who get their ‘information’ from Fox, or its more-radical bastard offspring, is stunning, and the connection between Fox talking points and the breakdown of nuance, connection, communication has proven overwhelming.
Because, at root, whatever Trump might be doing with this obliteration of our country’s foundation, its principles, its systems, it is not going to benefit the majority of the people who voted for him. The very rich will benefit: they will mop up ever more of the money and power. But to what end? How much is enough? And those scammers, grifters, scumfucks, and abased charlatans who have attached their fortunes to Trump’s tawdry cape, they will exploit insider information, illegal trading, slanted rules and rulings to enrich themselves. It will come to ruin, and until the end, Steve Doocy and his ilk will tell us things are getting so much better, but that damned Obama and Hilary’s emails and Biden’s senile incompetent but successful conspiracy are the real issue.
We have been broken by our comforts, our complacency, and our incuriosity. The money running politics in all parties cannot be beaten by principle or good faith. The Democrats are guilty, too. They’re all part of a big con, but they tempered their greed with gestures and policies (some, not all, not nearly enough) that didn’t crush everyone else. There IS a difference, but it is not good vs. evil. We the people need to find a way through the thickets of disinformation, of staged outrage, of deliberate manipulation.