Buried deep in the comments section of the JD video in ‘yesterday’s’ post was this:

This situation reminds me of ‘Save the Spotted Owl’ regarding forestry practices. I believed it until I discovered that it was huge paper companies like Weyerhauser and Georgia Pacific who were backing activists because they wanted to eliminate competition. And they did succeed in putting every one of those small family and one-man logging operations completely out of business. Yaaay big business. NOT. It ALWAYS follows the money.

I don’t know if this has any basis in fact or not, and it doesn’t seem to me that the comment poster really has hard facts to share either

… But …

I do remember being in Oregon during that time. I remember eating in little diners up toward Mount Hood that had spotted owl omelettes on the menu, and being faintly disgusted by that as a good greenie would.

But the comment is believable in spite of itself.

This is the shadow world we live in now.

No one wants to believe that nominal heroes like Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben are playing an amoral game and kidding themselves for the sake of paying off their mortgages in style.

But by the standards of an empire in decline, even if they are, they’re still supposed to be the good guys.

That’s how far we’ve fallen.

This is the rot at the heart of the system, and every one of us is to blame.