Sleepwalking into Autocracy: The Democratic Party Elite’s Complicity

Note: This essay was inspired and co-written with John S. Armstrong, my husband, who has been very focused on our current political landscape which demands a more critical look.

Written by John S. Armstrong and Karen I. Shragg

The Democratic party elite has unilaterally decided who is going to be at the top of their ticket. That act in and of itself is not a democratic one. The fact is that 70% of Democratic voters since 2022 have consistently said they did not want him to run for a second term. Even though they liked and supported President Biden they wanted someone else. We agree, it was not a question he was the right candidate for the job last time around. But that was then, and this is now. By preventing any viable democratic candidates for getting on state primary ballots they avoided the due process voters deserve.

On the side of the aisle marked with a ‘D’, we the people have lost our right to choose our own candidates. It is becoming clear that they are being chosen for us by a self-anointed power structure in the form of the Democratic National Committee and their ilk. There is nothing democratic about deliberately avoiding primaries to select a candidate. Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips articulated our concern when he tried to fight the entrenched system by making a bid for president, stating that his reason for running was that, “people deserve not a coronation but… a choice.”

 It is clear that both sides are avoiding the democratic process. Trump refused to participate in the Republican primary debates and Democrats refused to even have them. Neither side is indicating they will participate in presidential debates.

 No incumbent president Republican or Democrat has been reelected in the history of electoral politics with approval ratings as low as Joe Biden’s, which has ranged from 38-44% in the last six months.

 Both former presidents Clinton and Obama still went through the primary process in order to become the nominees of their party. Now here we are in 2024 and President Joe Biden is the Democrat running to ‘save democracy’ from the grips of another four years of an untethered Donald Trump. Being that the voters have not been allowed to make any other choice, we find it ironic that to fight the ‘loss of our democracy’ we are not being allowed to follow its basic principle of letting the people choose.

 According to recent reports, Biden is losing support from four key constituencies who helped to secure his election last time. Each of them is feeling that they have been underserved during Biden’s administration. Biden is losing support in the Black and Latino communities as well as with voters under thirty. He still needs to win over Independents who now represent over 40% of the electorate.

As of this writing, polling in the 7-8 swing states, which will again determine who wins the electoral college, has Biden losing to Trump. Under these circumstances, not having primaries that reflect the voter’s wishes is not only short cutting democracy, it is a sure fire way to lose because of Biden’s current unpopularity.

Longtime Democratic strategists James Carville and David Axelrod, warned from their insider positions that Biden is the wrong man to beat Trump this time around. Al Sharpton is also raising a red flag saying that people who call into his program from outside the beltway are less than enthusiastic about voting for Biden. When the warning is coming from within the party, the party needs to listen.

The DNC and their allies have secured the nomination for Biden by discouraging any viable candidate from running in the primary process. The power elite are now focusing their energy and resources on trying to prevent any third-party candidates from getting on state ballots across the country.

Democrats keep emphasizing that a Trump win is an existential threat to Democracy. But the DNC has demonstrated their animus towards democratic fairness. Author and commentator Fareed Zacharia has said that the way you defend liberal democracy (i.e. freedom of speech and upholding democratic institutions), is not by illiberal means of cutting corners or having double standards.

 Author and Pulitzer Prize winner David Remnick has said if you look at recent world history it is clear that when you pit institutions against authoritarianism, authoritarianism wins every time because the institutions are often not trusted.

If Biden loses to Trump, we cannot allow the Democratic power elite to say it was because “we didn’t get our message out” or blaming a third-party run. They have to look in the mirror and realize they put up the wrong candidate, one not chosen by the people and one that could not compete with someone as charismatic and dangerous as Trump.

We know what happened when Trump lost by a small margin. Imagine if Biden does pull out a win by a thin margin, what would happen this time? To fight Trump’s powerful grip on the Republican party we needed someone younger, vibrant and who could articulate Democratic accomplishments as well as a clear vision for the future.

Admittedly, it is a sad state of affairs that even an unpopular incumbent president cannot beat the likes of Donald Trump who is facing 91 criminal indictments. But politics isn’t logical and Democrats need to demonstrate how they can emotionally connect with voters. They must be better at selling their ideas. Their current strategy is to point out how bad their opponent is for the country, while failing to articulate why they are the better choice.

The bottom line is we can’t achieve the protection of our democracy by eliminating the democratic process. It is not a winning strategy and it’s time we take back democracy from the Democratic power structure who are sleepwalking us into autocracy.

Banking on Water

World Water Day is March 22nd and it’s a great opportunity to connect the dots between overpopulation and water scarcity. Here is a not so fun fact, there are approximately 2 billion people world-wide who do not have access to potable water according to a United Nations report out just last year. It shouldn’t be rocket science to figure out that adding millions more people to our watersheds is just going to make matters worse. When you have a bank account there is a limit to the amount of cash you can withdraw before it is empty. Water is no different. When you take out more that can be replaced, the taps, wells, hoses and faucets will run dry.

