Pondering the possibility of a political Perfect Storm

What if the Peak Oil thesis is right, or close enough to being right that we face severe shortfalls of petroleum supply relative to burgeoning global demand, such that the hydrocarbon era enters its final stages in the next decade or so? What if global climate change disrupts established patterns of social reproduction around the world, creating knife-edge conditions of survival in large areas and destabilizing political orders world-wide? What if, on top of these changes, US imperial policy and conspicuous consumption by our ruling class so infuriates the rest of the world that the only thing not in short supply world-wide is people willing to engage in terrorist attacks against the US? Can our republic (such as it is) survive in that kind of world? -- a world which is, ironically, substantially of our own making rather than a calamity which befalls us out of the blue. In that kind of context, I find it especially chilling to ponder the Bush-Cheney aggrandizement of executive power and open contempt for checks and balances, habeas corpus and civil rights, and public information with even a semblance of truth content. They may have extended executive power in ways which will make it easier for future administrations to do likewise, or to go farther still in the name of some all-too-readily imaginable national emergency.

Naming this blog Premature Anti-Fascist is only half in jest, and sometimes when I think about this it's no joke at all.