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Mar 20
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Justin McAffee's avatar

lol… exactly.

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MS's avatar

Thanks for the rant. 100% with you on this.

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Justin McAffee's avatar

Always appreciated. :-)

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Michael Campi's avatar

On point.

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Justin McAffee's avatar

I have a hard time going online anymore because that's all I see and it's just so pointless...

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Michael Campi's avatar

We need a lot more of you and a lot less of them.

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SUE Speaks's avatar

Come to my Substack, Now What? to make it inviting to go online, and join in dealing with what we-the-people can do now to end run around this broken system to get the world we want to be in.

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Angus Laird's avatar

Thanks for this. It’s a very valid rant. Democracy isn’t the problem IMHO. Rather, our problem is democracy that failed to evolve over the last Fourth Turning Saeculum. In the western world, we allowed neoliberal economics to march us right back into the Gilded Age. A Global Operating System (GOS) where four of the five underpinning forms of capital (financial, human and cultural, social, and manufacturing/built/intellectual) are manmade skews everything toward a fiction - money - and away from perhaps the most important fifth form of capital - natural capital. Every election cycle we have an opportunity to introduce major GOS changes that just might pull our bacon from the fire of civilizational collapse. But instead, we rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. And the band plays on. And life remains about money and power.

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Justin McAffee's avatar

I believe in democracy... I just don't believe in the facade we call democracy. We need a form that's really bottom-up. I'm personally partial to something akin to Democratic Confederalism (Abdullah Öcalan)...

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Vanessa Kiedrowski's avatar

Great piece Do you feel there is opportunity for more localized, eco-conscious living in the face of the USA empire collapsing?

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Justin McAffee's avatar

Yes. It necessitates it. That doesn't mean there won't be great hurdles thrown our way. But I think the empire collapse is maybe the only way we'll really see more localized ecoconscious living.

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Pierre Kolisch's avatar

I like a good rant like this to start my day. Thank you. I gotta get to work now; lambing season you know. 100% on your belief in local

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Pretty Prepared's avatar

It's just crazy that some people see things so clearly and other just...don't (or can't). You know about Cassandra, right? She tries to warn everyone about the horrors about what was coming but no one would believe her. That's her curse. Ultimately it drives her insane. I can relate :(

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Martin's avatar

Counseling people to “shut up” about Trump is just nonsense, even though your larger point about the futility of change through US electoral politics is still valid. People have every right to be pissed off about this insane corporate escalation through this fascist demagogue.

And, of course, you can extol the “dismantling” of the systems that are sending humanity over the cliff to extinction, but that’s not the model in nature. Humanity has no capacity to do what you are asking of this species - ask yeast in a vat what happens, or the unchecked deer population on a remote island.

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Justin McAffee's avatar

I’m not really into despair nihilism….

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Martin's avatar

No problem. Didn't really think you would be.

But despair nihilism is into you -

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Peace2051's avatar

Bunker in Place! ...until you can't.

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Geoffrey Deihl's avatar

Excellent summary of the ludicrous situation we're in. Some of the writers I read here, experts in history, politics, and fascism, bewilderingly never or rarely mention the crisis the planet is in. Even the brightest are blind to the truth that ultimately our downfall is in destroying an inhabitable Earth. It is beyond disheartening.

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SUE Speaks's avatar

Geoffrey — Send people to me. Ranting is easy, but I’ve got the only Substack dealing with how to get from where we are to where we need to be. (Show me anyone else and collect the $100 offer I have out for that.)

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Amy Yates's avatar

Big picture, I agree for sure. I think it’s a bit of a privileged take which isn’t necessarily a criticism. Most people on substack are very privileged. But for the people it matters for… it matters.

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Justin McAffee's avatar

What Orange does matters… but the question for me is whether obsessing about it online is actually useful, especially when the broad injustices and solutions get sidelined by our tunnel vision.

