A dangerous heat wave is bringing sweltering temperatures to much of the US this weekend, including over parts of the Ohio Valley and mid-Atlantic. Meanwhile, a tropical system could develop this weekend through the southwest Gulf of Mexico.
A dangerous heat wave is bringing sweltering temperatures to much of the US this weekend, including over parts of the Ohio Valley and mid-Atlantic. Meanwhile, a tropical system could develop this weekend through the southwest Gulf of Mexico.
I wonder at what point will it push people to storm fosil fuel offices seeking violence?
And no, I don’t want us to go to that place, but I simply wonder at what point will survival become so difficult that we as a society will wake up and see these companies as entities that are indirectly attacking us and seek retribution.
We should have already gone to that place.
I think for quite a while, the violence monopoly will be better at that game than will the ordinary people. And in Western societies at least, you still have a lot more leverage through political organization and activism than through straight-up violence. The number of people and the level of organization that would be required to win a for-real shooting war with the fossil fuel companies which would instantly escalate to a shooting war with law enforcement and from there to a shooting war with the US government, is so much higher than to get enough people in congress to just start putting the brakes on (and keep them there long enough to make a difference.)
I’m not saying it never gets to the point where something like that’s required. Ukraine in 2014 is actually a really good example; like okay, we tried elections and protests and it seems like even enough of us to win in that arena isn’t enough to make a change, so what the fuck let’s get in the streets and make it happen anyway. But you can see; it’s way more difficult. Basically 100% of the country was behind it, and still they had to have these huge battles. Political isn’t easy, no, but the same people who are saying “OMG I can’t believe they did Bernie like that, that’s unfair, they can’t do that” and then gave up, would not react well to seeing their friends and political leaders getting shot and killed because hey, that’s unfair too, they can’t do that either. The wrong people are in charge, yes. They are cheating, yes. That’s not like a reason to quit, that’s a reason to work to make it better.
Basically there’s no getting around needing to do the work to make it happen. Is my feeling. IDK, I am not expert in this but that is my feeling.
IDK, I could see it getting to that point like you’re saying, like Ukraine or the fall of the Berlin wall, where so many of the ordinary people understand that it needs to stop and start just forcibly making it stop, that it works. I don’t think we are there yet (and if Trump gets in and starts shooting even peaceful protestors after Project 2025 cleans house then it will probably set that clock back by quite a bit), and like you I would hope that in our societies there are enough levers of power available to ordinary people that it won’t get to that point.