It sounds trite, even naïve. But it isn’t. It’s a brutal concept. It demands discipline, concentration, humility and courage. And honesty. Our leaders were supposed to be our servants. They were elected “to serve”. We call it “service”. It’s one of the primary reasons our forefathers spilt all that blood. Not to mention they conceived that at some point each of us (who was at all capable and 99% of us are) was to set down the plow (or spread sheet) and for awhile do our duty to run that government that was doing all this serving.

I’m not claiming the thing ever worked perfectly, but who among us now even imagines that our representatives serve any of us that isn’t a millionaire, billionaire or that new form of “people” (thanks to the Supreme Court) – the corporations.

How did we get into this topsy-turvy house of mirrors? How do we get ourselves out? I think we have to start by more of us becoming those servants ourselves (the most realistic place to start is in local government). Are you unemployed; a student with no prospects? Are you working part time or retired?

Run for office. Or help someone you trust run. Why not?

And we have to stop getting sucked in by the media hype that anyone at the top is better than the rest of us. (Another reason our forefathers spilt so much blood – hatred of royalty.) And being rich, famous, going to an Ivy League or figuring out how to bilk pension funds does NOT make you royalty. Being greedy and lying doesn’t make you royalty. In fact nothing makes you special. A superior class was a lot of nonsense from the start and George Washington et al knew it.

Our leaders were meant to serve us. Plain and simple.

Otherwise throw ‘em out. You have the vote. Or run yourself, but you better pay attention – you’re a servant to your neighbors, friends, enemies, relatives. No lavish parties (not at this moment in our Republic’s tottering history). No limos with fluttering flags, no special Health Plans just for you. You’re a servant and you’d better be prepared to risk everything (even your life) for those you serve.

And then, ironically, you just might make it to the pinnacle of what it is to be a citizen, a human being. You just might make it into the history books. Or not. It doesn’t matter. You’ll have done what’s right and, frankly, that’s all that counts.

Good luck.

To all of us.

When did it happen? How? A small gathering in Zuccotti Park? Ten sleeping bags? Or was it Cairo? A different language. Same problem. Even worse. Was it the 2008 Crash? Or the hope of Obama, dashed as the Geithners and Summers swept in after the swearing in? Or was it Reagan sworn in, followed by his parade of massive deregulations, buttressed by Clinton, then Bush, while CEOs salaries skyrocketed and war was (more or less) declared wherever there was oil? And greed became our religion, presided over by a bought and paid-for Congress, White House, Media?

It doesn’t really matter how it happened, because here we are. Something has shifted.

History is back, ready or not, with her massive gears slowly turning. But what does each of us do about it? All those signs in the Occupy-So-Many-Cities-Across-the- Globe, with so many different grievances – why isn’t there some clarity here? Why? Well, because there ARE so many grievances. There ARE so many things to fix.

That’s where we are: so many things to fix.

That’s our plight/challenge/curse/blessing. And nobody’s going to do anything about it at the top because they’re fat and happy with their salaries, jobs, private healthcare plans, pensions, private jets, swimming pools and marble bathrooms.

But history is back. So what do we do about it?

Well, we can march and protest and live in sleeping bags and tents. This is completely legal in our country (and in most of Europe). It’s legal. And important. Our forefathers were clear about this. Very, very clear. It’s how it all started with clearing up the British problem.

Marching and protesting are legal in the United States of America.

But marching and protesting only get you so far and we still have a democracy on the books here, so why not use it? Really use it? Why not take a deep breath and…

…RUN FOR OFFICE this election cycle. LOCAL OFFICE. Are you working part time? Are you unemployed? Are you a graduating student and know (finally clearly know ) that there are NO JOBS out there, except for mowing your parent’s lawn (surrounding a house that may soon be sold off)? Or are you that parent, who’s about to lose his/her house, along with your pension?

Why not RUN FOR LOCAL OFFICE? What else have you got to do?

