Thom Hartmann’s stated goal in restart the american dream is to “regain a strong middle class and restore stability and prosperity to America without endangering future generations.” You should know better, and I’m sure you do.
Although he never defines the term, Hartmann’s idea of the American Dream seems to be lifted straight out of the post-World War II era, a period of unprecedented production, expansion, and consumerism. Almost anyone with any sense independently qualified for a job with benefits and a pension; a house in the suburbs; two cars; a color television, and just about every trick and gadget imaginable that his little heart was convinced he wanted.
That era effectively died around 1973, when US oil production peaked. Although the party of consumerism has lasted another 40 years, it has been financed by financial shenanigans; booms and busts; outright looting; continuous wars; and various other diversions like Monica Lewinsky, 9/11 and NASCAR.
There will be no resurrection.
Peak oil, to put it bluntly, ends the whole concept of economic growth as we have known it for some 300 years. Hartmann knows it. he wrote The last hours of the ancient sunlight, back in 1998, so the phenomenon of Peak Oil, the world’s maximum oil production, is hardly unknown. It happened in the United States around 1973 and around the world in 2006, according to the International Energy Agency, so from now on and forever, we’ll be chasing dwindling oil supplies with our insatiable demand; and we will have to do it in places that are enormously hostile to us. At an oil price of around $80 a barrel, economic growth stops and we’re there now.
Ronald Reagan, or at least his advisers, knew about Peak Oil and its ultimate implications for a society based on endless growth, fueled by abundant and cheap oil. So did Presidents Bush, Bush, Clinton and Cheney. Carter certainly knew this, hence his doctrine declaring the Middle East a theater of strategic importance to the United States. For all we know, Nixon also understood peak oil.
The corporate oligarchy and super-rich kleptocrats behind the political parties and the presidency have engaged in an orgy of self-aggrandizement, knowing that the petro-industrial train was headed for a brick wall. America’s transition from self-sufficiency to dependence on oil imports is the most significant reason behind the “30-year economic devastation of Reaganomics.” It is not a big secret, except for our deliberately ignorant fellow citizens.
Yet Hartmann seems maddeningly oblivious to even the most obvious implications of Peak Oil. There isn’t even an index entry for it. Even if it were desirable, which it is not, we are not going to “recover the industrial base that we have lost.” An American Dream of outrageous energy consumption per person is no longer possible under any circumstances, despite Hartmann’s 11 Steps (12 being taken).
If there was an ounce of honesty in the political arena, which there isn’t, they would tell us to dig in, plant Victory Gardens, relocate as many facets of production (craft, farmhouse, and manufacturing) as possible, and virtualize everything. the rest. Hartmann does not convey this message either.
But it is not that his ideas are, per se, bad. Hartmann is a serial entrepreneur and progressive author and radio host. He has created businesses, he has put people to work, he has created value where there was none. He would like to see an America like the one that grew up after World War II, made in America by Americans for Americans. He wants to reverse “the ‘free trade/flat earth’ idiocy” of the last 40 years. What Hartmann does not say is that globalization is already a dinosaur. The 7,000-mile WalMart pipeline and the 3,000-mile salad are artifacts of an era that is fast passing.
It is worth taking the steps that Hartmann suggests. But even if they are implemented, there is no snowballing chance in Hades of his success in restoring the American Dream. I suspect Hartmann agrees.
The nation needs to be saved from corporate oligarchs…absolutely. We need to educate ourselves and reward initiative and get basic healthcare for all and abolish corporate personhood (see Hartmann’s excellent book, unequal protection). But we can’t count on the federal government for any of that. For better or worse, that bloated and nosy bureaucracy of the Washington welfare state is another artifact of the positive side of Hubbert’s Peak, where we could always do more of everything because we had the energetic capacity to do so.
No more. We have to do it ourselves.
Do you want to take jobs home? Stop buying anything made outside of the United States. Period. Shop locally; do it yourself, or do without it. If you must have an item that is only made abroad, buy a used one so the money stays here. Stop exporting your dollars.
Do you want a healthier society? Stop eating junk and do some physical work. The vast majority of medical problems are related to diet and lifestyle, and the very companies that make you sick benefit from treating the disease.
Want to level the playing field with corporations? Work to amend the Constitution, as Hartmann suggests, and nullify at the state level all unconstitutional acts of the federal government…there is now a fertile field.
Fortunately, we still have the US Constitution, written during and for a time of small, self-sufficient communities and individuals deeply suspicious of selfish power, whether in the form of the state or the corporation. The Constitution empowers us to take back control of our lives and remain a nation, strong where it counts.
Hartmann wants to do good things, but they won’t take us anywhere near where he thinks they will; and he wants to do them on a scale that is more part of the problem than part of the solution; And I don’t think he trusts the language and vision of the Constitution, or the power of an awakened citizenry, to see us through the dark forest we’re headed for. Too.
