Long-Term View

In 2012, many people are primed to focus on elections, especially presidential elections. But it's worth remembering where we have been, where we are now, and where we are going, even though that is exceedingly depressing. We live in a very sick society, which is in the process of killing itself. The combination of global warming, climate change, resource depletion and destruction, economic collapse, and political ineptitude portend that our current course leads to death and destruction of our species and much beyond it. The planet might eventually recover, but we and our future descendants will have vanished. The candidates for the two major parties have no program to reverse any of these trends. Both the Democratic and Republican parties and candidates are parties of death and destruction. The argument to vote for one over the other is the argument to choose the gas chamber over the noose, the lethal injection over the firing squad. Whichever one chooses, we will all be dead, and there will be no afterlife.

Only by breaking with these parties of death is there even the slightest hope of changing the course of humanity. Of course, we need to do much more: Organize protests and movements, fight in many ways. But abandoning the parties of death is a necessary step. When I see progressives advocating support for Obama, who is totally committed to policies which will exterminate our species, I see people unwilling to face reality and I see them squandering their energies on a lost cause. Personally, I expect to live another 20 to 30 years at most, but I want my legacy (if anyone survives to inherit it) to be one of standing for principles which have some hope of improving the chances for human survival on planet earth. I will be voting Green for Jill Stein in 2012. If tens of millions of people would join me in doing so, that would be a good sign that there is support for genuine change. I rest my case.