Forget national politics, as Howard Schulz, the CEO of Starbucks, has been urging. Forget it! That’s a billionaire’s chess game. And forget Congress and the Senate. It’s millionaires playing political polo with each other.

The real game in town is in YOUR town — local city councils, town mayors, county commissioners. LOCAL. LOCAL. LOCAL. Are you a returning vet? Run for sheriff. Are you a parent upset about your kids having no computers in school? Run for the school board. A math geek? County treasurer. Take a look at what offices are available in your neighborhood and RUN.

You wanna fight corruption? Look in your own back yard, where the developers and corporate franchises buy and sell the local politicos like hot dogs. Where do your local tax dollars go? You’ll shudder. But stop shuddering; stop complaining; stop being depressed and giving into a sense of mass hopelessness – RUN FOR OFFICE.

Start running now. There’s time. Lots of time and lots of help (more on that later). Democrat? Republican? Independent? It doesn’t matter. Enough of the hate and name-calling.

Stand up for what you believe and do it with grace and at least little confidence (we’re all scared when we try something new). Ask your friends for help – money, time, advice. Ask your parents, your children, your grandparents (or grandchildren) or that rich uncle who can write a big check or the poor uncle (or aunt) who can go door to door.

Let’s take back our democracy one house at a time. It’s time.

History has decreed it, as with our rag-tag forefathers. Let’s get back a little gumption. Let’s swallow down our sense of mass meaninglessness and bring back individual meaning to what can (once again) be a great country and a great back yard.

This is a piece I posted on the GRASSROOTS website and Facebook today. I thought it worthwhile to post it here as well.

I want to begin as much of a discussion as I can around the subjects that I raise below. Again, I know I’ve been off this site for awhile (working very hard), but now I’m back and I treasure those of you who’ve participated on my strange (sometimes bumpy) journey over the past two years of “what’s the point?”

WHY READ THIS?

It’s a question worth asking. Why visit this website? Why go to our Facebook page? What’s the point? I want to answer that, but first everyone involved with Grassroots wants to announce that the movie will be coming to theatres in February, 2012. There will be sneak previews across the country starting next week in New England and continuing up thru Christmas. Oh, and yes…the film is finished – nearly. We’ll be screening it and listening carefully to the people who see it over the next two months, then we’ll make some final adjustments before the February release.

So why read this? Why follow this strange journey of making and releasing an independent film in the US from 2010 (when we started shooting) through 2012? What’s the point?

In the back of my mind I’ve had thoughts flickering even before we started shooting. First, I had a feeling there might be a narrative here as big as the movie, maybe bigger – a narrative that could unfold on YouTube, on our website, Facebook, on your mobile devices and computers across the country, actually across the globe (we have fans from everywhere now), even as some of you might have feared the film might never see the light of day.

But Grassroots is going to see the light of day, or rather the dark of many movie theaters. And, frankly, my suspicion now is that it’s going to see a lot more than that.

Why? Because the real story of Grassroots is about the messy process of getting something done. It almost doesn’t matter what. Of course, unlike most other projects, filmmaking and politics are fun and “sexy”, but they’re also a lot of hard work, and occasionally cause trouble, confusion, even panic…

Hopefully all the videos on our website make this clear as well as (hopefully) making clear the creative and fun parts too. And there will be new videos that will start appearing about music, post production, distribution. We’ll also re-arrange some of the older videos to help make this wacky and fragile story of filmmaking clearer.

But, again, why follow this story (over a milliard other stories)? Here’s the answer:

Phil Campbell, played by Jason Biggs and Grant Cogswell, played by Joel David Moore, are real people who got involved with something – ie: politics. They’d never done it before. They didn’t have a clue what they were stepping into and Grassroots is their story – funny, wacky, inspiring, lost, confused, found.

They did something – they ran for office. Then we did something. We made this movie about “democracy with smile” — a phrase we just coined this past week.

