Live Like the World is Dying—S1E104
This Year in the Apocalypse 2023
Episode Summary
This month on Live Like the World is Dying, we have This Year in the Apocalypse where Margaret and Inmn go over some broad strokes of 2023, from the genocide in Palestine, to anti-trans legislation, to the state of the environment.
Host Info
Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.
Publisher Info
This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.
Transcript
Margaret 00:15
Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for it feels like the end times. I'm one of your hosts, Margaret Killjoy, and the other host is
Inmn 00:22
Inmn Neruin. And we're here to talk to you about the dumpster fire that was 2023.
Margaret 00:29
Oh, come on, it is generalized far beyond dumpster fire at this point. Dumpster fire is like a nice contained thing. And you can push it in front of a line of cops. And so this is our annual year in review, as compared to our usual month in review, this one is for an entire year. It is for the year 2023. And it is coming to you in 2024, which we think makes sense. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. And the reason that you haven't heard jingles for us on other shows on the network isn't because they don't like us, but because we haven't recorded a jingle in a really long time. And that's on us. And we're terribly sorry. But here's a jingle for a different show.
Margaret 01:37
And we're back. Okay, so we have a lot to cover today, because we're covering an entire year. We're not going to get into every single story. If we missed your favorite story, it's because we don't care about it. And you should yell at us on Instagram. [said jokingly like she doesn't mean it] However, a lot of really fucking crazy shit happened in the past year. And I think that 2023 will stand as a...see change for society at large accepting that things are not going back to the way they were. In a lot of ways I think 2023 will stand as important of a year in history as 2020. 2020 obviously brought us COVID. But 2023 brought us: one, an ongoing genocide--I mean, unfortunately those happen quite often--but there's one happening in Palestine right now as we record this that has been...its effects are being felt all throughout the world as people try to reckon with their own governments' complicity in the ongoing genocide. Also, 2023 just destroyed every climate record. And really marked a time when we can no longer pretend like climate change not just isn't coming but isn't here, because climate change is here. And when I first started the show, it was like "Haha, what if everything went as bad as I would say." And actually things are going--well, not worse than I expected--they're going about as I expected but way worse than scientists expected. We'll talk about that later. First, we want to start with some impromptu--we didn't plan enough--in memoriam. In 2023, we lost a lot of really amazing people and we lost more people, of course, then we'll be able to give time for today but we're going to talk about four anarchists who died this year whose memories will live on. And that's one of the beautiful things about being involved in a movement is that the work that you do is felt and reverberates throughout history. I don't have a great summation of how important all of this is because it's heavy. First, on January, 18th 2023 Tortuguita was killed by the Atlanta Police Department. Tortuguita was a Venezuelan eco-anarchist who was part of the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, which I am kind of guessing everyone who's listening to this is at least somewhat aware of--we'll talk a little bit more about it later, but not really focus too much on it--and, if so, you probably remember when Tortuguita died, but we just want to remember them again. Next, August died.
Inmn 05:07
Yeah. August Golden was a musician, activist, and just fucking rad person who was living in Minneapolis and on August 14th was shot at a punk show in Minneapolis. And, you know, to the best of stories that I've heard, at least, was possibly specifically targeted for having told some creepy fucking dudes to leave the show. And....
Margaret 05:46
That's what I've heard too.
Inmn 05:51
And, yeah. I knew August a little bit and--not very well and not in years--but every.... There's just been this really overwhelming outpour of like, like, love and celebration of that person's life since August. And yeah, we'll miss you. And then in December, we lost a pretty prolific anarchist writer.
Margaret 06:24
That's right. On December 6th, 2023, Alfredo Bananno died. He was 86 years old. It's still sad when people die in their 80s but it's.... Alfredo Bananno got to do his fucking life. And he's primarily remembered as the [emphasis on "the"] insurrectionary anarchist writer. There are many, many other insurrectionary anarchist writers but in particular, his work "Armed Joy"--and a lot of other works, honestly--have been incredibly influential on anarchism in general. And I really recommend that people, even if you don't identify with insurrectionary anarchism--I don't personally identify as an insurrectionary anarchist, but I love the insurrectionary anarchists tendency as I love all of our tendencies. All of the ones that are actual tendencies, unlike those fake ass ones. I...I really highly recommend reading Bananno's work, even if it's just to challenge your own conceptions, if you're coming from a much more organizationalist perspective. And yeah, he was a Italian anarchist who just fucking did it all and just kept going for a long time. He's been arrested a bunch of times. He spent a year and a half in jail just for publishing "Armed Joy" and if you haven't read it, you should read an anarchist piece--it's short--that got someone to spend a year and a half in jail literally just for writing it. So that is him. Yeah. And then finally, we lost Klee.
Inmn 08:06
Yeah, on December 31, or 30th--I've heard different things--Klee Benally joined his ancestors. Klee was a writer and land defender, musician, podcast host, and just overall incredible and amazing person. Klee was about to be doing some book talks for his book, "No Spiritual Surrender," which is out from Detritus [pronounced with a short I sound] Books, I think.
Margaret 08:45
[Marget corrects with a long I sound]. Detritus.
Inmn 08:47
And this is like how I can't say the word foilage [realizes they said it wrong, corrects] foliage. I can't say foliage.
Margaret 08:56
I've never tried. It's never come up in my life
Inmn 09:03
Sorry, Gourd. Klee was just like...I met Klee a few times. Especially when I was younger, in Arizona and like I have probably never felt like so challenged by someone and someone's writings in really good and important ways. And like I don't know. Yeah, that's what I have to say. This one hit me particularly hard because this is someone who's part of communities in Arizona that I'm peripheral to and like....
