Stirring the pot

Oct 12th, 2024 4:42 am | By

Lizard man very active devouring people.

Elon Musk is using his social media network to spread election conspiracy theories about U.S. disasters — just as online falsehoods are complicating the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Musk has helped spread accusations that the Federal Emergency Management Agency “actively blocked” donations to victims of Helene and is “seizing goods … and locking them away to state they are their own” — allegations that FEMA officials call false and which run afoul of state and local Republican leaders’ praise for the assistance from Washington.

On his social network, X, Musk also amplified rumors that authorities in North Carolina had “taken control to stop people helping” stricken residents and accusations that sheriffs were threatening to arrest FEMA staff “if they hinder rescue and aid work.” Many of his allegations centered on the claim that immigrants had already depleted federal disaster funds, which FEMA has said is untrue.

“FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason,” Musk wrote without evidence on X, where he interspersed messages about hurricane damage with political attacks on Democrats.

The horror movie we’re living in keeps getting worse.



Election interference

Oct 12th, 2024 4:21 am | By

The lizard people are teaming up.

Elon Musk’s X social media platform has reportedly worked with Donald Trump’s campaign to censor material that could be harmful to the former president’s White House chances as part of a pattern of election interference that is unprecedented in U.S. history. According to The New York Times, Trump told one associate that Musk was pumping $500 million into his campaign. The two men are said to speak “multiple times a week.”

The Times reported that the Trump campaign “connected with X” to prevent the spread of hacked information supposedly from a dossier drawn up by GOP staffers tasked with vetting running mate JD Vance. X, formerly known as Twitter, then suspended the account of the journalist who posted the leak and blocked links to the material, said two people quoted as having knowledge of the situation.

The tech billionaire’s “frenzied engagement” in the race is said by the Times to reflect his determination to help secure a Trump victory. His millions are being funneled through a Super PAC and he has set up a team of top advisors at a war room in Pittsburgh. According to federal records, America PAC has so far spent $80 million boosting the Trump campaign, much of it going towards voter canvassing programs.

“I’m not sure there is a precedent in modern history to how Musk has inserted himself into the presidential race,” historian Benjamin Soskis told the Times.

They should just rename it the Bad Men Party.



A pattern

Oct 11th, 2024 5:16 pm | By

Ah this again. Seems like a century ago, and like yesterday.

Surprise surprise.


Tried to squash debate, squashed crickets instead

Oct 11th, 2024 3:18 pm | By

The Telegraph on the slaughter of the crickets:

Four suspected trans rights protesters attacked a gender-critical conference by releasing hundreds of live crickets into a packed auditorium. The stunt threw the annual LGB Alliance conference into chaos, as a room of about 600 people had to be evacuated on Friday afternoon…Rhona Hotchkiss, the compere of the event, encouraged people to stamp on the crickets.

That seems unnecessary. Crickets are harmless, and they’re nourishment for a lot of critters up the food chain. I’ve fed crickets to plenty of reptiles and birds back in the day.

Kate Barker, LGB Alliance’s chief executive, told The Telegraph that security guards had stopped the protester as she tried to leave the building and the police were called to the scene. She said: “They are trying to squash reasoned debate with silly tactics.

Could that be because reasoned debate is ruled out because what can they say???

It was an abrupt end to the charity’s fourth annual conference, which had featured speeches from writers, activists and lawyers. Many of the speeches criticised gender ideology, which is the belief that gender is not binary and can differ from your assigned sex at birth.

James Dreyfus, the keynote speaker who appeared in the 1999 film Notting Hill, said he had experienced homophobic abuse from supporters of the gender ideology movement.

“The current gender movement is undoubtedly the most homophobic movement I’ve witnessed since the early 80s,” he said. “And that is no exaggeration. We all have re-experienced being called ‘fucking poofs, Aids carriers’ etc.

“From three very specific groups. Firstly, the mob that is known as Trans Radical Activists. Secondly from those who feel the need to put their preferred pronouns in their online bios. And thirdly, from the ‘allies’, perhaps the most worrisome of all, who understand so little of the facts or indeed what the entire argument is about that I’m continually astonished how usually intelligent people have become so utterly brainwashed.”

Same, James, same.

Other speakers included Catherine Leng, a former senior journalist on the BBC News Channel, who left the corporation after multiple disciplinary actions over her gender-critical views. Speaking at the conference, she said the BBC had been, and remained, unbalanced in its coverage of trans issues.

She said: “2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, everything was so trans-affirmative it was incredible. There were no stories about puberty blockers but there were stories about transgender struggles.”

A BBC spokesman said: “We don’t agree with this characterisation; the BBC reports a wide range of views and perspectives on the subject, in line with our editorial guidelines.”

Hahahahahahahahahaha that’s a good one.



Men ≠ Women & GC feminism ≠ KKK

Oct 11th, 2024 3:05 pm | By

“India” Willoughby is an evil dangerous liar.

“Gender Critical is a hate movement,” he says. “No different [from] belonging to the Ku Klux Klan.” He’s a filthy malicious liar. Of course being gender critical is nothing like belonging to the KKK. The KKK disguised themselves and terrorized Black people with violence because the Klan considered them inferior and dangerous. People who are gender critical don’t believe that men are women, and we say so, and we argue about it.

Not the same things.

Willoughby is a filthy liar.



Fighting with the weather

Oct 11th, 2024 10:58 am | By

I share his frustration.

Alabama’s most respected meteorologist, James Spann, recently expressed frustration over a “society full of hate, anger, rage, and the inability to think clearly,” following an onslaught of negative responses after he attempted to debunk hurricane-related misinformation. Spann took to Facebook earlier in the week to share his concerns after encountering a wave of false claims about Hurricane Milton, which developed in the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall in Florida. His post, as first reported by AL.com, urged his followers to stop spreading misinformation.

Among the wild claims Spann addressed were conspiracy theories, such as the assertion that “the moon has disappeared and was nuked by the government,” and that hurricanes were being steered by “chemtrails.” He also highlighted other baseless claims, like the notion that federal agencies were manipulating weather patterns to influence the upcoming presidential election or imprisoning relief workers.

I was unaware of that claim about the moon. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it around lately.

Later in the week, Spann shared a link to a FEMA page that debunked rumors surrounding Hurricane Helene. However, instead of appreciation, Spann was met with a barrage of hostile comments. In a follow-up post, he wrote, “I pass along information from officials with zero comment. I have no interest in politics. But the threats I have received from posting this are not good. Some I turned in. Some of the most hateful messages I have received come from people with Bible verses all over their profile. It is clear that we live in a society full of hate, anger, rage, and the inability to think critically. It has been very tough today, and all I do is pass along information. If you hate me, that is fine, but you might want to pull down those verses and your church affiliation. It isn’t a good look. This post will be gone soon.”

Two words. Trump & Murdoch.



All kinds of reasons and excuses

Oct 11th, 2024 8:49 am | By

Obama tells men it’s not Manly to be afraid to back women.

Former President Barack Obama traveled to Pittsburgh on Thursday to urge voters there to choose Vice President Kamala Harris in November, aiming a message at one group in particular: Black men.

The decision voters have between the vice president and former President Donald J. Trump, her Republican opponent, “isn’t a close call,” Mr. Obama said as he visited with a group of campaign volunteers and officials at a field office just ahead of his appearance at a Harris rally. His message was for Black male voters whom he said might not be yet on board with Ms. Harris.

Citing “reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities,” he called out what he said was flagging enthusiasm for Ms. Harris compared with the support he received when he was running for the presidency in 2008.

“You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses,” Mr. Obama said. “I’ve got a problem with that.

“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” Mr. Obama continued, adding that the “women in our lives have been getting our backs this entire time. When we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they’re the ones out there marching and protesting.”

Besides which, is it really better to have a toad for president rather than a woman?



Unleash the

Oct 11th, 2024 8:27 am | By

The reasoned debate continues.

No doubt the crickets identify as tigers.


Yes and astronomers control the stars

Oct 11th, 2024 8:10 am | By

It turns out the hurricane was caused by meteorologists.

Trump suggested the Biden administration’s response had been lacking and planned in partisan ways that caused Republican voters be abandoned and left “Americans to drown”, particularly in North Carolina after Helene. “They’ve let those people suffer unjustly,” he said. His comments have received bipartisan criticism, including from some local and state Republican leaders in affected areas.

Remember how Trump dealt with hurricanes? Throwing rolls of paper towels at people? Ignoring Puerto Rico altogether?

Meteorologists tracking Milton have been beset by conspiracy theories that they are controlling the weather, even by using a nuclear explosion, and have faced death threats.

“I’ve never seen a storm garner so much misinformation, we have just been putting out fires of wrong information everywhere,” said the CBS meteorologist Katie Nickolaou. She added: “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes. I can’t believe I just had to type that.”