We could use some smiles around our political process right now, couldn’t we? And we’ll need a whole lot more smiles come next February when the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primaries hit, and then all the primaries and general election come at us.

And that’s when Grassroots will be out in the world full swing.

But the point is that Grant and Phil jumped into the process with just about nothing. Those of us who made Grassroots did pretty much the same – no money, no distribution and no cast for quite awhile (revisit the videos, revisit the journey). But isn’t that how many of the best things start? From nothing, with a good dose of fear and trembling, counterbalanced by unbridled passion.

Deep in our hearts we all know that we can do anything if we set our minds to it. Make a major motion picture or a small movie, build a chair, clean a house, wash a car or…

RUN FOR OFFICE

That’s what we’ve come to realize is Grassroots’ real story.

Run for office like Grant did; wonderful, crazy, unqualified Grant Cogswell.

RUN FOR OFFICE .

YOU.
NOT HIM.
NOT HER.
NOT SOME RICH DUDE WITH A TIE.

YOU
YOU

YOU, the “little” guy/gal whose been following our story. RUN FOR LOCAL OFFICE. WE’LL HELP YOU, even if you have no money right now and no hope. Watch our movie, then jump into the game. Maybe you’ll win, maybe you’ll lose. The point is — jump in.

RUN FOR POLITICAL OFFICE THIS 2012 ELECTION

One thing we can guarantee — it will change your life. It will change the lives of those around you. And it just might start to change the country. And then the point gets even clearer — the point of Grassroots the movie, Grassroots the website, Facebook etcetera. The point is to ignite that narrative of GETTING SOMETHING DONE (even if it’s sloppy, silly, seemingly stupid – which is how it often felt while making this movie, how it often felt for Grant and Phil.)

But as Woody Allen said, “Just show up.” And that’s what we’re asking you to do. SHOW UP. The real you. The best you.

Show up for the country by running in your district, and don’t forget to also show up to the movie. (If you want to see Grassroots on a big screen near you, then write us – our website is about to be revamped to make this easy. If you can pull enough people together, we’ll do a sneak preview in your neck of the woods.)

And we’ll do even more than that.

We’re teaming up with some of the top political groups in the country to help people find all the support they need to run, and hopefully get elected. Now I’m definitely a lefty, but one of our producers, Michael Huffington is a former Republican Congressman, so it’s not about a political agenda, but about getting involved right, left and center.

GETTING INVOLVED.

And that’s the reason to keep staying tuned to what it is we’re doing here – Grassroots – it’s not just a word; it’s not just a movie. In fact we will need you to define exactly what grassroots is at this moment in our history.

Now everyone would agree that things in this country aren’t looking great. We can blame it on the corporations. We can blame it on the rich, the poor, our leaders, the “illegal” immigrants. We can blame it on Global Warming or fate or… we can look in the mirror.

That’s what we’ve been trying to do as we’ve made this movie. And we’ve tried to share what we’ve seen with you.

So join us. Join yourselves. We can guarantee that we’ll all be in for one hell of a ride.

In these deeply troubling times we need to now face a hard reality and stop worrying about convincing President Obama of anything. We need to convince his bosses, Goldman Sachs and a few others on Wall Street that what’s good for the Republic is good for them. We need to convince them that Warren Buffet is right. Tax the rich. Tax the rich and save Social Security, Medicare, the Public School System, the physical infrastructure of this once important beacon of Democracy and dynamic capitalism called the USA.

And We, the People, need to stop believing what we learned in Elementary School about the “Balance of Powers.” Otherwise we’re all going down the drain of history, a drain that (as we also learned when we were young) is not a lot of fun. It’s brutal and chaotic and if We the People go down that drain, so too will Goldman Sachs, with all its billions in bonuses.

Because no amount of money ultimately protects you against the collapse of a nation, against raging compatriots in the streets too desperate to care anymore. Look at Rome, Greece, Rawanda, Russia (twice recently – the Czars, then the Commies). Take a look at Gadaffi, Hussein and all the other leaders in the Middle East who have been feasting off their people.

