[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Dissolve the US

Sun Jan 25 07:36:50 MST 2009

An Option for Proactive Change before Collapse

by Jan Lundberg

Culture Change Letter #221 (December 19 2008)

Will Obama be a Greater Gorbachev?

Housing starts in the US are down 47% as of thirteen months ago. Prices
of commodities, not just oil, are falling because of job losses unseen
since 1947. Oil is still very costly when subsidies are included. The
prior recoveries from recessions were from bubbles: dot com and housing
speculation - when oil extraction was still rising. Now peak money has
come and gone. Climate disasters have barely begun. So to deny we're
slipping on a downward slope is getting harder, and more of us are
wondering about the uncertain outcome.

Another bubble is highly unlikely, so we're having to face the music.
With nothing to reverse the trends, and with mounting effects of
ecological degradation and overpopulation, we see things are headed in a
terrible direction. Still, people don't want to explore collapse, or
they place a comforting limit on what it means and what might happen.
"No one knows" passes for wisdom and even action.

Whether we have been hit mainly by crippling energy costs as part of
peak oil and petrocollapse, or clobbered more by Wall Street greed, the
state of the global corporate economy is sick and maybe terminal. It's
reasonable to expect - or get caught up in - food riots on a broader
scale than ever. Same for the fall of governments. Fortunately, there's
something we can do to avoid the worst of the fallout if we act proactively.

Meanwhile, we are looking at the near certainty that the depression -
"the Final Depression" or "Grand Collapse" or "Darkness before the Dawn"
- will intensify. And, since we have to consider there's no longer
"unlimited" cheap energy to rebuild the infrastructure for rail, it is
time to (1) anticipate what can happen to the nation in the throes of
petrocollapse and the bursting of peak money, and (2) steer our megaship
away from the iceberg in hopes of a glancing blow and launching all
possible bioregional lifeboats.

The real danger is in clinging to the status quo. For example, we should
not try to build ever-more cars to run on deteriorating roads built with
and for oil. To do so is to throw good money after bad, to reward or
bail out fat cats taking the whole ship down as we sit by. Given the
late hour for cheap energy and rebuilding, we have to think bicycles
more than trains to be produced from car-dinosaur factories.

Even the most visionary, radical thinkers seem to saying little more
than, "Look, there's a big problem out there!" Yes, we see it. Some of
us see more than others. But we need to see what's next, while
visualizing the positive future we need.

The positive future that we'd like is basic security, more love,
connection to community and healthy nature, and liberation from foolish
work. What would you like? How can we get there? First we have to look
at where our problems are pushing us. Then we can see how any handles we
have on inescapable trends may be seized upon for improved results.
Otherwise, it will be just maximum chaos and a doubtful rebuilding from
utter collapse.

Risking chaos without any attempt to restructure for improvement is the
prevailing tendency. Reforming a system of waste, while refusing to
slash greenhouse gases and stop unproductive work, offers no hope except
for green opportunism. As the recent International Arctic Change
conference warned, "The roof of our house is on fire while the leaders
of our family sit comfortably in the living room below preoccupied with
"political realities" - the message from 1,000 scientists from around
the world along with northern indigenous leaders.

What's a real plan today

Beware of sellouts who trick people into thinking their plan is doable
and realistic: Is it a fantasy in any way, ignoring peak oil's full
effects or climate-change devastation? Is their plan a ruse to keep up
the hopeless attempt to reform the dominant system into some green
entity it has only resisted and rejected?

The denial of reality is about as strong as the trend to recognize it,
which means things are getting more intense as the natural world
collides with civilization for what's stacking up to be a final showdown.

We may soon see how correct I was when I claimed in 1992, in the
quarterly journal Population and Environment, that the Russian people
were better off in their imperial collapse than people of the US will be
because of petroleum dependence. With the common practice of one out of
five Russians growing their own potatoes, unlike US folk who only drive
to the supermarket, survival from the short term to long term looked not
so bad comparatively. But one reason there was no major die-off, as I
predict in the US and elsewhere, is that Russia was in an economic world
still "growing".

For more guidance from history, we can look to the work of Dmitry Orlov
who decided to compare the Soviet Union's collapse to what he saw
starting to happen in the US. His "five stages of collapse" seem to have
begun. I don't believe he sees a good outcome from potential US efforts
to turn negatives into a positive future. Perhaps it is the dreamer in
me that makes me an activist that says we can imagine, as John Lennon
did in his song Imagine, that we can be "sharing all the world".

"What?" you exclaim, "isn't the US needed as a world leader as times get
even tougher!"? Well, the US has been worse than a lumbering giant of
idiocy where it matters: standing in the way of climate protection,
guzzling oil, and creating terror around the world through militarism
and "intelligence" operations. There has been no nation worse, although
let us be fair by defending the United States as having many wonderful
people and some incomparable scenery.