Margaret 09:45
Yeah. I was really caught off guard when he died. He was 48. He was Diné and he did more visible work than anyone I can immediately point to about, not just indigenous anarchism but challenging European anarchism and anarchists who come from the European anarchist background and/or European backgrounds. And I will shout out that Klee, in one sentence, changed my perspective on everything by him challenging me. I was traveling and I was giving a talk, about 10 years ago, about my book "A Country of Ghosts" at Taala Hooghan, the indigenous anarchist infoshop in Flagstaff, Arizona, and Klee listened to my talk and then during the question and answer was like, "You know that this whole continent was destroyed by people who look like you who had utopian ideas, right?" And I don't remember the exact way that he phrased it, but it wasn't polite. No, it was polite, but it wasn't.... It wasn't afraid to be challenging. And it wasn't like handhold-ey it right? It was direct. But it wasn't to like "Fuck you," either. It was, by my read--and maybe I'm right and maybe I'm wrong--by my read, it was an invitation to be better. And I really appreciated it. And I've read some of Klee's writing and I actually don't know what of Klee's writing was and wasn't anonymous, so I don't know which pieces to talk about as being particularly influential. But we.... I don't know.
Inmn 11:39
We hope that everyone just takes a moment to remember, as the year passes, these four wonderful people and the uncountable others, that we've lost this past year.
Margaret 11:55
And I will say, I mean, and it's.... There are new people, you know, and we stand on the shoulders--I don't have anything inspirational to say. It just...it influences me a lot. It affects me a lot. But I think that there's.... This is the way the world works. Okay, so Stop Cop City, which Tortuguita died for, continues. And we're not going to talk too much about that. There's plenty of.... They actually do really good PR, and you can find out a lot more about Stop Cop City. But I will just say that if you're only paying attention really peripherally, it's worth noting that the protesters are getting Rico charges and domestic terrorism charges for fucking nothing. And no matter your political allegiance, it is worth paying attention to the criminalization of this kind of dissent. Basically, as everything gets crazier, the authoritarian state is trying to double down on cops and authoritarianism and we shouldn't let them. And I think that in terms of a diversity of tactics, I think Stop Cop City has a lot to teach us, but we also need to stand with them and protect them. Yeah. And then we're gonna talk about the elections.
Inmn 13:21
Oh God, the.... Wait, I have a funny thing about the elections. Do you want it now or later?
Margaret 13:27
Let's hear it. What do you got?
Inmn 13:29
Okay, so in some...there have been these news articles popping up in my algorithm about Ron DeSantis, you know, who's running for president probably, or is?
Margaret 13:43
Yeah, he's got nothing.
Inmn 13:45
Yeah, who's actively trying to lie about his height? [Margaret laughs] Did you hear about this? [Marget negates] Yes, he claims to....
Margaret 14:00
Is he short?
Inmn 14:00
I don't know. Well, I'm short. Whatever. He's not as tall as he says he is. Yeah, he claims to be 5'11". And there's all these people, like shoe makers and stuff, who have been looking at his shoes and being like, "His shoes are weird. I think he's wearing four inch heels." And that it's like built into this weird boot that looks like a normal shoe.
Margaret 14:24
That rules.
Inmn 14:27
Which would make him 5' 7"or something, which would make him one of the shortest presidents, if he were elected president.
Margaret 14:36
There's this awful thing that just studies...when in doubt, the taller man wins an election in this country and has since.... There's like, there's been occasional exceptions to this. I fell down a rabbit hole about this a long time ago. So we're not going to be like, "Ah, I think it's going to be this guy with this sub president." Vice President. That's...you can get that news anywhere. I wanted to talk about the elections, because I want to talk about the fact that we're in an election year and how it relates to crisis. And if you recall, 2020 was a year of crisis around the election, especially very early in 2021. But, you know, it is entirely possible that we will see a repeat of 2020, in which nothing in the end really happens, right? It's entirely possible that nothing in particular will happen. And it is entirely possible--I give it a very low percent chance, I give it a 5% chance--that this will cause a civil war in the United States. However, I would like to say that a 5% chance is a really high chance when you're talking about something like civil war, right? If I were to get in my car right now and drive to the store and I had a 5% chance of dying, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't get in my car. I'd be like, "You know what, I don't need vegetables today. I can wait till the weather's better," right? There's a lot of snow and ice where I'm at right now. And also, if you play Dungeons and Dragons, you know what a 5% chance is like. That a 1 or a 20 on the 20-sided die. So I would just say, in the year of our Lord, 2024, be aware, be careful. I used to think this election was, I was like, "Oh, Trump versus Biden again, we know how that goes. We've seen it before, right?" But Biden has completely torpedoed all of his base, his support from the base by supporting genocide in Palestine. And Trump probably will go to prison if he doesn't win the election. So he's got a lot to lose. And so it could get complicated. And I would just say, take it into account in your planning, take it into account in your decisions about where you want to be this Fall geographically. I'm not going to tell you whether or not to fucking vote. That's between you and your maker. And I don't know. That's what I gotta say about the election. It could be sketchy.
Inmn 17:13
Yeah. And yeah, in thinking about how you prepare for such an event, like, I don't know.... I remember during the last election, when--and you know, there was so much other shit going on in the world--but like, more so than the horrors that Trump introduced into the government or into legislation or any of that, remember that this person has a really fanatical base, that killed a lot of people in the last eight years, or like, whatever, you know?
