Sixty-Five Orbits · 10:14am Dec 30th, 2024
Dateline December 30th, 2024
It's my birthday today, I am 65.
Holy shit.
I would love to regale you with lessons learned or achievements accomplished, but such are few and far from fantastic. I am filled with two emotions as we enter 2025: fear and despair.
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Well, obviously this is not simple or fast process. For example you can't just annihilate both fossil fuel use AND nuclear energy use, because real energy transition from easy (oil et al) to harder (solar, et al) source of energy can't be simple or fast. Current reactors need mainterance for decades until you can decommision them finally! Generic knowledge about working with hydrocarbons (trash plastic etc) definitely still very useful. But r.n. priorities of too many supposedly independent entities remain very dangerously warped, relative to upcoming changes we already can't avoid.
And yes, single election cycle of 4 years in "politics" and short term death by quarterly report in so called serious business absolutely not conductive to anything strategical.
So, in a sense today even deep enough reform need some kind of revolution, or at least disruption of current trends.
visit r/collapse if you want to know more ;)
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It's not that simple, and defunding the police oftentimes has far more consequences than benefits. I'd say defunding pushes them closer towards being legalized thugs, if the pay gets that bad, then the only ones wanting to be police are the ones looking for the power trip. What needs to be done is police accountability. Policies have to be changed, tested and refined, and the use of technology that ensures police are held accountable. But more importantly, in order to raise the standards the whole police culture has to be slowly reworked, and that'll take a lot of time, probably more time than one administration would be permitted to invest in. At the same time, decriminalization of acts such as stealing and drug use have been proven to only make the situation worse, one need only look at LA and Portland and see how the landscape there has fallen off the edge. I know I'm going to get flack for this because I don't see retail theft as an act of social justice, and I wouldn't trust anyone who would put cannabis down on their list of hobbies.
Honestly, I can't see how current (USA/World) political situation can be fixed without some ... magik. Humans (most agressive part of "Humanity divided") cornered other humans and effectively all of us. Rich and powerful not really interested in surrendering, and insulated from consequences of their actions too well. Popular protest exist ("No Kings" protests, and before this Resistance in Los-Angeles) but so far was unable to reverse our slow but now sudden fall, not just politically but environmentally (where "environmentally" means literally making this planet unlivable by unprotected humans ... and plants they eat.). People too afraid to make bolder moves, like making solidarity works. I am afraid as long as our reaction psychology guaranteed that 90-99% of population can't resist - we will be pushed into abyss. Too bad I am not this wunderkid who can unleash Forced Redistribution Virus on global banking system, at very least. We definitely need to defund not just police, but oil/gas/fossil fuels corporations, industrial agribisness, bunch of "tech" corporations and who knows what else. If only detecting more "human-shaped pones" was easier in sea of liars. So many humans who potentially can at least try to steer humanity away from Endless Night forever barred from any power, because they were not aggressive enough in this arms race. If only we had way to asymmetrical empower those people, instead of usual political/corporative circlejerk.
I've heard the Republican party being called a lot of things over the years. But you got to be drinking 14 different flavors of Kool-Aid to even begin to believe this. Their party serves only the interest of those on the very top. Anyone else they claim to be fighting for is merely a tool to garner and consolidate more power. They always decrease taxes on corporations, always aim to make sure that they are unchecked in any shape or form through mass deregulation, always drain funding for public works and services ( for all the progressive rhetoric on defund the police, spending is cut more on the police in red states than blue states, crazy huh? No small wonder that blue line is so thin ).
And their solution for bringing jobs back to the US is to feed Corporate America enormous, overflowing amounts in subsidies and incentives. And it might move the needle in a few areas, which will be heavily focused on by right wing media as having saved the entire US Industry, when in fact they've done more damage with their usual thing of raising the debt to record breaking levels, debt they then shift the blame for to the opposition, once they've left office to wait for the heat to die down. Then the left wing tries to re-establish some programs to increase people's survival rate out there, and the Republicans scream at the top of their lungs and point fingers about wasteful spending ( their party used to be about responsible spending, but that has not been the case for 50 years ), all to kick up enough smoke and dust to hide their sky high spending, focused on feeding those on the top.