The looming threat of global weirding has made it apparent that both our political parties are death cults and, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, money is their only true value.

I’d be remiss if I failed to mention ideology, where the Republicans have gone so far down the path of government is the problem and never the solution while the Democrats have embraced neoliberal privatization, but it’s still mostly money with GOP receiving the bulk of their campaign funding from fossil fuel interests and the DNC disallowing debate on the real national security issue so as to not upset their financial backers.

“The DNC Doesn’t Want a Climate Debate for a Reason” [Jacobin]. “While tech money is important, the biggest donors to the DNC in the 2020 cycle are overwhelmingly financial companies, whether hedge funds, private equity, or more traditional investment management. Obviously, most of these firms want to be able to continue to invest in fossil fuels as well as in companies looting the Amazon. Such companies are run by — and depend on the continued existence of — the very rich, our planet’s biggest liability. (Not only do they create immense pollution through private jets and multiple homes, the rich also support such lifestyles through immensely planet-ravaging investments.) The finance class does not want to hear plain talk about solutions to climate change; in many cases, they are getting rich from destroying the planet and do not wish to stop doing this. That’s probably why DNC head Tom Perez called the idea of a climate debate ‘dangerous.’ The DNC also seems to be trying to avoid two likely outcomes of a climate debate: Joe Biden looking bad and Bernie Sanders looking good.”

Last week Bernie Sanders released his version of the Green New Deal—a $16.3 trillion 10-year plan to get down to zero carbon in the power industry and in transportation. Immediately, the Democratic neoliberal establishment and corporate media decried it as “too expensive,” not “realistic” and not “prudent.” Just as they had with other proposals that would have averted the certain physical and fiscal disaster that climate change will cause.

In a sense, these groups are even more dangerous than the deniers in the Republican Party’s camp. As evidence that climate change is happening now piles up, the deniers are increasingly like Ike Turner who says, “Who you gonna believe? Your lying eyes or me?”

Unfortunately, it really is “all about the Benjamins”, with both parties trying to hold onto a system that is literally killing us, even as they and their billionaire backers prosper.

But why do we have to resort to such radical action? Why not a more “realistic” or “prudent” one?

The reason is because “realists” have been aiding and abetting climate deniers with appeals to slow walk the implementation of solutions for decades now. And every year the danger grows while the costs have skyrocketed. What’s become apparent is that most of these “realists”—including the DNC, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the neoliberal Democrats—seem more concerned with campaign contributions than they are with the safety of the American people.

This brings us face to face with the real problem in our society–the moderates. Since the demise of Russia-gate the corporate media has been replete with scary stories of right-wing extremists threatening our precious democracy, but it’s the moderates of both parties that we should fear. Of course, this is nothing new. During the first Cold War, C. Wright Mills wrote of a “crackpot realism”, where bi-partisan US foreign policy mandarins evoked national security to continue policies that posed the real danger of ending life on earth.

Sound familiar?

Indeed, both parties are set up to divert anger while pursuing the very same policies that have gotten us to this point.

Meanwhile, neoliberal policymakers and other elites in the US have developed a language and ideology to justify doing everything and anything possible to avoid any responsibility for the coming collapse and the global chaos it will cause. Among the more jaded of the financial profession they have a saying that really encapsulates this morality. “I’ll be dead, you’ll be dead” (IBDYBD), so don’t worry.