Margaret 17:49
And we shouldn't be afraid of that. Right? Or, I mean, we shouldn't make our decisions based on that fear. And like, it is worth remembering that all of the culture war shit is actually a losing proposition for the far-right. And it has not won them a wide electoral base. And more importantly than that, it hasn't won them a wide.... So, a random, average person--I keep saying this and eventually people get mad at me at some point, I'm sure--the average random center-right person you're going to meet in a rural area isn't like, waiting to kill all the gay people. You know? And we shouldn't...we shouldn't assume...well we should...I don't know, whatever. What are all the dumb cliches everyone uses? Every time someone says, "Keep your head on a swivel." I like hate it. It's like the word "Huzzah.” I hate the word huzzah. I shouldn't. There's no reason to. I'm part of cultures that say, "Huzzah," because I'm a nerd. And I am part of leftist gun culture, whether I like really want to admit that or not. And so I'm around people who say "Stay frosty," and, "Keep your head on a swivel," unironically. But I'd rather you just said "Huzzah. " I hate all of it.
Inmn 19:12
Well, you know, is trying to fuck with trans people, Margaret?
Margaret 19:18
Who is this a good segue?
Inmn 19:20
This is a good segue out. I mean, it's not a "good" segue. It's just...
Margaret 19:25
It's good as a segue, not a segue of goodness.
Inmn 19:30
So, 2023 was a pretty horrifying year for anti-trans and anti-queer legislation. We saw things like the country of Russia can just completely outline like gender-affirming care of any kind to adults or children or youth, except in the case of like "genetic anomalies," which is code for like fucking with intersex people. And then, you know, in other places we saw like England had a lot of anti-trans legislation around, specifically around the youth and gender affirming care for the youth. In the United States, there were 75 anti-queer/trans laws across 23 states stemming from 500 bills that were proposed in the year of 2023.
Margaret 20:36
That does mean more than four out of five got shot down.
Inmn 20:41
Yeah, it's something like 15%. And I can't do math. Yeah, but yeah, so you know, in the face of, it's a slim amount of them were passed, like, and by slim, I mean.... But yeah, there's so much energy and attention going into this that it's horrifying that there were 500 bills proposed. 21 of those are on transition-related care for minors. Some of those are outright bans. And some of them have a lot of caveats and addendums. And there's also a lot of effort going into.... I think the Right has realized that outright bans are difficult to get support for in some places. And so there have been a lot of like, instead of having outright bans, making it structurally impossible or improbable that care could be provided, even if it was technically legal.
Margaret 21:48
Okay, like what they did to abortion before they overturned Roe v. Wade?
Inmn 21:52
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so there's like....
Margaret 21:55
Your gender-affirming care facility can only have hallways that are 26 inches wide, whereas every other hallway for every non-gender-affirming care place can only have 27 inch wide hallways. That kind of shit. That's what they fucking did with abortion clinics anyway, sorry.
Inmn 22:09
Oh, no, yeah, no, that's exactly. It's stuff like that. Like in Missouri, for example, there was a...there was this new ban on gender-affirming care for minors. But people who were already receiving transitional care, like hormones and stuff, were kind of grandfathered in to continue to receive care. But they also passed a legislation that made it so that current or former patients who are minors were allowed to sue their providers for 36 years or something. Which means that a lot of parents are going to be suing their providers either because their parents are like horrifying bigots or because they're trying to get money out of their providers. And so, like, pretty universally, hospitals and stuff that we're providing gender-affirming care for minors who have been grandfathered into continue to receive care, we're like, "We can't continue to provide care because of the liability." And so it's like there's not an outright ban, but they've made it just impossible for people to actually receive care.
Margaret 23:31
That's cool. [Said very sarcastically]
Inmn 23:33
Yeah, and you know, there were a bunch of similar bills like that in Texas for abortion access and abortion care. 10 of the laws limit classroom instruction, eight of the laws restrict restroom usage. And the rest are related to drag performances, which we all remember was a huge topic, continues to be a huge topic and was like a huge hot-button issue for the far-right over this past year. This is a...this is a newer one. I saw this in the headlines the past couple of days, but Ted Cruz has introduced a new bill to limit funding to workplaces for the purpose of using money to somehow enforce using pronouns or preferred names. Which is ironic because Ted Cruz's legal name, it's not Ted Cruz, it's Raphael so like he has crafted legislation that could be used to affect him, but obviously won't be used to affect him. Yeah, that's a lot of really bad things for queer and trans people like us this past year.
Margaret 24:57
Okay, here's a weird one--everyone's gonna get mad at me for this one too--you know, a large institution that is traditionally not on the side of LGBT folks that is standing up about both Palestine and LGBTQ folks this year?
Inmn 25:13
Who? [said sheepishly]
Margaret 25:15
The Vatican.
Inmn 25:18
Wait, really? That is news to me, actually.
Margaret 25:20
Yeah, no. on both counts. So the Palestine thing is a little bit more obvious and direct. And you'll see, you know, and we'll talk about this a little bit when we talk about Palestine, but it shouldn't be the main issue. But, you know, I don't know, I was talking to someone the other day where they were someone who doesn't like the Catholic Church, but who was like, it is the largest institution in the world that is speaking up about Palestine because no fucking government is besides like.... Well, some governments are right, and some governments are doing a lot.
Inmn 25:53
Sorry, I just want to counter that. There are some governments that are doing a lot and it's really fucking cool.
