I have just been reviewing Noam Chomsky’s book, Requiem for the American Dream, 2017, as he continues to recover in Brazil from a stroke he had last year, and it is really chilling in its prescience and simplicity.  Concentration of wealth yields concentration of power.  This political power then quickly translates into legislation that increases the concentration of wealth, which, in turn, yields more political power to the rich.  The history of our “experiment in democracy” has been the history of the progressive concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands, until by now there is no one able to stop this engine from exploding into chaos like the French Revolution.  The momentum behind this stampede is inescapable, meaning that it will continue until there is some crash, which may very well be the end of life on earth, either “as we know it” or “period.”

     It is too late for the solutions I have proposed ~ there is nothing to be done now but to sit back and watch it unfold.  The canaries are dropping like flies in this coal mine of a world.  All over the world, increasing sharpening is leading to a lurch to the far right and fascism, despotism, and oppression of the poor and marginalized, with war, starvation, and death in places like Ukraine and Gaza, as the rest of the world looks on, helpless to intervene.  

     Here, in this God-forsaken country, there appears to be no way of stopping the train wreck that is the Donald from sweeping away the last vestiges of freedom and democracy, and plunging the world into accelerating darkness.  Poor Joseph Biden ~ apart from his automatic support of Israel’s genocide in Palestine (egged on by the financial interests of the munitions industries of destruction, the backbone of the U.S. economy), he hasn’t been that bad, and many of his policies and programs have done some good.  I even believe that he might be capable of serving out another four year term as President, at least well enough to save us from the catastrophe of a Trump regime.  But he won’t get the chance to demonstrate even that limited capacity for a caretaker role ~ the Donald Machine, from the hand-picked Supreme Court on down, is steam-rolling the Red MAGA carpet on its inexorable path to the White House Coronation (remembering that, with the recent Supreme Court ruling, the King can do no wrong).  

     There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and nothing to be done.  The only chance for the survival of life on earth is such a massive re-programming of the entire social, economic, and political structure of the world as is entirely impossible to implement at this late date.  I just can’t see any hope, anywhere I look.  Where is the deus ex machina now when we really need it? Kiss your loved ones good-bye, and go out to the garden to wait for the end.

Elm Trees In Old Hall Park, John Constable