“Pity the nation"

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”

~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology

1995

A Requiem for the Beautiful Earth

With permission: 

“We should do whatever we can to make people more aware of the crises that are coming our way.  Too many of us are dangerously oblivious to most of them, and the governments are doing far too little. All the best, Tad"

 http://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-requiem-for-beautiful-earth.html

From the essay:

I know you know all this, but it’s worth saying: There are no significant ecological trend lines that are getting better for the ecosystems:

•Human population is growing, getting worse 

•Human livestock population is growing, getting worse

•Human consumption is increasing, getting worse for all but the consumers 

•Human ecological and war-victim refugees are increasing, getting worse 

•Toxin loadin biological systems is growing, getting worse 

•Wild flora / fauna diversity is shrinking, getting worse 

•Aquifers, and all freshwater resources  are shrinking, getting worse 

•CO2 content in atmosphere is increasing, getting worse for existing biodiversity 

•Acid content of oceans is increasing, getting worse 

•Human economic unpayable debt load (fake energy, fake “growth”) is increasing, getting worse

•Quality and availability of every critical resource are shrinking, making these resources more expensive and more destructive to recover 

• Net energy from energy resources is shrinking 

•Habitats and food for wild fauna are shrinking 

•Carbon and nutrient content of arable soils are shrinking 

•Nitrogen and Phosphorus cycles are disrupted and concentrated, creating dead lakes and dead ocean zones 

•Coral bed sea-life nurseries are shrinking 

•Tropical forest terrestrial nurseriesare shrinking 

•Estuaries are shrinking 

•Ponzi schemes, stock swindles, and scams are increasing in frequency and monetary value 

•Forest fires and violent storms are increasing with CO2 and heating 

•War budgets are increasing, etc. 

A Requiem for the Beautiful Earth

December 10, 2018

First, let me remind you that a pessimist is an optimist who shed his delusions and denial, and educated himself. Please keep this in mind, if you continue reading. If you don't, that's fine too. You will remain in your blissful bubble of denial and ignorance, which are the dominant genetic traits of most denizens of the fossil superorganism. Please understand that many democratically elected governments know very well about your truth aversion and are making best useof it.

Imagine now that your favorite airline offers a vacation package to a world-class city like the one shown below. That city is Beijing. China is the rising economic superpower that will collapse rather immediately, because there is not enough of the environment left to protect her 1.4 billion people from disease and death. But before China collapses, she will suck dry most of the world that remains. The brutal global competition for resources may precipitate a war between China and US.