Margaret 25:58
Yeah. No, that's what we're gonna talk about in a bit. But, yeah, the Pope is outspoken about the Palestine issue and not being in favor of what's happening there. But also, there's this thing--this is a complete minor thing that I just find really interesting--all of these right-wing folks who come from evangelical backgrounds, who are like Christian nationalists, were like, "Well, we like authority, fascisty things, right? What kind of looks like that and is super Christian? The Catholic Church. So we're all going to join. We're all going to become trad Catholic. We're all going to stop being evangelical Protestants and start becoming Catholics," right? And then they realize that the Catholic Church is not--the Catholic Church has fucking problems--it's not a racist organization on the level that they want it to be, right? Like it is a fundamentally racially diverse group. And so they're all freaking out. And then also, specifically, the Pope dismissed a conservative U.S. Bishop named Strickland because basically, he was like--I'm not fucking getting into the politics of that shit too much right now--but basically, the church is trying to be like, "Hey, we don't actually hate gay people, even though we kind of aren't like really cool with gay sex. But that's only because we're kind of not cool with any sex because like, we're weird Catholics." And then all of these right-wingers are like, "What? What do you mean? I thought this was about killing everyone," and so then they're all getting kicked out of the Catholic Church. And then they're all freaking out about it. It is the funniest thing for me and for probably no one who's listening is like watching.... You can like go on to Twitter and see all these Trad Caths be like, "I'm starting to think that this is a bad organization for us to have joined." Anyway, there's been all this shit where a lot of religious communities are stepping up their defense of LGBT folks. And I just want to.... Like, the culture war, even in the like terms of large, weird institutions, is a complicated one. That's what I got. It's just fun to read about.
Inmn 28:10
Yeah. And it's like...as much as bad, you know, horrifying legislation that's being passed, there's also...there's a ton of resistance. And there's a ton of people who are not trying to see the United States specifically turn into a more polarized bigoted hell-world for queer and trans people, despite the fact that the UN declared a state of emergency in the United States for queer and trans people this past year.
Margaret 28:12
Make sense. Christian nationalism as a fucking evil thing that is trying to take over the United States, which is funny, because the United States is already an evil country. Like, we are the--this is my attempt to transition to Palestine--we are the, the Israel to Palestine, like it's just...it just already happened. And continues to happen. But you know, it's like, we got like, 400 years on Israel in terms of being a settler-colonial state doing a bunch of genocide.
Inmn 29:25
Yeah, and I don't know. I'll--actually I'm gonna segue into this a little bit later. But yeah, so Israel has been carrying out a genocide in Palestine since October 7th. I mean, they've been carrying out a genocide in Palestine for like over 75 years, but the most recent incarnation of that has been since October 7. I'm not going to go over the broad strokes of it because if you have not heard about this and have not seen a ton of news about it since October then you live in a very different world than the rest of us. Over 28,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7th. Two thirds of those are women and children. The current statistic is that a child dies every 10 minutes in Gaza, which is an utterly horrifying statistic. About 4% of the population of the Gaza Strip, which is more than 90,000 people, are now dead, wounded, or missing. This is being considered an extreme mass destabilizing, or sorry, mass disabling and mass destabilizing event. And, you know, I'm not critiquing people who put out infographics at all, like the infographics on Instagram and social media are incredibly informative and there is a lot of focus on the the death tolls and less focus on the amount of people who are...who are now becoming or have become disabled since the start of this most recent wave of genocide. About 70% of civilian infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed. This includes 318 schools, 1,612, industrial facilities, 169 health facilities, including 23 hospitals, 57 clinics, 89 ambulances, 201 mosques, 3 churches, and 169 press offices. The death toll, which is as of a few days ago, I think, is about 28,000. And that includes 12,000 children, 6,100 women, 241 health care workers, and 105 journalists.
Margaret 32:15
Which is like more journalists than were killed in like World War II total or something like that. Like some it was just like, astounding, weird... It's not an accident.
Inmn 32:28
Yeah. And, you know, this is something that people have been talking about for, you know, a very, very long time at this point is that Israel very specifically targets journalists in their airstrikes. And this is like.... As far as Israel has reported, I think there have been like, I think, like less than 500 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the conflict since October 7th. And there's a lot of...there's a lot of criticism about these, or there's a lot of talk, about these statistics and these numbers from a lot of sides, the right-wing is saying that these numbers are completely inflated and then, you know, people on--I don't want to say the Left--people who are thinking reasonably about the world see it as being vastly underreported because it is...because of how difficult it is to actually ascertain the amount of damage that's been done. Yeah. So that's really, really horrible. And as some things that have happened, kind of like in the United States at least, there was also this.... I think it's like part of this kind of polarizing culture war that we've all been experiencing for a while at this point, but the US Congress had a bill go into effect that kind of effectively defines anti...redefines anti-semitism as being anything that criticizes the State of Israel. Which is fucking crazy. And it was opposed by two people. Do you want to guess who those two people were? Or like, what their backgrounds were?
Margaret 34:29
Palestinian...wait, we only have one Palestinian senator, right?
Inmn 34:33
Yeah, it was a Palestinian. Yeah and a libertarian from Kentucky who thought that it was a little...like that the bill too broadly defined anti-semitism and I feel like probably because he was worried about his own anti-semitism coming into conflict, you know?
Margaret 34:57
Maybe but libertarian--I don't know this guy. Yeah, libertarians historically...Libertarians recently have gotten worse. But libertarians historically are like--I mean, they're right-wing--but they sit outside of traditional right-left in a lot of ways, you know?
Inmn 35:13
Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. I don't know this person's inclinations.
Margaret 35:17
I don't know this one guy.
Inmn 35:18
Yeah, I hope they're cool but probably are not. So in terms of, you know, out cry there's a lot of it. In the US people have--and all over the world--there have been these mass marches, mass mobilizations, like millions of people showing up for demonstrations, especially in areas around Palestine, which is amazing. In the US, and like, I'm just focusing on a couple things in the US, there's...people have been targeting different Israeli companies and different companies that sell things like arms and technology to Israel and doing things like...there's indigenous water protector blocs who have been going out in boats and blocking ships from being able to leave port and just a lot of really incredible stuff happening. But who kind of, I don't wanna say takes the prize, but like guess who has been showing up in an absolutely ridiculous way?
