I Just Figured Out Why Thom Hartmann Called His Book THRESHOLD

In retrospect it's almost tragic that Obama ran as the candidate of Change. It was either a description of how relatively worse Republicans are or, perhaps, just an empty slogan altogether. And I don't even mean to pick on Obama. A great deal of the Democratic Party is very much a part of the structural impediments to progressive change that Eric Alterman talked about in his opus at The Nation last week.

Few progressives would take issue with the argument that, significant accomplishments notwithstanding, the Obama presidency has been a big disappointment. As Mario Cuomo famously observed, candidates campaign in poetry but govern in prose. Still, Obama supporters have been asked to swallow some painfully "prosaic" compromises. In order to pass his healthcare legislation, for instance, Obama was required to specifically repudiate his pledge to prochoice voters to "make preserving women's rights under Roe v. Wade a priority as president." That promise apparently was lost in the same drawer as his insistence that "Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange... including a public option." Labor unions were among his most fervent and dedicated foot soldiers, as well as the key to any likely progressive political renaissance, and many were no doubt inspired by his pledge "to fight for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act." Yet that act appears deader than Jimmy Hoffa. Environmentalists were no doubt steeled through the frigid days of New Hampshire canvassing by Obama's promise that "As president, I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming-- an 80 percent reduction by 2050." That goal appears to have gone up the chimney in thick black smoke. And remember when Obama promised, right before the election, to "put in place the common-sense regulations and rules of the road I've been calling for since March-- rules that will keep our market free, fair and honest; rules that will restore accountability and responsibility in our corporate boardrooms"? Neither, apparently, does he… Indeed, if one examines the gamut of legislation passed and executive orders issued that relate to the promises made by candidate Obama, one can only wince at the slightly hyperbolic joke made by late night comedian Jimmy Fallon, who quipped that the president's goal appeared to be to "finally deliver on the campaign promises made by John McCain."

No offense to Mr. Alterman, but I want to point you in an entirely different direction regarding Change from what we hear from the ruling elites and their ridiculous Beltway echo chamber. Obama's ineffectual and hideously compromised tinkering around the edges isn't the choice America would expect from a truly visionary leader-- regardless of whether we had the right or not to expect any kind of vision from a man with Obama's record. In his book Threshold-- The Crisis of Western Culture, Thom Hartmann gives us a far more visceral understanding of what Change is all about and what kind of Change our country and our world need. As you read what follows please keep in mind that his call for a profoundly deep reform of our entire culture may not be easy, but it is neither impossible nor anything less than essential for our survival. "The simple fact is," writes Hartmann, "that throughout human history every single civilization that made the same mistake of unsustainable living that we have (which, apparently, is virtually every civilization or culture) ultimately did one of two things-- died out (often in disastrous ways) or reinvented itself in a way to live sustainably. And that reinvention involved economics, politics, and religion."

He's taken us back to the Robber Baron Era (1880-1929) and the corrupted Supreme Court decision of 1886 that has been interpreted as conferring personhood on corporations, the result of which has been to guarantee that the "interests of a very small (fewer than one-millionth of 1 percent) of the people on the planet have achieved priority over the interests of every other human, every other government, every other institution, and, perhaps most ominously, over the biosphere."

Every life form on earth-- and the incredibly complex web of life's supporting systems-- is now totally subordinate to the interests of a few thousand of the world's most powerful institutions and the few hundred thousand humans who ultimately control them.

This is not the first time in history that a small group of people controlled the fate of pretty much everybody else in their realm. The history of Europe and its kings and queens-- almost all interrelated by marriage-- or the Inca and Mayan civilizations of South America, or the dynastic powers of India, China, and Japan, all remind us how often and how easily a small group can control everything from the commons to the people.

But this time is different. Today it's not the political freedom of Boston's patriots at stake; it's not the economic rights of the European nobles; it's not the fate of young Mayans conscripted into the Sun King's army.

This time the fate of humanity worldwide is at stake.

What is necessary is a new form of economics and a new form of politics. The new economic structure must consider, in every transaction, the environmental cost to all human (and corporate, and governmental) behavior, and appropriately mitigate that cost. The new political structure must function, using Madison's metaphor, as the ultimate republic-- a superstructure of law and governance that protects us all by protecting all life on earth.

Obama can't even get Ben Nelson on board to prevent families from losing their homes and dying in the streets, let alone the Republican Party, which is, of course, the party of conservatism, a quasi-religion predicated on nothing changing... ever.