Clash of the titans

The news media are giddy about the "victory" of Hillary Clinton in the "New Hampshire" primary. Not because they like Hillary Clinton, or because they believe she is the best candidate for president. They are giddy because her "victory" is automatic hype for "election" coverage. The more tight the race, the more excitement can be generated. The more excitement, the more viewers and readers are available to be pitched to by advertisers. The advertisers are corporations.

Just to bring it all back down to earth, so to speak, I drove home in fog last Saturday night, and could see about 20 feet in front of my car at the most.
The only way I could stay on the road was to keep my eye on the reflectors that were spaced along the center line. I also relied on the car ahead of me, but it vanished in the fog after about 15 miles. The next day, two people died in a fog-related pileup on the Interstate highway near Madison.

Wisconsin also had a tornado on Monday, which damaged 100 homes. The temperature reached a high of 47 degrees in Madison the same day. Compare this with the winter of 1995. I was working as a cable TV installer, and the temperature was consistently below zero. One day in January 1996 it was -35 degrees. Luckily, most of my work was indoors that day.

On Wisconsin Public Radio this morning, show host Kathleen Dunn interviewed Jim Motavalli, editor of E Magazine, on the subject "Losing winter." You may be able to listen to it by clicking here. I wasn't, but that's another story.

The global warming phenomenon may have advanced beyond our ability to reverse or stabilize the trend. It's not a fun prospect to think about, but it puts everything in context.

Particularly the "election." Regardless of who "wins," humankind, especially the "American" variety, is institutionally incapable of solving this dilemma in a competent way. We have rampant growth of population worldwide. That is, rampant growth of population worldwide with no meaningful intention of controlling or reducing it other than wars, disease, starvation, and poverty.

There also is no intention on the part of mass human institutions to place limits on economic growth, even though it means further degradation of the environment, and exacerbation of the great inequality that causes exponential population growth.

In that overall context, the "United States of America" is run by criminals. The executive branch of the Federal government has been a mafia-type criminal operation since early 2001, and likely for several decades before. This mafia-type criminal operation was placed in office through vote fraud and a Supreme Court that is derivative of the appointment process. Justices appointed by previous criminal administrations can be counted on to perpetuate the mafiaization (My own new term, I think. I haven't seen it before. Sometimes things pulled from the Collective Unconscious may have been pulled by someone else.) of the executive branch.

The support network of the executive branch mafia is most significantly made up of major corporations, especially defense contractors, oil and other energy companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, chemical companies, and, lest we forget, the news media. Just to muddy the waters a bit about the New Hampshire primary, the votes were counted by Diebold, the same company that guaranteed a victory for George W. Bush in 2004, and had a hand in the voting debacle in Florida in 2000, beginning the eight year national disaster were are now enduring.

This is a battle of mythic proportions: humankind is facing extinction, and the institutional framework of "the world's only superpower" is a mafia. It's asymmetrical warfare, to coin a phrase. Our criminal ruling elite versus the ecosystem that they and the rest of humankind depend on for survival. As each day passes, the climate crisis intensifies, the threat to our very existence intensifies, and the criminal class - the rich, the powerful, the corporate - becomes more desperately criminal. It's a clash of the titans, to coin another phrase. Who do you think will win?
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Here's a petition to sign. You don't have to join.
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Here's a little light reading: Click, click, click, and click.
This also is worth reading.
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A hint of things to come (mythically, of course).

Sometimes a sad tune can cheer you up.