Margaret 36:32
Jews.
Inmn 36:33
Jews. Yeah. That is not where I was going. But yes, Jews have been showing up in really incredible ways, especially in fighting this idea that criticizing Israel is anti-semitic or that Israel has anything to do with Judaism or Jewishness.
Margaret 36:53
Well, like relates to it, but it relates to it antagonistically half the time.
Inmn 36:57
Yeah. But where I was going was the country of Yemen.
Margaret 37:02
Oh, yeah.
Inmn 37:06
So there are these trade routes that Israel uses through, you know, these like narrow, narrow waterways and Yemen controls one of them and has totally blocked Israeli ships from going through it, and which has a lot to do with shipping oil and just anything. Israel has been blocked from shipping things through the portages that make the most sense and has been forced to sail completely around Africa, which has cost them billions of dollars. Yemen has also, like they've just literally attacked Israeli ships with missiles and shit. So Yemen is...Yemen is showing the fuck up. In terms of like, a lot of like, Western countries, Ireland is really showing up, which is not surprising.
Margaret 38:08
Yeah, I was about to say is like, "Why do you sound surprised?" What are you doing? Yeah.
Inmn 38:11
Yeah, not surprising at all like in, especially the UN there's all these videos of Irish politicians basically being like, "What the fuck is wrong with everyone?"
Margaret 38:25
Yeah.
Inmn 38:27
Which is incredible. And South Africa is suing Israel in international court for genocide. Yeah. Which you know, it's interesting to me that like South Africa, a country that has...that was..."affected" is not the right word...
Margaret 38:53
Well they know apartheid better than anyone else.
Inmn 38:55
Yeah. Yeah. That's what I got about Palestine. Keep showing up.
Margaret 39:03
Okay, my--it's hard to put a positive spin on any of this--although things like people stepping the fuck up is that one of the things that's so interesting to me about this is if you told me 20 years ago that the media consensus around Israel would be broken, I would either not believe you or be jumping for joy. Because as long as I've been involved in activism, people have been, you know, on the anarchists-left and whatever have been trying to show up for Palestine in various ways, right, and be in solidarity in various ways, but it has always been wildly a minority position. And because Israel has always successfully used the manipulation of the idea that to be anti-Israel is anti-semitic. And that's finally breaking. And I really want to say that like, I think a lot of that breaking is because of groups like--what is it called--Jewish Voices for Peace? And, like, the work of being clearly on the front line in saying, "Not in our name," and like.... Because that kind of activism, I think, matters more than it often does. Like, usually when I'm like, "Oh, like, 'not our name,' is just kind of some liberal nonsense that people will shout sometimes," right in other contexts. But in this particular context, I find it very useful, because I think breaking the media narrative and the political narrative is necessary for any chance of the American people to put pressure on lawmakers to push for a ceasefire. And or honestly, like, I have never seen such a stark division between all mainstream media outlets and the government, on one side, and everyone in the country on the other side, because I don't think it's leftists who are against the genocide in Palestine, it is like you said, it's anyone who's paying any kind of attention to what's happening. And that is really, really promising to me. That's my...I don't know. The question is whether or not it'll like, work, right? And I don't want to spread cynicism.
Inmn 41:34
So yeah, but there are some not so promising things on the world's horizon.
Margaret 41:44
Yeah. Oh, is this your climate transition? Yeah. Okay. So the main thing--not the main thing.... I want to talk about all the stuff that we talked about, but I started off by saying 2023 is the year where we can no longer in any way ignore climate change, right? It is the year where it really became clear to a great deal of the world that climate change is not just coming but is here. And so I'm gonna talk a little bit about some of the ways that we know that. 2023 was the hottest year on record across the world. Some of the cities in the United States that experienced their hottest ever year last year include, and these are only some of them, Albany Austin, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Burlington, Vermont, El Paso, Houston, Jackson Key West, Lexington, Little Rock, Miami, Milwaukee, Mobile, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Orlando, Raleigh, Richmond, San Antonio, Tampa, and Worcester. Is it Worcester [pronounced to rhyme with war-chester] The sauce is worchestershire [like war-chester]. I think the town is Worcester [first syllable as similar to "would"-ster. ] Worcester. Yeah, why? Just pick one. Okay, anyway. Well, they won't have to pick one because it's too hot to make their sauce. Phoenix, Arizona became the first major US city to average 100 degrees or higher during a month, with a July average of 102.7. November 17th, was the first time that global temperatures reached two degrees above pre-industrial levels. Overall, we hit 1.46 Celsius above global pre-industrial levels, with 1.5 being the level that the Paris Agreement was supposed to be about avoiding. The UN says that there's a 66% chance that we'll hit 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next four years. Europe is the fastest warming continent, warming twice as fast as anywhere else. I hate to be like well, it's your fault anyway. But I mean, anyway, but whatever.
Inmn 43:47
Yeah, yeah.
