There are two great questions facing Americans: the planetary crisis and the crisis of democracy. They are intertwined.
The only reason we in the US are not acting to heal Earth and save Humanity is that HyperWealthy Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Unnatural Gas , Big Bombs - and the Big Banks that fund them -- use their wealth to buy Power. Power to cancel out millions of voters.
If they were Russian, we would call them oligarchs
And their gobble-gobble-gobble of Earth brings famines. despair, and death upon first the very poor, then the moderately poor, then the lower middle class, then the middle middle class.
Soon -- you. Us.
Why do you think teen-agers are falling mentally ill? Covid and its isolation? Sure.
The fear not of individual death but the death of the web of life on Earth, the death of Homo "sapiens," the death of all our collective hopes and dreams? Sure.
And why have our governments destroyed public-health and show no signs of restoring it? Ahhh - let scientists get away with preventing deaths by urging vaccines, and first thing you know they'll be taking action to prevent melting glaciers, spreading wildfires, devouring famines. And they will defund lethal CO2. oil, gas. Can't have that!
The Russian government acts like other Great Nuclear Powers -- murdering children, schoolteachers, steelworkers. Illegal. Immoral. Disgusting. Who else behaves this way? Ummmm --- The US in Vietnam and Iraq and Chile and - too many to name. China in its own capital city of Beijing, and in Tibet, and among /upon the Rohingya. All of NATO -- not instantly lethal, but with a long reach through time, when it addes the Eastern staes against the pleas of Russian semi-democrats and one US expert -- George Kennan -- that doing so would weaken Russian democracy and strengthen militarism there. Took a while, but it did.
Does that mean the Russian rulers get a pass -- "Everybody does it"? No. Each criminal government is criminal. Brought to justice or not. We stop the ones we can. AND -- wee stay conscious of the truth.
The war gives Big Oil an excuse to raise gasoline prices. Does the US say "Nothing doing," declare a Climate Emergency (there's a law for real emergencies like that), and start an all-out crash program for renewables while forbidding windfall profits? Does the US share the confiscated profits with auto drivers and truck drivers until the emergency can kick in with electric cars and lower prices? Of course not!
You don't treat oligarchs that way! You encourage them to buy a private journey round the moon in their own space-ship while their workers can't afford lunch. And you make sure they can buy one of the largest communication vehicles ever, so nobody can call them "oligarchs" without their permission.
And you deal with high oil prices by opening up parts of the national public land to drilling oil and gas wells. Even though you promised not to. After all, those guys are oligarchs.
Our government cries out against Russia, "War crimes!" That's truthful. So do we accept the authority of the ICC (International Criminal Court) to deal with such war crimes, even if it were by our own armies - at least to show our bona fides?
No, for we have a law forbidding foreign aid to any country that goes to the ICC to charge an American soldier with war crimes. And our last President pardoned US mercenaries who had been convicted in a US court of murdering Iraqi civilians.
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