Republican Path to Dystopia

The Ultimate Twosome, Nukes and Climate Change in 2024 (1/4/2024)

“We are entering an era when a single person can, by one clandestine act, cause millions of deaths or render a city uninhabitable for years, and when a malfunction in cyberspace can cause havoc worldwide to a significant segment of the economy. Indeed, disaster could be caused by someone who is merely incompetent” Martin Rees: Our Final Hour
The radical right insurgency has swept all before it, crushing the administrative state, destroying public protections, capturing the courts, the electoral system and the infrastructure of government, shutting down the right to protest and the right to live. While we persuaded ourselves that there is no time for system change, they proved us wrong by changing everything. George Monbiot (7/19/2022) Days of Rage
There’s been nothing like this in history. It’s kind of an outrageous statement, but it happens to be true, that the Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history. Nobody, not even the Nazis, was dedicated to destroying the possibility of organized human life. It’s just missing from the media. In fact, if you read, say, the sensible business press, the Financial Times, Businessweek, any of them, when they talk about fossil fuel production, the articles are all just about the prospect for profit. Is the U.S. moving to number one and what are the gains? Not that it’s going to wipe out organized human life. Maybe that’s a footnote somewhere. It’s pretty astonishing. Noam Chomsky
"...Systemic risk in the financial system can be remedied by the taxpayer, but no one will come to the rescue if the environment is destroyed. That it must be destroyed is close to an institutional imperative. Business leaders who are conducting propaganda campaigns to convince the population that anthropogenic global warming is a liberal hoax understand full well how grave is the threat, but they must maximize short-term profit and market share. If they don't, someone else will. This vicious cycle could well turn out to be lethal. To see how grave the danger is, simply have a look at the new Congress in the U.S., propelled into power by business funding and propaganda. Almost all are climate deniers. They have already begun to cut funding for measures that might mitigate environmental catastrophe. Worse, some are true believers; for example, the new head of a subcommittee on the environment who explained that global warming cannot be a problem because God promised Noah that there will not be another flood." Noam Chomsky (8/12/2012)
There is no certain method to guarantee the survival of our species, but there are many ways to hasten its demise, and high on that list is selfish, self-righteous, and self-interested government promoted by the authoritarian conservatives who now control the Grand Old Party, and have given us broken government. John Dean's book Broken Government, How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches.
"Every species of living being, and every specimen of each species, is affecting and modifying the biosphere by its efforts to keep itself alive during its brief lifetime. However, no pre-hominid species has ever had the power to dominate the biosphere or to wreck it. On the other hand, when a hominid chipped a stone with the intention of making it into a more serviceable tool, this historic act, performed perhaps two million years ago, made it certain that, one day, some species of some genus of the hominid family of primate mammals would not merely affect and modify the biosphere, but would hold the biosphere at its mercy." Arnold Toynbee, Mankind and Mother Earth quoted in Psychopolitical Anaphylaxis, Steps Towards a Metacosmics by Daniel Ross
We are at a profound point in human history. Never before...have the stakes been so high. The future of the planet and human civilization as we know it is at stake - and the solutions must be found by this current generation." Plan for the Planet by Chambers and Humble 2012
All the biggest challenges of our time are transnational: mass migration, growing inequality, the onset of ecological Armageddon. It's arguable that the politics of the nation state have become at best irrelevant, and at worst a hindrance, to tackling such global challenges. The outlook is grim. Democracy and Truth, A Short History: Sophia Rosenfeld

The Doomsday Machine is Still On: Nothing Can Be Changed until it is Faced (12/15/2023)

I predicted the 2008 crash – these are the global ‘megathreats’ I can see now (11/5/2022) Nouriel Roubini in the Guardian

powerful interests seem determined to trigger the collapse of life on Earth. Why? (7/6/2022)

An All-American Horror Story: How we Sacrificed our Health on the Altar of useless Nuclear Arsenals (7/2/2021)

GLOBAL TRENDS 2040

World Economic Forum: 2021 Global Risk Report

Our conditions are going to get far more brutal. Will you be prepared to survive them? (12/20/2020)

Trump

Republicans

Fascism

Guns

Russia

Democracy

Government

Social Contract

Growth

Population

Environment

Global Warming

Energy

Migration

Pandemic

Famine

Wealth Inequality

Taxes

Corruption

Right Wing

Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Republican Scam

War

Nuclear Weapons

Jim Jones

Apocalypse

Forecast

Global Priorities Institute

Collapse Data Cheat Sheet

Collapse of Industrial Civilization

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto

Future of Life

Earth Charter

"... ten intersecting areas of activity (mass extinction, resource depletion, WMD, climate change, universal toxicity, food crises, population and urban expansion, pandemic disease, dangerous new technologies and self-delusion) which pose manifest risks to civilization and, potentially, to our species’ long-term future. This isn’t a book just about problems. It is also about solutions. Every chapter concludes with clear conclusions and consensus advice on what needs to be done at global level —but it also empowers individuals with what they can do for themselves to make a difference. Unlike other books, it offers integrated solutions across the areas of greatest risk. It explains why Homo sapiens is no longer an appropriate name for our species, and what should be done about it. Surviving the 21st Century, Humanity's Ten Great Challenges and How We Can Overcome Them by Julian Cribb
A senior European Commission economist has warned that a Third World War is an extremely "high probability" in coming years due to the disintegration of global capitalism. Insurge Intelligence

