However hard we try to deny or forget it, we are facing twin existential threats: the climate crisis and nuclear war. These are not unrelated. Wars are fought for resources, none more important than fossil fuels. They create prodigious amounts of greenhouse gases, and divert money that could be spent on climate mitigation and creating a just transition away from fossil fuels We cannot address the climate crisis until we end war.
Most people, including many of those who have spent decades trying to eliminate the scourge of war, believe that war is inevitable. We had better get over that in a hurry unless we are prepared to face the end in our lifetimes. If there is still hope to avoid both of these existential threats, it will require Americans to wake up to the reality that their fates are inextricably intertwined with those of everyone else.
This kind of tectonic paradigm shift in our collective consciousness would a tall order on any time scale, but as Kuhn showed in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, such shifts may occur rapidly when conditions are right. The urgency of the moment requires us to assume that is possible and to do all we can to promote it if we are to prevent nuclear war and/or environmental collapse.
To create a new world, we must first envision what that world would look like before developing a strategy to get there. If we want a world where most people implicitly recognize our interdependence, we must shed our violent habits of thought. Treating politics as warfare, where those of different ideologies are "the Other," if not enemies outright, is to perpetuate the world that we want to change.
Whatever strategy we develop to achieve our ultimate goal of universal justice, we must assume that some of those who currently oppose us are potential allies. Liberals and progressives alike seem to have given up on the idea that minds can change as circumstance do. By isolating from each other, both have allowed their worldviews to diverge to the point where the seem to have nothing in common with those who view the world differently.
We must be prepared to listen and acknowledge points of commonality in our opposing worldviews in a spirit of respect if we are to create the kind of movement capable of stopping our headlong rush toward oblivion.
I wrote the following for my local newspaper, but it hasn't been published yet. If it doesn't change your mind about the value of trying to treat the "other side" respectfully, I hope that you will at least consider the arguments carefully.
The suppression of free speech on campus took an ominous step toward fascism with the recent arrest of a nonviolent student protester in New York. This should concern any American who assumes they are protected by the Bill of Rights.
On March 8, Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent U.S. resident married to an American, was abducted by plainclothes DHS agents in front of his eight-months pregnant wife. His family and lawyer were not told where he would be taken. Eventually, they discovered he had been transported to an ICE facility in Louisiana that is notorious for detainee abuse. He has not been charged with any crime.
Khalil’s offense was that he had been a student leader in last year’s Columbia University protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Columbia has been a prime target of government pressure to suppress campus protest against US complicity in Israeli war crimes. The site of the first Gaza encampment, students there remain defiant despite draconian efforts by the university to coerce them into silence. These include mass arrests, academic sanctions including expulsion, and banning of student groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace.
Khalil’s arrest came one day after Columbia was notified that $400 million in federal grants had been cancelled. The government outrageously claims that Columbia has made insufficient efforts to combat “antisemitism.” That’s the term both the Biden and Trump administrations have used to characterize student protests against Israeli atrocities. To emphasize the message to others, 60 more universities have received warning letters that they are also being investigated.
America has seen a lot of protest in recent history, from across the political spectrum. Most complaints concern problems rooted in the corrupting influence of money in politics. The ability of corporations, the ultrarich and unregistered agents of foreign governments like American Israeli Public Affairs Committee to spend virtually unlimited amounts to influence elections has become a danger to the Republic.
Most politicians pay far more attention to the wishes of the donor class than to the needs of voters. As a result, people on both sides of the political divide demand radical change. From the rise of the Tea Party to insurgent campaigns by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, signs of revolt are everywhere. This terrifies the political and economic elites. That is why our rights are being trampled by both parties.
Active suppression of free speech is nothing new. Remember Biden’s Ministry of Truth proposal? He tried to create a State Department office that was to be tasked with determining what information is “misinformation.” Its principal purpose was to censor any evidence that the government was misleading the public in its efforts to demonize Russia after Trump “threatened” to normalize relations.
Whatever one’s opinion on Israel’s actions in Gaza and elsewhere, each of us should be concerned about arbitrary abuse of power to punish individuals who are doing nothing more than peacefully protesting government policy. If we permit this, the First Amendment rights of anyone to assemble, speak publicly, and petition the government for redress of their grievances will be threatened.
Or, as Michelle Goldberg commented in a New York Times editorial entitled This is the Greatest Threat to Free Speech since the Red Scare, “….a government this willing to disregard the First Amendment is a danger to us all.”
Ideological warfare has kept us fighting each other instead of the real enemy among us. Due to our system of privately financed elections, those of means who consistently put profit over the American people are close to destroying any prospect of representative government in the United States.
Americans must unite to save it.