Ok but will throwing vulcanologists into volcanoes stop eruptions?



Bacon

Oct 10th, 2024 5:16 pm | By

Trump thinks “grocery” is an obscure word that needs him to explain it.

Now tell us what a “stomach” is.


Theez dumm peeple

Oct 10th, 2024 10:51 am | By

Trump attacking other people’s intellectual capacities:

Donald Trump lashed out at the hosts of The View on Wednesday with a string of low-brow insults, including that they are “demented,” “dirty,” and “dumb.”

“I watched that stupid View where you have these dumb people,” a rambling Trump told a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania…Then, as if his brain were spitting out one of his impulsive, celebrity-obsessed tweets of yore, the former president trained his ire on Whoopi GoldbergThe View’s co-host and moderator, calling her “demented.”

Trump claimed, before he was in politics, he once hired Goldberg—a celebrated comedian who has won the Mark Twain Prize and the EGOT—to perform and accused her of having a “foul mouth.”

“Every word out of her mouth was like the f-word,” Trump said “She was so filthy, dirty, disgusting half the place left. I said I’d never hire her again.” He then called Goldberg a “loser.”

But…sir…

The hypocritical Trump, of course, is well known for profanity. He attacked NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem to protest police brutality as “sons of b—–es” and infamously called Haiti and several African nations “s–thole countries” during a government meeting. A New York Times analysis of his speeches published last week found he has used swear words 69 percent more often at rallies this year than he did when he first ran for president in 2016.

But that’s different, because he’s male, and pale, and rich, and evil.

And Trump’s attack on Goldberg wasn’t even his first broadside aimed at a View host that day. At an earlier rally in Scranton, Trump attacked her co-host Sunny Hostin as “dumber than Kamala.”

“She’s a dummy,” Trump told the crowd of Hostin. “I watched her over the years, that is one dumb woman. I’m sorry, women, she’s a dummy.”

At his Reading rally—after he finished disparaging Goldberg—Trump called Harris “a dumb person” before seemingly admitting his own staff have told him to tone down his boorish, sexist attacks on her. “Somebody said to me, one of my people, a nice person, a staff person said, ‘Sir, please, don’t call her dumb, the women won’t like it,’” he said, before insisting women “don’t care.”

poll released last week by the Women and Politics Institute at American University’s School of Public Affairs found Trump trails Harris among women voters by 15 points.

It should be way more than 15 points.



Learning beyond boundaries

Oct 10th, 2024 9:45 am | By

Mount Holyoke College wants to have it both ways.

At Mount Holyoke College, the leading gender-diverse women’s college, students learn beyond boundaries, explore interests across disciplines and build skills and connections for a lifetime of purposeful leadership.

What thee helll is a gender-diverse women’s college?

Nothing, that’s what. A contradiction in terms. You can be a women’s something or you can be a gender-diverse something, but you can’t be both.

Its second most recent post is about “a vibrant community space dedicated to supporting LGBTQIA+ students, staff and faculty.” So they have gay male students and male students who are trans or queer or asexual or plus? But then they’re not a women’s college.

You have to pick one. You can’t do both, not because it’s not allowed, but because it’s not possible.



Powered by Jaguar

Oct 9th, 2024 5:34 pm | By
Powered by Jaguar

Something called “Attitude” tells us:

India Willoughby has slammed the Labour government, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting over the party’s policies regarding the ban on hormone blockers and their stance on trans healthcare.

Speaking to Attitude on the red carpet at the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards, powered by Jaguar, Willoughby said: “I’m not exaggerating when I say that the Labour government are going to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds, possibly thousands, of trans people.”

Hahaha that’s funny, because exaggerating is exactly what he’s doing. He’s just making shit up, out of nothing. Look at Willoughby: is he dead? Is he approaching being dead? Not so much. He’s standing around in a red strapless dress, looking ridiculous but not dead.

“We are going through a very slow and quiet genocide,” she said.

Yahuh, so slow and so quiet that it can’t be detected at all, no matter how fine the instruments.

Everyone thinks that a genocide is all about death camps. Not necessarily.”

Nope, everyone doesn’t think that at all. Rwanda wasn’t death camps. Even the Holocaust wasn’t all death camps; they started out just shooting people, but decided that wasn’t efficient.

[He[ continued: “You’re stopping people transitioning. This is going to lead to suicides. Every study in the world has shown this leads to suicides. But Wes Streeting just does not care. I think it’s an absolute disgrace.”

