Best yet Corbin. As the movie says, 'What's on your mind? Milk and cookies kept you awake?' My only addition is this: before a large group of humans can actually grok the reality that they are a large 'group,' and must work together to survive, as a group, you need to show the need for cooperation rather than competition. Competition drives more than getting to some finish line, it drives cutting corners, taking inadvertant risks, narrowing the vision to only some distant goal, not the actual path(s) to said goal, and what does that goal actually have to do with survival or demise. I am not interested, in the least, in speed to get somewhere, especially in the final era of human existence on a planet that IS us, our home, our benefactor. Right now, we need to get our shit together and stop killing what sustains us. This is the core fault in competition. That end, to win something, merely shows we are addicted to the illusion that the means always justify the end(s). This world is in constant flux, and our 4000 years of constant chaos have only added to that flux, and we have, now, virtually NO TIME LEFT to stop the environmental plunge into the heart of the maelstrom. No more bulldozing our way out of chaos, it is going to take cooperative finesse to get ALL of us, especially our Earth support systems, out of this cesspool of suicidal behaviors we have become addicted to.
Mick, the speed I'm pushing for is about collective action. The wartime footing is on the build itself, on getting things done together. We can move fast and still cooperate. That's how the New Deal and the Apollo program worked. Big shared projects with everyone pulling together.
The urgency comes from a couple things. One is just running out of time. The other is feeling like we're in one of those big shakeups in human history. A transformative moment. A moment of unsettling and decision when one power structure gives way to another and we get to decide which direction we head. AI, robotics, the energy transition, climate change, wealth and income inequality, the collapse of faith in democracy and neoliberalism, all converging at once. And these crises represent massive opportunities for change. We need to be ready with a plan of action. A political plan, an economic plan, a social plan. Something that lets us capture these changes like lightning in a bottle. Appreciate you pushing on this.
How did we do it? Oil. We had the energy source to make stuff. You are right that we blew it with neoliberalism, but you are missing the fact that it was entirely based on fossil fuel energy. That energy source is either gone (we cannot make oil) or unavailable at a cost that can rebuild what we casually threw away. Solar and wind cannot replace everything as it was. We have to build a new energy system before we can restructure our economic system, hopefully without destroying our global ecosystem. It is the global and local ecosystem that is the real foundation. China is way ahead of us in changing energy, but no one is really succeeding in the ecosystem part. It is time to put away the guns, downsize the military, solarize the economy in a simpler form, and above all work to heal and regenerate our environment.
Wayne, I couldn't agree more that energy is foundational. But there's a new transition happening right now as important as the discovery of petroleum, and not going all in on it makes as much sense as expanding a whaling fleet when petroleum was discovered.
The numbers tell the story. In 2025 alone, China added 315 GW of solar and 119 GW of wind. Their combined renewable capacity now generates more electricity than the entire EU consumes. Meanwhile Hormuz has been effectively closed since March and gas in the US is up over a dollar a gallon. Oil isn't a strategic strength anymore. It's a strategic vulnerability.
China has been at this for 20 years and it's looking prescient. We don't need to treat this as a competition to win. We need to treat it as a frontier to join. A space race without the Cold War. The constraint isn't physics or economics. It's political will.
The leadership ran towards money and allowed corporations, wealthy, and foreign countries to grab the reigns of USA power. In the meantime we sat by enjoying a comfortable life with our heads in the sand while many were pushed down. Not the buzzards have come home to roost.
I’m fed up with all this “We” stuff. It’s not “we” who have done any of the obscene actions in Iran; it’s Trump and the ignorant losers with whom he has surrounded himself. And it’s all part of his Operation Epstein Fury — nothing more, and nothing less. Release the files and remove the whole stupid regime now — before the Fourth of July. Have a nice 250th, everyone!
The fact is though it's the Democratic Party too. It's the core leadership of not only the United States, but many of the Western powers plus the Middle Eastern powers.
The idea of vilification of Iran and many, many others, including the Iraqis and So forth. It is a shared responsibility.
This is definitely a collective group of folks that are leading this country and others that are that are making this the we. If it's just them, then it makes it less imperative that we change it.
I really think that it's so critical that we start to imagine this country as we in an effort to take control of this country again as the we.
You're missing the point. By supporting or accepting the systematic incestual rape of our own economy by the corporate elite, we've allowed people like Trump to be our leaders. And I'll point out that all the presidents, without exception, since WWII have only been quieter versions of the same.
These wars are never for ‘nothing’, they are always to line the pockets of wealthy interests. Look at who benefits, which industries and which individuals, have significantly more wealth and resources and power after a war and that will tell you why our country spends taxpayer dollars on these wars.
Not so fast. Everyone has an opinion, and when the subject matter is this crucial, I do not feel that weaving the ball of yarn together with yet more thread is a bad ideal. Corbin writes extremely well, and as a former writer, lead writer, editor, editor-in-chief and technical editor, I know what it takes to make a point stick with the reader. This article is one of the best-written arguements I have ever seen online.
