Behind the information wars is a struggle for power in the world between the privileged classes and everyone else. It cuts across nations and politics today as information itself is now a global commodity. In that sense, World War Three has already begun.
It’s no exaggeration to state that truth has become relative as opposed to universal. It depends on subjective and often diametrically opposing information fed to the population. People more and more do not know who or what to believe or trust.
This crisis has been percolating for many years but has taken center stage in the last twenty. Leaders like Putin and Trump deliberately challenged the factual and scientific world and our sense of reality on a scale that was never before attempted.
In our loathing of leaders like Putin and Trump and the new and openly fascist Republicans we forget that they were able to accomplish their goals through the use of clever and surprisingly basic forms of mass psychological manipulation. Building upon years of distorted, fictional and biased explanations of our history, faults and behaviors, it makes the Republican message much easier today to promote and the task of restoring a more rational approach to our actual realities much more difficult. The Trumper movement is based on an appeal to the white lower middle class, which has largely adopted the values and ways of thinking promoted by the upper classes, which is an authoritarian perspective on society. One which is patriarchal, ruthless and opposed to democratic, civil and women’s rights and invested in their domination and submission to their authority.
A Fire Wall of Lies and the Ultimate Reality Check
There is no doubt that the fire wall of lies, denial and fantasy erected by our national culture, and aided and abetted by the Republican fascists, will one day collapse and reality will hit us squarely in the face. But by then it may be too late. The inevitable advances of global warming threaten everyone and every living thing on the planet. The future predicted by science has become the present. I do not believe that global warming is an issue which can be kept separate from our other class-related and human rights related problems.
And yet we are forced into engage in a life and death political struggle with the Republicans instead of being able to commit our nation’s full wealth and resources to save ourselves and the planet. Nor have we yet awakened enough of our people to the death blow that nature and our failure to act sooner will inflict upon us.
Impending Disaster Dictates It’s Time to Address the Nation
It’s well past time for the more rational forces in America to put this crisis on the agenda at a level it deserves. It has the potential to shock but unite the country and will require much pain and change and a huge price tag. Just as America managed to find the resources to fight and help win two world wars, today we must find a way to put the information wars of deception out of its misery. If we don’t civilization as we know it will surely perish. We must embrace science and abandon self-deception.
I could fill pages with events this year which indicate global warning has accelerated to new and ominous levels. California will soon be bone dry. Record Heat has savaged parts of the Northwest and Alaska. Europe’s historic heat waves have caused widespread fires, drought and devastation. Record floods have hit parts of American’s Central/East regions. To name just a few recent weather catastrophes. While it was formerly believed that the worst ravages of planetary warming were years away, that is no longer the case. They are here, are life threatening and are the fault of all of us. It has been birthed by industrial society itself.
Silence on Global Warming = Death
I feel a bit like one of those religious fundamentalists that from time to time who predicted the end of the world. Only now this is actually a possibility predicted accurately by science. I could fill pages with more such disastrous weather evens. All of us, myself included, must face up to the challenge and fight the tendency to become resigned to it or pretend it’s not happening or it’s not that bad.
I am absolutely certain that President Biden and other world leaders have already been secretly briefed as to the national and worldwide consequences of global warming. It’s the ultimate national security issue for America and can no longer be kept from both the nation and the world. Much therefore depends on how the Democrats do in the Fall election in this regard. And whether the leadership can face up to it politically and persuade our industrial and financial sectors and the people themselves to get behind a long-range solution. Biden’s recent political successes are a positive sign but not nearly enough to make a dent in the problem.
Only with a much more united political situation can we hope to tackle global warming at a level that may make a difference. That in turn needs accepting that a national commitment is necessary. And in a manner which offers hope of success. My apologies if this issue makes me devolve from time to time into doom and gloom. It doesn’t help to let that get the best of us.
Fighting Global Warming Requires Fighting Fascism
I also think that a knowledge and understanding of mass psychology and the roots of patriarchal authoritarianism are essential. Such knowledge should be deployed in a positive rather than negative fashion by progressives and politicians to counter the damage that’s been done by the fascists. Monsters like Trump and Putin use the authoritarian and patriarchal tendencies in the masses for destructive reasons and to cement themselves into power. We should employ it for a progressive agenda. Words and emotions are weapons used by the fascists. That must be turned around as used for socially positive goals. Understanding of the mass psychology of fascism is necessary if you wish to counteract it. Wilhelm Reich’s Mass Psychology of Fascism is important reading for anyone in politics and the social movements, reviewed here.