THIS SUNDAY, THE entire New York Times Magazine will be composed of just one on a single subject: the failure to confront the global climate crisis in the 1980s, a time when the science was settled and the politics seemed to align. Written by Nathaniel Rich, this work of history is filled with insider revelations about roads not taken that, on several occasions, made me swear out loud. And lest there be any doubt that the implications of these decisions will be etched in geologic time, Rich's words are punctuated with full-page aerial photographs by George Steinmetz that wrenchingly document the rapid unraveling of planetary systems, from the rushing water where Greenland ice used to be to massive algae blooms in China's third largest lake.

The novella-length piece represents the kind of media commitment that the climate crisis has long deserved but almost never received. We have all heard the various excuses for why the small matter of despoiling our only home just doesn't cut it as an urgent news story: "Climate change is too far off in the future"; "It's inappropriate to talk about politics when people are losing their lives to hurricanes and fires"; "Journalists follow the news, they don't make it - and politicians aren't talking about climate change"; and of course: "Every time we try, it's a ratings killer."

None of the excuses can mask the dereliction of duty. It has always been possible for major media outlets to decide, all on their own, that planetary destabilization is a huge news story, very likely the most consequential of our time. They always had the capacity to harness the skills of their reporters and photographers to connect abstract science to lived extreme weather events. And if they did so consistently, it would lessen the need for journalists to get ahead of politics because the more informed the public is about both the threat and the tangible solutions, the more they push their elected representatives to take bold action.

The Aug. 5, 2018, issue of the New York Times Magazine. Which is why it was so exciting to see the Times throw the full force of its editorial machine behind Rich's opus - teasing it with a promotional video, kicking it off with a live event at the Times Center, and accompanying educational materials. That's also why it is so enraging that the piece is spectacularly wrong in its central thesis.

According to Rich, between the years of 1979 and 1989, the basic science of climate change was understood and accepted, the partisan divide over the issue had yet to cleave, the fossil fuel companies hadn't started their misinformation campaign in earnest, and there was a great deal of global political momentum toward a bold and binding international emissions-reduction agreement. Writing of the key period at the end of the 1980s, Rich says, "The conditions for success could not have been more favorable."

And yet we blew it - "we" being humans, who apparently are just too shortsighted to safeguard our future. Just in case we missed the point of who and what is to blame for the fact that we are now "losing earth," Rich's answer is presented in a full-page callout: "All the facts were known, and nothing stood in our way. Nothing, that is, except ourselves."

Yep, you and me. Not, according to Rich, the fossil fuel companies who sat in on every major policy meeting described in the piece. (Imagine tobacco executives being repeatedly invited by the U.S. government to come up with policies to ban smoking. When those meetings failed to yield anything substantive, would we conclude that the reason is that humans just want to die? Might we perhaps determine instead that the political system is corrupt and busted?)

This misreading has been pointed out by many climate scientists and historians since the online version of the piece dropped on Wednesday. Others have remarked on the maddening invocations of "human nature" and the use of the royal "we" to describe a screamingly homogenous group of U.S. power players. Throughout Rich's accounting, we hear nothing from those political leaders in the Global South who were demanding binding action in this key period and after, somehow able to care about future generations despite being human. The voices of women, meanwhile, are almost as rare in Rich's text as sightings of the endangered ivory-billed woodpecker - and when we ladies do appear, it is mainly as long-suffering wives of tragically heroic men.

All of these flaws have been well covered, so I won't rehash them here. My focus is the central premise of the piece: that the end of the 1980s presented conditions that "could not have been more favorable" to bold climate action. On the contrary, one could scarcely imagine a more inopportune moment in human evolution for our species to come face to face with the hard truth that the conveniences of modern consumer capitalism were steadily eroding the habitability of the planet. Why? Because the late '80s was the absolute zenith of the neoliberal crusade, a moment of peak ideological ascendency for the economic and social project that deliberately set out to vilify collective action in the name of liberating "free markets" in every aspect of life. Yet Rich makes no mention of this parallel upheaval in economic and political thought.

In this May 9, 1989 file photo, James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, testifies before a Senate transportation
subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., a year after his history-making testimony telling the world that global warming was here and would get worse.