In my late father’s lifetime, we added 6 billion people to the planet and the water did not and could not keep up. Our population growth would be impressive with innovations in disease and accident prevention if our planet were an unlimited place. But it is a closed system infused with slow-moving cycles evolved to accommodate only so much demand. Conservation technology can stretch some of those resources, but the demand for fresh water is just too great. Water is a renewable resource but only if demand doesn’t exceed the ability of a water resource to recharge or replenish. For example, the Ogallala aquifer which ranges from Texas to Kansas recharges slowly ranging from .024 to 6 inches a year, even less when droughts occur.  Since the 1920’s, the US population increased by a whopping 221 million people. Water may be a global cycle, but it is experienced on a local level and must be managed as such by controlling demand as much as possible.

The United Nations should be sounding the alarm on the water crisis. Instead, in its not so infinite wisdom, the UN is taking this opportunity to announce its WATER FOR PEACE campaign. Scan their website:

https://www.un.org/en/observances/water-day for insights into overpopulation’s impact on water scarcity and you will come up as empty as the wells in Mexico City. This megalopolis has a scary 22.5 million people in it up from 3.3 million in 1950, so it should be no surprise that its authorities have just announced it is running out of water. But as usual, they are blaming everything but the elephant in the room which keeps stomping all over our lives. The UN is supposed to be a source of leadership in our bedraggled world and yet they completely ignore that as we grow by over 80 million net gain each year on an already overpopulated planet, there will be anything but peace. There will be water wars and people are already investing in water rights ownership so that they will be the ones to profit from a lowered water supply. LIMITS TO WATER DAY is a much better name and will help to educate people about how water is a precious resource which must be protected. It is far more precious than the money we hoard.

 It is not just what we need to drink and wash our clothes with it is the element needed to process everything from lettuce to gasoline and its cycle is being broken by overdemand and human caused climate change. Of course, the more humans, the more climate change.

Water is a great opportunity to shed some light on how water supply is local even though the earth’s water cycle is global. The US is not immune from the perils of our looming water crisis. There are currently 2.2 million people in the US who live in homes without running water.  Yes, we could, at great expense, install low flow shower heads and any number of water-saving devices but it cannot make up for the mess of being in such deep overshoot. Depending on where you live in the US, your water source is either from a nearby river, and underground aquifer or mountain run off. None of these sources gets stellar marks in the supply department. Mountains must have snow if they are to provide water so that is nothing to bank on either. To this we keep adding more people gambling that somehow water will be coming out of our taps years from now.

Across the US, aquifers are being over-pumped and rivers are running dry because they cannot keep up with a demand of 336+ million Americans using an average of 82 gallons per person per day. The US is currently growing mostly by mass immigration. We must realize that there are answers to decreasing demand, perhaps ones we do not want to hear, but we are doing a great injustice to those already living within our borders. Keeping our borders open to more thirsty people will just use up our dwindling water supplies more rapidly. Real leadership would demand that we have the challenging discussion of keeping our demand in line with this life-giving resource.

 We know what happened when bankers loaned subprime mortgages to people who did not have the resources to pay them back. It is no different when we are not firm about limiting population growth to the best of our ability in a country suffering from low supplies of water exacerbated by the unstable weather events of climate change.

It’s hard not to loan people money who want to live in home and it’s also very difficult to turn people away at our borders even if they have the proper paperwork because it will just mean we are just going to run out of water in a shorter period of time. But it is the right thing to do if we want to be able to drink water, wash our clothes and cook our food in the future. You can take that to the bank.

“I am the Lorax and I speak for the trees “* How we must celebrate the International Day of Forests

Dr. Suess aka Theodor Suess Geisel, wrote his famous children’s book “The Lorax” in response to fighting development in his neighborhood. It’s a story we are still living 50 years later, when forests are more needed than ever and more threatened.

To truly speak for the trees, because the trees have no tongues, we have to honor their right to be here in the numbers required to provide habitat for forest wildlife and absorb carbon. Globally there are 10 million hectares (24,2710,541 acres)  lost to deforestation every year, with 70 million hectares(172,973,785 acres)  lost due to fires, evidence that trees need a lot more Loraxes to advocate for them.

The United Nations has announced that theme for the International Day of Forests this year is, “Forests and Innovation: New Solutions for a Better World,” to be celebrated the 21st of March. This means that according to the organizers, energy will be put toward early fire warning systems, sustainable commodity production for wood products as well as the empowerment of Indigenous Peoples. They also address ecosystem restoration.

