Ecoterrorism....

[Paladin]

Originally Posted by path_of_one

To be honest, wil, I think we need that. We need capitalism to collapse. It is unsustainable. Even the average middle class life is unsustainable and decadent. My own lifestyle is unsustainable, but I'm working on downsizing it as fast as I can.

We need the thing to collapse. Yeah, it will be a pain the butt and people won't like it, and people want their TV and their end of the year bonus and their new car and on and on... But in the meanwhile, you have a system that is exploiting the environment and the poorest people.

I, too, thought what Alex thought. Street of Dreams? Give me a break.

I don't advocate what the ELF (if they did, in fact, do it) did. I think it's the wrong tactic. But I also don't think we should play into the system and make the rich happy just because if we don't, Bob, Joe, and Fred won't get paid. As long as the American people are kept at a reasonable level of comfort (i.e., much higher than what is sustainable), they will stay in this space of being fearful of losing what they have, and so buy into the system- both as workers and as consumers. They will continue to mix government with capitalism. They will continue to expect the government to bail out personal and corporate greed and poor decision-making to preserve the "stability" of an inherently unsustainable and instable system, that is opposed to long-term environmental and social reality. They will continue to off-load their costs to other, poorer people and justify it because they are "giving someone a job." (Even as they rape and pillage the land and resources that once allowed those people to be self-sustaining.)

In short, we need people to get unhappy enough to revolt against a system that will lead us to our social and environmental destruction.

What we really need is for people to become more aware about their needs vs. their wants, and see capitalism for what it is and for the shell of a human being it makes people. But since few people seem to get to that space without first becoming disillusioned and unhappy, without loss...

Absolutely, but we must be smart about it. The withdrawl symptoms may include military intervention. Remember Pinochet? Yeltsin? these were people who tried to institute a brand of capitalism founded by the Chicago School, home of Milton Friedman. They found the only way to intitute and keep these ideas going regardless of what it was doing to the people and the environment was to "Shock" the people with military might.
As long as Americans are fat and happy they won't notice just how much this type of capitalism rules our country.