Nobody’s stopping anybody “transitioning”; it can’t be done. People can’t change sex. Willoughby is dressed up in a bright red fluffy dress that starts at the tits and ends above the knees. He is 59 years old. Do you know a lot of 59 year old women who dress like that? The photo of him in it is hilarious, because he’s glowering like Sterling Heyden in Dr Strangelove, which doesn’t really jibe well with the pwetty dwess.



That’ll help

Oct 9th, 2024 5:04 pm | By

Oh ffs. Some pond scum is attacking the Internet Archive. Why? Because Palestine uh uh uh.



Different fella

Oct 9th, 2024 11:22 am | By

Tom Nichols in The Atlantic on the contrasts between George Washington and the wannabe dictator:

Donald Trump and his authoritarian political movement represent an existential threat to every ideal that Washington cherished and encouraged in his new nation. They are the incarnation of Washington’s misgivings about populism, partisanship, and the “spirit of revenge” that Washington lamented as the animating force of party politics. Washington feared that, amid constant political warfare, some citizens would come to “seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual,” and that eventually a demagogue would exploit that sentiment.

Most American presidents have had some sort of military experience. A few, like Washington, were genuine war heroes. All of them understood that military obedience to the rule of law and to responsible civilian authority is fundamental to the survival of democracy. Again, all of them but one.

During his term as president, Trump expected the military to be loyal—but only to him. He did not understand (or care) that members of the military swear an oath to the Constitution, and that they are servants of the nation, not of one man in one office. Trump viewed the military like a small child surveying a shelf of toy soldiers, referring to “my generals” and ordering up parades for his own enjoyment and to emphasize his personal control.

Trump was more than willing to turn the American military against its own people. In 2020, for instance, he wanted the military to attack protesters near the White House. “Beat the fuck out of them,” the president told the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley. “Just shoot them.” Both Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper (a former military officer himself) talked their boss out of opening fire on American citizens.

Senior officers during Trump’s term chose loyalty to the Constitution over loyalty to Donald Trump and remained true to Washington’s legacy. Such principles baffle Trump—all principles seem to baffle Trump, and he especially does not understand patriotism or self-sacrifice. He is, after all, the commander in chief who stood in Arlington National Cemetery, looked around at the honored dead in one of the country’s most sacred places, and said: “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

Not someone we should put in a position to do it again.



Ed Miliband says ignore women

Oct 9th, 2024 9:27 am | By

No, he doesn’t say that.

What he says is even worse.

“We’ve really got to stand up for the rights of trans people, yes we’ve got to hear those women who say that there’s a case for single sex spaces, I understand that, but, I do think that we’ve got to empathize and recognize the pain that so many people, so many trans people face and treat them with the respect that they deserve.”

The whole bit between the “yes” and the “but” is rushed and gabbled, while everything after that is slowed and said with great emphasis. It’s very very very clear that the “yes yes women blah blah” bit is a contemptuous hostile yesyesIknowallthat, the only function of which is to lead up to the but.

It couldn’t be more clear or more insulting.

Updating to add: Video credit: @Jonnywsbell



Are they serious?

Oct 9th, 2024 6:13 am | By

So, to cheer us up, here are Jesus and Mo and the barmaid.



Free & Equal unless you’re a woman

Oct 9th, 2024 6:11 am | By

The UN coughs up a hairball onto women again.

Oh look! There are the women with missing lower legs again, complete with weird antiquated Captain Hookish prosthetic replacements. Corporate Memphis Pegleg.

Anyway. The real issue is here is the UN again telling us that men can be women, i.e. men can push women aside and take over everything. I tried to find a parallel Gay Men Day but was unable to. UN Free & Equal doesn’t try to force gay men to be incloosive of women but it does try to force lesbians to be incloosive of men. Why’s that then? I suppose it’s because the UN considers women inferior and subordinate.



The fuel necessary

Oct 9th, 2024 5:03 am | By

Are we there yet? I think we are.

Catastrophic hurricane approaches popular low-lying state

Hurricane Milton tore towards Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday, leaving residents with one final day to evacuate or hunker down before the “catastrophic” Category 5 storm is predicted to hit, triggering a life-threatening storm surge.

With more than 1 million people in coastal areas under evacuation orders, those fleeing for higher ground clogged highways on Tuesday and gas stations ran out of fuel, in a region still recovering from the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago.

Milton is on a rare west-to-east path through the Gulf of Mexico and is likely to bring a deadly storm surge of 10 feet (3 meters) or more of flooding to much of Florida’s Gulf Coast. Officials from Biden to Tampa Mayor Jane Castor warned people in evacuation zones to get out or risk death.