And if it all comes unglued here in the US you can bet your billions in bonuses that it isn’t going to go all that well anywhere else in the world.

A new world war in our lifetime; nuclear weapons used indiscriminately with radiation leaving no corner of the globe untainted; riots of hundreds of thousands, even millions (not to mention global warming, tsunamis and the rising waters of another hurricane devastating lower Manhattan next time)?

When the floodgates of history kick in (natural or unnatural) they can kick in real big.

Does Goldman Sachs really believe it’s immune from history just because a lot of its executives got real high SAT scores; have been able to plunder pension funds, etc. with impunity and got bailed out in 2008 by the taxes of We the People?

And do We, the little People beneath the boot heel of Goldman Sachs et al, have the luxury anymore to imagine that we have anything other than a titular president? Do we have the luxury to remain deaf to our forefathers who, when they set this whole thing in motion, warned us of blood in the streets every twenty years or so to keep a thing like democracy going? (I never like that part of their revolutionary message. We’ve been able to more or less slip by those kinds of blood baths with the exception of nearly a million deaths during the Civil War) But please remember that American Civil War, you brilliant men (and a few women) of Goldman Sachs, remember the possibilities of what history can bring with even one hand tied behind its back.

Remember and think hard and meanwhile I’ll pray for every one of you that works down there in Lower Manhattan. Maybe others will pray for you too. This is no laughing matter anymore, because what comes next (if you guys – and a few gals – make the wrong choices) could well make the blood baths of the past look like child’s play. So tax the rich, save Social Security, Medicare, the infrastructure, Education and most important – I guess – yourselves…

And if you do come to your senses – please pass it on to our president.

Thank you.

I feel like the kid who cried wolf a bunch of times, saying I’d come back to this site again and really do some writing, etc. I don’t really know if anyone’s listening anymore, but I’ve been really swamped with making a TV movie called “Girlfight” up in Vancouver, which turned out really well. It’s with Ann Heche and will air on the Lifetime Channel in October (more details later).

Also I did a TV show a few weeks back in NY for CBS, airing in mid season (right now, called “The 22” – it will probably change). It stars Adam Goldberg and Leelee Sobieski. (All three of these actors – by the way, Ann, Adam and Leelee – were an absolute joy to work with!)

In any case, I’m just about back in LA for awhile (more on that via Tweets, I’m diving back into that too) and my focus will be on “Grassroots,” the movie, which will be released theatrically in February 2012. But I’ll be really exploring what the movie and its implications will be over the next few months, as this election overwhelms us.

Grassroots politics. Real politics. Politics of the people. Democracy. That’s what the movie plays with in an entertaining way. Grassroots politics on the big screen and also we will be using the film to joyfully and tactically try to get people (young people, students, people unemployed) to run for office. (More on that later too…)

So, there’s a lot to start to talk about. To discuss. It’s all been bottled up in me over these past few months and now I’m looking forward to sharing it all with whomever wants to listen (and respond to) what Grassroots is about in this upcoming election and beyond, an election that might be one of the most important that the US has experienced.

And that’s, the point, I guess. Dive in. Do your best, even if – as in my case – for awhile I fell off the horse or whatever it is this website has been trying to do.

That’s the point…(without putting too fine a point on it).

By: Jane Hamsher Thursday July 7, 2011 12:46 pm

According to both the Washington Post and the New York Times, Obama is proposing cuts to Social Security in exchange for GOP support for tax hikes. Lori Montgomery in the Post:

At a meeting with top House and Senate leaders set for Thursday morning, Obama plans to argue that a rare consensus has emerged about the size and scope of the nation’s budget problems and that policymakers should seize the moment to take dramatic action. As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal.

And Jay Carney’s carefully chosen weasel-words today do not contradict this:

“There is no news here – the President has always said that while social security is not a major driver of the deficit, we do need to strengthen the program and the President said in the State of the Union Address that he wanted to work with both parties to do so in a balanced way that preserves the promise of the program and doesn’t slash benefits.”