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Amy Yates's avatar

I feel you. I appreciate the post too. I see the obsession phase as almost a right of passage. It probably has some utility too. Mostly in creating cultural pressure on the few who actually matter for opposing Orange and maintaining social “order”. But, like you said, there is so much more power in the actual change making - creating new systems, etc. But we’re not all privileged enough to be parts of that early change (i consider myself to be privileged enough). The rage outlet should mostly be there for people shackled to the system. It’s part of waking up, I think

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Justin McAffee's avatar

I used to be obsessed with politics. So I can see it being a right of passage. I used to do campaign work. lol

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Amy Yates's avatar

You’ve been on a journey! I bet it was pretty sobering to let go of and grieve your belief in politics and politicians. Everyone I know who really challenges themselves with the reality and weight of collapse has a lot of heart for life. It takes a lot of heart to morph the frenetic rage into real action.

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Michelle Hess's avatar

I really appreciate your comments here. Thank you for your perspective it is really helpful.

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Amy Yates's avatar

Thanks for extending your gratitude. It means a lot

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Justin McAffee's avatar

I was in the Mojave Desert at the time. I had gotten to know the land really well. I spent so much time in the outback, I saw so many plant and animal communities and started growing a big heart for these places. I aligned myself with environmental groups as a result. Then.. I started witnessing so much habitat being destroyed for renewable energy development that I started making films and advocating against growth. I found myself astonished by the environmental groups and the Dems wholeheartedly supporting this shit. I had started a business and operated for 7 years working with these groups and suddenly found myself having fewer and fewer clients. That was the end of it...

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Amy Yates's avatar

You have a powerful story. Keep telling it! What was it that allowed the environmental groups to be swayed by “green” business? I imagine things like a lack of understanding the hydrological cycle (small and large), money, fear of confronting overshoot, social pressure could all play roles..

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Etheria Dark Garden's avatar

Few are discussing degrowth, evidently a verboten subject , and how to go about it. I guess climate collapse will take care of over population, along with other concomitant horrors.

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Monapahoa's avatar

As along as it doesn’t impact you, the rest should just shut up? Interesting take on rolling over and pissing on your belly.

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Justin McAffee's avatar

Plenty of things politicians do impact me. The question is whether focusing on critiquing team red or blue is going to make much difference, especially when both teams are complicit in vast injustices and protecting an economic system that is destroying the planet. As I wrote in the piece, there are better uses of your time.

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Peter d'Errico's avatar

"The real trap here is mistaking bureaucratic stability for justice, or assuming that defending the status quo is resistance."

Yup!

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Jackie Feather's avatar

There's room for both. Sometimes we/I need to do a big rant about Trump and Musk and get it off my chest. And then I can think about how we are destroying 💔 our fragile ecological systems and what to do about it... and then I'll make a cup of tea and sit in the sun. Life goes on, we can't solve everything all of the time, or even anything some of the time, but we can make room for it all and do our best one baby step at a time. Shutting up about Trump is definitely valid when it gets in the way of doing what matters. Off to make a cuppa now and then fold the washing ☕️ ❤️🌲

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Justin McAffee's avatar

Agreed.

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Margi Prideaux, PhD's avatar

Senstational, Justin. The essay we all needed. Gratitude and RESPECT.

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Walt Svirsky's avatar

We had a brief chance, with Bernie Sanders, to escape the evil clutches of the muthafuckin’ billionaires and get some care for the middle and lower classes. But, the phony as HELL Dems snatched that little pearl away, too. I’m under no delusions that any political party in the U.S. is worth a shit. We have been bamboozled, hornswoggled and buffaloed. The 4th Estate has completely collapsed upon itself, to the unabashed glee of the billionaires and the NYT and WaPo have normalized tyranny.

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cyberwyrd's avatar

Freaking brilliant! I’ve been banging on about this for years. I’ll be checking out your curriculum as research for a speculative political novel I’m (re-)writing.

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