Coronal mass ejection doom

I have a comment I made on John Michael Greer's "The Archdruid Report" blog that I copied to my clipboard in case Blogger.com ate my comment while I was in the process of posting it. So I may as well copy it here and turn it into a post.



This post provided some very delicious and exotic food for thought as usual. It certainly comes as no surprise that the ancient Greeks were equal to the task of inventing and constructing a working steam engine, at least if their philosophy is any solid indicator of their cultural intellectual prowess.

If you'll forgive me for veering off-topic just a little bit, I read some news today (oh boy!) that spoke of an apocalypse. Well, maybe not really, I just wanted to preserve the meter of the beloved old "Beatles" song! Seriously though, this article in the UK newspaper The Guardian described a coronal mass ejection (CME) event that might have brought down the electrical grid, everything that relies on it, and most modern communication systems too, had our planet been in its line of fire. And we would have been, too, had this CME erupted in the same way a week earlier than it did.

Considering where we are in terms of resource depletion and resulting economic near-exhaustion (a fancy way of describing the way the world's industrial societies are pretty much hanging on by the proverbial thread these days), I really do think this would have precipitated a "fast-crash" event, or something close enough to a fast-crash that it would certainly have been the primary turning point in the decline of industrial society.

It wouldn't have been an apocalypse in the traditional religious sense, but the hardship and mayhem that would have ensued certainly would have resulted in very many people calling it the apocalypse. The fact that it would have happened in 2012 would certainly have added to the temptation to call it just that. I have to admit, the new ager in me has to wonder if that CME would have hit us were it not for the spiritual growth of ordinary humans ultimately redeeming us from being hit with "the worst". What do you think? :-)

The downed Malaysian airliner: Whodunnit?

There's something about the spin being perpetuated by the Western media that just doesn't smell right to me at all.

But I will admit, the way the separatists are blocking access to the crash site and holding onto the bodies of the passengers really doesn't look good.

Stonekettle Station: Self Evident Truths

The underlying truth of Jim Wright's essay linked below, is that a democratic republic such as ours will only be as good as the people who are its constituent elements.  The reason I strongly suspect that it's all over for the USA in the very near future is that we have and always have had a disproportionate number of deranged morons in our population, and a lot of these people are the class-narcissists who have the largest percentage of money and wield all of the real power.  When this reality collides with the reality of resource depletion and ecological collapse, I can't imagine how we're going to deal with it all.  Please, American people, prove me wrong!  But both my gut and my rational mind continue to tell me that you probably won't.

Stonekettle Station: Self Evident Truths: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rig...

One last precious chance

One may well wonder why I'm willing to give voting as means of changing things one last precious chance in the face of all the evidence that one may as well piss in the wind. Paul Krugman in one of his recent columns does a good job of explaining what is at stake and why.

If the people of Wisconsin are dumb enough to keep Scott Walker in power because of ignorance, apathy, or some paltry tax-cuts that mostly benefit the rich, then they will deserve whatever they get as a consequence. End of story.

"Get ready for an even bigger threat to Obamacare"

I've long thought that Obamacare is an ass-backward Rube Goldberg device that will likely blow up in the Democratic Party's face in a very major way. Well, it would appear that I may possibly soon be vindicated in that opinion, despite being a very bad robot-boy whom Democratic Party Kool-Aid drinkers don't like. Who'd have thunk!

And here's a bone-us op-ed about why Obama ain't doin' so hot, no matter from which perspective you view his administration. Yes, some of the fault definitely goes to the Republicans here, but that only buttresses my belief that our political system is fundamentally sick and broken because the societal and cultural context in which it exists is fundamentally sick and broken. And I have to say that I never cease to be amazed by the sheer volume of pure cognitive dissonance it takes to prevent oneself from recognizing this obvious and fundamental fact.

Lately it just seems as though all this political sound and fury is merely more empty words that we don't really need.