CAPITALOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE

On Wednesday evening Jimmy made another of his legendary appearances on Tucker Carlson’s show, the most popular cable news program in the country. In a finely targeted rant, Jimmy took aim at Democrats for cravenly trying to blame all of the nation’s woes on Vladimir Putin while also reserving plenty of his ire for both Republicans and Democrats who, he said, serve the interests of the oligarchy that funds them rather than the American citizens who vote for them. Jimmy and American comedian Kurt Metzger discuss the benefits of bringing an anti-imperialist, anti-oligarchy message to a Fox News audience that likely never hears such perspectives.

JOHN RACHEL—No, good people, forgiveness is no longer recommended, no longer possible, such graciousness is not the appropriate noble response anymore. We simply cannot forgive those who are doing to our world what we see happening right now. It’s unconscionable. It’s repulsive. It’s malevolent. It’s nihilistic. It’s . . . unforgivable. Jesus Christ surely would not approve of what I’m about to say. Then again, these days He’s basically irrelevant, just another marketing brand, an advertising gimmick for knee-jerk religiosity.

ERIC SCHECHTER—People justify the “fairness” of the system by referring to “property rights.” But where do those come from? According to our laws, if you buy stolen property, it does not thereby become yours. Rather, it still belongs to the people from whom it was stolen, or to their descendants. That is true no matter how many times the property is bought and sold — but if it goes through enough sales, the history becomes untraceable, returning the property to its “rightful owners” becomes unfeasible, and the rights of the original owners fade away. That’s called money laundering. For instance, at this point it would be difficult to give North America back to the descendants of the Native Americans. Soon the last Palestinians will be exterminated, and giving Palestine back to them will be impossible.

LEE CAMP—The government can’t truly represent the people unless the people know what the government is up to. But we’re not told most of what the government does. And when a whistleblower reveals what our government is up to — or a journalist like Julian Assange — they’re horribly persecuted and imprisoned. Furthermore, even if you wanted to claim we have a free democracy in the US, the two corporate parties agree on 90% of the core issues of our country. They agree on capitalism, on militarism, on Wall Street, on environmental destruction, on unlimited surveillance, on a massive prison state, on dystopian policing — they agree on just about everything. So if our choice is between those two parties, then it’s no choice at all. None of our elections are legit in this regard. 

Critics say a worrying pattern has emerged during Biden’s tenure, with his administration handing out drilling permits at a rate of more than 300 a month since his inauguration, a faster pace even than under Donald Trump.

At the Glasgow talks, known as Cop26, the US also declined to sign on to an agreement to end coal mining, or to phase out gasoline and diesel cars. “It truly calls into question whether the Biden administration’s climate agenda is nothing but broken promises,” said Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians, an environmental group.