I'd agree with you if the argument were "ecological overshoot theory is flawed". But, the discussion as I understand it is... the solution to ecological overshoot is "degrowth". In that context it makes sense to revisit Malthus.
Chris Hedges: My Thoughts on Biden Dropping Out
- Thread starter Ricter
- Start date
I'd agree with you if the argument were "ecological overshoot theory is flawed". But, the discussion as I understand it is... the solution to ecological overshoot is "degrowth". In that context it makes sense to revisit Malthus.
Your contributions are welcome regardless. Funny pic BTW.
It really started with Clinton and his DLC organisation. Since Reagan buried the old FDR democrats, Clinton needed a new vision for the Democrats to succeed and that was fighting big money with bigger money.July 22, 2024
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. Source: X
By Chris Hedges
Joe Biden was discarded by the same billionaire class he assiduously served throughout his political career. Barely able to stumble his way through the words on a TelePrompter and not always cognizant of what is happening around him, his billionaire supporters pulled the plug. He was their creature – he has been in federal office for 47 years – from start to finish. He was used as a foil to defeat Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primaries and was anointed as the candidate in 2024 in a Soviet-style primary campaign. The billionaire class will now anoint someone else. Democratic Party voters are stage props in this political farce. Donald Trump, unlike Kamala Harris or any other apparatchik the billionaire class selects as a presidential candidate, has a genuine and committed base, however fascistic.
In Hitler and the Germans, the political philosopher Eric Vogelin dismisses the idea that Hitler — gifted in oratory and political opportunism but poorly educated and vulgar — mesmerized and seduced the German people. The Germans, he writes, supported Hitler and the “grotesque, marginal figures” surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse and hopelessness. Voegelin defines stupidity as a “loss of reality.” The loss of reality means a “stupid” person cannot “rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.” The demagogue, who is always an idiote, is not a freak or social mutation. The demagogue expresses the society’s zeitgeist.
Biden and the Democratic Party are responsible for this zeitgeist. They orchestrated the deindustrialization of the United States, ensuring that 30 million workers lost their jobs in mass layoffs. As I write in America, The Farewell Tour, this assault on the working class created a crisis that forced the ruling elites to devise a new political paradigm. Trumpeted by a compliant media, this paradigm shifted its focus from the common good to race, crime and law and order. Biden was at the epicenter of this paradigm shift. Those undergoing profound economic and political change were told that their suffering stemmed not from rampant militarism and corporate greed but from a threat to national integrity. The old consensus that buttressed New Deal programs and the welfare state was attacked as enabling criminal Black youth, “welfare queens” and other alleged social parasites. This opened the door to a faux populism, begun by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, which supposedly championed family values, traditional morality, individual autonomy, law and order, the Christian faith and the return to a mythical past, at least for white Americans. The Democratic Party, especially under Bill Clinton and Biden, became largely indistinguishable from the establishment Republican Party to which it is now allied.
The Democratic Party refuses to accept its responsibility for the capture of democratic institutions by a rapacious oligarchy, the grotesque social inequality, the cruelty of predatory corporations and an unchecked militarism. The Democrats will anoint another amoral politician, probably Harris, to use as a mask for outsized corporate greed, the folly of endless war, the facilitation of genocide and the assault on our most basic civil liberties. The Democrats, tools of Wall Street, gave us Trump, and the 74 million people who voted for him in 2020. They look set to give us Trump again. God help us.
https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/22/chris-hedges-my-thoughts-on-biden-dropping-out/
So he is really the candidate that started the strategy of catering to the Oligarchs instead of the white working class that the FDR democrats like Carter catered to. NAFTA was the final nail on the coffin for the union class. Heck Perot even foretold what was going to happen but I guess the voters didn't give a fuck and voted for Clinton anyway. I guess playing the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show was more important to the voters.
I'm not "promoting" anything, just pointing out that it's been over 200 years and a Malthusian catastrophe has yet to occur. In addition, I see your concerns re: EO as being quite similar.
I suspect you're a bit wet behind the ears and never heard of Malthus until I brought him up. Now you're just wriggling to try and get the last word or cling to your collapsing model of the world.
But, by all means, if you don't see a similarity between Malthus and your concerns regarding EO... do the work required to explain the differences and help humanity avert the foreboding catastrophe.
It's your world... we're just living in it.
We were on the verge, actually, until Haber Bosch. Then world population tripled. Think we can keep doing that indefinitely?
Malthus' shortcoming was not understanding the other half of the thermodynamic equation: waste (he was not alone, not by a long shot, many people still think it all just "goes away"). We are rapidly overfilling our pollution sinks (a parameter that includes all the undesirable outcomes of economic production, including climate change).
There's no other option besides enslaving or exterminating people. I don't think that will go over well. The tragedy of the commons will force human ingenuity to make the best of a bad situation.
I'd suggest you start thinking about social "science" as well as natural science. Good luck.
Don't put words in my mouth. I'm not suggesting it's a place to start nor that we work backward... I'm pointing out the problem. Get to work! I'm sure you can find ways to economize.
Edit: I'd really appreciate you didn't take my words out of context too. It comes off like you're playing bullshit games and it's very unsavory. To be clear, I wrote:
(emphasis added)
You think I just fell out of a coconut tree? Grow up; you're not worth my time anymore.
Last edited: