Hello, revcom.us!
The piece on Bill McKibben last week, “If Snake Oil* Were a Fossil Fuel...Bill McKibben Would Be One of the World's Worst Polluters *aka BULLSHIT,” sparked a memory of an engagement I had with an influential environmentalist several years ago. I was struggling with this person to participate in a forum the revcoms initiated on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. That environmental crime is documented in the American Crime series at revcom.us, and was the largest marine oil spill in history, and perhaps the U.S.’s worst environmental catastrophe ever.
This person had a chance to be part of something that mattered, something that would wake people up to the stakes of the looming environmental catastrophe for real and include the perspective of people fighting for a revolution that could actually address that. But they were adamant that being part of a forum with revolutionaries would end their ability to get an audience with Obama. The person I spoke to passionately insisted that I couldn’t appreciate what a difference it made to not have a president (George W. Bush, who preceded Obama) who was a climate change denier and tool of the oil industry. And how important and essential it was that the door remain open to talk to Obama.
Well, walking through that door, literally and otherwise, leads to serving this system exactly as a “dangerous peddler of toxic illusions” while the world goes to hell!
This all brings to mind something from Bob Avakian that is very timely as things are coming to a head with this upcoming (scheduled) election, in a time when revolution is much more possible—if we seize the time:
If you try to make the Democrats be what they are not and never will be, you will end up being more like what the Democrats actually are.
—BAsics 3:12