These are not bad ideas, but they are woefully incomplete as human overpopulation and population growth is being overlooked once again as a driver of deforestation. Forests are cut down to make room for housing, freeways, agricultural production, shopping centers, airport runways, train tracks, and cul de sacs to name just some of the development pressure which turns forests into lumber and sends wildlife packing. The more people added to a given country, the more the bulldozers are called in to clear the lungs of the earth.

We desperately need to stop deforestation for many critical reasons. We need trees to hold in the soil, make it rain, provide wildlife habitat, produce oxygen, absorb carbon, provide wood products, make shade and provide an aesthetic that makes our neighborhoods more beautiful. Stopping deforestation simply cannot happen when we allow our population to keep growing either through high birth rates or high immigration rates. Deforestation, like all environmental actions, must be addressed where our political power is, within each country. In the US, just since the Lorax was published we have grown from 207,372,00 to a still growing 336 million.

In a perfect world, the UN would encourage each and every one of their member states to address their population in an effort to prevent deforestation, although clearly, they do not have to power to enforce actions within each political entity. Unfortunately, the UN is not taking on overpopulation as the upstream issue it is, which will undermine their success. They need to adopt the theme that population growth drives sprawl and it is the enemy of forests. Statistics prove that population inspired sprawl erases any benefit of conservation efforts of denser living and better planning. ( see www. Sprawlusa.com.)

Until we tell the big truth about how to really stop deforestation, we will not be doing a service to our planet or ourselves. We must speak up and be unafraid to address overpopulation however it manifests. Let’s be inspired by the Once-ler who tells us in the Lorax, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It's not.”

*From the book The Lorax by Dr.Suess ( 1971)

It’s Still About the Numbers: Why we Should Have Listened to Al, In Commemoration of Al Bartlett’s Birthday

I was lucky to meet the amazing Al Bartlett, physicist, professor and outspoken on an issue we continue to collectively ignore. He brought a gentle but firm intellectual and scientific perspective to the issue of overpopulation and the unsustainability of adding more growth to an already overpopulated US and world. He was born, ironically enough, in Shanghai China, back when China was still under 1 billion citizens.

The US in the 1920’s, had 112 million people living within its borders and when he died the US had grown to the unsustainable number of 316 million. Since his death, the US has added another 20 million people. Al knew the numbers and did the math. The US cannot continue to feed, clothe, house and provide water, health care, and transportation to limitless numbers of people. No country can take that on.

Al would be disappointed that we did not follow his advice so well laid out in his NPG article.

https://www.albartlett.org/articles/bartlett_thoughts_on_immigration_2007dec.html.

He based his statements solely on the issue of sustainability. We are not sustainable now so more growth only exacerbates the

problem of growing exponentially when resources can only grow

arithmetically. On the ever-controversial topic of mass immigration, he took the mathematical approach when he said, “Immigration, legal plus illegal, is the main driver of population growth in the United States in 2007; therefore, any discussion of sustainability in the U.S. must address the need to reduce or eliminate immigration, both legal and illegal, into the U.S.”

Indeed we should’ve listened to Al. The delusion that the US can keep growing in numbers without accounting for their impact on our dwindling resources is a fools’ game. It is also pretentious to think we are being kind by sharing what we no longer have with those who will always be in need.  Currently there are 700 million people living in extreme poverty in the world. I am sure each and every one of them would want to come to the US where all they have to worry about is racism, classism, homelessness, joblessness, gun violence and our very own rising poverty. Al was a kind soul. He would advise us that helping others is important, but it must be done in other ways since it cannot be done sustainably, and it hasn’t been sustainable for a very long time.

To honor Dr. Bartlett on what would’ve been his 101st birthday, we need to realize that we don’t need a degree in physics to understand this issue, we just need listen to Al.

Changing Names or Making Change

As a bird lover, I have grown to hate certain sayings that demean birds. “Killing two birds with one stone,” is top on my list “Bird brain,” vies for second place and “Eat like a bird” is annoying for the way it is so inaccurate. Yes,I do tend to eat like a bird, for birds eat a lot and all day long. I would love to rid our language of these, but the best I can do is not use them myself. Language does matter, but my point in this essay is that it does not matter as much as appropriate action.

Recently there is much being made out of changing bird names to rid ourselves of those named after historically tainted characters. Fine, let’s do that, but let’s do that for two reasons. First because it is a correction that is needed because time has given us the gift of ethical perspective and secondly because bird names would just be better if they were descriptive. Proper names tell us nothing about what the bird sounds or looks like.

Birds should never be named after people because their records will never stand the test of time, nor is it helpful to the beginning birdwatcher. Birds aptly named include: the red winged blackbird, the red headed woodpecker and black capped chickadee which has the extra bonus of being named for its call as well as its looks.

