Rising Authoritarianism And Worsening Climate Change Share A Fossil-Fueled Secret - TPM – Talking Points Memo

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This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was first published on The Conversation.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1414179
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Can’t take a bus off this Planet

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Any sane person acknowledges this, however…

A ton of social research over the years demonstrates the rich and powerful really do think they’re immune: from pollution, from disease, from the consequences of bad choices. Something happens in the mind of the entitled few that warps it into an ‘exception’ mindset.

Whether it’s Freudian denial or some other construct, they really do believe they’ll escape.

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The sad truth is, their money will preserve their miserable hides a bit longer than we groundlings will be able to persevere. Damned few of them are going to suddenly go all Bill & Melinda Gates on us until it’s too late for us…and them.

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It’s a misguided and perverse “Rapture While on Earth” mentality.

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And the US cannot even make the simple sacrifices…

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Daniel Yergin, in The Prize, quotes the Venezuelan oil minister, one of the original founders of OPEC, back in the 1970s, on the tendency of oil rich nations to have awful corrupt authoritarian governments: “Oil is the devil’s excrement.” We are continuing to learn, to our deepening sorrow, just what that means.

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They’re on script with Don’t Look Up and counting on Elon Musk to be their Peter Isherwell.

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I’m sorry, but when did this become a secret? Was I supposed to stop talking about it at some point? Can someone in charge please check why I didn’t get the memo?

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Because in the short term they live like oligarchs. In the long term w
e’re all dead

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Given as they can hire the best chefs out there, I must presume they’re looking forward to the array of sauces that could accompany their blue green algae patties.

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Well said.

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If you look at the Silicon Valley techno-reactionary billionaires, they are seriously interested in medical research that will make them quasi-immortal. Which shows both their fundamental narcissism and their scorn for mere mortals who have less than nine figures in personal wealth.

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Oil always was the Devil’s Tears. Countries with so much oil that their entire economies are subservient to it are obvious examples: Russia, the Gulf states, kleptocracies like Nigeria and Angola, and so on. But look at the US: Texas and Oklahoma are clear examples. But North Dakota, once a progressive state with its own state-owned bank, elected its last state-wide Democrat about the time the Bakken Shale Formation started overtaking every other economic activity in the state.

We also forget too easily that the entire geostrategy of World War II could be looked at as the dictators’ search for oil: for their autarkic economies and to fuel their war machines. Epic battles like Stalingrad occurred because it was initially conceived as flank protection for the German drive to the Caucasus oilfields. Japan’s entire war strategy that necessitated crippling the US fleet at Pearl Harbor was the drive to take over the Dutch East Indies and its oil.

Our whole misbegotten Middle East policy springs from our supposed need to “protect the West’s economic lifeline” by giving Saudi Arabia carte blanche. That didn’t exactly work out well.

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If Roger Stone wants a satanic portal, he is much more likely to find it at the gas pump than the White House.

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Maddow’s “Blowout” tells another aspect on the same fossil-fool travesty.
This guy’s got tech info worth knowing, some of those charts tell a tale too complex for words.

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Fixed it.
There are laws in Kansas that criminalize testing Wichita water for pollutants.
Ponder THAT.

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The character defects of Trump, Stone, and the rest of these assholes who plague us arose from the fact that throughout their lives, nobody ever physically beat the living shit out of them. Every halfway decent adult male who got through high school or went through basic training learned at some point that if you pop off too much, you’ll get stomped. Because of monetary privilege, the Trumps and Stones never received that condign lesson.

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with a side of daintily fried peasant who failed to keep the towels straightened in the bathrooms

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Doubtless they’ll settle for algae strands in his mouth: apples, even dried ones, will likely be too dear.

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