"Free" Market Fundamentalist Jihad

Link to another piece of John Cusack's interview with Naomi Klein

I haven't read the book yet but I'll order it when I have money. Watch Cusack's video of the first part of his interview with Naomi Klein here. Klein has done us an incredible service, by looking the devil in the face and naming it for what it is, and seeing that face for ourselves can give us the moral strength to do the same, which we sorely need. The book they are discussing is Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism"

She points out that the philosophy driving the entire Bush agenda is a devotion to a fantasy free market, by adherents of the Chicago School of free market economics. Their distinguishing feature is that they hate government "interference" in the market in any form whatsoever (the rest of us know it as regulatory oversight). And she shows that the Bush II administration is far from a new thing under the sun, but a continuation of a growing economic fundamentalism we've been suffering under at least since Reagan.

The power she gives us, evident in the video, is to see that there is no reason in the world to be polite in the face of such cynical piracy as this president and his cabal are foisting on us. Our own civil politeness, our hesitance to accuse, or even to attribute bad actions to bad intentions, is being explicitly and knowingly used against us and against all of America and, with the "new" imperialism, against the world as well.

We are, most of us, a civil people. And liberals are more civil than most. But we need to understand that we are dealing with a jihad by economic fundamentalists. Their god is the Free Market, by which they mean just that: No governance applied to corporations. Corporations not subject to laws. (how can I be plainer about this?) And just like other religionists we know, they will bend any rule, violate any stricture to pursue their jihad.

Politeness means absolutely nothing to a fundamentalist, and neither does fair play. They themselves make that point in regard to their appointed "enemies," and they illustrate the principle well, when they accuse those who want to stop their plunder of being the real fundamentalists. The free market jihadists won't make their case and wait for us to make ours. A debate is not what they want. They want our hides on a frame.

We have to be willing to do whatever it takes, because that's what they are doing as we speak. They aren't waiting for a "good climate" in which to tear our country apart. They create the climate, and tell us whatever they think will keep us occupied while the job gets done. We can't wait or even hope for civil discussion of the options. There is no civil discussion left, and no negotiating with terrorists, which our elected leaders now are.

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We also need to look at the background against which this struggle takes place. We are seeing the beginnings of the final throes of the oil economy. And we don't have any ready or even feasible replacement energy source that can sustain anywhere near the energy intensity we have become used to, and addicted to. Even nuclear energy can't let us continue as we have been. There is not enough fissible fuel to continue our current massive use of energy for even another fifty years past Flat Oil, which is the term I use for the point at which oil takes as much energy to get out of the ground as it gives up in use.

I'm re-reading Jeremy Rifkin's book, "Entropy," which is subtitled in its Bantam second edition, "Into the Greenhouse World." I recommend this book highly, and it would be a good conceptual companion to Klein's call to action. It's not always easy to follow, if it's your first introduction to the subject; but it is accessible enough, and right-on in its analysis of cultural energy dynamics.

According to Rifkin, every energy base humans have ever used has been overthrown out of necessity, when increasing populations and their energy use finally outstrip whatever energy source is supporting the culture. European farming culture mastered the plow and cleared land to increase their populations so much that soil and wood, their sources of energy and the whole underpinning of their way of life, was critically threatened. At which point, entirely unwilling, they turned to coal, considered vastly inferior to wood for burning. Even the rich had to resort to coal, the crunch was so bad. The need to mine and transport coal was what drove the developement of the steam engine.

Coal gave way to oil, and now here we are at Peak Oil, and there is no new energy base that can meet the intensity we require, if we are to keep using energy at the rate we've become accustomed, and addicted to. Our current technology is quite energy-wastefull, because it was evolved to exploit a perceived endless supply. It will not be easy to introduce efficiencies that will make much difference at all, in the face of increased population pressures and consequent energy demands. We are outgrowing the stored petroleum base, and we have nothing viable to replace it with, not even at vastly increased expense.

EVERY use of energy creates waste (entropy) of some kind; the more concentrated and intense the use, the more waste must be dealt with. Dealing with waste requires (guess what?) energy. Which creates more waste. Which requires dealing with. Etcetera. This means we get less and less actual benefit for each greater unit of energy we use, in a diminishing-returns feedback cycle.

Put simply, we have no choice but to cut back our energy use. It could be done BY us, or it will simply happen TO us, when our energy sources become too energy-expensive to use. Eventually it will take more energy to find new oil, than that oil can produce for us.

Flat Oil.

When this happens, there are basically two options, from a cultural point of view. Either we all die together, in a miserable starving thirsting diseased huddle; or some of us prey on the rest for the energy they need to survive. Human nature being what it is, I expect the latter. Get your guns while you can.

American free-marketists are long on think-tanks, so don't think they haven't reasoned this through. This scenario at once explains their desperation to shake off government controls -- since environmental protections make energy much more expensive even now -- and it underlines the desperation we ourselves should be feeling, to force change NOW, while we still have some few options.

Anyone who doesn't have children now should be thanked for not contributing to the load.

Those who do have offspring should know that taking no action on this front is not an option your children and grandchildren will thank you for.

It's no good waiting for the political environment to change, because the political front has been colonized by the jihadists, and the change we get from that direction will be the change the jihadists want.

It's no good wanting to be nice. Nice won't stop a fundamentalist, and it won't stop Flat Oil. And it sure won't help to climb into your nice, oil-heated bed with another warm breeder and try to forget the whole thing.