polycrisis

There are so many competing components of the #polycrisis that it's almost overwhelming sometimes, and it's often difficult or impossible to rank them.

Is ICE/ASS (the American SchutzStaffel) a bigger issue than the genocide in Gaza? It is for the people being hunted and killed by them, probably. How does global warming compare to each? That's killing people. How does the social and environmental catastrophe of large language models compare? How about the utter lack of a social safety net in the US, combined with rampant and growing unemployment? How about the creeping spread of fascism in the US government, targeting minorities, gay folk, and trans folk? How about that good old COVID pandemic, which is still killing people daily when it's not disabling them in various unpleasant, life-altering ways? (Mask in public and see what kind of reactions you get.)

There were grim jokes going around in acivist circles before the US presidential election: "If Trump wins, Palestinian children will die *twice*.'

Or another one, "What we need today is to come together. I am talking to both Kamela and Trump supporters. Dem voters and repub voters. There are a lot of things that make us all Americans. Values we all agree on. Whether you voted for Kamala or Trump, reach across the aisle and say to someone on the other side, 'At least we all agree that little Palestinian kids are Hamas.'"

I personally think what will fix many of the issues we face is ranked choice voting, as it encourages platforms that represent and support the people, rather than creating bogeymen and driving votes to extremist candidates. But we don't have that, and I struggle to get away from the notion that "if you vote for the lesser evil, you've still voted for evil." So I don't vote for evil, and I'm vocal about that, and you've doubtless seen the abuse that invites from folks.

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Douglas Adams said it very well:

“I come in peace,” it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, “take me to your Lizard.”

Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…”

“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”

“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”

“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”

“I did,” said ford. “It is.”

“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”

“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”

“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”

“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”

“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”

“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”

“What?”

“I said,” said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, “have you got any gin?”

“I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.”

Ford shrugged again.

“Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,” he said. “They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.”

#uspol #rcv #climate #covid #fascism #polycrisis