Margaret 43:51
The COP28 summit finally saw country's--like finally in 2023--countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels entirely. They're like, we'll be net zero by 2050, which is hilarious, because we're all gonna be dead by 2050. I hate to say this, but.... I'm gonna talk a little bit about ways that we might be not dead by 2050. But like... That's too late. Okay, anyway, so Florida Keys hit a water temperature of 100 degrees this year. And Arctic ice was at an all time low. The rain forest had a drought. Swiss glaciers were still melting in October. The Mediterranean floods were 50 times more likely than a usual year. And this caught climate scientists off guard. Climate scientists, like at least according to--I'm sure there's climate scientists it did not catch off guard--but even climate scientists tended to have, at least the ones who were talking to the media about these certain types of things, have like a slightly.... There's a lot of scientists, as far as I can tell who are like, "We can't really communicate everything because then we'll just have like worldwide panic," right? I don't like any of this, but I also feel vindicated. I don't feel good about feeling vindicated. But there's this thing where...I have looked at what has been communicated through the media for the past 15 years and been like, "That is wildly optimistic," and like irresponsibly optimistic is how I have felt about it. And I have tended to, even amongst my peers, not be believed about how bad I think that things are going to get. And I've probably talked about this on the show before. And in some ways the show is the reflection of that. And yet, at the end of it all, I'm not a Doomer. I think things are really bad. And they're going to be really bad. But we need to just actually notice that take a real look at what's happening. I want to--I don't know whether the episode will come out before or after this one will, but I just did an interview.... Oh, here's positive news. The anarchist prisoner Eric King, who spent almost 10 years in lockup, finally got out for a direct action that was related to the Ferguson uprisings. [Inmn yays] And, and I just had a conversation with him, that you all may or may not have already heard, and one of the, you know, it was about how to survive prison. And, you know, in some ways, whenever you ask someone how to survive prison, you're kind of looking for the like, hopeful, like, "Oh, I could just keep my head down and read books and stay out of the fights," right? You know, and, a lot of his advice was, "learn how to fight," you know? And like, because we actually just need--I don't want to say we don't need people to hold our hands. We need to hold each other's hands. But what we need to do is soberly face what appears to be happening. And what appears to be happening is the dissolution of the climate that we grew up in. And that climate change is happening faster and with more chaotic effects than we've been told. And all of the methods that we've been told that will work to stop or alleviate climate change are not effective. I want to read some Washington Post headlines. They have a...they actually have a better climate section than any other major newspaper, as far as I can tell. I actually canceled my subscription. I like to subscribe to a lot of the newspapers because I do work and need access to it. I actually finally canceled my New York Times subscription mostly over the Palestine issue because they're just propaganda for Israel. But the Washington Post is better climate reportage anyway. But even in the Washington Post, you can see the media spin. I'm just going to read you some headlines. "Indoor house plants come with a cost to the planet. Here's how to minimize it," or "How soon do you have to buy heat pumps and electric vehicles to avoid climate catastrophe?" "Renewables and electric vehicles are soaring, it's still not enough," "Companies made big climate pledges. Now they are bulking on delivering," "Companies capture a lot of CO2. Most of it is going into new oil," or "Exxon Mobil doubles down on fossil fuels with $59.5 billion Pioneer deal."
Inmn 48:48
Are these Onion articles? Is this the game of whether it's an Onion article or not?
Margaret 48:51
Those are literally all Washington Post from about the past month or so. They're all currently on the website. And yeah, exactly, exactly. Because the juxtaposition between "Hey, maybe you should get a heat pump and put solar on your roof and think about getting your house plants from somewhere local," like, I do literally all of those things. I swapped out my oil furnace for a heat pump. I put solar panels on my roof. I went into debt in order to do so. I actually did these as preparation things because whatever, like, you know, they don't stop climate change. Stopping fossil fuel infrastructure stops climate change. There is no other thing... There are other things that are big, like changing the way that our agriculture works, to not have factory farming and like distribution of animal products across the country. Ironically, centralizing grain production actually lowers the environment embedded greenhouse gasses as compared to like... It's complicated. But like there's stuff, but ending fossil fuel infrastructure is the only thing. And then the other thing is that it's like.... And then okay, the Doomerism is, "it's too late," right? And it is too late to not have climate change. But there's like...when you're watching a genocide, it's too late to have the genocide not happen. It's never too late to stop the genocide from happening, you know?
Inmn 49:04
You can always choose to stop....
Margaret 50:43
Yeah. And we need to stop climate change. It is too late to, "peace and love, everything is going to be totally fine. Everything can keep going the way it used to, " right? But there is a difference between a world in which we can survive and a world in which we can't. And like I know that I'm...I'm just going to like finish out my.... I think it is very likely that we, during our lifetimes, will need to grow all of our food underground or inside. I think that is entirely possible. I think it is entirely possible that we will be looking at mountain ranges and looking at how to put roofs between.... well, where I live where the mountain ranges are right next to each other and they are a little bit short, you know.... Like, roofing in things so that we can grow things inside and we can have some level of climate control, right, in order to have a consistent enough way to grow food. I think that it is entirely possible that everything will be different. I don't want that to be the case. Well, I do want everything to be different. But it's because I want a mutual aid utopia where we all take care of each other and etc, etc. But..
Inmn 52:01
Out of the questions. [Jokingly]
Margaret 52:05
So, I don't know. That's, um.... And I will say, the best sober look that I have ever read about this, is a book.... Have you read "Ministry for the Future," by any chance? I've been mostly talking to the audience and not you Inmn, but I'm switching over to talking to you.