But of course we’re talking about millions of people here. Getting out won’t be a walk in the park. When gas stations run out of fuel, well, that’s game over.

Milton became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic, growing from a Category 1 to a Category 5 in less than 24 hours.

“These extremely warm sea surface temperatures provide the fuel necessary for the rapid intensification that we saw taking place to occur,” said climate scientist Daniel Gilford of Climate Central, a nonprofit research group. “We know that as human beings increase the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, largely by burning fossil fuels, we are increasing that temperature all around the planet.”

So it’s not even that people should have left sooner, because they didn’t know they had to leave until it was too late to leave.

More than a dozen coastal counties issued mandatory evacuation orders, including Tampa’s Hillsborough County. Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, ordered the evacuation of more than 500,000 people. Lee County said 416,000 people lived in its mandatory evacuation zones.

Evacuation is mandatory and impossible. We’re going to be seeing headlines about thousands of people trapped in their cars as the hurricane takes everything out.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic choked roads leading out of Tampa on Tuesday, when about 17% of Florida’s nearly 8,000 gas stations had run out of fuel, according to fuel markets tracker GasBuddy.

What’s the % now? What will it be 12 hours from now?



Guest post: We’re not dancing anymore

Oct 8th, 2024 3:45 pm | By

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Trump’s decompensation on the campaign trail.

“Climate change covers everything. It can rain, it can be dry, it can be hot, it can be cold….”

That’s exactly right, and that’s a huge part of the goddamn problem. It’s not just a “change” like flipping a switch on or off; it’s the disruption and destabilization of established, reliable patterns upon which human civilization (and the biosphere in general) depends. It is the removal of “pattern” itself, which makes human planning much more difficult, in this instance, the rescheduling, or the end of the concept of a hurricane “season” itself.

Looking more closely, it’s not just a “climate change” problem, but a nightmare weave of disasters arising from the collective appropriation by eight billion humans of ever more of the Earth’s species and materials for their own exclusive use. Even if we weren’t destabilizing the climate, we’d still be in the midst of a biodiversity crisis, a water crisis, a food production crisis, a pollution crisis, and a resource scarcity crisis. Our numbers alone impose an irreducible footprint and load upon the normal, healthy cycling of the planet and the health and wellbeing of all of its other inhabitants. Multiply anything each of us does by eight billion. We take up a lot of biogeochemical space simply by existing. Our cumulative impact starts at the molecular level and goes up from there, with our fingerprints on change and influence at every scale over the entire planet. We are a growing herd of bulls in a china shop that is still as small as it ever was, but there are now fewer things left to break. Taking everything for ourselves is a self-defeating strategy. Looking at the trend lines we’re following, it looks like our goal is a human monoculture. More humans mean less of everything else, and that “everything else” gives us the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. There are no substitutes. There are no alternative brands we can switch to, no other store we can go to that will stock these items if they disappear from the shelves.

The Earth system is not going to restabilize until we stop dumping massive amounts of greenhouse gasses into it (among other things). If and when that happens, it is likely to have shifted to a new regime unprecidented in human experience, which is not a phrase one wants to hear in conjunction with the very conditions upon which human society depends. The Earth is still recovering from the last such major perterbations we’ve induced; the widespread extirpation of Ice Age megafaunal communities, and the European conquest of the Americas, both of which are still unfolding, and both of which have involved massive disruptions and reorganizations of biomes on a continental scale, the first over a timescale of millenia, the second over centuries. It’s harder to dance if the beat keeps changing. Our current crises (which are developments of and elaborations upon these two previous convulsions) are operating at a decadal level, with things getting worse faster than our models had predicted. We’re not dancing anymore. Now we have to run just to keep up. This is not good news for a global, Just-On-Time civilization, because at some point it means we’re not going to be sure where our next meal is coming from. Multiply that by eight billion.