What we need to remember is that this is not a self-righteous act but a self-correcting one. Too many are jumping on the bandwagon of changing bird names to reflect their own wokeness and that is what I find so distasteful. Let’s do it because it will make bird watching easier and it will stop honoring those who need to be forgotten. Let’s keep in mind that it won’t help the birds one iota. We cannot lose sight of the fact that their numbers are plummeting in mind-numbing ways. Devoting our energies to stopping the human enterprise from polluting their air and bulldozing their habitat is a much better way to spend our time.

We can’t for a moment allow ourselves to think that any name changes will help them survive our obsession with growth. Our time will be much better spent wrestling with the massive force of 8 billion non-feathered primates who seem to love distraction more than action.

Name changes are fine and needed but they often don’t get at the core of a problem or help it much to any degree.

In my community a lake once named for a slave-owning secretary of the military is now renamed a Dakota name. The indignities suffered by native peoples are many and shameful, but few new the story behind who the lake was originally named for and so erasing that painful history is really not accomplished in any meaningful way especially when there are so many more important ways we could help native peoples regain their land and dignity.

There have been many protests against referring to people streaming across our southern border as “illegal aliens”. So it became more respectful to say, ‘”undocumented worker”. The problem is that this correction never touched on the real issue that the US cannot keep absorbing more people without draining our resources and damaging our remaining open spaces beyond repair. It also gives the impression that we have a blatant disregard for rules of entry to the US which creates all sort of problems from sustainability issues to crime.

Some now want to call “homeless people”, the “unhoused”, but once again this does not deal with the systemic issues behind the over ½ million who must scrounge for shelter and food each day in the US.  It makes some feel as if they have done something to bring dignity to people when time would be better spent addressing how homelessness is related to both our tax structure and mass immigration.

George Carlin was fascinated by how we like to hide behind language while never really solving the problem. My favorite reference of his was how we went from “shell-shocked” to “post-traumatic stress disorder.” It’s the same problem, less clear and certainly we haven’t addressed sending young people to war as the reason people keep suffering from it.

Let’s focus on the organic issues behind the desire for all of these name changes and quit pretending that when we change names of our birds or people or syndromes our actions are complete. In a foolish contest to gain meaningless points of self-righteous wokeness we are ignoring the underlying issues of worshiping growth and promulgating war in the US and why that is bringing so much pain to our citizenry and to our birds.

Israel Matters: Why Heavy Doses of Perspective are Needed Now

Secular is where I choose to live. Beyond edicts, away from doctrine, wrapped in the freedom of making up my mind based on evidence. Yes, I have belonged to synagogues, attended years of Hebrew school, and even kept kosher for decades but observance morphed into shackles long ago as more important issues came to my attention. I decided it was all a distraction from what we were doing to the planet and decided to devote my life to protecting our biosphere and wildlife from the real beast of burden, the growing human enterprise consisting of overpopulation and overconsumption.

I care deeply about what our carbon emissions are doing to the coral reefs, how our ever-growing population is expanding our endangered species list. I have been painfully aware for decades that we are heading for the cliff of environmental collapse because of our takeover of the planet. That is why I don’t regret any of my decisions. I have chosen not to reproduce and not to get distracted by things that take me away from shining a light on the plight of our planet. But I do feel I must now weigh in on the current war between Israel and Hamas because propaganda is fogging history, hate is flying everywhere and it’s just too important to ignore.

Even though I would prefer to live in a world that was secular and much less tribal with everyone treating women well and living within the parameters of mother nature, clearly that is getting further and further out of reach. If that can’t be than I would love to live in a world where antisemitism disappears into history once and for all. I would also like it if insensitivity to all victims of war ceases to exist.

Admittedly this is personal. If I were to take an ancestry test my DNA would be undoubtedly come out as 100% Ashkenazi Jew. That means that my very existence stands on the shoulders of those who suffered and survived antisemitisms’ wrath over millennia. My great uncle emigrated to Israel from war-torn Europe and he and his descendants became a part of the kibbutz movement. Beyond that Israel stands for something deeply significant. It stands for more democratic freedoms than exist anywhere else in the Mid-East. It stands for the re-creation of a homeland for those deeply scarred by a world intolerant of their presence in it. It stands for a country which has demonstrated its integrity with giving back to the world for its privilege to live and thrive even with insecure borders.

Citizens of Israel have recently demonstrated their demands for leaders who are far less corrupt. To be sure, all is not perfect in the Jewish homeland. I have often thought that citizens of Israel would be better off in a more secular country with less power offered to the very religious. Israel’s many enemies demand a strong army so everyone must do mandatory service, male and female alike unless of course you pray all day. If you are religious, you are exempt for fighting to defend your country. Why does that still exist especially now when all able bodied are needed to fight this war?

At least when it comes to the Jewish mission to conquer and convert others, well it’s not allowed. Traditionally in Judaism, if one wishes to become Jewish, a non-Jew must be turned down three times. Hamas on the other hand has not only rejected the idea of a two-state solution, they plainly have an ideology of genocide as stated right in their very own covenant. These are not two equal sides, and olive branches will only be met with violence.

Being secular offers no protection from these Jihadists. Hamas and groups like them will still see all Jews as infidels. Hamas didn’t care if the people they came to slaughter on October 7th even owned a tallit (prayer shawl) or had ever been in a synagogue, they only wanted to kill Jews. You can do nothing to appease them, for you are only good Jew in their eyes when you reside inside a coffin. They take their genocidal stance right out of the Nazi playbook. Nazis didn’t care if you were religious when they made you wear yellow stars and sent you off to death camps. They even went as deep as rounding up people whose only connection to Judaism was a grandparent. To Nazis and Jihadists, the secular life is no shield against the deep seeded hatred of genocidal antisemitism.

As an overpopulation activist I used to think that war was mostly inspired by a lack of resources because too many people were demanding limited resources, but no more.

-When Rome destroyed of the Jewish Temples of Israel, (No, Jews did not colonize the land, it was their land) and sent Jews into the diaspora in 70 CE the World Population was between 200- 300 million ( much less than the US population is now).

-During the 200-year Spanish Inquisition when over 300,000 Jews were tortured and forced to convert to Catholicism or be expelled The world population less than ½ billion.

-When my direct ancestors were forced to experience the horrors of the Russian pogroms of the 1700’s, having their small villages burned down randomly because their lives had so little value, the world population numbered approximately 700,000,000.

-By the time the infamous Nazi Holocaust sent 6 million Jews to the gas chambers the world’s population had climbed to 2 billion.

The only way population plays into this lopsided story is that 24 % of the world is Muslim and 0.2% is Jewish which translates to 1.8 Billion Muslims compared to 16.1 million Jews world wide. There are 22 Arab nations and one Jewish nation. It is also must be repeated that there are 2 million Arabs living as Israelis and Jews have been kicked out of the Arab world. Over the years 100 Arabs have been members of the Knesset verse zero in the Arab world, just saying, these are not equal parties.

And here we are again. Now that the world is over 8 billion and growing by nearly 80 million per year, unarmed Jews were brutally attacked by Hamas who celebrated all the way. Jewish enemies find ways to hate and kill Jews no matter how many people are in the world. Not that overpopulation doesn’t create suffering, misery and early death it does, but the killing of Jews for just being Jews, has been around since our world population was less than that of the US now.

Where does all of the hatred towards Jews come from? Because of the myth that Jews killed their god? Because Jews didn’t want to accept their messiah? Because people just always need some to blame for their problems? Because it’s easier to raise your children to hate than teaching them to love? Because of the myth that Jews stole the land partitioned to Israel from Arabs? It is probably a combination of all of the above.

Jews represent .2% of the world’s population and yet have won over 20% of the Nobel prizes ever given out, But no matter how many Nobel prizes Jews win, no matter how many scientists, actors, writers, doctors and even comedians can claim Jewish ancestry, no matter how many agricultural advances Israelis have invented, there remains growing antisemitism in the world which becomes the permission slip to authorize genocidal acts against Jews the scapegoat with the most longevity in the world.

There are those in America who took sides against Israel before the Jewish bodies were even laid to rest, especially on college campuses. These students were making their anti-Israel signs before all the bodies were counted and seem to understand nothing of Middle East history or the history of the Jewish people. Perhaps it is because of their own unexamined antisemitism. Maybe it has more to do with the sickness of identity politics where the title of oppressor is given out without much research and uninformed individuals fall all over themselves to identify the victim du jour. Perhaps it is because of Palestinians on campus who organize and point out the bombing of Gaza without mentioning the horror which provoked the attacks.

What is deeply disturbing is that there is zero understanding that these groups are cheering for those who do not share their ideas of equality. Why are LBGT and others lining up to side with Hamas? Allowed to make their own rules for years now in Gaza, Hamas hangs it hat on some pretty draconian rules that many Americans on college campuses are now supporting with their protests. Women and girls there still face early and forced marriage, dating is frowned upon, polygynous marriages are legal and gender-based violence is a huge issue. Homosexuality remains a taboo in Palestinian territories never mind legal same-sex marriage. Who are they cheering? Do they know that over the years of trying to make peace a two-state solution has been offered to the Palestinians and rejected five times? Do they even care?