Nobody ever says they want to “cut” Social Security or Medicare. They want to “save” it. Just ask Pete Peterson, he wants to “save” it. Likewise AARP. They don’t want reduced benefits for senior citizens, they want to “preserve” it for future generations. If they have an enormous customer base they can market private “add-on” accounts and other retirement products to when Social Security goes bye-bye, I guess that’s just a happy coincidence.

Now if you think that this is something the President is doing because it’s the only way to get Republican cooperation you can stop reading here, because we’re going to disagree. From the moment he took the White House, the President has wanted to cut Social Security benefits. David Brooks reported that three administration officials called him to say Obama “is extremely committed to entitlement reform and is plotting politically feasible ways to reduce Social Security as well as health spending” in March of 2009. You can only live in denial for so long and still lay claim to being tethered to reality.

And if you think it’s only the President, and the progressives in Congress will oppose him, we’ll have to disagree about that too. Nancy Pelosi can always come up with the votes she needs to pass whatever the White House wants, and she’ll do it again this time. It’s her only chance to ever be Speaker again. If the Democrats somehow manage to retake control of the House, she needs Obama’s support. She’ll shake her fist and say things like any health care bill “without a strong public option will not pass the House” — and then turn around and force her caucus to walk the plank.

Progressive Democratic “leaders” like Raul Grijalva will fold once again like a house of cards if need be — and they know it. Today, the Huffington Post reports:

Progressives Won’t Criticize Obama For Proposed Social Security Cuts

Grijalva and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), a vice chair of the caucus, defended the president for signaling he would be willing to take a look at changes to the programs, arguing there are ways to restructure entitlement spending to save money without hurting beneficiaries.

Translation: They’ll wait for the whip count to see if their votes are needed, and if not, they can let somebody else be the “rotating villain” this time. But just in case, they’re leaving the back door open for themselves.

What we’re watching is the death of the Democratic Party. Or, at least the Democratic Party as most of us have known it. The one that has taken its identity in the modern era from FDR and the New Deal, from Keynesianism and the social safety net. Despite any of its other shortcomings (and they are myriad), the Democratic Party has stood as a symbol for commitment to these principles. As recently as 2006, Democrats retook the House in a surprise wave election because the public feared that George Bush would destroy Social Security, and they trusted the Democrats over Republicans to secure it. Just like George Bush, Obama now wants to “save” Social Security….by giving those who want to burn it to the ground the the very thing they’ve wanted for decades.

Any member of any party who participates in this effort does not deserve, and should not get, the support of anyone who values Social Security and cares about its preservation. The amount of damage that the Democrats under Obama have been able to do has been immeasurable, by virtue of the fact that they are less awful that George Bush. But where George Bush failed, Obama will probably succeed.

Which means we’re watching another casualty here: Democracy. Or at least, the illusion that we live in a democratic society. The public, regardless of party, overwhelmingly opposes cuts to Social Security and Medicare. But elected officials of both parties are hell-bent on conspiring to bring the programs to an end. They seem to have come to grips with a fact that the public has not: their tenure in office depends on carrying out the wishes of oligarchical elites.

There is only one thing you can reasonably conclude as you watch the political theater that is transpiring: what the voting public thinks really isn’t all that important. And to the extent that it does matter, it can easily be channeled by those with sufficient money to pay the tab. Samuel Johnson said that patriotism was the last refuge of scoundrels, but in our modern era, that honor goes to tribalism. The list of horrors that people found intolerable when George Bush was in office, but are now blithely accepting because “Sarah Palin would be worse,” grows longer every day.

We’ll fight this, because it’s the right thing to do. We will probably lose. But we will make it as painful as possible for any politician from any party to participate in this wholesale looting of the public sphere, this “shock doctrine” for America. And maybe along the way we’ll get a vision of what comes next. Because what we believe in as Americans, and what we stand for, is not something the Democratic party represents any more.