But climate change wasn't just a concern for politicians and wonks - it was watercooler stuff, so much so that when the editors of Time magazine announced their 1988 "Man of the Year," they went for "Planet of the Year: Endangered Earth." The cover featured an image of the globe held together with twine, the sun setting ominously in the background. "No single individual, no event, no movement captured imaginations or dominated headlines more," journalist Thomas Sancton explained, "than the clump of rock and soil and water and air that is our common home."

(Interestingly, unlike Rich, Sancton didn't blame "human nature" for the planetary mugging. He went deeper, tracing it to the misuse of the Judeo-Christian concept of "dominion" over nature and the fact that it supplanted the pre-Christian idea that "the earth was seen as a mother, a fertile giver of life. Nature - the soil, forest, sea - was endowed with divinity, and mortals were subordinate to it.")

When I surveyed the climate news from this period, it really did seem like a profound shift was within grasp - and then, tragically, it all slipped away, with the U.S. walking out of international negotiations and the rest of the world settling for nonbinding agreements that relied on dodgy "market mechanisms" like carbon trading and offsets. So it really is worth asking, as Rich does: What the hell happened? What interrupted the urgency and determination that was emanating from all these elite establishments simultaneously by the end of the '80s?

Rich concludes, while offering no social or scientific evidence, that something called "human nature" kicked in and messed everything up. "Human beings," he writes, "whether in global organizations, democracies, industries, political parties or as individuals, are incapable of sacrificing present convenience to forestall a penalty imposed on future generations." It seems we are wired to "obsess over the present, worry about the medium term and cast the long term out of our minds, as we might spit out a poison."

When I looked at the same period, I came to a very different conclusion: that what at first seemed like our best shot at lifesaving climate action had in retrospect suffered from an epic case of historical bad timing. Because what becomes clear when you look back at this juncture is that just as governments were getting together to get serious about reining in the fossil fuel sector, the global neoliberal revolution went supernova, and that project of economic and social reengineering clashed with the imperatives of both climate science and corporate regulation at every turn.

The failure to make even a passing reference to this other global trend that was unfolding in the late '80s represents an unfathomably large blind spot in Rich's piece. After all, the primary benefit of returning to a period in the not-too-distant past as a journalist is that you are able to see trends and patterns that were not yet visible to people living through those tumultuous events in real time. The climate community in 1988, for instance, had no way of knowing that they were on the cusp of the convulsive neoliberal revolution that would remake every major economy on the planet.

But we know. And one thing that becomes very clear when you look back on the late '80s is that, far from offering "conditions for success [that] could not have been more favorable," 1988-89 was the worst possible moment for humanity to decide that it was going to get serious about putting planetary health ahead of profits.

President Ronald Reagan signs legislation implementing the U.S.-Canada free trade agreement during a ceremony at the White House, Sept. 28, 1988.

It was this convergence of historical trends - the emergence of a global architecture that was supposed to tackle climate change and the emergence of a much more powerful global architecture to liberate capital from all constraints - that derailed the momentum Rich rightly identifies. Because, as he notes repeatedly, meeting the challenge of climate change would have required imposing stiff regulations on polluters while investing in the public sphere to transform how we power our lives, live in cities, and move ourselves around.

All of this was possible in the '80s and '90s (it still is today) - but it would have demanded a head-on battle with the project of neoliberalism, which at that very time was waging war on the very idea of the public sphere ("There is no such thing as society," Thatcher told us). Meanwhile, the free trade deals being signed in this period were busily making many sensible climate initiatives - like subsidizing and offering preferential treatment to local green industry and refusing many polluting projects like fracking and oil pipelines - illegal under international trade law.

I wrote a 500-page book about this collision between capitalism and the planet, and I won't rehash the details here. This extract, however, goes into the subject in some depth, and I'll quote a short passage here:

We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis. We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe - and would benefit the vast majority - are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. That problem might not have been insurmountable had it presented itself at another point in our history. But it is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s. Indeed, governments and scientists began talking seriously about radical cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in 1988 - the exact year that marked the dawning of what came to be called "globalisation."

If, on the other hand, we humans really were on the brink of saving ourselves in the '80s, but were swamped by a tide of elite, free-market fanaticism - one that was opposed by millions of people around the world - then there is something quite concrete we can do about it. We can confront that economic order and try to replace it with something that is rooted in both human and planetary security, one that does not place the quest for growth and profit at all costs at its center.

