Thank you for this, Linh Dinh. I wish this sad story could be shoved into the face of most Americans, on this "Independence Day"!

"We haven't been paying for squat." There's the awful truth. We think we have been "paying", but money is a poor indicator of the true "costs" of everything we use... and use up. As the largely ignored truism goes "Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money." It saddens me that humankind seems bent on it's own destruction, wittingly or not, based on the mistaken idea that the planet is not finite. Most non-spiritual and spiritual people consume the planet with abandon, one to make their "heaven" on Earth and the other to make it "in the sky". And when "our moment of reckoning" becomes an un-contestable reality, with the worst effects "willed and deferred to our [not] distant progeny", what will those people think and do with us? Is violence not clearly the likeliest response of those whose future is robbed against those who robbed them of it? I hope this is still avoidable, though I fear it is not.
Thank you for your sobering article.

That was good.

Still, even so, the President needs to apologize for the genocide that the USA is built on ....

someone needs to get this going ... nothing is going to work before that ... well, nothing "they" are trying is working is it? ...

Thanks Linh GREAT article! You summed up real well where we are, and where we are going. My wife and I have already downsized our lives, smaller house, bigger garden. Down stairs we have a small efficiency apartment should a relative need a place to stay.

Unfortunately our "leaders" have dedicated themselves to "business as usual" at all costs, even as more of those they "lead" clearly know that will not be possible for much longer.

As Ronald Wright in A Short History of Progress said: “The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer.” I wonder how long the uncleansed masses are going to put up with that?

Our insane oil fueled journey is winding down. The days of shipping plastic pumpkins halfway around the planet so the elite can make a bigger profit are numbered. I cant predict with any certainty how it will all end other than to say, it's not going to end well for many/most.

Rodents, bacteria and fruit flies respond to energy subsidies with population overshoot and die off. We American humans have been brainwashed and foolishly believe we are immune to biology and history. Defying common sense we see no contradiction between endless and mindless consumption and spiritual and material loss. We are a proud and sick society manipulated and exploited by our own hubris, greed and stupidity. There is no American People, only a land of me and me and me. We seem to exist for the profits of car, oil and tire companies. This has always amazed me and still does. As long as the blue tube glows in the living rooms of the average citizen every evening there will be no spiritual rebirth because materialism as a mantra precludes such a development.
I especially like the observation" no more growth is possible because we have reached the limits of resource extraction growth. If we can't grow the economy by using more resources then our economic model has reached failure mode.
In the mean time every one is pretending the status quo is viable and that all that is required is to reinvigorate the processes that got us to where we are.
Meanwhile I quote Yeats:

" Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I love this poem because it speaks to our idealism, our belief in another world as salvation, which shall surely be our undoing.

Well done!

Great article Linh. I came to this country in 1955 looking for democracy and I am still looking. It is clear that a small ruling elite has taken over and with their short term thinking and greed have brought this country to it's knees. The only upside is that we will have to give up trying to dominate the rest of the globe because we are finally broke.

Linh was one of the first (besides Chris Hedges) to relate that trusting the "official version" of the 911 Hollywood script/story line makes no sense when the government has shown its willingness to lie about things as potent as a fictitious pretext for beginning a war of aggression, all the way to lying about the state of air quality in NY after THE event. It lies, using the CIA preferred version of "plausible deniability" about its motives for bailing out the amoral banker caste, lied about health "reform," and the behind-the-scenes motives operating to benefit the privileged interests in that debacle, lies about the economy, etc.

Integrity, accountability, and decency have all absolutely gone missing and the government that's left is a remnant of its once-professed ideals. The right wing echo chamber uses the evidence of flawed government to tell its simple-minded followers that government cannot be trusted. This, in turn, leaves society at the further mercy of those that have NO respect for life... not in persons, places, or living beings. In their empty Midas pursuit of profit, they lay all things sacred and sustaining to waste. The empire of disaster capitalists is akin to an army of Oncelers ("The Lorax," Dr. Seuss).

Only a collective wake-up call and earnest penance on the part of citizens (of conscience) can turn this nation's deadly, suicidal mission around.

I was driving in my steel box past a construction zone yesterday. Lo and behold, there it was, hanging from a 100 foot crane, the American flag upside down. To say this nation is in great distress is truly an understatement. As we ponder the freedom of a nation that is the most imprisoned on the planet, a nation engaged in two wars of foreign aggression, a nation that the author points out has troops in 130 foreign nations, one realizes that the founding fathers are rolling in their graves. A nation founded on the concepts of democracy and rebellion against tyrannical empire now stands as preeminent tyrannical empire on the planet. A nation that is led by sophisticated sociopaths who place war, greed and money above all else. Superiority is not measured by accomplishment but by the ability to swindle and wheedle dollars from their fellow citizen. A nation toiling under the iron fist of corporate fascism. As the author's photo blog illustrates, a nation that casts off its citizens like used rubbers.

