Bill McKibben, American Idealist, Sours on America's Ideals

[Celerity]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/books/review/bill-mckibben-flag-cross-station-wagon.html

https://archive.ph/rtqHo



In his writings, his many speeches and bullhorn exhortations, Bill McKibben comes across as one of the least cynical people on the battlefield of public opinion. He’s passionate about solving problems others have given up on, about building a better world and particularly about climate change, the issue that has made him the Paul Revere of alarm about our fevered planet.

Growing up, he actually sang “Kumbaya” around a campfire — “always earnestly,” he says. He won the Gandhi Peace Award and the Thomas Merton Award. One day, perhaps, he’ll win the real Nobel to go with the so-called alternative Nobel, which he’s already been awarded, the Right Livelihood Award. As is sometimes said about effective environmentalists, he’ll make a great ancestor.

His latest book is a slim cri de coeur about the rot at the base of his biographical foundations. McKibben finds his country, his religion and the suburban lifestyle of his youth to be so flawed that he’s ready to divorce much of his past. “I’m curious about what went so suddenly sour with American patriotism, American faith and American prosperity — the flag, the cross and the station wagon,” he writes. “I’m curious if any of that trinity can, or should, be reclaimed in the fight for a fairer future.”

He doesn’t stay curious for long. This memoir reads like an extended argument against the idea — oft cited by Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama, among others — that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. He says at one point, in reference to how that phrase applies to the evolution of religion, that “it’s just as easy to make the opposite argument from history: that Christianity is a baleful force, baptizing oppression and sanctifying the unspeakable.”

snip

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250823595/theflagthecrossandthestationwagon

[Auggie]

1. What the Hell happened is ...

professional media gave way to professional propaganda. Cable news, satellite radio, social media, and technology opened the door for special interest to shape public opinion in a way never before possible. Those with the most money, loudest voices, and biggest lies prevailed.

[Lonestarblue]

2. I've always believed that we truly began falling apart with Reagan's election.

Nixon was a stain on the presidency, and the War on Drugs he started has been an expensive boondoggle that we’re still paying for today. Kennedy and Johnson cut tax rates for the wealthy to 70%. Reagan then cut it to 50% and we’ve seen it decline ever since, along with the addition of loopholes allowing many wealthy people to pay nothing in federal income taxes. Reagan began the long slide continued by Republicans today when they have the power toward creating a super wealthy class of white people whose wealth has bought almost unlimited power, complete with having a Supreme Court rule in their favor with Citizens United.

Reagan presided over an increase in poverty, and a growing inequality. While not as blatantly racist as Republicans today, his policies were racist, and especially homophobic, in effect. Democrats saw his presidency as a disaster, yet much of the media fawned over him and, like Trump, his voters loved him.

With the advent of Fox News, the media truly started sowing division and hatred of other. The Republican Party has not been the party of Lincoln for many decades, and I law the blame for the mess we have today mostly at their feet. Their tax policies have created the greatest inequality in our history, unions have almost been decimated, and corporations have been allowed to change their policies to deny some workers basic benefits like healthcare insurance. The social cost has been great. And with cable and the Internet, we now have 24/7 access to “news” and opinion pieces telling us we are victims of this or that group and we should be angry and go buy guns to protect ourselves.

I also do not fully excuse Democrats. I doubt that Clinton or anyone else anticipated the effects of global trade policies on US manufacturing, but they have been devastating to many parts of the country. I’m not saying that he and his advisers should have anticipated the damage, but even then it was the wealthy as corporate shareholders pushing to open global trade. And to get rid of higher-paying union jobs in manufacturing. Big corporations made billions moving jobs out of the US with no penalties, and we started seeing CEO bonuses go through the roof. People losing their jobs in the Midwest saw news of those bonuses, and resentment was born among many white people who had always had good jobs.

We as a society are sick, and I’m not sure there’s a cure. Like the refusal to take Covid seriously, too many people refuse to take the danger of losing democracy seriously. The attitude seems to be “We don’t care if we have democracy so long as we can have a president and government that places white people, especially white Christians, above all others; keeps non-white immigrants out, prevents women from having any say on their reproductive lives, and forces LGBTQ back into hiding. That’s why they love Trump and anyone like him because he tells them what they want to hear. They’re well on their way to ripping this country to shreds.

[BlueMTexpat]

3. The beginnings

are actually with the Nixon Era.

The Reagan Era exacerbated those beginnings and built upon them with massive tax cuts for the wealthy and deliberately breaking up unions.

It has been downhill since with a couple efforts to get something back (Clinton Era and Obama Era) that were thwarted at every step by what the GOP has become and Dems who complacently went along with them.

