We were lucky when I was young. In the 1980s it is true that leaders in the English speaking world suddenly decided that supporting corporations and hitting the poor would solve all our problems, but they also were rational enough not to want atomic war and global destruction. They understood what nuclear war meant. Basically the protestors and the dominant groups were in harmony – all of us preferred not to have nuclear war and the end of the world. As a result, we all lived through this potential universal death.
Even when it came to environment, the dominant groups largely thought saving the earth was good and possible, and that if it cost a few bucks extra that could be done. Even Margaret Thatcher thought global warming should be tackled, while she was in office – even if she later thought saving capitalism was more important than saving the planet. Apparently after retiring she wrote “Kyoto was an anti-growth, anti-capitalist, anti-American project which no American leader alert to his country’s national interests could have supported.”
Apparently she was persuaded by the usual groups of people. Exxon, Koch, Cato, Institute of Economic Affairs etc. who sold her the 80s mantra, we can do everything if we just don’t get in the way of corporate profit. No work, no planning, is necessary (unless its planning to destroy the power of ordinary people).
This was the transition to the change in which leaders began to value elite profit more than survival. They cannot imagine a future without corporate capitalism and economic growth and I guess that tips them out of reason and their position becomes there is no alternative – we have to destroy everything else in order to survive. Something of a contradiction, we might think.
However, our recent leaders don’t seem even this rational. Trump for example is encouraging corporations to pollute and poison people even more than they might want. The current leader of Brazil apparently started by claiming that the land clearing he had promised for the Amazon was not happening and then trying to suppress the bearer of news:
“The state-run National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has reported a 88-per cent increase in deforestation in June year-over-year, and said that cleared area increased 278 per cent between July 2018 and July 2019.”
“Jair Bolsonaro claimed that the statistics were “lies” meant to tarnish the image of Brazil and its government. He went on to fire INPE head Ricardo Galvao after suggesting that he was working for a foreign non-profit group.”
When the massive fires arrived, he apparently first of all claimed they were not happening, despite the evidence of satellite photographs, later claiming the fires were lit by green NGOs. It seems obvious that people who wanted to clear the Amazon, and reduce oxygen, would be happy with the fires.
Our NSW government is a simple mess of contradictions, but if you want support from them, then do some land clearing, help destroy people’s lived environment in the cities for profit and you will be fine. Our two main parties in Australia, seem to want not just to maintain coal pollution, but to increase it. Again because it would profit some people.
What does money profit anyone if they loose the world to spend it in? The contradiction drives people crazy.
Faced with this lack of sense and coherence, contemporary righteous politicians seem to have decided that they will do as much destruction as possible.
If they are going down they will take the world with them, and maybe they will be wealthy enough to buy some kind of survival, or support from those who are wealthy enough to be building fortress bunkers. This is an unusual combination of psychological factors, but it is now ingrained. Maybe corporations really to select for psychopathology?
The common attitude seems to be that normal folk are disposable and easily deceived, and service directed at them is pointless – apparently these people do not share the same world or wealth. I guess this attitude could also function as a psychological defence against climate change – they might suffer or die, but we will not.
What do you do in such a situation, to fight a leadership wedded to destruction?
Tags: climate change, depth psychology, Disinformation, free markets, social action
Climate, technology and chaos Blog 
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