I am lucky. As a Jew I was raised not to hate my enemy. During Passover we are not allowed to say the name of our oppressor for fear that hatred will rule our world. That is why I do feel deeply sorry for those who are suffering within Gaza who don’t support its harsh regime, the Palestinian people deserve better and deserve to be governed by real leaders interested in helping them. Some Palestinians have been outspoken about how Israel has been a better friend to them than other Arab states now shutting them out once again when they need to be sheltered. But Israel is now at war with their barbaric leadership because of what they did to its people. Jews were one questioned about not fighting back much when Hitler came to power and now are being questioned about fighting back. Hamas put their own people in harm’s way the minute they assaulted so many victims and took hostages. They increased the strength of their propaganda by not letting them leave areas that were targeted by bombs. When you poke the bear and don’t be surprised when the bear counter attacks. Hamas knew Israel would retaliate and that is what they want; misery and instability for their hated neighbor even if it means hurting their own people. Still there is room in my heart for those who are caught in this mess, who knew this was a bad move and had no power to stop it.

The other reason Israel matters is that it also ties together the things that matter most to me and should matter to the rest of us. Nature is the collateral damage of the armaments of war. If we can find a real way toward peace, by being unafraid to look at the real stories behind war, we can help the planet heal too. Military operations are not only deadly, they come at a huge carbon cost. The US army alone purchases over 269,000 barrels of oil a day while we pretend we are helping by driving electric cars.

To counter all of this we must read real books, study real history and examine our own hearts to eradicate the prejudices that infest us and damage the world. We must pause before joining protests and learn about what is really going on. Hatred is one of the biggest most unrecognized environmental threats to our existence. We need to come to grips with the cancer of antisemitism, and all the other ‘isms’ under which group hatred thrives.

What would it look like if we didn’t hate those perceived as the other? What if Hamas stopped promoting hatred of Israel and the Jewish state in its schools? We wouldn’t have to use up resources to poison the world and kill off each other with our weapons.

Since their first temples were destroyed Jews of Israel have been trying to find a way to live surrounded by those who don’t believe they should exist. As an Israeli friend said recently to a Rabbi, “Rabbi we keep praying and they keep killing us.” Answers begin in the acknowledgement that all this human suffering of attacks and retaliation are 100% human created, supernatural forces are not involved and in my book, prayer cannot continue to be our default button. We must roll up our sleeves and destroy the stories that breed hatred within the context of the stench of anti-semitism.

We, the non-zealots of the world must understand that it is a complicated conflict with even more complex solutions.

Those solutions must also include the deep understanding of the pain being experienced by the other side. Imagine if your children were kidnapped, imagine if your children were bombed. Now go forward and work to stop the additional pain which begins by insisting on the releasing all of the hostages, ceasing the bombing and letting people safely bury and mourn their dead and then go about the challenging task of getting rid of those on either side who would plan and allow such an attack to happen. Hatred only comes in the flavor of pain. We just might want to do what John Lennon demanded, we must give peace a chance.

Perhaps none of this will matter as our planet is passing so many climate tipping points for Mother Nature will have the last word and show us soon enough that she has had enough of us.

Why Policy Matters: From Social Justice to Sustainable Justice

By the time you are protesting the high rise in your neighborhood it is too late. By the time you are sitting in more traffic jams it is too late. By the time you are rationing water it is too late. By the time you are watching the dwindling numbers of wildlife turn into roadkills it is way too late.

In order to prevent overcrowding and keep our remaining quality of life, in order to maintain our open spaces and help wildlife continue to live within our borders we must pay attention to policy matters regarding growth in the US.

They say you should never watch what goes into making policy or sausage, it’s too complicated and too many strange ingredients go into them. But pay attention we must. We must learn that policy sets in motion a series of events from which will either suffer or benefit.

 Our best chance to preserve our remaining wilderness, stop the hemorrhaging of our aquifers, cease to build those giant unsustainable developments in our neighborhoods, and curtail the never-ending need to construction more freeways is to stop growing our population.

Yes, we must stop growing because we are pushing the boundaries of what the US can handle in every parameter of life. We are using up too much water, too much energy and too much open space. We cannot ‘green’ our economy while we keep growing. We are growing mostly by immigration and therefore we must focus on how best to curb our growth by tackling the political football of immigration policy. Those who are unafraid to address this important issue are the ones also unafraid to curb women’s rights and voting rights, to cut social security and foreign aid. They are the ones also challenging the last election results and offering only obstacles to sensible gun laws.

Few want to pay attention to what is happening in congress, it seems out of control and too complex, but we need to spend some time understanding that if we paid attention, we could start seeing just how we end up in too much traffic, with too many crowds, with too little quality of life. We need to see that those who otherwise might represent us to do not represent us when it comes to curbing growth and protecting America from being overrun with a kind of demand for its resources it cannot sustain.

By every important marker, the US is full and overflowing that is why we can’t fund our border without reforming our policy that recognizes our limits without demeaning those trying to gain entry. A bill which must be the beginning of sustainable justice, passed the House this last spring. It includes some of the reforms needed. H.R.2 would close loopholes and mandate the use of the E-Verify system for employers. The Senate and the president need to step up and sign and enforce this bill so that sustainable justice can begin its long overdue journey.