Thank you very much, Mick. That means a lot. It's taken some time to find my voice, but I'm getting closer and closer. Thanks for being along for the ride and for the encouragement.
Who, what, when, where, how, why. The core of communication. You tell the audience this. Then you tell them you told them, and then you tell them again what you told them earlier. You pin the three corners of communication - observation, confirmation, clarification. The science of writing or speaking. Where does this science come from? From the senses, which create the emotions that all animals live with as they bob and weave thru life. Emotions are real, creations of the experiences of the senses. The science just centers those emotions in the reality from whence they came. Beauty is truth, and truth, beauty. Keats.
The most important thing might not actually editing. It might be spelling but there's no spelling mistakes in Corbin's work.
The second thing after spelling is as much clarity as possible. Repetition and writing simply is good. Repetition when writing an opinion piece reminds people what the point is.
People all over the internet are writing about politics. If we came here and read all the way Corbin wrote it well boom.
To get people reading you have to give two out there damns about what you're saying and be who you are. He's very much being who he is and reminding our country who it is. I also could tell this pains him.
Being honest is a big deal.
I write somethings. I take a long time. I've had 4 things I haven't finished this year. Five other things. If you can write frequently with almost no spelling errors you are honest and develop and value your unique voice, man you're already doing better than 90 percent of the people who write things on the internet.
If you v can consistently get five comments on your writing you're doing something many people aren't.
There's a reason most people over here are journalists not lit professors. Journalists learn to write on spec everyday. They even learn how to make venal opinion sound like disinterested fact.
Corbin even had a call to action. How much political writing has a call to action instead of just telling us what we can already see with our own eyes, know from what we experience everyday. He said what is to be done and said these people are doing it.
If something is too long but you read it it's for you.
It's a little bit weird these days to run into grammar and style critiques on the internet. I thought people stopped doing that in 2006. But I could be wrong.
Speed, clarity, frequency and voice matter way more in producing a body of work. Even when people do things well and are sick with talent there's no guarantee they'll get eyeballs all day everyday.
Oh well we all read whatever we want to read take from it whatever we take from it hoping people will engage with content of what we write. If someone comments we've probably succeeded. Even if we haven't as a writer we just chive on, chive on, chive on..
I hear you, Carole. I wrestle with length too. People already aligned with me get bored if I go long. People on the fence need the receipts. So I'm always trying to land somewhere between brief and convincing.
Best yet Corbin. As the movie says, 'What's on your mind? Milk and cookies kept you awake?' My only addition is this: before a large group of humans can actually grok the reality that they are a large 'group,' and must work together to survive, as a group, you need to show the need for cooperation rather than competition. Competition drives more than getting to some finish line, it drives cutting corners, taking inadvertant risks, narrowing the vision to only some distant goal, not the actual path(s) to said goal, and what does that goal actually have to do with survival or demise. I am not interested, in the least, in speed to get somewhere, especially in the final era of human existence on a planet that IS us, our home, our benefactor. Right now, we need to get our shit together and stop killing what sustains us. This is the core fault in competition. That end, to win something, merely shows we are addicted to the illusion that the means always justify the end(s). This world is in constant flux, and our 4000 years of constant chaos have only added to that flux, and we have, now, virtually NO TIME LEFT to stop the environmental plunge into the heart of the maelstrom. No more bulldozing our way out of chaos, it is going to take cooperative finesse to get ALL of us, especially our Earth support systems, out of this cesspool of suicidal behaviors we have become addicted to.
Mick, the speed I'm pushing for is about collective action. The wartime footing is on the build itself, on getting things done together. We can move fast and still cooperate. That's how the New Deal and the Apollo program worked. Big shared projects with everyone pulling together.
The urgency comes from a couple things. One is just running out of time. The other is feeling like we're in one of those big shakeups in human history. A transformative moment. A moment of unsettling and decision when one power structure gives way to another and we get to decide which direction we head. AI, robotics, the energy transition, climate change, wealth and income inequality, the collapse of faith in democracy and neoliberalism, all converging at once. And these crises represent massive opportunities for change. We need to be ready with a plan of action. A political plan, an economic plan, a social plan. Something that lets us capture these changes like lightning in a bottle. Appreciate you pushing on this.
How did we do it? Oil. We had the energy source to make stuff. You are right that we blew it with neoliberalism, but you are missing the fact that it was entirely based on fossil fuel energy. That energy source is either gone (we cannot make oil) or unavailable at a cost that can rebuild what we casually threw away. Solar and wind cannot replace everything as it was. We have to build a new energy system before we can restructure our economic system, hopefully without destroying our global ecosystem. It is the global and local ecosystem that is the real foundation. China is way ahead of us in changing energy, but no one is really succeeding in the ecosystem part. It is time to put away the guns, downsize the military, solarize the economy in a simpler form, and above all work to heal and regenerate our environment.
Wayne, I couldn't agree more that energy is foundational. But there's a new transition happening right now as important as the discovery of petroleum, and not going all in on it makes as much sense as expanding a whaling fleet when petroleum was discovered.
