Catastrophes loom on the horizon: an ecological catastrophe caused by our reliance on fossil fuels; a nuclear catastrophe, caused by our reliance on nuclear power; and another kind of nuclear catastrophe caused by our government’s failure to pursue nuclear disarmament.
It is unclear whether the first can still be stopped or even reversed; what is clear is that the danger gets worse as time goes by. What has taken many decades to develop is not easily undone, and the longer the task is put off, the harder it becomes. Thresholds have been crossed; more lie ahead. At this point, doing little or nothing only makes the problem worse — fast.
But taking bold action would require bold leadership, and there is little of that these days in Washington, DC.
The impending nuclear catastrophes can be blocked at any time. But, here too, our leaders are hardly up to the task.
The good news is that none of these catastrophes are likely to do us in at one fell swoop; the bad news is that if our politics is ever to change enough to meet the challenges we face, it will be because ever more devastating foretastes of greater catastrophes to come increase in number and severity.
This will mean that the American government would have to take on the energy industry and the military-industrial complex. This is impossible so long as it remains in the pockets of both.
Plutocrats are calling the shots; in their own (unenlightened) interests, not ours.
This is why the old slogan – “the only solution, revolution” – has become than ever apt. But ours is not a revolutionary age.
It is not even an age in which far-reaching but non-revolutionary change — change for the better — is on the agenda. In the Bush-Obama era, normal politics has become even more futile than it used to be.
Meanwhile, as catastrophes threaten, the body politic has grown chronically ill; basic rights and liberties are under assault, and the temptations of empire undo what is most estimable in our political culture. For security’s sake, much that was worth retaining has been undone; and we are still more and more at risk.
And it could get worse. Our military juggernaut and the institutions that comprise our national security state are capable of wreaking havoc throughout the world to an extent that is without precedent in human history.
The danger is that this is what will happen as American economic, political and moral dominance wanes. Wounded tigers on the loose lash out.
Decline has been in the works for years, but the Bush-Obama wars have accelerated the pace. It has gotten to the point that, in the current rift with Russia over Ukraine, even Israel, dependent as it is on American sufferance, feels free to act in its own interests, not America’s, in the United Nations.
Britain and France survived the loss of their empires. We can too; a soft landing is possible.
Indeed, if Obama really wanted to be, as he says, “on the right side of history,” it would be his highest priority. His highest priority instead is serving his corporate masters.
Inequality is on the rise too; this is a chronic malady that betokens yet another catastrophe.
What the harm is in increasing inequality is not as immediately obvious as it is in the other cases, and neither is it as clear how the situation could be rectified if there were the political will. This impending catastrophe therefore stands apart from the others.
Nevertheless, there is a widespread feeling that something is wrong, and that the problem is becoming worse. It was this sensibility that brought the Occupy movements into being.
By now, only a remnant is left; soft repression and the meretricious pull of the 2012 election did Occupy in. Perhaps this was inevitable. Being leaderless and non-ideological, there was no clear next step. Occupy could only wither away.
But it served a purpose. It caused the idea behind the slogan, “we are the ninety-nine percent,” to take root.
Even Barack Obama is trying to horn in. Needless to say, his efforts are just words, and his proposals are insipid. He is going through the motions only in order to advance Democrats’ prospects in the 2014 elections. No doubt too, he would like to depoliticize egalitarian aspirations.
Would he also like to diminish inequality? No doubt, he would; but only if it could be done in ways that the pillars of American capitalism would not find threatening. Good luck with that!
The problem the Occupy movements brought to public awareness was not just that the poor are getting poorer or that the gap between the rich and the poor is growing. It is that the one percent – actually, the very top stratum of the one percent – is enriching itself egregiously in ways that threaten what remains of our rights and liberties and of government of, by and for the people.
In other words, the danger was – and remains — oligarchy. With a political class bought and paid for by the hyper-rich, the danger is acute. Our would-be oligarchs have lots of “free speech” to spend, and they are not shy about spreading it around.
The Occupy movement gave expression to political aspirations and to a demand for justice that is implicitly revolutionary. But, at this point in history, it is not clear what a genuinely revolutionary politics, adequate to the tasks at hand, would involve. It is urgent, though, that we find out.
Read more at Counter Punch
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