Inmn 52:23
No, I have…I have not. [laughing]
Margaret 52:24
Okay, there's this book by Kim Stanley Robinson, who's like probably the most experienced climate fiction author in English that...certainly that I'm aware of, but has been writing climate fiction for a very long time. And "Ministry for the Future" is like, as far as I can tell, it's a couple years old now, his best guess at what could possibly pull us out of this tailspin. And Kim Stanley Robinson is not an anarchist but he's always been anarchists adjacent or has always been friendly to anarchists. And we've appeared sympathetically in many of his books. And oh, yeah. Yeah, like the "Mars" trilogy is about terraforming Mars and it being complicated. Has anarchist characters that are pretty explicit. And the book "Antarctica" has like eco-saboteurs and stuff like that. The book "Ministry for the Future" is about--what he does best is less the like "eco-arson" and more of the like, "you and organization tasked to fix climate change" or whatever. So it's like from that perspective. But they work hand in hand with--it's been a couple years since I read it--I think the Children of Kali or something like that, which comes out of basically--since India is one of the countries that's going to be the most affected by climate change--and they are basically a direct action group that in that book is like just blowing up airplanes and just like, absolutely being like, "Fossil fuels are done and we're gonna blow them the fuck up." And now.... And it's about the, not even the tension, but--dare I say--the dialectic between those two forces. It is about the relationship between and how they can work together between institutional radical change and direct action. I think what is happening is bigger than ideology. I think what is happening is bigger than anything that has happened in human history. And we are so blessed--I say that ironically, but in a weird way I don't--to be alive during one of the most tumultuous things that will happen in the history of the Earth. And it's our fault. But it's not our fault because you didn't buy an electric vehicle fast enough. It is the fault of a civilization that, you know...is a fault of Western civilization, but it is our responsibility to do what we can about it and/or to try and survive what's coming. That's my.... Sorry, this has been... I've been thinking about this a lot.
Inmn 55:22
No, I think that makes sense. And I...just a couple days ago, I was talking to a friend about--they work outside a lot collecting plants--and she's like a plant archivist. I'm forgetting the words for these things. And, like, she was talking about, how, in 10 years, probably this is.... You know, she's a botanist and a biologist and studies this to some extent, but she thinks that in 10 years that the world will be not a comfortable place, in more places, to just exist outside in. And so she's on this quest right now to catalog as many plants as possible before they don't exist anymore and before, it becomes not...like a lot less possible to be out in the world doing that kind of work. Like, her 10 year plan is to not...somehow not work outside anymore. Yeah. Which is not going to be a reality for a lot of people. But yeah, it was very like, oh, yeah, this is not some distant thing. This is like, this is...
Margaret 56:52
What happened now?
Inmn 56:53
What's happening right now. Yeah. Yeah. So you know, that's not like a...that's not like a hopeful or whatever. But I don't know. I do want to, I do want to say that, like, you know, 2023 was a lot of really bad things that happened in it. And I think people are also doing a lot more about all of this stuff. And, like, I don't know, it's like.... I feel like there's this kind of joke, especially in activist or anarchist circles, that it's like, the true revolutionary spirit comes out when the most repression and horrifying shit happens. And I don't know, I hope that at least, at least, more bad things happening means that more people are doing more to stop bad things from happening. That make sense?
Margaret 57:58
Yeah, I mean, what's funny is like, historically, I tend to think that it's actually not repression that brings out resistance as much as I'm like, when people are repressed for a really long time, it doesn't necessarily make them resist as much as like when things get slightly better and then that reverses really quickly...
Inmn 58:16
I see.
Margaret 58:17
...is more often. But that is also part of what's happening right now. And yeah, I think that we can look at more and more people showing up for Palestine and more and more people showing up for the climate and I think that that will continue and will continue to grow. And I think that another random weird positive thing that's happened in the past couple of years, or past year in 2023, is that the prepper space is no longer a right wing space. I think. When I look at mainstream... like when you look at like prepper Reddit, right? It is like people talking about how they can take care of their communities as well as get ready for themselves. And it's like a... that is a sea change. Right. And I…that gives me hope. Okay, one other like, not actually really positive, but funny, almost positive: You know, the DC was built on a swamp?
Inmn 59:11
Yeah. A lot of major cities were.
Margaret 59:15
DC is built in a low-lying delta like New Orleans, but it was constructed on top of rubble fill and the Federal Triangle--which unfortunately includes a lot of museums and I like museums--is built on land reclaimed from Tiber Creek, which is occasionally.... which was eventually buried and turned into a sewer. The US Capitol is sinking. Sea level is rising. The like abandoned...the like forgotten creeks are returning and just using roads. And this will fuck up a bunch of poor people. Like DC is like--although it's gentrified, like fuck since I first lived near it--but um, it's still a city with a lot of marginalized people living in it. It's not going to just directly affect the lawmakers. So it's only symbolically beautiful that DC is sinking. Practically, it's actually a disaster and a crisis.
Inmn 1:00:10
Yeah. Golly.
Margaret 1:00:12
Which is a good metaphor for civilization itself. We can be like, "Hooray, civilization is collapsing." And you're like, "Oh, wait, who is that gonna affect the most? Oh shit," you know?
Inmn 1:00:22
Yeah. Which I...you know, I hope everyone knows this, we are not eco fascists.
Margaret 1:00:29
No.
Inmn 1:00:30
Yeah, if you're getting that from this show, you're listening to the wrong show...
Margaret 1:00:34
You're listening wrongly.
Inmn 1:00:35
You're listening...listening wrongly. Margaret, you know what other really.... You know what kind of cool thing happened in 2023?
Margaret 1:00:44
What?
Inmn 1:00:46
Um, this podcast, which you are maybe familiar with, I think, Live Like the World is Dying.
Margaret 1:00:54
Sounds familiar.
Inmn 1:00:55
Yeah, we hit 100 episodes.
Margaret 1:00:58
Oh, shit.
Inmn 1:00:59
In 2023. And...
Margaret 1:01:00
We hit any other milestones?
Inmn 1:01:02
Yeah, we also hit over a million downloads.
Margaret 1:01:06
Hell fucking yeah.
Inmn 1:01:08
Yeah. Like, and I don't know. It's...I feel like.... Oh, and I came on as a host in 2023, which I think is pretty....
Margaret 1:01:19
Was it only a year ago?
