Get real. Let's face it. We are DOOMED. But are we really?

[99th_Monkey]

At the end of the day, it matters not which political or social "issue" is nearest and most
dear to your heart.

Whether we're talking about out-of-control global warming, organized labor, corporate
"personhood", foreign policy, gun control (or lack thereof), or Wall St. corruption & it's
inordinate and nefarious influence on the economy .. with ALL of these issues, BIG MONEY
is now -- and will always be able to-- BUY more and better lawyers, BUY the very shrewdest
and highly skilled lobbyists, create louder think tanks, embed and bribe more convincing
"journalists" and pundits onto M$M airwaves, bribe more judges, steal more votes
on election day, etc. than the "Left". the 99% and poor could ever hope to do. And as if this
were not enough game-rigging to prop up the 1%'s vampiric stranglehold on America,
there is always an even Darker Side, of paid assassins at-the-ready, who are experts
in manufacturing "apparent suicides", untimely car crashes, false-flags, etc.

Lady Liberty, ACLU, Democracy Now, Anonymous, the labor movement, Occupy, et. al. all
notwithstanding, we are in the middle of a gunfight, holding a proverbially dull knife. If
you doubt this analysis, see Harry Reid cave-in on US Senate filibuster reform, etc. This
one betrayal of democracy, will ham-string the Obama Administration from doing ANY
thing meaningful during his second term. Add to that the radical "unprecedented" court
decision retroactively stripping President Obama, in one stroke, of his power to appoint labor
commissioners, judges --and many other appointees-- installed the only way possible anymore,
via recess appointments. Just these two developments spell big trouble for Obama's second
term, and especially for him doing ANY thing contrary to the will of the 1%.

At the same time, we seem to have reached some kind of awareness tipping point, signaled
most pointedly by Occupy Wall St., but also reflected by various public opinion polls, all showing
that a growing majority of Americans are actually starting to "get it", and are waking up to a
clearer understanding of the nature of this struggle, and many of these newly awakened are
willing to take action. But what action(s) will it ultimately take for us to salvage what's left of
our great nation?

This is a genuine question. Ironically enough, if there were a good answer to it, I doubt anyone
would have the gonads (or be naive enough?) to post it in plane sight on DU. But that reality
aside, does anyone have any light to shed on this?

[stultusporcos]

1. as long as one is prepared for a total collapse of society and or a fascist government

you will be fine, if not, oh well, life is really, really, really going to suck for you.

[JaneyVee]

3. I'm pretty sure life is going to suck for everybody in a total collapse of society.

[NoOneMan]

13. I'd dig it

Till the day I was dead

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. There are really only three issues that matter.

In the near term and in the longer term. Climate change, resource depletion, and food insecurity. Everything else is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The petty internal squabbles of US domestic politics are insignificant and meaningless in comparison.

[ananda]

5. In perspective.

The whole mess will be a welcome feast for the survivors.

[ProSense]

8. Well, those

"Climate change, resource depletion, and food insecurity."

...three are more observant than mine.

[napoleon_in_rags]

10. This is a great post.

I think we miss what the threats are, by always focusing on some hypothetical group of bad guys. I liked John Stewart's gun control rant, where he complains we can't take on present dangers because somebody is afraid of imaginary Hitler. In a similar spirit, the threats we really should be fearing are those which already take out millions already: Famine, disease, poverty, etc. The answer is for people to become more locally independent, even though it doesn't always make short term financial sense. It doesn't take naivety or gigantic gonads to address these biggest threats, because they are in fact forces of nature.

[99th_Monkey]

17. I would argue that a few more issues matter.

like adequately accessible health care, and raising cap to fund Social Security.

But I get where you're coming from, and pretty much agree.

[sikofit3]

35. Bingo!

NT

[Warpy]

4. Most people felt the same way in other Gilded Ages

when big money had bought up the gummint and people were robbed of the fruits of their labor and were hurting.

So far, it's been corrected fairly peacefully as soon as Congress gets more frightened of the folks back home than they are of the lobbyists in Washington. People are starting to get scary, booing the teabaggers. They'll get a lot scarier the more the rich put the screws to them in order to keep their ill gotten wealth.

That's good because most violent revolutions don't work. The scumbags who caused all the problems just change uniforms and go on with business as usual.

