What to do about the 1% of the 1% [Note: Content Warning - climate crisis, elitism and social division, evil]

Recently I wrote about the egregious self-serving and, frankly, evil, actions of oil company executives who knew the climate crisis was coming and did nothing.

I’m now reading about the worst of the worst in historian  Nancy  MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains: the deep history of the radical right's stealth plan for America” (Amazon), about evil wealth supremacists such as John C Calhoun, James McGill Buchanan, and Charles Koch - the 1% of the 1%, in a sense. 

As usual, I’m also trying to work out how their evil can be undone, and it isn’t easy - things like action against the climate crisis and for minimalism, counter-greed strategies, and the sorts of power balancing strategies that Robert  Reich advocates for will help the planet and many people, but the deliberate and wilful attempt by the people written about in “Democracy in Chains” to destroy democracy requires more. 

No doubt I will find what the author suggests in due course, but, for now, it seems like the informative writings of people like John  Pilger, Michael  West, Greg  Jericho, Alan  Kohler, and Michael Pascoe, the calls to stand up and be accountable for our society and democracy made by people like Robert  Reich, George  Monbiot and others is the way to go. We have to find the courage and make the decisions that avoid lifestyle vulnerabilities to enable to us to be ethical and stand up against wrong doing wherever we find it - whether in right wing extremists, workplace autocrats, or community organisations. 

No doubt I will write (and read: see, for instance, this) more on this as I progress through the book. In the meantime, here are a few links to some (mostly relatively recent) previous writings of mine (which I will use to help refine my next thoughts on this, but feel to free to read them if you wish 😀 ): 

From my main (spiritual) blog: 

• Post No. 2,243 - Eccentricities are NOT all harmless; 
• Post No. 2,031 - Monsters and the risk of becoming one;
• Post No. 2,011 - Bigots and their legacy of trauma; 
• Post No. 1,897 - Insanity Inducing Lifestyles and Their Apologists; 
• Post No. 1,577 - Emotional Intelligence is not . . .; 
• Post No. 1,552 - Spoons of Courage;
  

From this blog: 

• Community support and personal responsibility;
  
• Emotional, psychological, social, intellectual, legal, and MORAL blindness to cruelty (~1,800 words - 8 - 11 min. read);
• Bob Hawke: a re-thinking;
• The problem of giving in to evil;
• Rental and other crises;
• Votes tell us about voters ...;
• Change - for the better, after a backlash ...;
• The truth behind resistance to human rights;
• On resistance ...;
• The coming global waves of hates ... and canaries in the mine (~930 words; 3 - 5 min. read); 8Sep22 
• Opting Out of Discrimination (~1,600 words; 6 - 8 minute read);
• The moral abyss we're being herded in to by the media and political parties of the 1950s; 25Jul22
• Meritocracy, lack of bias, and other myths (~2,400 words; 5 - 8 minute read);
• Putin’s People;
• A review of the last half century by former US Secretary of Labour Robert Reich;
• Democracy needs human rights;
• The evil of Edmund Bernays;
• Governance for ...;
• Citizens vs. denizens / "the precariat";
• The utterly evil Howard's attack on our democracy is being continued;
• The social engineering actively performed by social/political elites;
• On the alleged "fragility" of democracy;
• What drives right wingers?;
• Why we should care about . . . the fact that the world order is American, not global;
• Incompetent (non)reactions;
• Corporations, decisions, and the changing social/world climate;
• Choices in a democracy - including inaction / foolish action / allowing evil;
• Some thoughts on governance;
• Thoughts on embracing uncertainty;
• A quote from Abraham Lincoln that bears on these days;
• In defence of democracy;
• A new term: FBU - Flummoxed By (the) Unfamiliar; 
• Political change; 
• On Demagogues; 
• Ethics, Lazy Management, and Flawed Thinking: The Hypocrisy of the "No Emotions at Work" Dinosaurs; 
• Getting into management should NOT be like getting into a cult or a gang; 
• Shirking and stuffing up legislative - and other - responsibility; 
• Surveillance capitalism.

And finally, a saying of mine: 

Beware the enforcers of conformity - those small people who, sharing the banality of evil, cannot abide that others may demonstrate that doing the same as everyone else is not compulsory.