To imagine personal mobile steel boxes as the worst of our problems is truly wishful thinking. Marx's ideas about commodity fetishism and the truly disconnected nature of capitalist society have come to pass. We are a nation defined not by our social connections and the intimacy of human interaction, but are insted defined by the products, gadgets and things that we own. Perhaps the collapse of our manufacturing industry might cause us as a people to become more connected. On the other hand, we are a society of specialization and the extended family as we have known it has disappeared entirely for millions of citizens. Smaller families means less social net and that coupled with our corporate fascist government's abandonment of other social nets will leave hard ground for many to fall on. Further, we are faced with a burgeouise that is addicted to growth. It demands ever expanding spheres of growth and exploitation in order to sate its voracious appetite. To what degree the working class can placate these monsters with ever increasing amounts of human blood and bone is open ended. Given the ever increasing technology and sophisticated methods of manipulation and suppression, the corporate fascist maw of tyranny stares us in the face in 2010. A system of wealth inequality taken to the extreme, leads us to further global insecurity that threatens the survival of the planet. As we approach seven billion inhabitants, the predominant economic and political forces continue to push us to a world of wealth inequality, security inequality, education inequality and that in turn means continued population growth.

We are today faced with realities that no generation of humans has ever been faced with. We have come to understand the vast expanse of the universe and the realities and limitations of space and time. Space, space, everywhere, not a livable spare square meter of space to spare. We are today faced with new paradigms that we are psychologically not suited to face. As we purvey the spiritual and religious landscape of the world, we are faced with paradigms that offer us monotheistic, nondualistic views of the world. An ego driven system of worship that holds out god as some man like entity, molded in the vision of ourselves. Authoritarian in nature, it dictates and we are the victims. Acceptance is the key, life is an illusion. In reality, this universe is a gift, we trample on it at our own peril. It is not an illusion, our destruction is real. There is no authoritarian, man-like owner and when we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves. We are billions of disconnected islands on the surface, but we are all connected by what lies underneath. Paradigms of growth, conquest, sheepish acceptance and authoritarian dictates work against us and threaten our very survival. If we are to break these chains, we must abandon our concepts of the nature of our universe as never before. We must come to accept that we do not know god anymore than our dog undestands the complexities of our daily work world. We must cast aside the concept of king, billionaire and authoritarian. We must do so with extreme prejudice and by any means necessary. We must adopt models of sustainable living where modes of excessive consumption and destruction of planetary life and resources is the ultimate sin. We must vacate theologies that claim that some men know god more than others and that whatever is this reality is based on the singular. We must drop our pretenses of ego which value human life above all other animals, mountains and oceans. Gods are all around you, look and see.

In my youth I saw great potential with this country. A melting pot that offered a modest glimmer of hope. I have seen this country brought to her knees by greedy and self-serving men and we stand at the brink. This burgouise want you to think that you are stupid, that you are powerless, that this is your fault. It is not. There is nothing unique about the fact that some enterprising men have taken advantage of our trust in them to lead and organize. They have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they no longer deserve our trust nor our compliance. It is now up to us. There is little to celebrate on this fourth of July. We are sliding into the abyss. As we slap that slab of resource intensive meat on the grill, we should consider for just one moment what our real responsibilities are at this point in time.

"Blow up the TV, throw away the paper, move to the country, build you a home, have some children, raise em on peaches, try and find Jesus, on yer own." John Prine

I can't wait to say this:

Linh Dinh,

Wow. Just wow.

Absolutely superior piece.

Thank you.

The US love affair with expensive automobiles needs to end. I was totally on board with this column until I began reading the part about 9/11. "Washington" was not involved in making that up, altho it surely did make up a lot of stuff leading us into the Iraq war. Why dilute the main message with kooky, to use his own term, paranoia?

Each of us needs to do a part in helping end the oil dependency. There is not much public transportation available where I live, and it's dangerous to try to walk or bicycle even short distances, because of the lack of adequate sidewalks. My town of around 500,000 people is probably typical.