And the good news - and, yes, there is some - is that today, unlike in 1989, a young and growing movement of green democratic socialists is advancing in the United States with precisely that vision. And that represents more than just an electoral alternative - it's our one and only planetary lifeline.

Yet we have to be clear that the lifeline we need is not something that has been tried before, at least not at anything like the scale required. When the Times tweeted out its teaser for Rich's article about "humankind's inability to address the climate change catastrophe," the excellent eco-justice wing of the Democratic Socialists of America quickly offered this correction: "*CAPITALISM* If they were serious about investigating what's gone so wrong, this would be about 'capitalism's inability to address the climate change catastrophe.' Beyond capitalism, *humankind* is fully capable of organizing societies to thrive within ecological limits."

Their point is a good one, if incomplete. There is nothing essential about humans living under capitalism; we humans are capable of organizing ourselves into all kinds of different social orders, including societies with much longer time horizons and far more respect for natural life-support systems. Indeed, humans have lived that way for the vast majority of our history and many Indigenous cultures keep earth-centered cosmologies alive to this day. Capitalism is a tiny blip in the collective story of our species.

But simply blaming capitalism isn't enough. It is absolutely true that the drive for endless growth and profits stands squarely opposed to the imperative for a rapid transition off fossil fuels. It is absolutely true that the global unleashing of the unbound form of capitalism known as neoliberalism in the '80s and '90s has been the single greatest contributor to a disastrous global emission spike in recent decades, as well as the single greatest obstacle to science-based climate action ever since governments began meeting to talk (and talk and talk) about lowering emissions. And it remains the biggest obstacle today, even in countries that market themselves as climate leaders, like Canada and France.

But we have to be honest that autocratic industrial socialism has also been a disaster for the environment, as evidenced most dramatically by the fact that carbon emissions briefly plummeted when the economies of the former Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s. And as I wrote in "This Changes Everything," Venezuela's petro-populism has continued this toxic tradition into the present day, with disastrous results.

Let's acknowledge this fact, while also pointing out that countries with a strong democratic socialist tradition - like Denmark, Sweden, and Uruguay - have some of the most visionary environmental policies in the world. From this we can conclude that socialism isn't necessarily ecological, but that a new form of democratic eco-socialism, with the humility to learn from Indigenous teachings about the duties to future generations and the interconnection of all of life, appears to be humanity's best shot at collective survival.

These are the stakes in the surge of movement-grounded political candidates who are advancing a democratic eco-socialist vision, connecting the dots between the economic depredations caused by decades of neoliberal ascendency and the ravaged state of our natural world. Partly inspired by Bernie Sanders's presidential run, candidates in a variety of races - like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York, Kaniela Ing in Hawaii, and many more - are running on platforms calling for a "Green New Deal" that meets everyone's basic material needs, offers real solutions to racial and gender inequities, while catalyzing a rapid transition to 100 percent renewable energy. Many, like New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon and New York attorney general candidate Zephyr Teachout, have pledged not to take money from fossil fuel companies and are promising instead to prosecute them.

These candidates, whether or not they identify as democratic socialist, are rejecting the neoliberal centrism of the establishment Democratic Party, with its tepid "market-based solutions" to the ecological crisis, as well as Donald Trump's all-out war on nature. And they are also presenting a concrete alternative to the undemocratic extractivist socialists of both the past and present. Perhaps most importantly, this new generation of leaders isn't interested in scapegoating "humanity" for the greed and corruption of a tiny elite. It seeks instead to help humanity - particularly its most systematically unheard and uncounted members - to find their collective voice and power so they can stand up to that elite.

We aren't losing earth - but the earth is getting so hot so fast that it is on a trajectory to lose a great many of us. In the nick of time, a new political path to safety is presenting itself. This is no moment to bemoan our lost decades. It's the moment to get the hell on that path.
(c) 2018 Naomi Klein is an award"winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." To read all her latest writing visit www.naomiklein.org. You can follow her on Twitter: @NaomiAKlein.

YEARS AGO I had a friendly discussion with Ariel Sharon.

