A walk through the mind of a progressive

[Samthehumble]

Very instructive to say the least.   So many words and so much nonsense.    It'll help you understand what we're dealing with.

https://eand.co/why-the-next-3000-days-will-decide-the-fate-of-human-civilization-213e3f0561b6

The next three thousand days will be something very much like our judgment days. The next three thousand days — the next decade — will decide the fates of the following things: the planet, life on it, democracy, and freedom. The next three thousand days will decide the fate of human civilization.

Our existential threats right now are the greatest ones in history. Yes, really. Climate change and mass extinction, to name just two, make yesterday’s seem small in comparison................................

The hard truth about both climate change and mass extinction, though, is that so far there’s only one political economy that’s proven capable of reducing either. Only Europe — alone in the world — has managed to reduce carbon emissions and (theoretically, at least) increase biodiversity. Why? Because Europe is a social democracy — and a social democracy is capable of investing in its trees, rivers, soil, animals. It is capable of nourishing them, just like it’s capable of nourishing people......................................................

The rest of the world isn’t a social democracy, though. It’s part of America’s global capitalist system. India, China, the Middle East, Central America, South America. All these regions essentially feed American capitalism’s voracious appetite for raw materials, minerals, oil — at any price. What do all these countries and regions have in common? Well, most of them were bombed, invaded, or destabilized by America — to create that global capitalist system. Any time a people wanted another political system — communism, socialism, social democracy — America would invade...............................................................

That brings me to my third existential threat. American capitalism’s imploding into fascism. America itself is the bellwether, the prime example: it now has all the institutions of a properly fascist society, as much as Americans don’t understand it or can’t admit it — concentration camps, kids tortured in them, “raids” which terrorize entire cities, dehumanization as an everyday feature of public life, second class citizenship, all the stuff above done by private “subcontractors” for profit and power..............................................................

Now. Perhaps you can see my fourth existential threat already. A world of rising extremisms is also a world where democracy is in retreat. But as troublesome and wearisome as democracy seems — especially today — we should all want more of it.

Why? Because as we’ve discussed, democracy — of the most advanced and sophisticated kind, social democracy — is the only political economy in the world capable of resisting any of my existential threats. Europe hasn’t just been the only region in the world to reduce carbon emissions — it’s also the only in the world to resist fascism successfully so far..................................................

capitalism and democracy cannot coexist as equals. One must master the other. In social democracy, capitalism is not the equal of society. It has a purpose, a place, and a reason to exist beyond mere profit...............................................................................................

Democracy should best be seen as a ladder. At the bottom lie nations like America — just a few decades out of being apartheid states, with no real progress to becoming sophisticated democracies at all. At the top lie true social democracies, like European ones, with advanced, cutting-edge human rights constitutionally guaranteed — like healthcare, education, safety, transport, media, income, even dignity..............................................

If that happens, if tomorrow ends up like today, then the first three existential threats, climate change, mass extinction, and fascism, will probably rise to levels that they can’t be managed or defeated at all. Then the world enters a period of chaos, of violence, of might making right, of wars for water and air and land by fascist state against fascist state, each of which is trying to shunt off its “others”, it’s “parasites” and “liabilities”, to another weaker nation, using technology, surveillance, drones, bombs, bots, and body-armored paramilitaries. Sound like a pleasant future?