2020 Presidential Election

[Martina]

I actually heard a journalist use the phrase "late Capitalism" on the radio the other day. My mouth fell open. The leftist critique of Capitalism is going mainstream. I think because it's hard to deny anymore. The end result of Capitalism is that it consumes itself, destroying everything for short term gain.

I don't think Capitalism is an expression of some inherent human impulse although elements of it are. Early humans wiped out large mammals when we moved into new environments, and we wiped ourselves out in some places due to deforestation. But cooperation is also in our DNA. Think of bonobos. Even chimpanzee troops over time have as many cooperative peacemaker alphas as they do warrior Kings. Evolution makes sure there's always both to choose from. That doesn't mean we won't go extinct. We surely will at some point.

I honestly don't know if we'll survive on this planet. I don't care that much. I do know that the planet will survive anything we do to it. Some life will remain, and there will be a reboot. We'd have to completely burn the atmosphere off and boil the oceans to destroy 99 point whatever percent of life, and while we're fucking with them, we're not yet capable of that. (I googled, and even if all the nuclear weapons were detonated creating a long long nuclear Winter, scientists say only 75% of life on the planet would die. It's gonna take an asteroid to kill the planet until we invent something worse than nuclear weapons.) I think we'll kill ourselves long before we destroy the planet. I am not saying we won't cause a mass extinction. We already are. But life will go on.

I'm wandering. What I think we're seeing is the late stage of Capitalism. But something different will emerge. Even if inequality gets much worse, and the super rich arm themselves, etc., I think that something different and more egalitarian will emerge. There is too much information, there are too many smart people, for the one tenth of one percent to continue in power once our very lives are at risk (water rationing, for example).

But who knows? The Nazis were very successful where they ruled. Eighty percent of Germans supported them. Because the Nazis wiped out entire towns when there was resistance, resistance really was futile. The French resistance was meaningless. All resistance movements were except Tito's in what became Yugoslavia. A really determined Fascist regime, or group of regimes, could create some kind of temporary dystopia.

I agree it's not Republicans versus Democrats because liberals have been destroying our economies and the planet at a furious pace. It's the one tenth of one percent versus the rest of us. People who continue to support mainstream Dems, along with Republicans, remain blind to this and are part of the problem. The lesser of two evils will not save us from a nasty resolution to these global economic and evironmental changes.