I told him: "I am first of all an Israeli. After that I am a Jew."

He responded heatedly: "I am first of all a Jew, and only after that an Israeli!"

That may look like an abstract debate. But in reality, this is the question that lies at the heart of all our basic problems. It is the core of the crisis which is now rending Israel apart.

THE IMMEDIATE cause of this crisis is the law that was adopted in great haste last week by the rightist Knesset majority. It is entitled "Basic Law: Israel the Nation State of the Jewish People".

This is a constitutional law. When Israel was founded during the war of 1948, it did not adopt a constitution. There was a problem with the Orthodox religious community, which made an agreed formula impossible. Instead David Ben-Gurion read out a "Declaration of Independence", which announced that "we are founding the Jewish State, namely the State of Israel."

The declaration did not become law. The Supreme Court adopted its principles without a legal basis. The new document, however, is a binding law.

So what is new about the new law, which at a first glance looks like a copy of the declaration? It contains two important omissions: the declaration spoke of a "Jewish and Democratic" state, and promised full equality between all its citizens, without regard to religion, ethnicity or sex.

All this has disappeared. No democracy. No equality. A state of the Jews, for the Jews, by the Jews.

THE FIRST to cry out were the Druze.

The Druze are a small and close-knit minority. They send their sons to serve in the Israeli army and police and consider themselves "blood brothers". Suddenly they have been robbed of all their legal rights and sense of belonging.

Are they Arabs or not? Muslims or not? That depends on who is speaking, where and what for. They threaten to demonstrate, to leave the army and generally rebel. Binyamin Netanyahu tries to bribe them, but they are a proud community.

However, the Druze are not the main point. The new law completely ignores the 1.8 million Arabs who are Israeli citizens, including the Bedouin and Christians. (No one even thinks about the hundreds of thousands of European Christians, who immigrated with their Jewish spouses and other relatives, mainly from Russia.)

The Arabic language with all its splendor, which until now was one of the two official languages, was demoted to a mere "special status", whatever that means.

(All this applies to Israel proper, not to the 5 million or so Arabs in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, who have no rights at all.)

Netanyahu is defending this law like a lion against mounting criticism from within. He has publicly declared that all the Jewish critics of the law are leftists and traitors (synonyms), "who have forgotten what it is to be Jewish."

AND THAT is really the point.

Years ago, my friends and I asked the Supreme Court to change the "nationality" entry in our identity cards, from "Jewish" to "Israeli". The courts refused, stating that there is no Israeli nation. The official register recognizes almost a hundred nations, but not an Israeli one.

This curious situation started with the birth of Zionism in the late 19th century. It was a Jewish movement, designed to solve the Jewish Question. The settlers in Palestine were Jewish. The whole project was closely connected with Jewish tradition.

But once a second generation of settlers grew up, they felt uneasy about being just Jewish, like Jews in Brooklyn or Krakow. They felt that they were something new, different, special.

The most extreme were a small group of young poets and artists, who in 1941 formed an organization nicknamed "the Canaanites", who proclaimed that we were a new nation, a Hebrew one. In their enthusiasm they went to extremes, declaring that we have nothing to do with Jews abroad, and that there was no Arab nation - Arabs were just Hebrews who had adopted Islam.

Then there came the news of the Holocaust, the Canaanites were forgotten and everybody became remorseful super-Jews.

But not really. Without a conscious decision, the popular language of my generation adopted a clear distinction: Jewish Diaspora and Hebrew agriculture, Jewish history and Hebrew battalions, Jewish religion and Hebrew language.

When the British were here, I took part in dozens of demonstrations shouting "Free Immigration! Hebrew State!" I don't remember a single demonstration where anyone shouted "Jewish State!"

So why does the Declaration of Independence speak of a "Jewish State"? Simple: it was alluding to the UN resolution which decreed the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. The founders simply stated that we are now setting up this Jewish state.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the legendary forefather of the Likud, wrote an anthem declaring "A Hebrew is the son of a prince."

ACTUALLY THIS is a natural process. A nation is a territorial unit. It is conditioned by its landscape, climate, history, neighbors.