Humans are a pattern-seeking species. It has been one of our vital survival skills, allowing us to see fleeting parts of a whole and infer the signal “predator” lurking in the undergrowth. The occasional “noise” of a false positive where it’s a false alarm is a small price to pay compared to the lethal and overconfident false negative that resulted in a non-forebear becoming dinner. Pattern-seeking is the basis of all science. But we are pattern-creators too, with the false-positive noise of mistaken inference being elevated to the level of meaningful “signal” Our pattern-seeking instincts can be hijacked and redirected by our cultural expectations and turned into elaborate, whole-cloth delusional structures, like astrology. Or, they can be incorporated into an existing cultural construction where there is a resemblance to expected imagery. Pareidolia can be quite culturally specific. From this we get the veneration of a random pattern on a leaky oil storage tank because it happens to look vaguely like some peoples’ idea of the appearance of the Virgin Mary, and that this is actually a vital message, a call for repentance and renewed faith. That’s a lot of baggage to load onto a stain. Non-Catholics and non-Christians are much less likely to see any such resemblance, and even less likely to ascribe any meaning or urgency to any such “apparition,” and yet still succumb to triggering by a resemblance to something culturally salient to themselves. Catholics and other Christians will in turn see nothing of interest or import in someone else’s “significant” patterns of burnt toast, or stained walls. Message not received. (This cultural naivety/gullibility can be used by the unscrupulous, with “images” created for power and profit, the “Shroud” of Turin being the most well known among all the relics of the Saints, and splinters of the True Cross.)

There’s money to be made in the other direction as well. What we’re dealing with now is a denial of pattern, a claim that there is no connection, no signal in the supposed pattern of phenomena ascribed to “climate change.” That this denial happens to align perfectly with the economic and financial interests of those promoting it is supposed to be disregarded (in effect, the denial of another pattern) and ignored, their hand poorly hidden behind made-to-order astroturf organizations whose sole purpose is to sow doubt. Denial of the tobacco-cancer link was just the audition. In a nice bit of judo, this conflict of interest is projected upon the researchers studying climate change, with the charge that they are grifters making a buck out of the climate change “industry,” and that their calls for “more research” are just grabs for more money. This accusation, coming as it does from the oil industry’s side of this grotesque power imbalance, would be laughable if it weren’t leading us on into disaster. But it’s part of the fine human tradition of hiding from ourselves the true costs of our behaviours. It’s as old as calling cows, pigs, and chickens “beef”, “pork” and “poultry,” and of a piece with hiding sweatshops overseas, and euphemistically naming suburban property “developments” for the natural features plowed under and bulldozed away to make room for them. We’re encouraged to look the other way, to not concern ourselves with how others have to pay for what we have and how we got it. If we lose our appetite for what’s on our plate, we no longer buy their product, but we still have to find something to eat.

Part of this pattern denial is hiding alternatives to the way things are now. Products labeled “fair trade” offer a hint of this. What does that say about products that aren’t labelled as such? What of the treatment of people at the other end of the supply chain? Isn’t it possible to run a profitable business that doesn’t rely on oppression and expoitation in service to the bottom line? These are choices that have been made, not things that just happen. Somebody signs those paycheques and decides how many zeros follow the number on the line. It shouldn’t be remarkable or noteworthy to treat people working for you with dignity and respect, and to take less in profit in order to pay them a living wage. The end price that consumers pay should reflect these considerations, rather than be used as an inflexible position to use as leverage against workers’ conditions in a race to the bottom. One would hope that a knowledgible, educated, compassionate society would be aware of this and realize that our economic relationships should be more like a partnership or collaboration, and less like a dictatorship or theft. We’re all in this together, and we shouldn’t let sociopaths set the agenda or write the rules. At this point in time, a “winner take all” mentality ends up with everyone losing.

Making choices depends upon knowing their are choices to be made, that choice is even possible. Hiding this fact, and acting as if our current conditions are somehow “natural”, “inevitable” and not themselves the products of past and current choices prevents us from making informed decisions. Ultimately we are constrained by the physical limits of material reality (limits which are making themselves felt more keenly as time ticks away). But the most important limits might be both imaginary and imaginative, dependent upon our ability to discern the importance of patterns that are actually present, our ability to overcome cultural and economic blindness to those patterns, and our willingness to change what we’re doing. Not all changes are improvements, so having a clear understanding of where we are, how we got here, where we want to go, and how we might get there, are crucial to choosing our actions. The human impact on the Earth can be found everywhere, at all scales. This knowledge is sobering, but it means that opportunities for action to heal those injuries is possible at all scales, everywhere. Wherever we are, there are things we can do. We’re capable of so much. We have produced more than our fair share of cruelty and barbarity, destruction and thoughtlessness. But we also have an amazing aptitude for creativity and genius, curiousity and determination, understanding and compassion, physical and mental courage, stamina and perseverence; for imagining things that one would scarcely believe possible, both individually and collectively, and doing them. Multiply that by eight billion.

Roll up your sleeves: there’s work to do.