The numbers tell the story. In 2025 alone, China added 315 GW of solar and 119 GW of wind. Their combined renewable capacity now generates more electricity than the entire EU consumes. Meanwhile Hormuz has been effectively closed since March and gas in the US is up over a dollar a gallon. Oil isn't a strategic strength anymore. It's a strategic vulnerability.
China has been at this for 20 years and it's looking prescient. We don't need to treat this as a competition to win. We need to treat it as a frontier to join. A space race without the Cold War. The constraint isn't physics or economics. It's political will.
What happens when we let bullies gready for virtual dollars lead
The leadership ran towards money and allowed corporations, wealthy, and foreign countries to grab the reigns of USA power. In the meantime we sat by enjoying a comfortable life with our heads in the sand while many were pushed down. Not the buzzards have come home to roost.
Let's see how we fix this mess, if we fix it.
I’m fed up with all this “We” stuff. It’s not “we” who have done any of the obscene actions in Iran; it’s Trump and the ignorant losers with whom he has surrounded himself. And it’s all part of his Operation Epstein Fury — nothing more, and nothing less. Release the files and remove the whole stupid regime now — before the Fourth of July. Have a nice 250th, everyone!
The fact is though it's the Democratic Party too. It's the core leadership of not only the United States, but many of the Western powers plus the Middle Eastern powers.
The idea of vilification of Iran and many, many others, including the Iraqis and So forth. It is a shared responsibility.
This is definitely a collective group of folks that are leading this country and others that are that are making this the we. If it's just them, then it makes it less imperative that we change it.
I really think that it's so critical that we start to imagine this country as we in an effort to take control of this country again as the we.
You're missing the point. By supporting or accepting the systematic incestual rape of our own economy by the corporate elite, we've allowed people like Trump to be our leaders. And I'll point out that all the presidents, without exception, since WWII have only been quieter versions of the same.
These wars are never for ‘nothing’, they are always to line the pockets of wealthy interests. Look at who benefits, which industries and which individuals, have significantly more wealth and resources and power after a war and that will tell you why our country spends taxpayer dollars on these wars.
Very interesting reorientation for the US. It would be good for the Dems to lead with the positive of what we can do to create these goals.
PS. You write well but need to edit. This should have been half in length making the same points.
Not so fast. Everyone has an opinion, and when the subject matter is this crucial, I do not feel that weaving the ball of yarn together with yet more thread is a bad ideal. Corbin writes extremely well, and as a former writer, lead writer, editor, editor-in-chief and technical editor, I know what it takes to make a point stick with the reader. This article is one of the best-written arguements I have ever seen online.
Thank you very much, Mick. That means a lot. It's taken some time to find my voice, but I'm getting closer and closer. Thanks for being along for the ride and for the encouragement.
Who, what, when, where, how, why. The core of communication. You tell the audience this. Then you tell them you told them, and then you tell them again what you told them earlier. You pin the three corners of communication - observation, confirmation, clarification. The science of writing or speaking. Where does this science come from? From the senses, which create the emotions that all animals live with as they bob and weave thru life. Emotions are real, creations of the experiences of the senses. The science just centers those emotions in the reality from whence they came. Beauty is truth, and truth, beauty. Keats.
The most important thing might not actually editing. It might be spelling but there's no spelling mistakes in Corbin's work.
The second thing after spelling is as much clarity as possible. Repetition and writing simply is good. Repetition when writing an opinion piece reminds people what the point is.
People all over the internet are writing about politics. If we came here and read all the way Corbin wrote it well boom.
To get people reading you have to give two out there damns about what you're saying and be who you are. He's very much being who he is and reminding our country who it is. I also could tell this pains him.
Being honest is a big deal.
I write somethings. I take a long time. I've had 4 things I haven't finished this year. Five other things. If you can write frequently with almost no spelling errors you are honest and develop and value your unique voice, man you're already doing better than 90 percent of the people who write things on the internet.
If you v can consistently get five comments on your writing you're doing something many people aren't.
There's a reason most people over here are journalists not lit professors. Journalists learn to write on spec everyday. They even learn how to make venal opinion sound like disinterested fact.
Corbin even had a call to action. How much political writing has a call to action instead of just telling us what we can already see with our own eyes, know from what we experience everyday. He said what is to be done and said these people are doing it.
If something is too long but you read it it's for you.
It's a little bit weird these days to run into grammar and style critiques on the internet. I thought people stopped doing that in 2006. But I could be wrong.
Speed, clarity, frequency and voice matter way more in producing a body of work. Even when people do things well and are sick with talent there's no guarantee they'll get eyeballs all day everyday.
Oh well we all read whatever we want to read take from it whatever we take from it hoping people will engage with content of what we write. If someone comments we've probably succeeded. Even if we haven't as a writer we just chive on, chive on, chive on..
I hear you, Carole. I wrestle with length too. People already aligned with me get bored if I go long. People on the fence need the receipts. So I'm always trying to land somewhere between brief and convincing.
Dems forgot how to lead. As for editing, sometimes it’s necessary to repeat the obvious until people get it.