When the British settled in America, they felt after some time that they were different from the British they had left behind in their island. They became Americans. The British convicts sent to the Far East became Australians. In two World Wars, Australians rushed to the rescue of Britain, but they are not British. They are a proud new nation. So are Canadians, New Zealanders, and Argentinians. And so are we.

Or would have been, if official ideology had allowed it. What has happened?

First of all, there was the huge immigration from the Arab world and Eastern Europe in the early fifties - for every one Hebrew there were two, three, four new immigrants, who considered themselves Jews.

Then there was the need for money and political support from the Jews abroad, especially in the US. These, while considering themselves full and true Americans (try and say they are not, you bloody anti-Semite!) are proud to have a Jewish State somewhere.

And then there was (and is!) a rigorous government policy of Judaization of everything. The present government has reached new heights. Active - even frantic - government actions try to Judaize education, culture, even sports. Orthodox Jews, a small minority in Israel, exert immense influence. Their votes in the Knesset are essential to the Netanyahu government.

WHEN THE State of Israel was founded, the term Hebrew was exchanged for the term Israeli. Hebrew is now only a language.

So is there an Israeli nation? Of course there is. Is there a Jewish nation? Of course there isn't.

Jews are members of an ethnic-religious people, dispersed throughout the world and belonging to many nations, with a strong feeling of affinity with Israel. We, in this country, belong to the Israeli nation, whose Hebrew members are part of the Jewish people.

It is crucial that we recognize this. It decides our outlook. Quite literally. Are we looking towards Jewish centers like New York, London, Paris and Berlin, or are we looking towards our neighbors, Damascus, Beirut and Cairo? Are we part of a region inhabited by Arabs? Do we realize that making peace with these Arabs, and especially the Palestinians, is the main task of this generation?

We are not temporary tenants in this country, ready at any moment to go and join our brother and sister Jews around the globe. We belong to this country and are going to live here for many generations to come, and therefore we must become peaceful neighbors in this region, which I called, 75 years ago, "the Semitic Region."

The people that rule the United States are in the third year of a frenzy to blame Russia and its "trolls," "dupes," and witting or unwitting "colluders" - including a sitting president - for racial conflicts, eroding respect for public institutions and a general social breakdown in the nation. "We are at war!" they scream, incessantly, and in a thousand well-placed voices. The relentless barrage of war-talk crowds out all other subjects in the corporate media -- the Omnipresent Voice of Oligarchy -- including the actual warswaged all across the globe by the U.S. and its shrinking gaggle of allies. By now, 65 percent of Americans -- if asked -- tell pollsters they think Russia "interfered" in the 2016 elections. According to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released late last month, 41 percent believe that whatever the Russians did had some effect on the election, and 30 percent think Hillary Clinton would be president if the Russians had not interfered.

People don't volunteer these opinions; the question is presented by the pollsters and respondents select an answer among the multiple choices offered. However, A Gallup poll, taken during the same period, that allowed respondents to offer their own list of problems besetting the nation showed that less than one percent thought "the ongoing situation with Russia was the top issue." Immigration was the top problem on people's minds (22 percent), followed by dissatisfaction with the U.S. government (19 percent), and racism (7 percent). Concerns over "unifying the country," "lack of respect for each other," "the economy in general," "health care," and the catch-all, "ethics/morality/religious/family decline" rank in the even lower single digits - but almost nobody considers Russia to be a top problem.

Apparently, Americans don't yet believe that anything like a "Pearl Harbor" has occurred, despite the Herculean efforts of the corporate media, the Democratic Party, old school Republicans, and the National Security State (Spookland). Undeterred, these fevered fomenters of hysteria insist that Russia's "war" against the United States -- aided by a "fifth column" composed of left-wing and right-wing web sites -- must be answered by putting the nation on martial footing, through further curbs on freedom of speech and association at home, and relentless pursuit of full spectrum military dominance over all potential adversaries and competitors abroad.

The oligarch-declared state of war requires that there be one set of "truths" and a common worldview to unite the nation at this time of peril -- whether the people perceive such a peril, or not. If there is insufficient public resolve to respond to the "threat" from Moscow and their partners in Beijing, then that is blamed on Kremlin-disseminated disinformation designed to confuse Americans or cause them to lose faith in U.S. institutions, and to fight among themselves - to "hate" each other -- thus requiring more censorship.

