This essay deals with life and death—of planets and people—and the consequences of our actions. We are either caretakers of life on Earth, or destroyers of it. We cannot be both. If we fail as caretakers, we fail ourselves. The penalty for failure to accept and protect our responsibilities is our own extinction. Our planet and our solar system could become a silent graveyard for other beings in the universe--to observe, assimilate, and to ponder the reasons for our excesses and our failures—and why we failed to keep faith with ourselves. There is no simple solution to the forces man or of nature that confront us. This is merely a short summary and analysis of a few facts behind the dangers. It does not hold the solution to our multi-dilemmas. That will require men and women of vision, compassion, reason, and the willingness to fight for what they believe is the right course of action to take.

Before his death, Carl Sagan reminded humanity of two silent threats that criss-cross our skies on a regular basis. The two threats are the lifeless bodies of Venus and Mars. Both planets are barren of all lifeforms for different reasons. Venus is too hot. It is surrounded by carbon dioxide poisons. It’s surface temperature is around 900 degrees Fahrenheit, and the weight of its atmosphere is 95 times heavier than ours. All life that might have been would be crushed and burnt to a crisp. It travels as a silent reminded of the consequences of a permanent Green House effect. In silence, it asks us this question: “How long must you and I observe it before we realize the same condition can take place on Earth?’

Farther out from our Sun, Mars travels without an atmosphere. With surface temperatures as low as -200 degrees F, it is much too cold for life as we know it. Its surface is constantly being blasted and laid bare by high velocity ions carried by the solar winds from our Sun. None of our probes has detected even one microbe of life there.

Sagan also reminded us of our own planet that he called the Pale Blue Dot, the only home we have ever known. Nearly 100 billion humans have come and gone in our planet of plenty. As a species we did little damage to it while we were mere hunters and foragers. But as consumers and warriors, we have failed ourselves miserably. Today, we all leave ecological footprints so large and polluted that our day or reckoning is coming at us faster and faster in leaps and bounds.

I am neither an ecologist, biologist, nor an astrophysicist. Those professions do not need my help. Listen and pay attention to their worthy practitioners. They are the knowledge-bearers who warn us of our plight. But there is another threat to our survival that needs a lot more light shone on it. And that is this: We need to begin in earnest to learn to stop being liars and cheats, marauders and invaders, greed and fear mongers, and learn how to live together on this planet. In particular, we need to disassemble those ideologies and false beliefs and show how and why they can be as disastrous to our survival as an incoming asteroid.

Around the world, humanity is being threatened by an ideology that has no respect for life, liberty, compassion, truth, or for reason. It is gathering momentum now that could quickly lead to wars on a grand scale. It has many branches, but they are all subsumed under the term authoritarianism. It is an  ideology that is the antithesis of democracy.

Authoritarianism was never limited to Hitler, to Nazism, or to Communism. It is the theft of freedom and material things from humanity, to be held and constrained by a few authority figures. It flourishes wherever and whenever humanity becomes too lax, and too off its guard. Its tools are lies, repeated again and again. It has no respect for you, me, us or for our individual or our collective intelligence. It promises freedom and plenty, yet it imprisons and kills those who dare to oppose it, while it steals more and more wealth in any manner it can. It thrives on greed and power.

In contrast democracy is still an emerging form of government. It also has its flaws. It is based on individual freedom, and the right to think, to do, and to live as freely from authoritarian rule as possible. It combines egalitarianism, individualism, and political freedom as best it can. Its flaw is that is has always been too willing to accept authoritarians. Its allies are all the nations of the world who value freedom.

Today, the Republican Party in the US has been infested by authoritarian thugs. The great majority are those who formerly held themselves out as freedom-lovers who have been effectively captured by authoritarians led by the ignoramus, liar, and cheat--Donald Trump. Their most notable admission of corruption is revealed by their new insistence that the rebellion of January 6, 2010 against the US Capitol and its residents to stop the Presidential vote count and replace it with a fraudulent set of documents was nothing more than “legitimate political discourse.” They have also chosen to rebuke two members of the House of Representatives who stand in opposition to them.

The nearest ally of the American faction of insurrectionists in the world is the re-ascendance of pre-1990 communism in Russia. The new testing round for the supremacy of democracy versus authoritarian communism is occurring around the border of Ukraine. More than 130,000 Russian soldiers have amassed near the border of Russia and Ukraine in what could be the start of a war that no rational person wants, but who are virtually powerless to stop.

Will Russia try to force its control over Ukraine, its capital, and its people? Will NATO and the free world intercede to stop them? Does anyone in a position of decisive action have the will, the knowledge, and the determination about how to end this looming conflict? In this age of nuclear annihilation, all other issues and questions must take second place. But if it is to be resolved, silence is not an option.