World’s moral leaders are throwing down the gauntlet over destruction of Planet Earth
By Paul B. Farrell Columnist for Marketwatch.com April 22, 2015
Headlines warn us. He’s throwing down the gauntlet. Forget “Prince of Peace.” It’s 2015. Pope Francis is igniting WW III. The big one. He knows capitalism’s already at war everywhere, destroying the planet’s environment. So he’s taking command, launching a counter-offensive, demanding action, leading his army of 1.2 billion worldwide, inspiring environmental activists everywhere.
Yes, folks, it’s 2015 and Pope Francis launched a full-on, major assault on capitalism, like Ike’s D-Day, a major battle, a counter-attack promising to dominate global headlines for the year, as opponents scramble, regrouping to repel his war on climate-denying capitalists.
The thunder is already roaring: “Pope Francis declares war on climate deniers” reads a New Republic headline. And the Guardian headline throws jet fuel on the flames: “Pope Francis’s edict on climate change will anger deniers and U.S. churches.”
Anger? No, he’s provoking, infuriating, enraging! Because this “radical, anticapitalist
revolutionary’ pope is a huge threat to everything capitalists stand for, a clear and present danger to the ideology driving Big Oil, Koch Bros, conservative billionaires, and all GOP senators and governors already on record as climate-science deniers, opposed to all taxes and regulation of their profits and toxic carbon emissions.
No, folks, it doesn’t take much to imagine their reactions when Pope Francis speaks to the world leaders at his upcoming historic speech in New York at the United Nations General Assembly. Enraged, superrich capitalists everywhere will be seeing red, later worried about grassroots rebellions, like the 1789 French Revolution attacking the rich, ruling elite.
Yes, 2015 promises to be a turning point in the history of capitalism, not just climate change. Our “Warrior Pope” has ignited WW III with a counterattack on capitalism that many historians already see as the defining issue of the 21st century — free-market capitalism versus global warming, climate change, the environment, triggering revolutions by citizens everywhere rising up against the world’s superrich for destroying the planet.
“Pope Francis plans to make climate change a personal issue for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics,” continues the New Republic’s Rebecca Leber. In early 2015 Francis “will publish an encyclical (a letter to the world’s bishops) … he will speak directly to United Nations leaders in the fall … and he will organize a summit of world religions — all aimed at pressuring countries to commit to a strong climate agreement at a Paris meeting next December,” citing John Vidal of the Guardian. Now that is WW III.
Pope Francis is now the world’s new moral conscience
But Pope Francis has emerged as far more than the “radical, anticapitalist, socialist revolutionary” we first wrote about after his election less than two years ago. Yes, he’s a radical. A revolutionary. And clearly an anticapitalist socialist.
But today, Pope Francis’ emerging power comes from a new source deep within, from within his soul, inherent in his character, visible in his actions. You feel a renewal of traditional values sorely missing is today’s world of out-of-control consumerism and narcissistic capitalists.
Francis touches all of us, our minds, our hearts, he’s in our souls, one to one. You know he’s doing the right thing, the moral thing, for all people, poor and rich. Francis is painfully aware the planet is rapidly nearing a point of no return, of irreversible damage, that capitalism’s insatiable blind pursuit for more and more profits is ultimately destroying Planet Earth — that’s the core struggle in the conflict defining our 21st century.
All this is guaranteed to have enormous economic consequences for today’s capitalists who now exist without a moral compass. Pope Francis has emerged as the moral leader not just of 1.2 billion faithful in his church, but the new conscience for the entire world.
Francis’s words reveal a pope not only with a strong moral conscience but also a man who’s clearly been on top of financial, economic and political trends for a long time, worldwide and here in America. And he’s not happy with the trends. Thank God. The world needs his kind of moral leadership, sorely missing in today’s world adrift in soulless capitalism.
Capitalists everywhere: Big Oil billionaires, climate-science deniers, GOP politicians, Wall Street bankers, conservatives, even traditional economists, are justifiably concerned about this gentle pontiff’s happy smile, deceptively disarming demeanor. He’s threatens all they stand for.
Warrior Pope’s 10 battle cries threatening capitalists worldwide
So, yes, you will be part of history in the making: Pope Francis is leading a new kind of crusade. Just before our Thanksgiving last year his “Apostolic Exhortation” defined his mandate to change the world. From Day 1 he was crystal clear. Francis understood his enemies’ strategies: the invisible hand of capitalism, trickle-down economics that fail the poor, self-centered conservatism, the insatiable worship of money, profits, wealth.
But never bet against Pope Francis. Once a boxer, he’s a born fighter, an iron fist in a velvet glove, he smiles, but he hates to lose. So here’s our edited, paraphrased version of Pope Francis’ top 10 strategies in his 2015 war against climate-science deniers everywhere:
1. Invisible Hand … now only the hands of the superrich
Francis: “Never trust in the so-called ‘invisible hand’ of the markets and economic remedies like cutting workers to increase profits. The world needs a better distribution of income.”
2. Trickle-down … a total economic disaster
Francis: “Free-market trickle-down economics causes injustice. A naive trust in the culture of prosperity and those wielding economic power deadens society.”
3. Inequality … is the root cause of all social ills in the world
Francis: “Inequality is the root of social ills. Help the poor, reject markets and speculation, attack the structural causes of inequality, or you’ll never solve any of the world’s problems.”
4. Capitalists … are the new golden calf worshipers
Francis: “Money must serve, not rule, yet we calmly accept its control over us. It originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person. The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money.”
5. The New Tyranny … is killing democracy
Francis: “Ideologies increase the wealth of a minority exponentially, increasing the inequality gap, separating the most humans from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. A new tyranny is thus born, unilaterally and relentlessly imposing its own laws and rules.”
6. Consumerism … out-of-control consumerism is killing morals
Francis: “Today’s economics promote inordinate consumption, increases inequality, damages the social fabric, increases violence and serious conflicts. Blaming the poor and poorer countries for their troubles is misplaced, solve the corruption spreading at the top.”
7. Competition … blind addiction to profits undermining the world
Francis: “The laws of capitalist competition, the survival of the fittest rule. The powerful feed upon the powerless, the vast majority are marginalized: No work, No opportunities. No escape. News is a two-point loss in stocks, but not the death of elderly homeless?’”
8. Exploitation … treating human beings as mere commodities
Francis: “Yes, we are now consumer goods, used, then discarded in a spreading throwaway culture. It is no longer about exploitation, oppression. Today excluded are no longer society’s underside, no longer even a part of it, but outcasts, leftovers.”
9. Conservatism … selfish destruction of world’s common good
Francis: “In a world where everyone has their own subjective truth, citizens cannot develop common solutions that transcend personal ambitions. We need a new way of living and thinking that’s more humane and noble, that brings dignity to all human on this earth.”
10. Capitalism … blind ideological dogma with no moral compass
Francis: “Behind capitalist economics lurks a rejection of ethics and God, debasing humans. This lack of morality and ethics leads us to a God calling for solutions outside marketplace economics, to make it possible for more balance and a humane social order.”
Bottom line, 2015 is a turning point. Pope Francis is declaring war against capitalism, an economic system gambling the future of civilization. But no one can stand passively. Everyone’s engaged. You, your kids, grandkids, everyone, 7.3 billion people worldwide. Nobody’s on the sidelines in the new Francis Crusades, new Holy Wars, this is WW III.
Pass on his 10 battle cries, use social media, tweet, retweet, let others know WWIII is on, where you stand, where he stands. Francis’s 10 strategies may not only save civilization and Planet Earth from disappearing, they may even save capitalism, conservatism and democracy … yes, hope does spring eternal.