It’s difficult today not to be tripped up by little things like our President who received the Nobel Peace Prize as he swept into Afghanistan, then invaded Libya, promising to be out in a week or two. How long has it been now? Or the Patriot Act, having been mocked by this same President, then fully renewed; or Guantanamo Bay being closed, but not closed; or the vast bailouts for the very, very rich and nobody else, even as “the nobodies” put him into office so filled with hope.

It’s difficult today in particular given that it’s the day that in 1949 the book “1984” was published and one stumbles over the following lines…

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”

(Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part 1, Chapter 3)

It’s difficult and it’s very, very sad.

Just a quick note, popping one’s head out of the rabbit hole of just functioning one day after another. One can live without blogging, without being online…but here I am – maybe inexplicably, maybe unreasonably, maybe only temporarily – back. So much of what has pulled at me (and I know pulls at others as well) is articulated by Chris Hedges. The article below (go to Truthdig to read the whole article) is his latest example. It’s not good news, but it’s real news…hard news…hard…

The Sky Really Is Falling
Global climate change has made for freak storms and more intense weather. The result is Hurricane Katrina, this month’s devastating tornadoes and floods, and routine forest fires in California. Here, a tornado touches down in Iowa in 2008.

By Chris Hedges

The rapid and terrifying acceleration of global warming, which is disfiguring the ecosystem at a swifter pace than even the gloomiest scientific studies predicted a few years ago, has been confronted by the power elite with two kinds of self-delusion. There are those, many of whom hold elected office, who dismiss the science and empirical evidence as false. There are others who accept the science surrounding global warming but insist that the human species can adapt. Our only salvation—the rapid dismantling of the fossil fuel industry—is ignored by both groups. And we will be led, unless we build popular resistance movements and carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience, toward collective self-annihilation by dimwitted pied pipers and fools.

Those who concede that the planet is warming but insist we can learn to live with it are perhaps more dangerous than the buffoons who decide to shut their eyes. It is horrifying enough that the House of Representatives voted 240-184 this spring to defeat a resolution that said that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” But it is not much of an alternative to trust those who insist we can cope with the effects while continuing to burn fossil fuels.

Horticulturalists are busy planting swamp oaks and sweet gum trees all over Chicago to prepare for weather that will soon resemble that of Baton Rouge. That would be fine if there was a limit to global warming in sight. But without plans to rapidly dismantle the fossil fuel industry, something no one in our corporate state is contemplating, the heat waves of Baton Rouge will be a starting point for a descent that will ultimately make cities like Chicago unlivable. The false promise of human adaptability to global warming is peddled by the polluters’ major front group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which informed the Environmental Protection Agency that “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” This bizarre theory of adaptability has been embraced by the Obama administration as it prepares to exploit the natural resources in the Arctic. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced recently that melting of sea ice “will result in more shipping, fishing and tourism, and the possibility to develop newly accessible oil and gas reserves.” Now that’s something to look forward to.

“It is good that at least those guys are taking it seriously, far more seriously than the federal government is taking it,” said the author and environmental activist Bill McKibben of the efforts in cities such as Chicago to begin to adapt to warmer temperatures. “At least they understand that they have some kind of problem coming at them. But they are working off the science of five or six years ago, which is still kind of the official science that the International Climate Change negotiations are working off of. They haven’t begun to internalize the idea that the science has shifted sharply. We are no longer talking about a long, slow, gradual, linear warming, but something that is coming much more quickly and violently. Seven or eight years ago it made sense to talk about putting permeable concrete on the streets. Now what we are coming to realize is that the most important adaptation we can do is to stop putting carbon in the atmosphere. If we don’t, we are going to produce temperature rises so high that there is no adapting to them.”