Biden is literally the Last Hope.

[DavidDvorkin]

9. I'd go back to the Goldwater nomination

After his landslide loss, his minions didn't give up. Instead, they went behind the scenes in the GOP. Everything that followed was the result of that.

[BlueMTexpat]

11. Excellent point!

Yes, indeed!

[slightlv]

10. Lonestar, I agree with you

about the effects of the tax cuts, etc. But I'll add an effect on to it. It shifted the moral arc, as well. With Reagan, these corporate people saw themselves as the chieftains, the do-gooders of society. Why should they pay all the money, in addition to all the good they do for society, as they saw it? They were held up as paragons, and ate up every word of it until they believed it completely. They passed the belief onto the next generation until it was internalized unto the current generation. If we actually go back far enough, I think you'll find it didn't start with Reagan, but actually started prior to Reagan... but with Cheney and Feith and others prior to Reagan; with those who actually got Reagan elected. Those who were so incensed that Nixon got caught with his pants down, and swore revenge. Those who started the New Century America (or whatever it was actually called - memory fails me). This was a long term plan. Bush, Jr. almost ruined it for them. Trump almost ruined it for them. Instead, they made both of them work it around for them. Cheney turned it around by making himself Bush's VP. Trump's just decadent enough to buy into everything they want - which is one party control; a fascist state. Of course, it's great as long as their desires are compatible. They will diverge at some point; at which point New Century is going to be sorely disappointed, as will all the Evangelicals who think Trump is their savior god.

But Reagan's election DID start society on a tract towards coarsening and hardening of it's heart against the poor, the vulnerable. Reagan shut down and emptied the mental hospitals. Killed the unions. Made the workplaces dog eat dog. Up to that point, it was not unusual to start and end your career at the same company, retiring with a good pension, as well as social security. Reagan helped stripped all that away. Reagan made the phrase "welfare queen" a dictionary entry. He may have been a doddering, dementia impaired, old fool... but he was an actor playing a part with enough old-time republicans around him in good supporting roles to prop him up. So, even today among some circles, he's still worshipped as a near god figure. Trump has worked hard to replace him, but even he can't replace him completely.

The only thing Trump has been able to do is carry on the Republicans' work of turning Americans against each other in hatred. And they've been absolutely successful in that. They've had excellent lessons in that from the Russians.

And I agree, absolutely, with you in not absolving the Democrats. I liked Bill Clinton, but I detest the fact that, like a lot of men in power, he couldn't keep his pants zipped. I also thought he should have foreseen some of the problems his policies would have had on the American people. I thought all along his policies were more corporate-leaning, and I didn't agree with that. And then, it seemed like each democrat that came afterwards followed him was more like him until we came up with a new class of democrat - the corporate democrats... farther and farther away from our FDR roots... and farther and farther away from the common people who were always our base voters. Saying this is what made me finally give up on Daily Kos, btw. I pray I don't get chased off here, too. I was thrilled to see Joe Biden hark back to our FDR roots, despite the headwinds of the Republicans.

We are so far into the evil of hatred, I don't know if there's a way out of it. At this point in all religious mythologies, the gods send a global catastrophe to wipe the earth clean and start anew. All hail the coming asteroid?

[NNadir]

4. I'm not a fan. Although the media regards him as an...

...an "environmentalist" in general his approach is decidedly bourgeois, tentative and weak. In many ways he reifies the culture he deigns to criticize.

His mantras, showing a lack of courage, have all failed.

[Celerity]

5. Do you have some examples to back up this fairly searing criticism?

in general his approach is decidedly bourgeois, tentative and weak

His mantras, showing a lack of courage

pretty harsh takedowns

[NNadir]

6. It would take a long time to list them all...

...suffice it to say that in this century while he he was driving his Prius to 350.org events, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide rose by about 40 ppm.

It's all been unoriginal Amory Lovins rehashing that if we just made minor adjustments in our suburban lifestyle everything would be wonderful, in short the myopia of a provincial. After decades, in which hundreds of millions of people died from air pollution, and an accelerating rate of increases in carbon dioxide accumulations was clearly and unambiguously observed, while we all waited for the so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, he reluctantly decided that maybe, just maybe, nuclear energy isn't that dangerous.

Thanks Bill.

Neither he nor Lovins have had an original idea since the 1980s. The consequences of their chanted dogma are written in the planetary atmosphere.

[Celerity]

7. my main issue with Bill McKibben is his anti nuclear power stance

Amory Lovins seems to ne cut from the same cloth

[NNadir]

8. That's a pretty big one, hundred of billions of tons of CO2...

...sized.

Lovins was there before McKibben. McKibben just latched on to it.