Decade of Fear

For what it’s worth, I expect the first decade of this century to be remembered for the use of fear by terrorists -- both inside and outside the United States -- to gain and hold political power at the expense of the vast majority of the world’s population, present and future. Although a small group of religious extremists was responsible for the pivotal event of the decade, the attacks of 9/11/2001, it was a larger group of home grown ideological extremists that let it happen and then capitalized on it to accelerate their rape, pillage, and murder of the planet for fun and profit.

In this, the last year of the decade, the world’s political leadership -- bought and paid for by the real powers in the world, transnational corporations -- blew several chances to repair the damage wreaked by our wasteful culture. Financial reform, health insurance reform, and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions were approached half-assed at best, even after a political power shift in the U.S. toward the party that claimed to know better.

Replacing the “family values” diversions of the first eight years, the corporate-controlled media taught us more about rich people’s sex lives than the growing slaughter of people and other species by poisonous plastics, gases, and industrial waste that has contaminated our food, air, water, and soil to a lethal level. Instead of working on ending this genocide, our government focuses on keeping a handful of potential murderers at bay, overreacting with unintended consequences that kill far more people.

Time is running out to avert the worst of all catastrophes, the extermination of the human species, and we squandered the period when we could have had the greatest positive impact.