Source: The Crucial Years
by Bill Mckibben
“Way back in January of 2015, six months before Donald Trump began America’s escalator-like descent, Sen. John McCain of Arizona took to the floor of the Senate to describe Russia as ‘a gas station masquerading as a country.’ He was responding to the invasion of Crimea, and demanding the US stand up to Moscow; within a few weeks others has shortened his bon mot to ‘gas station with nukes.’ It hit at an essential truth: Russia, for all its size and might, hadn’t developed much of anything in recent decades; Vladimir Putin survived by pumping gas to the rest of the world, resting on the weapons his Soviet predecessors had bequeathed him. Eight months into the second Trump administration, what are we?” (09/09/25)
https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/america-a-fracked-gas-station-with