Coup-Coup States, part 2: How Greenwash Is The Valley

“How Green Was My Valley is a 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn, narrated by Huw Morgan, the main character, about his Welsh family and the mining community in which they live. … After everyone Huw has known either dies or moves away, and the town is reduced to a contaminated shell, he decides to leave, and tells the story of his life just before going away.”[1]

To get in through the door of the White House, aside from the obvious security protocols, what’s needed is The Book with, not facial recognition but, a hand.

“The book, several inches thick, and which his [Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.] late son Beau also used when swearing in as Delaware attorney general, has been a 'family heirloom' since 1893 and 'every important date is in there.'”[2]

But who knew, that’s not mandated:

“The Constitution does not require the use of a specific text for swearing-in ceremonies and specifies only the wording of the president’s oath. That wording does not include the phrase “So help me God,” but every modern president has appended it to their oaths and most have chosen symbolically significant Bibles for their inaugurations.”[3]

Add to that, youth poet laureate Andrea Gorman quoting scripture in her Inauguration poem “The Hill We Climb” along with her goal of some day being president,[4] and the bent of the Christian nation is further evident:

“Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, / And no one shall make them afraid.”[5]

So, it's every man for himself? or everyone does Buddha’s enlightenment after sitting with the Bodhi Tree (also a fig) for 49 days? I love trees, too, yet the talented Gorman might as well have quoted Robert Frost’s “good fences make good neighbors,” what with the newly gated community “blue zone”[6] to ensure that the military-industrial-entertainment complex’s extravaganza went off without a hitch. Frost’s 1914 poem, from whence the quote, is titled “Mending Wall”. To his credit, President Biden Jr. has stopped funding for the border wall with an executive order that will presumably help immigrants, the natural world, and the Tohono O’odham whose ways of living have been disrupted by the wall on the settler-colonial man-made border.

Yet with the “blue zone” fences, the stop to the border wall feels like some kind of strange trade-off. Wait, this just in, “Border wall construction goes on in spite of Biden mandate to stop it”.[7]

Speaking of 'trade-offs,' it is easier to notice a coup when it happens all at once and in one place, as with Bolivia in 2019. As was written in “Coup-Coup States, part 1”: “Wait, did I tell you the one about the US-backed coup in Bolivia a little over a year ago when there was busting into the government palace with an extremely large Bible and declaring that the Andean cosmovision of Pachamama was no longer valid? Declaring that the mysterious forces that hold the Earth and Sky and all beings together is no longer valid is like yelling at a tree and telling it to take a hike. There wasn’t instant karma but a mere year later and the coup-coup clan was busted up, signaling a resurgence of People power now gracing Latin America.”

But it is harder to notice a slow-motion coup, akin to the boiling frog metaphor.

On the day of the Inauguration I listened to an interview on First Voices Radio revealing the greenwashing scam of electric vehicles. In July of 2020, Elon Musk infamously said, as the following headline shows in context: “‘We will coup whoever we want’: Elon Musk sparks online riot with quip about overthrow of Bolivia’s Evo Morales.”[8]

The First Voices Radio interview was with Max Wilbert who is camping at Thacker Pass in Nevada so as to stop the destruction of habitat due to plans for lithium mining by Lithium Nevada, a subsidiary of Canadian mining company Lithium Americas; lithium is a key ingredient for batteries for electric vehicles. Along with potential detriment for the sage grouse, pronghorn antelope, cutthroat trout, sage brush, and more, Wilbert said:

“Because business as usual can continue with these green technologies. … There's a lot of money to be made if you're willing to destroy the planet, and that's what we're here to fight against. We're here to say, we need to completely change our ethical relationship and our framework of how we relate to the natural world and to the rest of the life-forms with whom we share this planet.”[9]

So there's the connect-the-dots slow-mo coup in the works. Yet many people were distracted by Jennifer Lopez singing “America the Beautiful,” Lady Gaga the “National Anthem,” Garth Brooks “Amazing Grace,” Jon Bon Jovi “Here Comes The Sun,” Justin Timberlake and Ant Clemons “Better Days,” John Legend, Nina Simone’s “I’m Feeling Good” and the Foo Fighters “Times Like These.”

Yes, another Biden executive order is thankfully stopping the KXL pipeline, yet be aware this may all be part of an energy shell game, where smiley-face environmental-friendly marketing belies further destruction of Mother Earth.

In a September 2020 article, Elon Musk is quoted as saying,“We got rights to a lithium claim deposit in Nevada – over 10,000 acres.”[10]

Where Wilbert and fellow activist Will Falk are at Thacker Pass: “The operation would use 850 million gallons of water annually and 26,000 gallons of diesel fuel per day.”[11]

As fossil fuel profits wane, if we as a species continue to consume to the same degree but with different resources – the processes of which obtaining those resources causing further harm to the Earth – then we are fooling ourselves into a drive-thru organic fastfood future with no place left for a vacation . . . stuck in a covid or non-covid lockdown forever.

***

PS:
For Wilbert's on site 18-minute video “Lithium Wars #5: Protect Thacker Pass occupation”.

And for more about protecting Thacker Pass, see here and here.

NOTES:
[1] “How Green Was My Valley”

[2] “Inaugural tradition: The meaning behind President Biden’s Bible”

[3] Ibid.

[4] “Amanda Gorman reads "The Hill We Climb" at Biden's inauguration”

[5] Ibid.

[6] “Video: US troops occupy Washington DC in massive show of force”

[7] See here.

[8] See here.

[9] First Voices Radio “This Week's Program: Wednesday, January 20, 2021”

[10] “Tesla is getting into the mining business, buys lithium claim on 10,000 acres in Nevada”

[11] “Activists Occupy Site of Proposed Lithium Mine in Nevada”

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet at Axis of Logic, as well as a correspondent-poet for the WUSB 90.1FM radio segment “Radical Words”. In addition to his work as a writer and small press publisher, he travels a holistic mystic pathway staying in touch with Turtle Island. His website is here.

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