It is the ruling class that is in panic, and using Russia as an all-purpose foil. The U.S. is in terminal decline, and has already been economically surpassed by China, based on "purchasing power parity," the standard of measurement preferred even by the U.S dominated International Monetary Fund. According to an analysis by business columnist Noah Smith in Bloomberg, "not only is China already the world's largest economy, the gap between it and the U.S. can be expected to grow even wider." Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies, says "China's economy is already 25 percent larger than the U.S. economy and is on a path to be almost twice as large in a decade."

The era of U.S. economic dominance has already ended, and the Potemkin facade of American economic supremacy is only maintained by the U.S. dollar's artificial status as the main international reserve currency - from which pedestal it will ultimately be toppled, and the imperial era will be over. But this is an historical verdict that the U.S. rulers cannot accept. Having lost the economic capacity to lord over the planet, they must now rely on their military -- a terror machine more expensive than most of the rest of the world's militaries, combined -- in a "generational," twilight battle to preserve the empire. The Lords of Capital cannot imagine a world in which they are not on top. They have chosen permanent, "infinite" war.

On the home front, the ruling class policy is eternal austerity, dictated by the requirements of capitalism at this stage in its decline. It is a horrifically destructive process of corporate consolidation (the big get bigger, devouring each other and everyone else) and the shrinking of the public sphere, through public sector starvation and privation. The job market is restructured, with more and more workers becoming "casual" or "contracted" -- the "gig" economy -- and millions of others (especially Blacks) made permanently redundant and disposable.

A regime of permanent war and austerity -- the fate that both corporate parties plan for us -- requires the manufacture and perpetual maintenance of war hysteria, and the methodical suppression of popular demands for economic rescue of the affected classes. It demands Russiagate and the snuffing out of radical dissent. This is not about Hillary Clinton, although she was the presidential choice of the great bulk of the ruling class because she could be trusted to pursue permanent war and austerity. It's about preserving and serving the oligarchy under capitalism in terminal decline.

A similar process is underway in Europe, where the welfare state is besieged by the ruling bankers and corporate chiefs. Some leftish pundits describe the corporate parties' lashing out at "the left and the right" as an offensive of "the center" -- but that's nonsense. In both the U.S. and Europe, the corporate governments are to the right of the public; they don't represent some political "center" -- they represent only their corporate selves. The corporate leaders of the Democratic Party are positioned way to the right of Democratic voters, and also rightward of the general American pubic on most key economic issues. They are carrying out their corporate duties to preserve and maintain austerity and war.

This compels them to make a spectacle of Russiagate, and to ensure that the show never ends, but takes on new forms of hysteria. And it requires that internet-based dissent be brought to heal, as Hillary would say -- even at the cost of billions to one of the top oligarchs, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who has been mercilessly bludgeoned by his fellow corporatists. Facebook's political tampering with its algorithms to marginalize left-wing sites like BAR cannot help but suggest that the company also puts its fingers on the scales of the algorithms whose results are sold to advertisers. But Zuckerberg no doubt understands that the purge of "left and right" sites is in the best interest of his class, and has accepted to forgo some profits.

Facebook, Apple, Google, YouTube and Spotify all came down on right-winger Alex Jones and his Infowars, this week, in what appeared to be a coordinated purge. Although the corporate media have long accused Jones of spreading "disinformation," he was not purged for telling non-truths. Apple announced that "it does not tolerate hate speech." Facebook said "false news" was not the issue, but that Jones had violated its policies by "glorifying violence" and "using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants."

When it comes to "hate," the high tech oligarchs rely heavily on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Morris Dees - Richard Cohen legal outfit in Montgomery, Alabama. The Center has a special animus towards Black nationalists, to whom it dedicates a whole page on its web site. "Most forms of black nationalism are strongly anti-white and anti-Semitic," the SPLC declares, as if its white, Jewish leadership are expert in the Black American polity. In addition to naming Min. Louis Farrakhan and every Nation of Islam mosque, the site lists a slew of "Black Nationalist Hate Groups," including book stores, the Black Riders Liberation Party and all its affiliates, various Black Israelites, both halves of the split New Black Panther Party, and the Revolutionary Black Panther Party, as well as the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors. We can assume that these groups' internet sites and Facebook presence are marked for special attention and future purging.