'Climate carnage': UN demands funding surge to save millions of lives (11/3/2022)

Noam Chomsky: Decades of “the Neoliberal Plague” Left U.S. Unprepared for COVID-19 Outbreak (7/30/2020)

Climate Crisis, Pandemics and Bad Governance: Humanity’s Existential Threats (5/30/2020)

2020 Doomsday Clock Announcement: Closer than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnight (1/23/2020)

Climate change and nuclear war. These are really existential threats. And what’s happening now is just astonishing. If media were functioning seriously, every day the lead headline would be this amazing fact—that in the entire world, every country is trying or committed to doing at least something. One country—one!—the most powerful country in history—is committed to trying to destroy the climate. Not just pulling out of the efforts of others, but maximizing the use of the most destructive means. Noam Chomsky

The Republican agenda is a suicide pact for everyone. Climate change will do us in if nuclear holocaust doesn't do it first. Jim Jones was a piker. The GOP is likely to destroy the habitability of the planet.

Republicans voted to make America great again, but they were conned.

While Comey was testifying, the House was rolling back Dodd-Frank which will destabilize the economy, the Senate was secretly drafting a deadly bill removing millions from health insurance.

To extract more money from people, Republicans removed tax progressivity, blocked consumer protections, defanged the CFPB, scrapped the fiduciary rule, ignored anti-trust, made student loans more expensive, weakened privacy, cancelled net neutrality, privatized for profit.

For tax gifts to the wealthy and elimination of the inheritance tax, they cut Medicaid, meals on wheels, social supports. When Republicans are in office deficits don’t matter. As they attempt to privatize everything: infrastructure, schools, military, public land, remember that 8 men own the same wealth as half the world. Income inequality weakens the social fabric,the economy, and democracy.

Government looks like a get rich quick scheme.

GOP billionaires despise democracy. To solidify their gains, they undermine its infrastructure: attack media, undermine elections, pack the Courts, empower corporations, expand the military, build more nuclear weapons, expand surveillance, privatize schools, public lands, and physical infrastructure. Germans learned democracy may not be self-correcting.

To continue fossil fuel pollution, Republicans deny evidence and cast doubt on the coming climate disaster.

Instead of making America great, Trump, a conflicted, unprepared, strong-man head of state, delivered plutocracy, corporatism, racism, theocracy, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, militarism, isolationism, nativism, mercantilism, authoritarianism. Refusing to acknowledge his election loss, he mounted a violent overthrow of the government. The GOP mostly accepts the big lie, and works to fix the next election. This is a Wiemar moment.

If Trump solidifies gains, there could be a permanent Republican majority and there may be no going back. It looks a lot like Fascism, but the religious right approves. The GOP is heavily armed and ready for insurrection.

The billionaire class has won and everyone else will be in subjugation as antitrust fails, monopolies proliferate driving out competition and making a mockery of the free market. This has already happened in many industries.

Losing health care is but the first step. It will be followed by more active voter suppression,Corporations will continue to consolidate, labor unions will be further weakened as will the remaining infrastructure of democracy. The Supreme Court will be populated with more right-wing radicals. Most institutions will fail to respond to people. As universal surveillance becomes more thorough, our dystopia will look increasingly like 1984... or Mad Max. We will be threatened and possibly obliterated as the rest of the world again responds with nuclear weapons to unacceptable Fascism.

Tillerson reportedly called Trump a moron when he called for a ten times expansion of the nuclear arsenal. We are, in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) expanding our nuclear arsenal and preparing for more use.

As the spectre of Fascism rises in the US, it is becoming easy to imagine another World War, this time nuclear on home soil.

Deep geologic history tells us that as CO2 levels were as high as today, glaciers and arctic ice disappear raising sea level. Coastal cities, world-wide, will be flooded. Many poor countries are not far above sea level, so there will be mass migration.

...the costs of climate change, if not addressed, will be equivalent to losing 5 percent (and potentially as much as 20 percent) of the global gross domestic product (GDP) each year, now and forever." Hundreds of millions of people could be threatened with hunger, water shortages, and severe economic deprivation. "Climate change is the greatest example of market failure we have ever seen." from the Stern Report on the Economics of Climate Change.

NASA climate scientist James Hansen forecast a possible 10-foot rise in sea levels before the end of the century. One-third of Florida's population lives below this level, as do more that 700,000 residents of New York City. Expect mass migrations from major coastal cities, flooded coasts, storm devastation, deserts or uninhabitable areas. Danger of nuclear war as rivers dry up, particularly between India and Pakistan, will grow. Grandchildren will find the climate increasingly hostile. The end times will not be pretty. Republicans will bring it on much faster.

See the forecast.

"Tell Trump you didn't learn from Hitler. You can't fight on two fronts. You can't take on radical Islam and China. You will end up in the bunker, like Hitler." Milos Zeman, president of the Czech Republic in discussion with Steve Bannon.

Thirty Years Ago We could have saved the planet (8/1/2018)

Introduction: The Trump administration’s approach to existential threat (10/16/2017)

Real world headwinds for Trump climate change policy (10/16/2017)

Noam Chomsky: The Republican Party Is Dedicated to Destroying Human Life (7/6/2017)

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