What I do, is NOT buy a new car, not even when the government offers me cash for my clunker. I do limit driving to the absolute minimum, group my errands and plan out necessary trips around town. When I need to make a trip out of town, I rent a fuel efficient vehicle. I know if there were sidewalks or adequate bike lanes in this town, I could do more. I know buying a more fuel efficient car would indeed save gas, but at the expense of helping those car manufacturers stay in business, manufacturing less fuel efficient cars. Besides, I don't want ANY more gas-consuming cars to be manufactured. Period.

The most important thing is, I've decided not to support corporations in Detroit, USA or any other country, who sell vehicles, until they create an affordable electric car for me and everyone else dependent on oil and the resulting oil wars and deep sea drilling to get it. Of course they have the means to do produce an affordable electric car, but our $$$ is helping them to continue NOT to do it. The author rightly points out the irony of car commercials between newscasts of the Gulf oil disaster, our collective short attention span, and usual disinterest in anything beyond our selfish plans.

I want to be part of the solution, no longer part of the problem. I don't think I'm that rare of a person in the USA. I see my neighbors putting out containers for recycling, even though it costs them more. But they buy new gasoline running cars, effectively canceling out that sort of green behavior.

We need more media attention to what can be done, but how can we get everyone's attention, when our media also is dependent on big oil? HELP!!!

Another interesting thing about the Flintstones was that Fred Flintstone worked in a quarry -- that is, he was a "blue-collar" worker. I don't watch commercial TV, but my impression from what I hear is that people of that class have not been honoured as central characters for a long time.

"Imagine a world where music was a nuisance because it had become repetitive and could not be silenced!"

I noticed a long time ago that Canadians (and, from what I can gather, Americans) are terrified of silence and continually make war on it with electronically reproduced sound.

Excellent article, Mr. Dinh. My favorite of yours because you offer some hope and don't insist that we are condemned to die off.

This article assumes worst case scenarios but should not be ignored. Are we doomed to fail? That depends. I think we're doomed to some failure but we will have room for improvement but here's what the author fails to mention. We have people who think they have it all and claim to be totally perfect and non-materialistic. They'll tell you "I'm doing great and I'm a very responsible person. What are you doing about it?". Most of them will pretend that we all need to be Luddites but are dishonest with themselves and others. I'll be honest with you. I'm not clean neither am I a hypocrite and that's where I think we are all best at starting. Are we going to be like the Jetsons? No. Are we going to be like the Flintstones? No. I think that we will be somewhere in between. We are approaching our limitations in advancing our technologies but at the same time some of us are fighting for good ideas that were forced off the table. The status quo will say no new technologies. The Luddites will say no new technologies. I say that we should open the doors to new ideas but not let any new idea get into the wrong hands. That said, what needs to be done and the author fails to touch upon this is to abolish our capitalist cultist system that is keeping us divided. Without that action, no alternative sources of energy or new ideas will be carried out in ways that benefit the greatest number of people and other living creatures on this planet. We can't just lie to ourselves and say shit like "I don't drive but someone drives for me" or "I am very financially responsible. It's not the bankers' fault that you're a loser" or "My neighbor is buying 10 acres of land to own a solar powered home because he watched me do the right thing". Now good for you people out there who did the right things but there's no need to give others the "I'm a happy go lucky and you're nothing" Luddite shit talk. Americans can laugh at my parent's country of India but little do they know that by being so divided, selfish, and arrogant they are only digging their own grave of setting up similar caste systems and making themselves as poor as the poorest in India and China. I also have to warn this author that plenty of other nations are getting to be like the US in good and bad ways. I don't know what it will take to improve the US but I hope that some of the additional problems I laid out might help us figure out the cure(s) to avoid worst case scenarios.

And when it all comes crashing down, the vast majority of Americans will whine in unison:

'Why didn't anyone warn us?'

Get over your Greedism, folks, or you and the rest of us are f**ked.

And y'all know it.

Well conceived article. Sadly,the deception and fabricated science distributed by the energy cartels has successfully brainwashed most Americans beyond the point where they could accept such logic.

Our Nation's non-compliance with other developed nations concerning global warming mitigation underscores the dangerous control that special interests have exercised over our policies through deception and fabricated science. They cite random climatic variations, such as the some unseasonal snowfall in the southeast US but ignore other trends.

Evidence linking carbon pollution to warming has long been as close to certain as science can be. Its causes,consequences, and mitigation requirements have been documented by the dedicated international scientific community including The Union of Concerned Scientists.

Special interests argue that the current warming trends follow historic warming cycles, and hence reflect natural weather patterns--but they omit obvious differences: The earlier warming trends developed at slower rates which permitted the ecosystems to adapt. Morever they resulted from temporary natural events, which allowed transitions back to normal temperature patterns--by contrast, the current warming patterns result largely from artificial causes that will only intensify unless mitigated.