The Earth has already begun to react to our hubris. Freak weather unleashed deadly tornados in Joplin, Mo., and Tuscaloosa, Ala. It has triggered wildfires that have engulfed large tracts in California, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. It has brought severe droughts to the Southwest, parts of China and the Amazon. It has caused massive flooding along the Mississippi as well as in Australia, New Zealand, China and Pakistan. It is killing off the fish stocks in the oceans and obliterating the polar ice caps. Steadily rising sea levels will eventually submerge coastal cities, islands and some countries. These disturbing weather patterns presage a world where it will be harder and harder to sustain human life. Massive human migrations, which have already begun, will create chaos and violence. India is building a 4,000-kilometer fence along its border with Bangladesh to, in part, hold back the refugees who will flee if Bangladesh is submerged. There are mounting food shortages and sharp price increases in basic staples such as wheat as weather patterns disrupt crop production. The failed grain harvests in Russia, China and Australia, along with the death of the winter wheat crop in Texas, have, as McKibben points out, been exacerbated by the inability of Midwestern farmers to plant corn in water-logged fields. These portents of an angry Gaia are nothing compared to what will follow if we do not swiftly act.

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“We are going to have to adapt a good deal,” said McKibben, with whom I spoke by phone from his home in Vermont. “It is going to be a century that calls for being resilient and durable. Most of that adaptation is going to take the form of economies getting smaller and lower to the ground, local food, local energy, things like that. But that alone won’t do it, because the scale of change we are now talking about is so great that no one can adapt to it. Temperatures have gone up one degree so far and that has been enough to melt the Arctic. If we let it go up three or four degrees, the rule of thumb the agronomists go by is every degree Celsius of temperature rise represents about a 10 percent reduction in grain yields. If we let it go up three or four degrees we are really not talking about a planet that can support a civilization anything like the one we’ve got.

(for the rest of the article go to…http://www.truthdig.com/report/page3/the_sky_really_is_falling_20110530/

What has happened in Egypt and is happening in other parts of the Middle East is (of course) profoundly important for that region, but it also brings lessons to the so called First World, struggling with it’s reworking of financial structures (both in Europe and in the US). As we watch Obama (who has increasingly emerged as a closeted Republican) we must ask ourselves if we aren’t beginning to face similar issues, albeit at a very early stage.

In various parts of the Middle East one might ask (as Sara Palin did) if the protestors aren’t questionable – un-Christian, Islamic (which, I suppose makes them radical), dangerous (despite the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood has been one of the more moderating forces in Egypt).

Nonetheless, let’s allow the right-wingers (and the CIA, etc) their suspicions re the Egyptian protest movement. Instead, let’s turn our attention to Iran (we all know that it is correct to hate the government in Iran – terrorists to the core, as they build their weapons of mass destruction and as Ahmadinejad goes on about there never having been a holocaust. And then the crackdown of 2009.

And it’s funny how Obama (and the US government) played that moment of uprising in Iran and the more recent moment in Egypt.

It should give us humble citizens here in the US pause.

What would our government do if we suddenly started protesting the Corporate bailouts, the massive CEO’s salaries, the startling high quality Health Care that those in Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House receive – for free, while we more humble folk lose homes, jobs, hope, clarity, real healthcare, low priced food and gas, etcetera.

So here’s a quote from one of the leaders of the protest movement in Iran, Mahdi Karroubi, one of the two pro-reform presidential candidates in 2009. At the moment he’s under house arrest. The hard liners in the Iranian government are calling for his execution now.

“We warn (the ruling system) that before it is too late, stop being stubborn and hear the voice of the people,” he said in remarks posted on his website, sahamnews.org. “Exercising violence and opposing peoples’ wishes can last for a limited time. Take a lesson from the fate of governments that distanced themselves from the people.”

Yes, it should give us pause how Obama and his government have handled the uprisings (will continue to handle uprisings) in the Middle East. But this quote should give them pause. It should give Goldman Sachs pause. It should give the other bankers, CEOs and millionaire/billionaire Senators and Congressmen/woman pause.

You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.