Inmn 1:01:21
It was less than a year ago, actually. Well, we switched to being weekly too, which was...has made it seem a lot longer.And, you know, it's like I hope that...I hope that more people listening to the show, I hope that us doing more--even though every time I get on the air I'm like, "Wait, how do you be a person? How do you say things?" It's been really amazing to see this show be important to people and to see this show be helping people have more conversations, more conversations about COVID, more conversations about disability, more conversations about preparedness, more conversations about the dumpster--I'm gonna say dumpster fire again....
Margaret 1:02:11
That is okay.
Inmn 1:02:11
That is our country. But thanks everyone, for supporting the show. And thank you for listening to us rant and all of our Lord of the Rings jokes.
Margaret 1:02:26
We didn't get a single one in this time.
Inmn 1:02:29
It's true. We've failed you.
Margaret 1:02:33
You have failed me. [Joking] Yeah, that's why we're ending the episode. Should we end the episode? Should we sign out?
Inmn 1:02:39
Probably.n Do you have any like.... I feel like.... Margaret was like...I guess reflecting on all of that and having created or founded the show, I'm just wondering if you have any more reflections on 100 episodes of Live Like the World is Dying and anything that you'd like to see in the future going forward for maybe, more specifically for the show. We've kind of talked about what we would love to see people do in their lives.
Margaret 1:03:12
I never expected Live Like the World is Dying to take off. I obviously started it right before the pandemic began. So that gave me a little boost right out the gate, you know, but I never expected my interest in preparedness to be more generalized. And, you know, I've been so used to feeling.... One time I lived on a land project. And I was saying, "If the following bad thing happens, don't worry, I've got about six months worth of food for everyone in the barn." And the person...one person was like, "You have salt?" And I was like, "Yeah, no, yeah, I've got a bunch of giant cans of salt." And then I realized they were joking. And, I feel less alone as a result of the success of this show. And I've heard from other people. I've heard from listeners who feel similarly. One of my favorite types of messages to get in this world is people who were sort of a political getting into preparedness and were starting to get sucked towards individualistic and right-wing preparedness and then ran across the show and felt like they were pulled back from that brink. I also sometimes hear from people who are starting to normalize, as part of anarchist and mutual aid practice, to encourage individual preparedness. And I also would say that over the 100 episodes and the, coming on, four years of the show, I've learned so much from the people that I've interviewed and from the people that you've interviewed and that Brooke has interview and it's really given me a lot more of a holistic picture of what preparedness is. It's really helped me focus my own thoughts on the matter. And, you know, I, when I say things like, "Well, we can do it." I don't mean it's going to be easy. But I mean, we can do it, you know, and one of the things that I've learned by being an anarchist and how Bonanno influences this, is that doing it is the winning, right? It's not about.... Like, you know what I have 0% chance of surviving? Life. Life kills. We all fucking die, right? Yeah. And so all we can do is live as well and as in alliance...allegiance to our own values as we can. And I think preparedness is a big part of that. And I think that preparedness has taught me responsibility. I come from a very chaotic background. I think that anarchists in general sometimes eschew responsibility a little bit too much, even though that often when crisis comes up, we're some of the more...like, our entire ethos is built on responsibility. And sometimes we forget that. And this show has helped me remember that. And a million fucking listeners...listens is a fucking lot. And that's cool as shit. That's awesome.
Inmn 1:06:47
Yeah, it's like a lot more than a million now.
Margaret 1:06:50
Hell yeah.
Inmn 1:06:51
We didn't like just barely hit...scratch it.
Margaret 1:07:01
Should I do a little close out spiel?
Margaret 1:07:04
And if you want to support us, you should tell people about the show. You should tell people about it in person, you should tell people about it while organizing preparedness gatherings where people from your region get together and talk about needs and how you can help each other. And we'll probably be putting together a little bit of a like "How to do that" based on one that--I'm going to say "we" organized, but that's...I'm over emphasizing my own importance in the organization. And you can also just rate and review and do all that other algorithmic shit. I am becoming more and more of a crotchety old lady and I hate all that shit. But you can also support us on Patreon. We pay our transcriber and we pay our audio editor. And we have hopes of paying our guests and hosts at some point as well. And if you want to help make that happen, you can support us on Patreon. We're published by Strangers in a Tangle Wilderness, which puts out several other podcasts including Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which features our monthly zine, as well as The Spectacle, recently renamed from Anarcho Geek Power Hour, which talks about nerdy shit in a way that is hopefully entertaining. Well...it is entertaining. But in particular, we want to thank some of our patrons, we want to thank....
Inmn 1:07:04
totally.
Inmn 1:08:30
Wait. One second. I've had a new thing. I've had a new idea about these acknowledgments. So these acknowledgments that we do at the end of each episode of our podcasts are for people who are in our $20 a month Patreon tier, and maybe piggybacking off, you know, some of Margaret's other work is, you, if you sign up for this $20 a month here, we'll acknowledge something, and it could be you, it could be a mutual aid group that you work with, or dare I say it could be whatever you say that we want to acknowledge. Obviously, we're not going to do anything fucked up....
Margaret 1:09:09
Like "Pee Pee Poo Poo" or something? If you want me to say "pee pee, poo poo," give me $20 a month, I'll fuckin say it.
Inmn 1:09:15
Yeah. So in reframing this--and we have some other stuff coming out for $20 a month patrons, hopefully soon, some more some more stuff beyond acknowledgments--but you can get us to say funny things or thank theoretical concepts by signing up for our $20 a month Patreon tier. [Margaret laughs] And that is...that is my new plug about the acknowledgments tier.
Margaret 1:09:40
That rules Okay, well, this is the list from before anyone realized that they could do that. And it is, Patoli, Eric, and Perceval, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, S.J., Paige, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsea, Staro, Jenipher, Kirk, Chris, Michaiah, and the immortal Hoss the Dog.
Inmn 1:10:12
thanks everyone. Talk to you soon