A Clarifying of Stance, Part 2

From time to time I check my readership stats, as I want this blog to be informative and I want to gauge its impact.  I noticed that over the last few days, people have been exploring some rather early posts in my back catalog.  I am flattered by your curiosity, although I must warn you that some of my perspectives have changed over the years, due to the acquisition of newer information which superseded some of my early assumptions.  So today's post is a bit of a grain of salt for you who are exploring those early posts.  As a sign I once saw on a co-worker's desk once read, "I don't always agree with everything I say."

Generally, I do agree with everything I have written from the end of 2016 onward.  I also agree with some of the statements of the very early posts of this blog, namely that the modern industrial societies of the First World are running up against limits to growth.  These limits consist of resource limits and the cumulative effects of environmental degradation.  No reasonable person can disagree with this.  There is one other theme that I explored in parts and pieces throughout various posts from the start of this blog until now, namely, that there is a powerful, well-organized movement among the wealthiest and most privileged people to roll back all the civil rights gained by the world's poorer people - especially those who are nonwhite - during the 20th century.  I'd like to suggest that this movement would have emerged regardless of the emergence of resource constraints and their effect on economic growth.  Therefore, those of us who have become once again targets of oppressors must learn to thrive while navigating a threat environment.  My posts from 2017 onward have largely explored the question of how to do this.

One last caution.  Many of the people who were writing about the impacts of resource depletion, climate change, and American fragility from 2007 to around 2015 were actually aligned with white supremacy, the Global Far Right, and the Russian government.  I am thinking of how many of these people aligned themselves with the candidacy and later presidency of Donald Trump.  I am also thinking of how their earlier suggestions for dealing with the emergent crises of the early 21st century all revolved around buying a large-acre doomstead somewhere in the western United States and stocking up on guns, gold bullion, and baked beans in preparation for the zombie apocalypse.  Let me just say straight up that these people were and are dead wrong.  Their hyper-individualist responses have actually made them and their society much more fragile.  Look at the hyper-individualist responses to the COVID pandemic in the United States, and compare our shamefully high death rate from 2020 onward to the much lower death rates in many of the more collectivist societies of the nonwhite world and the developing world.  And as for the Russians, I hope that my posts on Russia from 2017 onward have completely erased any pro-Russian bias that exists in my posts that are earlier than 2017.  Please see my post titled, "A Clarifying of Stance" if you want more detail.  Vladimir Putin is a thieving little man in a bunker, and Putin's regime is a good-for-nothing piece of garbage.