Puppeteers and Pulling Strings
The Trump agenda is not about putting America first. It’s about putting the privileged (monied) first. The Washington Post has a decent perspective on this, but it doesn’t go quite far enough.
Really, though, Trump’s policy reflects a deeper truth. Climate change denial is not incidental to a nationalist, populist agenda. It’s central to it. And that’s not a coincidence.
Combating global warming requires international cooperation, multinational agreements and rules. Done right, no country is exceptional, and some might have to sacrifice for others. In other words, it strengthens the international order that Trump and his team are so assiduously trying to dismantle in the name of “America First.”
As Andrew Norton, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development, explains:
“Climate change is a highly inconvenient truth for nationalism, as it is unsolvable at the national level and requires collective action between states and between different national and local communities. Populist nationalism therefore tends to reject the science of climate change however strong the evidence.”
Although I write about climate change most often, it is not the only issue of concern (by a long shot). It is however, THE issue that will affect all humans and all other species of life on this planet because it transcends borders, Presidents, races, religions, regions and even our imagination. It is the Extinction Level Event that spells the end of our species.
I have come to accept that Americans will never give a damn about their environment in a measure that will be meaningful to true conservation. I have also come to realize that conservatives have no concept of conservation at all. There is nothing conservative about them. American history is not about preservation, protection, liberty or respect, it’s really about domination, destruction, total dominion and extraction. These are the principles that built America and destroyed the country as each successive generation of dominionists trampled upon everything they possibly could.
It is an untold story that only comes to your awareness upon deep reflection of history and current events. It is not going to change either, no matter how much “evidence” there is, or how many people, species or life suffers. The real story of modern humans is one of conquest and domination and the final chapter has not been written. The Trump Administration is hell-bent on ensuring that their mark upon the historical record imprinted upon the Earth will never be forgotten. Some people are convinced that this will be good for the country, I’m convinced of just the opposite.
But in the end, it is not going to matter what I think or what anyone else thinks. The reigns of power have passed to a madman and like the stupid puppets we really are, we will respond to the pull on the string. There is no courage in this country to refuse the President and his many asinine decrees just as there was no courage before with other Presidents and their many decrees. Every governmental employee is just “doing their job” which is really just another way of saying their job always comes first and to hell with principles. It is the same with military contractors and assembly line workers and every other employee who is building, buying or engaging in any aspects of destroying the lives of other humans. The job always comes first.
We are all playing lip-service to what we claim to believe and what we actually do. It’s all quickly forgotten when our monetary survival is threatened and then we simply do what we are told. Once they controlled how we survived, they had us – forever, and they know it. Everything else is now just vented steam. Our anger is meaningless, our disgust misdirected, our activism nearly useless. They’re quite adept at shifting the goal posts and keeping the dissenters distracted, divided and ineffective. The rest can’t be bothered to care enough anyway.
So this is what life has become. Puppeteers and pulling strings. The next go-around will be another agenda, another President, another war, another event. And the goal posts will change ever so slightly once again, but it will always be business as usual. Those of us that are few and concerned about a habitable future are not going to achieve the success that is needed because the status-quo will never, ever allow it. We lack the courage to kill them and take the reigns ourselves and even if we did it would not change anything. The human trajectory is a Juggernaut of immense enormity and weight, the essential course correction that many champion for will never happen.
I think I should start another business in the field of death and destruction, that would put me on semi-equal terms with the rest of America. Your suggestions on how I might do this would be appreciated.