Social justice is a worthy goal but only when it lives under the parameters of sustainable justice. If we cannot sustain more newcomers because we have reached our limits, we are not being just to them or those already here by having policies which permit more to come in and especially to ignore those who are here without having followed legal entry policies.

If those on the Democratic side of the aisle are choosing to be weak on curbing mass immigration especially illegal immigration due to social justice concerns, they need to think twice. They must realize that there is nothing socially just about letting people into a country which will not be able to provide for them without sacrificing our remaining open space, wildlife and water supplies. Perhaps more of us speak up the Democrats would see that there is a majority of voters who want them to support sensible immigration policies.

Quenching our Thirst: Why We Need Sensible Policies to End Population Growth

The New York Times has some sobering news to report, the kind we cannot keep ignoring and the kind that technology will not solve. In its recent article, “In uncharted waters, America is using up its groundwater like there is no tomorrow,” their reporters did a deep dive into the current state of our country’s ground water supplies and came up empty. Their subtitle tells most of the rest of this disturbing story, “Overuse is draining and damaging aquifers nationwide.” Climate change is turning this bad news into an even worse nightmare in what they refer to as a “climate trap,” for our warming climate means that replenishing rainfalls can no longer be counted on to restore our life-giving aquifers.

The scientific measurements are in and with wells running dry in farm country and in our cities and with an understanding that water is the key to life, we must tell the rest of the story. Overuse is not because each person is being greedy, it is because we are already overpopulated relative to our water resources. We cannot solve this crisis by mandating shorter showers and regulating water-saving appliances. We cannot rely on the good will of the people to save water by giving up their lawns and xeriscaping around their homes. We must consider how many people will need this ever-diminishing essential resource in the future. To allow our country to keep growing in numbers is putting out the welcome mat to disaster.

We have outgrown our country’s water supplies and its time to embrace that honest truth and conduct ourselves accordingly. Allowing demand for water to increase is setting us up for a painful scarcity of wells that are running dry everywhere particularly in the desert southwest. When each person requires an average of 82 gallons of fresh water a day, adding more people to the US just makes no ecological or sociological sense.

We need to call for all political leaders to sound this alarm. America’s population of 335 million and is growing somewhat by birthrate but mostly by welcoming people from other countries into our soon-to-be water desert. This is not an alarm of hatred, it is an homage to sustainability using ground water as our yardstick.

When millions pour over our borders looking for opportunity, we need to advertise the real truth that soon it will be an opportunity to be thirsty. We can no longer claim that we are unaware of this situation, the New York Times has done the homework for us and we need to listen. We cannot afford to have our narrative remain stuck in a place that puts the need to fill jobs and help the desperate over the beleaguered future of our water supply. Unless we slow our growth to a trickle, with fairly written policies bent on conserving our remaining water resources, that is what we will see coming out of our faucets, just a trickle.

The Earth’s Loans are Coming Due

 Before the housing crisis in 2008, many mortgage bankers of high-profile lending institutions were encouraged to keep selling mortgages to those who were clearly unable to pay back the loans. The goal was to make fast money, of course. The ensuing chaos was predictable even by those who are naïve about how capitalism works. The consequences were ignored, and the truth was covered up. It’s pretty simple, you can’t take out loans if you have no way to pay it back before it comes due. There is only so much money to loan out and short cuts do not work because there is an ultimate due date, and they must be paid back with interest.

The Earth’s biosphere is letting us know that we have been taking out too many of her loans, taken without her permission, and those loans are coming due nearly all at once. We have abused the ability of the earth’s systems to absorb our pollution and provide 8+ billion of us with enough of its essential services. When we can smell the smoke from1500 wildfires all over Canada, the loan is coming due. When the Weather Channel reveals temperatures hotter than ever in places that are not used to the heat, the loan is coming due. When Phoenix Arizona puts a moratorium on new development because there is no water to promise new residents, the loan is coming due. When millions of birds are disappearing before our eyes, we are getting a painful message that our loan is way overdue.

The solutions that are offered by those who have come late to this party are afraid to address the organic reasons why all of these loans are coming due. The whole human enterprise is not just what we do but how many of us are doing it and we are making unrealistic demands on our limited planet. The growth we have experienced since the 1800’s, when we reached our first billion, has overwhelmed all of the earth’s resources.

We are a top predator, who cannot help but consume our limited resources. We tend to look to technology to get us out of our pending loan dates, but every single tech-fix comes with its own resource price tag. Every time we have a net gain of people in a world of over 8 billion, we are taking out a sub-prime loan which is coming due now, when we can least afford it.