[ProSense]

7. Three reasons why we're doomed:

Senators Cruz, Johnson and Paul.

At least three.

[whatchamacallit]

28. Political Animal

There will come a day when even you understand the limits of politics. Likely soon.

[ProSense]

36. Are you

"There will come a day when even you understand the limits of politics. Likely soon."

...projecting? I mean, I recognize the difference between a President and a dictator. Do you?

Progress never happens overnight, no matter how much one stomps one's feet or holds one's breath.

President Obama puts his stamp on global development (foreign policy isn't war)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022223604

[canoeist52]

9. I think the only power left to us is work slow-downs and strikes along with

refusal to buy from non-progressive corps. Boycotts and strikes are the things that "power money" fears the most.

[datasuspect]

21. indeed

they fear mobilization and movement ideology on the part of the "rabble" or what they used to refer to as the "mob."

good old patrician FDR knew this.

[Egalitarian Thug]

11. Not yet, but we are seeing few signs that enough people will catch on in time. n/t

[NoOneMan]

12. But does any bit of that really matter?

Really?

In 50 years, most of us and our children will be facing famine from climate change's impact on agriculture. Do any of these great struggles mean dick in that context?

[randome]

14. We have a confluence of three things operating to our advantage.

1. The waning power of the GOP.
2. Climate change's clear and present danger (droughts, hurricanes, etc.). To the point where it can no longer be denied.
3. A President who has made tackling climate change one of his priorities.

Add to this humanity's nearly infinite capacity for adaptability and I am not as pessimistic as some are on this thread.

[NoOneMan]

15. Maybe we can adapt to eat dirt

[flamingdem]

19. The "avante guarde" has moved on to Quinoa

Wheat is passe!

[truebluegreen]

27. And are pricing quinoa out of the reach of the people who grow it. nt

[datasuspect]

22. water and food

water and food.

our next generation of wars will be wars for food and water.

[moondust]

16. Related article:

The Myth of Human Progress

Posted on Jan 13, 2013

By Chris Hedges

~snip~

“The experience of a relatively easy 500 years of expansion and colonization, the constant taking over of new lands, led to the modern capitalist myth that you can expand forever,” Wright said. “It is an absurd myth. We live on this planet. We can’t leave it and go somewhere else. We have to bring our economies and demands on nature within natural limits, but we have had a 500-year run where Europeans, Euro-Americans and other colonists have overrun the world and taken it over. This 500-year run made it not only seem easy but normal. We believe things will always get bigger and better. We have to understand that this long period of expansion and prosperity was an anomaly. It has rarely happened in history and will never happen again. We have to readjust our entire civilization to live in a finite world. But we are not doing it, because we are carrying far too much baggage, too many mythical versions of deliberately distorted history and a deeply ingrained feeling that what being modern is all about is having more. This is what anthropologists call an ideological pathology, a self-destructive belief that causes societies to crash and burn. These societies go on doing things that are really stupid because they can’t change their way of thinking. And that is where we are.”

~more~

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_myth_of_human_progress_20130113/

[99th_Monkey]

18. Great quote. I loves my Chris Hedges. He's one of my "heros"

except I don't much believe in heros in the first place. but if I did, he's be
one of them.

[RobertEarl]

20. We've reached our limit?

Jimmy Buffet wrote a song about a pirate in these modern days. It was a lamentation that there is nothing left to plunder. It is an apt song for this society. We have plundered just about all there is, or rather, was.

Friend of mine says he wants to live in a cabin and be a wino. And he a go getter, famous, rich and talented. But methinks he sees the coming end of this mad race to have it all. So, if he can do it, anyone can.

And that is my answer to our problems.

[Odin2005]

23. There are Doomers in every generation. And they are always wrong.

[99th_Monkey]

26. From one perspective that is true.

From another it is only proving my point: i.e. is like saying "nah, not to worry.
we've always had 'crazies', Chicken Littles and doomsday alarmists. Just carry
on with business as usual and it will all go away" <--- this thought form is itself
part of the problem.

[Nikia]

24. We have faced challenges at other times and other places

We may or not overcome these issues in the near future, but facing dark times is hardly unique. Certainly, there have been many times that people believed all was lost right before things changed for the better.
I don't know what will happen, We can only try to do our best to be the change that we want in the world.

