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| The "Post Industrial" world somehow pours more CO2 into the air than the Industrial World ever manged to. |
Instead, we've Balkanized our thinking so that each issue we face everyday is as though it sprang up newly hatched from a magically-laid egg, another pod-problem that was dropped to earth by aliens to wreak havoc by befuddling our senses and beclouding our judgement. Just as we refuse to make any connection between our position in the world as preeminent arms dealer and avatar of the "arm-everyone-to-the-teeth-to-maintain-the-peace" theory of the post WW2 World Order and the incidents of mass murder in our own country, by virtue of the same mentality: the NRA merely brings home for domestic consumption our international stance vis-a-vis the arms industry, along with its attendant predictable mayhem.
And just as we refuse to admit there could be any connection between the mayhem we wreak on a worldwide basis and the mayhem we engender in our own country thereby enabling us to pretend that, whether one believes the NRA to be a terrorist organization or not, the fact remains they have a very real agenda and that agenda has very real consequences, one of which is that it causes death and mutilation on an ongoing, simply-just-accept-it-and-shut up, basis, than any foreign entity that is inimical to the interests of the USA, via a quite nonsensical, mad even, interpretation of an amendment that specifically states a militia has the right to bear arms: not collect them, not amass them, not to lug them into one's hotel room by the truckload, it extends not even to the right to procure the requisite ammunition, we also refuse to see any connection between the triple E's of Economy Energy and the Ecosystem/Environment.
And much for the same reason, to do so would be to admit that we have (despite years, decades even, of economic stardom in the international firmament, our stock market soaring to dizzying heights), trammelled down the wages and benefits that the most profitable Corporations in the world offer to its workers. They have never been lower, while the costs for both the US government on all levels, State, Federal and Municipal. as well as the costs to the niggardly Corporations, caused by escalating healthcare costs that suck out every dollar of increase in Corporate wage compensation costs, allocating them to Health Insurance premiums, resulting in wage declines even as outlay per employee escalates, those increases never reaching the workers' paychecks.
And on top of thsoe Healthcare Insurance Premiums, to cover healthcare cost taht continue to inflate at 5x's the official inflatino rate, the amounts society needs to outlay to rear, educate, and drive those workers to the Corporate POW (Place of Work) camps has never been higher, the drag to national prosperity, never more telling. Yet the security of those workers has never been more tenuous, their future prospects, never more stark.
The recent fad to blame and therefore sue, the US energy giants for providing fuel to satisfy our outsize and ever-growing demand for it, makes shameless use of this mental compartmentalization. The most shameful aspect being that it is the very people who call themselves "Progressive" that mount the most virulent attacks on those who disagree with their Eco-War-in-the-guise-of-Ecology agenda.
And as though to prove my point, the Scribbler's released yet another apologia for the auto industry's Star International Criminal, (sic) that avatar of blackguardism, Volkswagon. Never mind that on the scale of production envisioned, merely to make the world habitable for yet another fleet of power-hungry speed machines (with the next generation already on the planning boards so that they need not even have drivers, but will basically be drones on wheels, who cares if the planet is thereby made Uninhabitable for humans and other roadkill as long as its suitable for machines?) will require an immediate outlay of such enormity that it could bankrupt the world.
We already knows how this works. It's been rendered in literature time and again, the similarity to the plot of Trollope's The Way we Live Now, being the most strikingly similar, as the generation between 1865-1895 (causing both the financial panic of 1893, and the coming depression of 1907) had their entire future mortgaged to the railroads, the US and the ROW is now being treated to the replay, this time in their future being mortgaged to the EV's Scribbler has become the self-appointed cheerleader for. It's so much easier when society, existing despite the cynical denial that it doesn't, sets racing down its clear-cut path of self-delusion, thinks of nothing else than dropping every thought of dealing with anything other than the single fraction called automobilization and its attendant highway system and fueling infrastructure . This relatively small part to the overall task of planning a future that entails the dramatic curtailment of CO2 poisoning being so big as to need the energies of a generation and requiring all the new energy-sucking machinery that's been created - Banks newly formed to collect all the risk premiums while the citizens assume all the actual risk, Capital, much of which comes from government, yet the public that pays receiving only a kick in the teeth (not only when the government investment fails, but when it succeeds), mines, enslaving yet another generation of Africans, furnaces, shops, power-plants, computers, networks, technical knowledge, together with a steady remodeling of social attitudes and political habits, ideas and Corporations as well as other institutions, - all hijacked and dedicated to fit the new scale and suit the new conditions for this one aspect of life: "the ramping race in mass electrical vehicle production", and the "Oh did I forget to mention?" rampant race in electrical generation and transmission requisite to accommodate them.
But the porn-like presentation of the new technology with the old values belies the green claims of the EV's, that boast, as Scribbler sites, they can push a car from 0-60 in 1.85 seconds while achieving a top speed of 258 miles per hour. What machine of any color need be designed to achieve such ridiculous metrics unless its marketed as a race car? When was the last time You drove at 258 mph? 158? 100?
But as Scribbler makes that clear by claiming the Roadster 2.0 is a hypercar (whatever that is) that’s starting at around 200,000 dollars. So producing cars for the rich 'll somehow help reduce the burgeoning carbon pollution from the poor.
And the ramping race to produce this magical vehicle, will be, like the fracking ramping race in the US has been, a wasteful ramp-up to overcapacity followed by a very loud car crash. That's how, in case you've been remiss in observing, wasteful Kapitalism works. Huge financial shenanigans as the rich position themselves to suck every dollar out of alternative solutions, such as hydrogen cells, so that the by the time the first vehicle, be it Tesla or Nissan turning over a new Leaf, or VW having concocted yet another scam to rip-off the very market it craves entry into, is marketed, the commitment of investment, all of it financed in our modern mania of not using real money, so that the real risks can be hidden, but using borrowed funds from sources not even aware their funds are being used nor what purposes they've been put to, making their success a foregone conclusion, as their failure doesn't just mean we've lost money, it means we've lost money we didn't even have, yet are stuck paying for the products, with interest, that never get made. So, come hell or high water, or, in this case, both, they Will get made! (Following the same trajectory as our Wehrmacht: the engines of destruction, having already robbed us of our ability to support our selves, educate our progeny, or provide for the medical needs of our citizens, must get deployed! 'Cause we'll be stuck paying the bill for them for the next twenty years, and , anyway, "What's the point of paying through the nose for this superb military you're always bragging about, if we don't use it?").
The entire EV project rejects any need for any rethink of our techno-bedazzled child-like faith in science to solve problems the misuse of science by unaccountable, criminal Corporations created, which the same author is ballyhooing the lawsuit against. Without oil, coal and natgas, there would Be no Tesla, or any other EV. Perhaps he already knows that and he's secretly planning to sue the EV manufactures over, and, like The Donald, who pre-warns his cohorts before announcing, supposedly just off the top of his head, tariffs on steel from China, whereas his cronies, having been told in advance about his "impetuous" announcement, are set up in advance to steal from China, he is pre-positioned for the out-of-court settlement said lawsuit would result in.
Such kowtowing to the Corporate agenda is of no help to struggling humanity which it leaves, to paraphrase Matthew Arnold,
Motoring between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere left to rest one's head,
The earth, now paved, is all forlorn.
Our fate, Corporations will decide--
We'll just accept, all for a ride.
In which we'll sleep, our metallic bed,
Which shall our coffin be, when dead!
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