I’ve lost hope in politics, I’m buying a sturdy helmet and hoping for the best.
The situation around global warming would be a lot different if the environmentalist Al Gore hadn’t lost to conservative George Bush. The election hinged on a narrow Florida Supreme Court decision of 5-4 over the votes and controversial butterfly ballots. Based on that decision, Bush won the USA presidential election by only 537 votes. The 3rd party spoiler effect from the Green Party was also to blame since Florida isn’t yet advanced enough to have ranked-choice voting.
And there's a very good chance the entire world look different if Gore won. There may have not been a 9/11, for one. There would have certainly not been an Iraq war.
It’s possible that the tone around climate change would have been different under a Gore administration, but the entire composition of Congress would also have looked different after the mid-terms in response to a Democratic president making sweeping changes to the economy (as it was republicans already controlled the Senate for half of Bush’s time in office, and the house for three quarters). The fiscal conservatism of 90s republicans may have stayed intact instead of accepting large deficits as they did under Bush.
The feature and bug of the US system of democracy is that radical change is hard to do and disagreements can’t be steamrolled over. Sometimes the right person can have an enormous effect on the course of history (Washington, Lincoln, FDR), but it’s unlikely Gore was one of those people.
[0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/why-al-gore-wo...
US needs more oil. Hence all the wars. Iraq - oil. Libya - oil. Syria - oil (US occupied all oil deposits in Syria where and extracts it without giving anything back to the people of Syria).
Afghanistan - I'm not sure, but considering that during US occupation, production of heroine in Afghanistan went up orders of magnitude, and many visitors to Afghanistan reported that US guarded poppy fields, probably it was due to drugs. Kill two birds with one stone: get rich from selling drugs, finance other wars and coups with drug money, and flood geopolitical enemies that happen to be located next to Afghanistan borders with the most powerful drug.
The next target will be also rich in oil, although it would be definitely said that it's only because of lack of democracy in the said country.
I don’t know.
Haiti.
The next victim of US military incursion will be oil rich country. There's no reason for incursion if it is not going to be profitable for the US.
If there's "no democracy" in some country but also no valuable natural resources, it's not worth spending expensive missiles and bombs. E.g. dictatorship in Cambodia would be always safe as there're little gains in occupying Cambodia.
Same for Haiti. It doesn't mean that US won't intervene with cheaper methods like assassinations and/or propaganda.
US literally prints money, it's very easy for them to set up media outlets publishing propaganda non-stop 24/7 in almost every country on Earth.
FAANG monopolies are also a big part of this picture. They all censor all anti-american views and push propaganda. E.g., if you're from Russia, and you register on YouTube, you'll see Navalny channel in recommendations for months, even if you explicitly block his channel and channels of his associates. Facebook regularly blocks pro-Russian persons, groups and posts (including published in Russian in Russia). Many Netflix series (and Hollywood movies) continue to picture US as the exceptional country with exceptional people ("chosen by God") while all the rest are third-world worthless thrash (see Narcos, for example). Also, almost all the villains in Hollywood movies are Russian (Tenet is the recent example).
That's exactly what I'm talking about. See e.g. https://www.worldoil.com/news/2010/1/27/haiti-could-have-lar...
Bush became president in January 2001. You think Al Qaeda was like "oh no, Gore lost? Let's proceed with that airplane plan" right there and then? Like they even remotely care if it's a dem or Rep.
But US intelligences services might have caught it, by sheet chance if history was to replay with slightly different variables. Just saying, they got lucky.
Consequences of 9/11 certainly could have looked different, if the US was less focus on oil and less concerned about confronting the Saudis.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jun/06/uselections200...
Christine Todd Whitman was nominated as administrator of the EPA to enact the policy. Lobbying by the fossil fuel industry changed the direction of this policy and because of push back, Bush took the opposite direction of the policy he campaigned on.
The green party not winning is the shame. Never blame a third party for a majority party not winning. If they caused Gore to lose hopefully he tries harder to win over 537 people next cycle.