[99th_Monkey]

25. True dat. Yet there seems to be no end in sight, to this idiocy.

I like this part of your post esp. --> "believed all was lost right before things changed for the better."

I think that may well be how it plays out, i.e. enough people wake up just barely soon enough to
just barely turn it all around in the nick of time ... yet we're so very far into utterly unprecidented
unknowns, like with climate change, that it's not even clear where the point of no return is, or if we've
already gone past it.

Anyway, thanks for your thoughtful reply.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

30. Things seemed awfully dark for us from 2001-2006

I thought that Republicans would hold onto one-party rule for quite some time but, between their gross incompetence, corruption, and scandal, they finally got a well-deserved a**-kicking in the 2006 midterms and have lost the Presidency twice now in blowout elections. We've kind of slid backwards since 2010 in terms of being able to get stuff done and it's been horrendously frustrating to be sure. Just don't give up now. We've beat the GOP before and we'll beat 'em again. Electorally, the GOP can't continue with their extremism without bald-faced cheating (which, of course, they're working on as we speak) and I see no signs of moderating their positions.

[99th_Monkey]

31. I would agree with you more

if it were not for the Electoral Collage chicanery going on right now, to award
delegates piece-meal by Congressional District, rather than "winner takes all"
at the state level. <-- (this is my rudimentary understanding of what's now
happening).

I see that you are also aware of this, where you say "GOP can't continue with
their extremism without bald-faced cheating (which, of course, they're working
on as we speak)".

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/01/26/1496981/electoral-college-rigging/?mobile=nc

[Proud Liberal Dem]

32. I do recognize this as a problem

I'd feel a whole lot worse about it if there weren't some Republicans in VA, FL, and PA rebelling against this plan. We need to make sure to fight against these plans but, even if they are able to change the electoral system, they still can't change Demographics plus, the practical reality is that it's going to be hard for people not to see that they're not being represented fairly by a system where somebody can lose the popular vote by an overwhelming margin and still win the majority of the electoral votes. Let's just hope that these sort of proposals die a quiet death in their infancy.

[99th_Monkey]

37. Yes.

if we can just keep the 2-3 factions in the GOP at each others throats, and
bickering over how low they will stoop, how many degrees of dastardly they
can stomach, etc. then maybe the Dems can get on with end-running the
country, while the GOP's train-wreck continues to pile higher, and become
an ever more obvious national embarrassment. Here's hoping.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

38. Fingers crossed

It should've been almost criminal to keep HHS Sec. Sebelius from being confirmed until the Swine Flu became a problem back in 2009.

[99th_Monkey]

40. Well if Bush the Lesser proved anything

it is that when GOP politicians openly commit crimes,
NO body gives a rats ass, not even the Democrats
running the DoJ.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

29. I'm bummed too about the lack of meaningful changes in the filibuster rules

but as long as the House is in GOP control, nothing much meaningful can get to the President's desk without their *cooperation*, so, ultimately, what the Senate Democrats do is fairly irrelevant in terms of ensuring the passage of progressive legislation except for confirming cabinet posts and other nominations. It can still serve a useful function in ensuring that awful House GOP legislation doesn't break daylight in the Senate let alone get to President Obama. One of my biggest concerns at the moment is ensuring that we can keep a majority in the Senate after 2014 as the odds seem stacked against us. I'm starting to get fairly confident, however, that the teabaggers will find a way to sabotage the Republicans yet again and I'm glad that the Dems seem to be keeping more of a close eye on 2014.

[99th_Monkey]

33. In a word: Appointments

To NLRB in particular, and judicial ones as well.

I agree with most of what you say, in terms of the Tea Party obstructionist's
in the House, and how that renders the Senate somewhat "irrelevant", but
that's not taking into account the Senate's role with appointments.

This role is unique to the Senate, and crucial for Obama to create any
lasting change beyond 2016, not to mention just to maintain a nominally
functional Administration.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

34. I agree

I guess we'll have to wait and see how obstructionist they're going to be with his appointments and how hard President Obama is able/willing to fight/shame the Republicans.

[joshcryer]

39. We are doing effectively nothing about climate change.

And unless activists groups actually start working hard on open hardware and clean energy producing tech we're going to be in for some hurt as a species.