Thank you for venting, Richard. I completely share your rage, grief, and despair at what is happening to our nation and planet due to ignorance, greed, hatred, and denial—all personified in the pernicious asshole we just elected president. You are right: our nation and our entire industrial and commercial civilization is a cancer on our living planet, and that cancer is now terminal—so our collective future is a downward spiral into chaos, rage, despair, and death.
The root cause of this global cancer is also, paradoxically, the basis of our unparalleled affluence: the money system. We assume that money is wealth, and that wealth is all that matters, so we see our entire biological support system as nothing more than a “resource” with no value at all until it is transformed into commodities to be bought and sold. But the problem with money is that it is a maximizing system: more is always better. Conversely, the Earth—our biological support system—is an optimizing system: enough is enough, and too much or too little of any value is toxic. Therefore the entire global market economy—which I call “Glomart” for short— is completely incompatible with Gaia—our biological support system. Our global cancer began with the agricultural revolution and the invention of money, and has now reached it’s predestined end: upward concentration of wealth into an all-powerful oligarchy on one hand, and the overshoot and collapse of our biological support systems (Gaia) on the other.

So how do we cope, when there’s no hope? Acceptance and compassion. Collectively we are doomed, and this will be ugly and heartbreaking—hell on Earth, getting progressively worse, year by year. But individually, we have options. I have formulated my own options into a simple slogan as my guideline, until I die:
Grew gardens, Grow community, and Grow awareness— by learning, teaching, healing, and creating. This is the best we can do to guide younger generations through the encroaching chaos and horrors of their future. Let us aspire to sow seeds of Gaia in the crumbling ruins of Glomart!