"What about defense against the evil doers?!" With collapse there will
be little of today's overblown "defense", and little possibility of full
scale oil-driven invasion of the former USA. Today the biggest oil
consumer in the world is the US Defense Fuel Supply Center. The future
bioregional nations will have their own defense, but probably basic and
not gold-plated, high-tech or dominated by corporate mercenaries. If one
dreams that the US, as presently structured, will become a paragon of
good sense - somehow thwarting the selfish kleptocracy that calls the
shots - this is the height of naivete. So we must get on with
proactively dismantling the US before the tsunami of change hits - much
like dispersing before a wave crashes. If all are tied together, all
drown. If we separate into bioregional local economies, we might survive
and even help each other across divides. Manufacturing and crafts have
all but disappeared in the US, as other countries in Asia usually send
us whatever we think we need. So our future will include recreating
capabilities to make and repair things, but probably not frivolous toys
that use energy.

SharonAstyk.com said on December 15 "2009 will be the year we say that
things 'collapsed' ... a la the Great Depression". Is anticipating
collapse the best we can do? What about an intelligent restructuring?
The word for restructuring in Russian is famous around the world:
perestroika. In 1990 I published in the Earth Island Journal my article
"Ecostroika". (Actually, Sharon Astyk has great ideas along such lines.)

Mikhail Gorbachev and then Boris Yeltsin presided over the dissolution
of the USSR, but had to go with what was already happening: collapse was
inevitable, but it did not pose the threat that today's higher house of
cards represents globally.

Because the US government is incompetent and cannot be trusted to handle
the engineering job of the millennium - mitigating petrocollapse,
overpopulation, peak money, and climate collapse - as we saw
post-Katrina, local communities need to formulate their own plans with
President Obama's encouragement. He can thus be a greater Gorbachev for
posterity. But let us not delude ourselves to imagine he can start
telling the citizenry that we must stop population growth and start
reducing our numbers. He is, after all, central to the one-party system
for haphazard economic growth: the Democrats-and-Republicans.

Culturally the US population is hooked on technology that makes them
passive. A recent poll published in the Portland Oregonian states that
seventy percent of the nation's residents' "favorite way to relax is
watching a holiday movie". Personally I find movies to be one of the
greatest justifications for civilization - the new artistic documentary
Blind Spot, on peak oil, comes to mind. But without the convenient power
and gadgets we've enjoyed and been slaves to, we'll have to become much
more convivial, in ways described by Ivan Illich: be more social and
interactive.

Nuts and Bolts/Nitty Gritty of Dissolution

Responsibility for the nuclear waste, weapons, superfund sites, and
brownfields must be taken seriously - whereas today the byword is
growth, growth, growth (ie, profits, profits, profits for the few).
Where has growth gotten the average person? Lower real wages and more
working hours. Honest assessments of our predicament can be more easily
made if we recognize our false system of values. We need to flush down
our propaganda and national delusions brought to us by television and
gossip magazines. Or, just wait for some plum job so we can get back to
consuming like the global hogs and zombies we have been.

Dissolving the United States consciously is an actual proposal for a
workable future, more clear than the "relocalization" that dissolution
would automatically cause. Most analysis and speculation about the
effects of peak oil and climate chaos are exercises in hand-wringing and
waiting around for a vaguely anticipated involuntary dissolution of the
nation and global economy.

Much like a failed marriage is better dissolved earlier rather than
later, dissolution of the US empire (domestic especially) will minimize
pain and chaos that can take over completely - as anyone knows who went
through a tough divorce long after the love and respect went splitsville.

Vermont has had a serious, although tiny, secession movement. Great
things have come from that state, I mean nation, and will continue.
Whereas there once were Committees of Correspondence for the American
Revolution, revisited by the Green Party in the 1990s, there needs to be
Committees for Dissolution in every state and local community too.

The idea of dissolution is not in any way meant as disrespect to
God-fearing, my-country-right-or-wrong, anti-abortion, pro-war ways of
living in our unraveling society of haves and have nots. Indeed,
diversity is healthy, and no doubt there will be after dissolution
strongholds of homophobic, patriarchal, gun-loving bible-toting whites,
just as there will be nations or tribes of feministic, pagan vegans. Or,
to bypass the ridiculous stereotyping and labeling, people everywhere
will be adopting local survival strategies to suit their surroundings.

There may be acorns in abundance here, wild rice there, seaweed here,
rats there, permaculture gardens everywhere - connected not through
fossil fuels and steel/asphalt infrastructure 'a crumbling, but through
sail boats, bicycles, horses, and other means. The important feature for
future economics and trade will be local resources that are renewable.
By definition, with the passing of the Petroleum Age underway already,
we will not have long-distance trade through jets and trucks and rail as
we know it.

Let us not be bested by the Russians: steer our collapse as proactively
as possible, applying available petroleum energy and society's
still-intact services to cushion the fall of our petroleum civilization.

For example, create millions of Victory Gardens for local food
production. Make community barter networks, and call neighbors together
for Citizen Petroleum Councils and Transition Town programs. Bicycle and
bike-trailer facilities. Depaving. Ecological restoration for clean
water and fish habitat.

If done later by hand and animal power, when petroleum power may be down
forever, little would be accomplished, as little energy will be
available and applied to the above measures - such that the enormous
rubble that falls will stay there and hinder the survivors who will lack
means. If these measures were undertaken before the US and the global
economy falls flat, available energy will make the tasks to a large
extent doable, and we could see a transition to Balkanization or
Ecotopiazation.

Conclusion

Dissolution is our future, so let's get started proactively. Raise the
issue with someone you know and watch the tension rise - touching a
nerve means you're close to the truth.