Dialing it all back with policies of less is a good thing, something we should all applaud from both sides of the political aisle. We can encourage less growth by putting our tax structure in reverse. Reward people for having small families and buying used goods. Enforce E-verify policies to check for citizenship before hiring and incentivize citizens to fill the many job openings by offering living wages, free education credits and better public transportation. There is no shortage of real solutions, but we must first understand the reason it's so important. We must take our foot off the gas pedal of growth just like those with high blood pressure must take medication to make sure their vessels can handle the blood flow. We have to push back on all of these due dates from within our political borders. We have to have less demand so that our rechargeable resources can do just that and create less pressure to extract degraded ones.

I wore a button back in the 70’s that said, “Do you really believe in the unlimited possibilities of limited resources?” Apparently, we do and that will the downfall of every country who allows their population growth to continue to overwhelm their resources. We cannot stop growth on only one front. We cannot dismantle growth by discouraging large nuclear families while encouraging growth from migration. Imagine trying to encourage weight loss by banning trans-fat in restaurants while building a bakery on every corner. That is just what we are doing by embracing more and more immigrants to the US, but we must also keep our conversation on the collective numbers which overwhelm our resources and not on who is making up the unsustainable demand.

We must understand the nature of our planet’s limits which can only be dealt with within each country’s borders. According to the UN Environment’s Global Resources Outlook 2019, “The extraction and processing of materials, fuels and food contribute half of total global greenhouse gas emissions and over 90 per cent of biodiversity loss and water stress.” That is exacerbated by the fact that we are heading towards more billions because we are still growing by over 80 million a year. No, we are not depopulating at all, not yet.

 We must be courageous, and not be afraid to see overpopulation as the enemy. We cannot allow it all to get worse by offering up lame downstream solutions which will never prevent the knock on the door by the most frightening loan officer of all, the Earth.

The Boring Optics of Good News

If watching the news is your ‘jam’ as they say, then your view of humanity is likely to be pretty grim. News by definition is the trainwreck, not about the trains that run on time. It is the 5 traffic accidents that occurred today and not the millions that didn’t. There are over 130,000 schools in the US but you will only hear about them if one has a school shooting. Those who put on plays, won their first football game or had an art display will not become breaking news.

My husband recently treated me to a music festival in a small town in Wisconsin. A small town of ( yes mostly white volunteers) who worked their tails off to bring in talented bands from Chicago and New Orleans as well as Minnesota to entertain and create a weekend’s worth of great music. Their motto was, “Promoting Positive Change Through the Power of Music” and what we witnessed was several thousand people enjoying themselves, dancing, eating, and watching black and white talented musicians playing together. They all came with their guitars, keyboards, drums and harmonicas to Durand, a town of 1824 on the Chippewa River. There were no fights, or even harsh words. Strangers offered to watch our stuff while we danced. Local restaurants closed their doors and offered up their tasty treats in food trucks, while bars offered to have the bands perform there after their sets. “Blues on the Chippewa” with all of its great music and dancing, with people just having fun didn’t make the national news because no one shot up the place.

I was in Madrid for the COP 25 conference several years ago to speak on the role overpopulation plays in our ever-warming planet. The first week I witnessed so many people from all over the world desperate to find solutions to the existential threat of climate change. There were meetings all day with enough reports about rising oceans and expanding desserts to make your head spin, fall off and roll down the hall. Everyone inside was sincere about addressing the price we are paying as fallout from a world gone mad with growth and development all run by fossil fuel. It was impressive, even if ultimately effective, to witness such an effort. It’s true that many companies were there to benefit from the many greenwashing opportunities, but the distraught scientists were there to warn us of a future that would not welcome our presence. Not until protesters showed up during the second week, however, did the media suddenly appear to see what the commotion was all about.

It is certainly important to know about the fires in Maui. But Hawaii itself is not on fire, as so many headlines are reporting. Hawaii is made up of 137 islands and for now at least 136 of them are NOT on fire.

Of course, there are the required amount of feature stories about dogs being rescued and kids having lemonade stands to fight homelessness on the local news, but the everyday good things that are happening are just not news. Those are boring optics in the context of their mission.

I wouldn’t be the first person to say that we are looking at our phones too much. But more importantly we don’t even seem to hold any space sacred anymore where they are not welcome, where silence and relaxing from the world is the priority. I love going to my health club to swim and use its relaxing whirlpool. But now it is quite common to see people even there staring at their phones. Not only are they getting a constant stream of news, but they are no longer socializing, no longer really getting away from it all even for just a few moments.

We have volunteered to surrender to a virtual world. The skewing of our perspective about humanity by our constant consumption of news on our phones and computers is not just bad for our mental health, it’s just not the whole truth. Remember if you are watching something, someone selected that piece of reality for you to see, there was much more going on and often the boring stuff of people just getting along. So get out at witness life in real time, with real people preferably outdoors doing the boring stuff of just trying to live their lives, doing their best to be good people while having some fun along the way.