But, many more Blacks will be caught up in the "hate speech" net that the high tech monopolists have deployed. Anyone that has gone to protests against killer cops has shouted words that could be deemed hate speech -- because we do hate killer cops, and we do hate their armed occupation of our communities, and we have every right to say so among ourselves or to shout it to the world. Black people -- and especially Black activists -- must be most zealous in defense of free speech, knowing that our speech will be the first to be curtailed and outlawed.

We can expect no defense of Black speech rights from the Black misleadership class, which has always opted to cut off Black lips in order to silence a few white racists' mouths. In the early Seventies, the Congressional Black Caucus and the Atlanta NAACP tried to get the Federal Communications Commission to ban campaign ads by the arch-racist candidate for one of Georgia's seats in the U.S. Senate. I argued loudly against attempting to create a "hate speech" standard for the public airwaves, warning that among the first victims of such a standard would be Min. Farrakhan, whose weekly radio program was aired on over 100 Black-oriented radio programs.

The FCC ruled in J.B. Stoner's favor in 1972, but it was a good day for Black political speech, too. In the same way, the high tech monopolists' assault on right-winger Alex Jones under a "hate speech" standard is bad news for Black political speech, and for radical speech. "Hate speech" is a trap. A few months ago, all but eleven members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted to make any assault on police a "hate crime," thereby giving police the status of a protected class. The "hate speech" trick, in practice, rewards Black people's occupiers and abusers (the police) and renders voices of protest illegitimate and mute.

Everything you need to know about today's Republican Party is summed up by a photograph from President Trump's political rally in Ohio on Saturday. Two men in the crowd look defiantly at the camera, proudly displaying the slogan on their matching T-shirts: "I'd Rather Be a Russian Than a Democrat."

The sound you hear is the GOP presidents of the Cold War era - Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford and Reagan - whirring like turbines in their graves.

This is the state of derangement to which Trump has brought a once-great political party. Anyone tempted to dismiss these cult-of-personality rallies as freakish sideshows should keep in mind one sobering fact: An astounding 89 percent of Republicans approve of Trump's performance as president, according to Gallup. The GOP has lost its mind.

The Republican Party used to believe in fiscal discipline and worry about the mounting national debt; Trump has blown a trillion-dollar hole in the budget. The party used to believe in free trade; Trump is imposing tariffs left and right, including on our closest allies. The party used to believe in free markets; Trump clumsily tries to pick winners and losers, hectors the independent Federal Reserve board and uses his Twitter feed to attack individual companies for political reasons.

The GOP used to champion American ideals of freedom and justice throughout the world. Trump gives the back of his hand to the postwar alliance of Western democracies, and has nothing but praise for autocratic rulers who abuse human rights in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Philippines and, of course, Russia.

Previous Republican presidents have complained about press coverage. Trump calls the news media "the Enemy of the People," a phrase that blood-soaked totalitarian regimes have used to justify assassinations and purges. Don't be comforted by GOP apologists who say Trump is just using over-the-top rhetoric and doesn't really mean it. As recently as Sunday, he tweeted that "The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People because they know it's TRUE." He called the media "very dangerous and sick!" On Friday, a C-SPAN caller who identified himself as "Don from State College, Pennsylvania" threatened that "I'm going to shoot" CNN hosts Brian Stelter and Don Lemon. Words have consequences: Trump's unhinged rhetoric is going to get somebody killed.

If you ask House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), they will, of course, disavow such sentiments. And then, la-di-da, they'll go back to pretending this is a normal presidency rather than a runaway train.

Brace yourselves, because it's all going to get worse.

It doesn't take a degree in psychology to see that Trump is increasingly frantic about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. On Sunday, shortly after the "Enemy of the People" tweet, Trump added this:

"Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!"

It is safe to surmise that Trump feels the walls closing in. And if Democrats seize control of the House in November, he will face a lineup of committee chairmen, armed with subpoena power, who are determined to do their constitutional duty of holding the administration accountable.

So Trump reportedly plans to spend as much time as possible on the campaign trail, desperately trying to stoke enough fear, resentment and anger among the GOP base to produce a big turnout that saves the House majority. What a surprise: Trump intends to make the election all about Trump.