Driving the Sharks Back Out to Sea — What We Can Learn from ‘Planet Earth’
Stuck on a transatlantic flight with no wi-fi, I bring you news on how to defeat fascism
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“But as the great whites move in for the kill, the seals do something astonishing. Together, they turn on their enemy.”
—Sir David Attenborough, Planet Earth III, Series 1, Coasts
On my flight back from the UK, the wi-fi was down, and I faced 11 hours untethered from the digital world. After reading about 50 pages of Our Malady by Timothy Snyder, a birthday present from a Bette member, and writing two Bette posts for future delivery, I decided to turn on the video screen embedded in the seat in front of me and submerge myself in the natural world by tuning into Sir David Attenborough’s Planet Earth series, the only sensible thing to do on a long plane ride.
Between the brilliant writing and the lush photography, I always wonder why I don’t watch Planet Earth off of airplanes. The simple fact is I don’t watch anything off of airplanes except French films, Barnaby Jones, old Brit shows, and films or series with my mother — we are currently binging The Crown. I have post-traumatic news syndrome and am allergic to poorly written chyrons.
I tuned into Series 1 ‘Coasts’ from Planet Earth III and was captivated immediately. Not simply by Attenborough’s incredible tutelage about all living things, but because the animals were offering me strategies on how to defeat fascism.
These lessons from the natural world might just save the world.
We certainly can’t count on the media world — which has its head so far up its lazy arse it’s got 2016 reruns on heavy rotation. As Jim Stewartson says, But His Debate is the equivalent of But Her Emails. And by now, the stakes should be clear to even the laziest of arses.
Seals vs Sharks
The first lesson comes to us off the southern coast of Africa, where seals risk their lives just trying to eat.
The great white sharks — usually solitary hunters, are now gathering together a dozen at time.
Let’s think of them as the oligarchs of this parable.
The seals, trying to stay close to the corner of cliffs, shirking away from the predatory sharks, decide to band together to take another tactic.
Rather than obeying in advance and succumbing to the inevitability of being shark bait, they mob up.
“As the great whites move in for the kill, the seals do something astonishing. Together, they turn on their enemy. As more join, the mob grows — in both numbers and in confidence,” Sir David explains. “The tables are turning. By sheer force of numbers, these fur seals drive the world’s most notorious predator back out to sea.”
We are the seals in this story, and if we band together, we can defeat the fascists.
But it takes unity, and that unity starts by showing the kind of solidarity required in this grave hour, instead of engaging in circular firing squads.
When David Pepper joined our recent Happy Hour, he noted that Trump uses dominance to appear in control.
Few in media talked about his Stalin level lies, instead they focus on how a guy three years older had a bad night and should “Step Aside” — the most obvious active measure since Hillary Clinton was virtually assassinated in 2016. As noted in the Roger Stone indictment: “Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke…” smh
Jane Goodall confirmed Pepper’s dominance observation when she compared Trump to a chimpanzee in 2016.
“In many ways the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals,” she told The Atlantic during the 2016 presidential election. “To impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: Stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks.”
Fin Fanning
So again I turn to Planet Earth III for clues on this theme, and there’s a sequence in Series 1 where a lionfish fans out its fins to disorient and intimidate its prey. That was what the professional propagandist Trump did to Hillary in 2016, when he skulked menacingly behind her — shadowing her with his flabby body to appear powerful.
And that’s what he did to Biden with his ability to lie with psychotic ease — each lie was like a lionfish fanning out its fins to disorient its prey — like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, it was an attempt to feel bigger, to dominate.
As my other podcast partner High Fidelity says, all that Biden needs to do next time is throw a glass of water in his face. He won’t look so dominant with his orange grease paint sliding down his face and his wig flattened to his skull.
The last note I took comes from both the horn shark and the angel shark. There are lessons in defeating fascism from both.
Surprise Offense and Spiky Resilience
The angel fish burrows deep in the sea bottom, covered in sand, patiently waiting for days to lunge up and snatch its prey. The art of surprise — maybe an October surprise — is valuable when plotting how to defend democratic governance from criminals.
Maybe the firing of Christopher Wray — a hack holdover from the corrupt Trump administration, who told me all I need to know about him when he went on Fox ‘news’ to talk about Chinese biolabs, already debunked by our own intel agencies. In addition, he worked for a law firm that represents Russian oil companies — a conflict of interest when Russia is in actual war with our country.
The angel shark is one of the most deadly sharks in the kelp forest and the best camouflaged.
When it snatches a horn shark in mid low-bottom swim, you think it’s lights out for the horn shark. But the angel shark quickly spits out the horn shark because the horn shark has a secret weapon — sharp spikes.
The point is we need to sabotage the sabotageurs by lying patiently in wait and then spring surprise after surprise on our enemies, and we must do so with spiky resilience.
Sea Angels — The Devils of the Deep Blue Sea
By the time Attenborough introduces us to the sea angel — a translucent gelatinous slug that looks like a water fairy — I am convinced the sea creatures hold the key to fascism’s defeat.
The sea angel floats along angelically, until it spots a butterfly snail and then you see its devilish side as seemingly out of nowhere it sprouts tentacles to capture its prey. As I noted, the art of surprise will serve us well. I’m tired of being caught flat-footed when the criminals pounce.
We must stop being so easily misled by Russian fairytales where the good man is too old and the con man is just right.
I suggest heeding the lessons from these creatures of the sea, and that way, we begin protecting them from the inevitable extinction that would occur under the feudalism and dominionism planned by the dark and sinister forces trying to install an adjudicated rapist and 34-time felon into our most important office.
Together, we must turn on our enemy and not each other.
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"By sheer force of numbers..."
There are more of us. We need to break through to those who consume only MSM. I'm just not sure how. Billboards about Project 2025 everywhere?
One commenter said earlier today, “Do we want 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to be added to the register of sexual predator addresses in D.C.?”