In a week this total fraud of an election will be over, and among the great number of things they have in common, one of the two disaster candidates elected will be in full support of the Dakota Access Pipeline. We could have had Bernie Sanders. We could have had Jill Stein. But nope. The fossil fuel industry owns both the Democrat and Republican parties.
What’s so impressive is how many so-called progressives have convinced themselves that their center-Right neoliberal candidate shares their values and morality. Hillary supporters say Jill Stein is crazy, yet their reasons for supporting Hillary are all issues that Stein actually supports and Hillary actually doesn’t support. Are they just selectively sexist or what?
So once again we get conned into a rigged oligarchy that caters the illusion of choice, and once again the real work, the real Hope and Change rests on the front line communities; the rebels chaining themselves to bulldozers, building barricades, getting beaten by police and bitten by attack dogs.
Happening now: #NoDAPL water protectors blockading highway 1806 with cars, tires & fire amid fears 100+ police about to raid resistance camp pic.twitter.com/GGwD8IRAK5
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) October 27, 2016
Those resisting the forces driving climate change are resisting our very economic system at the same time. To be sure, there can be no real solutions to a warming globe that don’t address the accumulation of capital from destructive resource extraction and the burning of carbon.
The word ‘sustainable’ has become almost meaningless, but to reclaim it, it helps to invoke its antonym: terminal. The opposite of sustainable is terminal. As in the cessation of life. That’s right folks. If it’s not sustainable, it’s killing us. Our current economic system is killing the planet and making obscene amounts of profit for a select few in the process.
.@HillaryClinton Time for you to make your position on #DakotaAccessPipeline clear. Do you stand with people & planet or big oil? #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/0gGIW2j3aG
— Jeremiah Smith (@jbspharmd) October 21, 2016
These select few run the death cult and tell us its for our own good. Like Jim Jones amplified to infinity, they pay their shills to mindfuck us into believing a new light bulb or a short shower is all you have to do to make a difference. Sorry not sorry, but it won’t.
Some argue only radical system change will halt this cult. I’ve argued the easiest way to hobble them is to simply stop drinking the Kool-Aid. The two easiest ways to reduce your personal carbon footprint from 40 tons a year to just 0.4 tons is to quit eating animals and quit driving cars.
If you want to actually support what’s going on w/#NoDAPL, donate to the legal funds: https://t.co/LWKOG2n5gx , or https://t.co/ZTVhiGN4H9
— Dr. Adrienne Keene (@NativeApprops) October 31, 2016
Radicals will claim these are petty lifestyle choices. They wouldn’t be if enough people made personal changes, but we know that’s not how the human mind works. So what then?
Elon Musk and others are trying desperately to innovate the tech necessary to make solar the cheapest form of energy there is. But is that enough when the human population increases by 40,000 people every day? How do we even begin talking about overpopulation without factoring the vast imbalance of resources consumed between the first and third world?
Is it really just time to pray for a giant meteor to reset Earth again and erase this mistake called homo sapien?
“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and racism.” ~Martin Luther King Jr #StandingRock #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/6nPXZ4EjsW
— The Crisis Magazine (@thecrisismag) October 27, 2016
Everyone’s read ‘The Monkey Wrench Gang‘, but few have read Edward Abbey’s posthumous sequel ‘Hayduke Lives!‘. The title refers to the seminal character of the original novel who engages in eco-sabotage; burning and destroying bulldozers and blowing up bridges in the name of saving the desert, if not the entire planet. While seemingly killed by law enforcement, his legend lives on by the actions of countless others.
While often being a sardonic look at activism, the message of both books is clear: protesting isn’t enough. Direct action is warranted and necessary, and that includes destruction of private property – to smash the very tools of death excavating sacred sites of peoples like the Standing Rock Sioux.
Like the saying goes, and it cannot be repeated enough: there can be no compromise in defense of the Earth.
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Before the Flood, 2016 directed by Fisher Stevens
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