There are cracks in the earth and holes in our hearts. The gusher in the Gulf has dramatized in gut-wrenching fashion a set of values and outcomes that comprise the underlying foundation of our lives. This is no “reality TV” episode, even though the already-diluted news coverage increasingly makes everything appear that way. No, this is “real reality” – an edgy, in-your-face, unexpurgated reminder of what we have relentlessly wrought on the planet and ourselves. The question now is whether it will be enough of a wakeup call to prompt us to shake out the cobwebs, roll up our collective sleeves and steer the entire enterprise away from the precipice.
Early returns are not favorable, both for stopping the oil gusher (it is not a spill, dammit!) and for Americans snapping out of their doldrums and getting off the petro sauce. Drilling into Mother Earth at all is sinful in some cultural frameworks, but doing so a mile beneath the ocean with no mitigation plan on hand is simply stupid. Trying to then improvise various “kills” (aptly named though they might be) after the inevitable disaster occurs has the now-realized potential to further exacerbate the problem – all based on the innately flawed logic of “more meddling will solve our misguided meddling.”
Yet, this logic effectively summarizes a baseline tenet of American society, namely that more of the same will somehow remedy the problems created in the first place. When a dictatorial president takes us to ill-begotten wars, the solution becomes simply to find a better president – as if the problem were one of leadership rather than an underlying structural impetus to make war. When those wars go badly, both in fact and perception, we announce a “surge” that will escalate an already lost conflict in an attempt to somehow “win” it. Better technology is the answer to too much technology. A new pill can cure the ailments produced by the pills we’ve been taking. Weeds and pests become resistant to our biocides, so let’s make them even stronger – and the same logic goes for our antibiotics. The economy crashes and consumes vast resources, so we’ll prop it up with an infusion of even more resources. And on and on.
Indeed, this is the story of civilization itself, a process that continually requires deeper interventions in order to sustain lifestyles dependent upon initial interventions. It is fundamentally unsustainable, since we cannot keep up with the consequences of our incessant machinations. This is the gambler’s paradox, attempting to “double down” over and over again on a bad bet, hoping to someday get level, but merely digging a deeper hole each time out. Now, one of those deep holes threatens to prove itself incapable of being made level, exposing the harsh realities of our cavalier logic and raising the prospect of an apocalyptic scenario in which, ironically, we could drown in oil while thirsting for water.
This is a bona fide moment of truth for Americans and, perhaps, further for humankind as a whole. We either wake up and smell the methane or continue sleepwalking down a path to seemingly inevitable self-destruction. Shall we live as servile cogs in obeisance to Moloch as we stoke the perverse machines that maintain the apartheid apparatuses of Petropolis? Or will we choose a new path and refuse to serve our soulless masters, instead demanding that they account for their misdeeds and dismantle the hardware of devastation and despair? It is a clear choice ahead, a societal fork in the road: continue on toward the madness of mutually assured destruction or take a real chance on an unknown journey toward self-discovery and collective innovation.
We cannot afford to hit the snooze button and go back to sleep, no matter what the final outcome of the Gulf oil disaster turns out to be. Maybe an ingenious solution will emerge that snatches business as usual from the jaws of imminent annihilation. More likely, it will be an inexorable and ambiguous seepage that has innumerable ruinous effects on the habitat, only some of which will legally be traceable back to the oligarchy, swirling together with various other incipient atrocities to hasten our societal demise like some oblivious frogs in a planet-sized vat of slowly boiling water. Humankind, marinated in oil, literally stewing itself to death in an ultimate act of self-fulfilling consumption …
Will we double down again, or cut our losses and walk away? Sometimes, not playing the game at all is a winning streak unto itself. Either way, the first step is to wake up and answer the opening bell. Destiny is calling and one way or another we will have to account for our recent whereabouts. That time is now.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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