If you want to understand why fighting global climate change is so tough, this book will help. Rachel Maddow (Ph.D., Politics, Oxford) is a great writer, and this is practically a page-turner.
Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth
If you read this book you'll understand that the corruption of our democracy began long before the 2016 election. The corruption of elected officials by oil money goes way back to John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil Trust in the late 19th century. And ever since the 1930s the U.S. has been propping up friendly oil-rich dictatorships (Saudi Arabia) and bringing down unfriendly ones (Iraq, Iran, Libya). It was inevitable that our own government would be compromised and corrupted in the process. The irony is that it's the burning of fossil fuels, petroleum and natural gas, that is the root cause of the global climate catastrophe that will ultimately be the cause our demise. What's that saying? "WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND."
As described in Rachel Maddow's best seller "BLOWOUT: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth", the Internet Research Agency (IRA) based in St. Petersburg, Russia is responsible for much of the disinformation found on the Internet.
The political theorist Hannah Arendt once wrote that the most successful totalitarian leaders of the 20th century instilled in their followers “a mixture of gullibility and cynicism.” When they were lied to, they chose to believe it. When a lie was debunked, they claimed they’d known all along—and would then “admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.” Over time, Arendt wrote, the onslaught of propaganda conditioned people to “believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.”
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