By all indicators, global warming will self perpetuate as the melting ice sheets reflect less heat, as the melting permafrost releases more CO2 & methane, and the list goes on. Inundation of low lying areas, spread of tropical diseases to temperate latitudes, sea life destruction from changing ocean chemistry, & currents are only some inevitable consequences.

Often overlooked is the fact that, the same measures needed to mitigate global warming would be necessary even if it were no issue. Conservation,alternative energy development, anti- pollution refinements, etc are essential for other vital environmental reforms such as air and water quality, reductions in toxic waste generation, land preservation, etc.

Contrary to right wing assertions, measures to reduce greenhouse gases could only improve our economy by lessening our trade deficits, and improving our security by reducing our dangerous dependance on foreign oil. We could also regain some of our lost world respect that has resulted from our rejection of Kyoto and dismal participation in Copenhagen, while arrogantly contributing disproportionally to carbon pollution. With our participation in international efforts, China & India could no longer use our non-compliance as an excuse for their non-participation.

The environmental and social damage from our indifference to carbon pollution--and conflicts between the main contributors to it and those who suffer most from it--can only intensify until we show responsibility and detooth the special interests,who have blocked these vital reforms in the past.

Let's keep the idea of making a sustainable nation through a large public works project alive. The reason it doesn't work is because the super rich can't figure a way to own it and get richer off us through it.

Superb article, if only to summarize what so many of us know.

But the more we speak out, bear witness, and bring awareness, the better the chance that we might change course--not soon enough, obviously, but maybe better late than never.

Thanks for the article, and the considerable effort and time putting it together.

There is absolutely no reason that our government hasn't

made it a federal law to have all drink containers

made out of glass and recycled. The amount of waste and

plastic from milk, juice, soda, and water containers is

sickening. It would be so easy to do , and create jobs.

SCREW CAPITOL HILL, AND OBAMA.

1984 doublespeak Mutha F . . . . . S
that have ruined the people and the environment....
Obama and Pelosi, and Reid are the biggest frauds our nation
has ever witnessed. and came at a time when we needed good
leadership for our survival.
EVERY ONE OF THEM BELONG BEHIND BARS........
and that would be better than what they really deserve.
because they deserve just what that 15 year old OMAR KAHDR
got only worse.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At some point, this convergence of ugly realities will lead to a blowup in America. I keep thinking of the sixties riots, assassinations and near assassinations, bombings, and the creation of domestic armed freedom fighters (the Black Panthers and the Weathermen). I think about the tiny minority of extremely wealthy families in South America who must have armed bodyguards, and I noted for the first time ever in print a mention of a CEO whose company pays over $140,000 a year for security services for their head honcho.

What is in store for all those wealthy people when the Have Nots of America get fed up with poverty?

Maybe the pushing has been slow (the slow motion fascism idea) and therefore the recognition of what is happening is slow. But when you finally realize it, survival means running, fighting back--anything but letting the thugs take you without a fight.

Think Warsaw Ghetto.

What will you do when the America's corporate version of the Waffen SS comes knocking? They are already on your street, walking toward your house.

It's past time to wake up, but how do you rouse an entire nation?

"our troops are certainly killing and dying to sustain our car infatuation"

Come on. A few of us are infatuated with cars.

But Darth Viper and the Houston We Have A Problems pushed every last one of us off the rail and into the car whether we liked it or not.

At least half of the women I know are frightened of cars and traffic. No surprise. 50,000 USans die each year, many more maimed, by cars.

But Darth Viper and the Houston We Have A Problems push them into cars anyway, at age 16, to do their part to "keep merka strong".

It's not that you love cars. You simply have a duty to the imperial juggernaut. Risk your life for your star-spangled banner! And your exploding car's red glare gives proof through the night!

There are energy alternatives to oil and great ideas to curb the demand but if they get implemented, who will be able to make a living writing another apocalypse article? If we don't hook everything to oil, what will happen to all those environmentalists making a living out of complaining loudly about oil? Sure they're right that fossil fuels have screwed our environment but failure to work with those trying to push for environmentally friendly alternatives is success for them but failure for us.

But why stop there? How about filling up those gaps in US history that were never covered? Here's a question the author probably couldn't answer. What was the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution originally written on? I'll give you a hint. It wasn't paper made out of wood. It's the same plant that was banned in the 20th century that could save us from being at the mercy of Big Oil.