As Mary’s essay underscores, the new rulers of the universe have vast wealth to buy political power. They also have ownership of major media to deceive with messaging and distract with circuses; corrupt foreign tyrants on their team; and an ideology of supremacy that fortifies their indifference to laws and those not like them.
We the people (serfs…) have the power of numbers and personal agency to say no, your agendas are unacceptable. Start with the midterms. Check your voter registration today. Vote as early and safely as possible. Tell your friends your plan to vote and urge them to set their plans. Volunteer to be a poll worker or with an election protection team.
It’s a long game to restore capable, ethical national leadership dedicated to the aspirations our founders expressed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. With intent and effort, we - the American majority - can do this.
Of course, the profound irony of trump’s desire to “restore” the ‘gilded age’ is the bleak reality of that period of teetering wealth during that period built on the backs of the poor. Not even “trickle down” aided those who didn’t benefit from the giant funds that rained on the already very wealthy… not the child laborers (some as young as 5) toiling in dangerous factories IF they could find a job “better” than begging on a street corner. Or the women crammed into rooms full of sewing machines and closed windows & locked exit doors (ie triangle shirt factory). Men working brutal hours in unsafe factories… but with trump’s current vision I imagine he & his billionaire buds would be very happy with the restoration of these inequities so long as they are assured that their trillionaire status is clearly on the horizon.
A word about methane, from the EPA: "Methane is the second most abundant anthropogenic GHG after carbon dioxide (CO2), accounting for about 11 percent of global emissions. Methane is more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere." By some calculations, mostly depending on the time scale of the analysis, methane is rated at 80 times the potency of CO2.
I don't know how anyone can trust voting by mail at this stage. The USPS management is Trump-owned, and even with the court's decision who can trust them not to delay delivery, lose mail bags, or otherwise make mischief? And when the votes don't arrive, or arrive late, they won't be counted. Can you reverse that with a law suit? Doubt it.
While critics cite concerns about air pollution, climate change, and global economic competitiveness, administration officials insist such worries are “hyperbolic bullshit propagated by woke coastal elites and so-called meteorologists”
The Trump administration is basically like...
“ We don’t hate the environment. We just love our kickbacks more”
Meanwhile, China is moving forward to OWN the 21st century by investing $50 billion in solar and EV infrastructure, citing A Livable Planet as a national priority.
"Economists have a perfectly respectable word for that: externalities."
Well, that's the term economists use, but whether it is respectable is another matter. 'Externality' really means 'external to the market' (the economists' playground) but not, of course, external to anything else.
An 'externality' is usually a social or ecological cost that is not included in the price of a marketed product but which is dumped on innocent bystanders (inlcuding, as you put it, folks at "home"). This means much of what we purchase in 'the market' is underpriced and therefore over-consumed.
In effect, 'externality' assumes there is an 'environment' that exists separate from, and independent of, human society. This 'environment' is where worn-out or nasty stuff is supposed to go when we throw it 'away'. These beliefs are the pleasant, if delusional, fictions we use to excuse all the sorts of potentially harmful polluting/desecrating activities you describe and that the EPA was set up to prevent.
The concepts of 'externality' and 'environment' are made-up social constructs. They conspire to separate people psychologically from reality; they facilitate human destruction of the ecosphere that sustains us. The increasing ravages of climate change/global heating are but one symptom of the growing toll of non-market 'externalities' on real world life-support functions (methane 'super-emitters, anyone?).
Never underestimate the capacity of self-delusion to trash an entire 'civilization'.
I suppose--with a close reading of history, and taking into account the basic Hegelian principle--thesis, antithesis, synthesis--life was, and will always be--a struggle.
There may be a moral arc to history (sometimes hard to see just because of power plant pollution) but that's often a poetic hope rather than a hard fact of life.
This most recent instance of the Supreme Court doing the right--the fair, the just--thing for a change and rejecting the Trump gang's attempted extermination of the vote is heartening--but Trump and this gang of obsessive vengeheads never stop finding "reasons" (rationales) for their piratical behavior. ..Even as we speak, they're trying to get their way by having bills passed by their Congressional stooges, jamming the calendars of various courts and--when they can--just committing home invasions into our Constitution.
These people need to be stopped--either with care, as you would stop a tantrum-throwing child, or with a necessary imposition of parental imposition of authority.
This current crew ARE like out of control children who, in their short-sighted, egocentric greediness, will burn down the house unless they are stopped... It's a complicated society and political system we live in, but with all its checks and balances, it can sometimes (like right now) be easily tipped out of balance. It's survival as living, breathing democracy rests on the good faith understanding that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us-- Why is that so hard for some people to understand?
That fundamental bit of fundamental human wisdom seems to be incomprehensible to the current crop if babies in charge right now. ...Not that it should be seen that way, but The Supremes just gave us a gift--the trick will be to keep fighting the horde of MAGA Zombies until we once again reach--even if it's temporary, a state of political equilibrium.
As Mary’s essay underscores, the new rulers of the universe have vast wealth to buy political power. They also have ownership of major media to deceive with messaging and distract with circuses; corrupt foreign tyrants on their team; and an ideology of supremacy that fortifies their indifference to laws and those not like them.
We the people (serfs…) have the power of numbers and personal agency to say no, your agendas are unacceptable. Start with the midterms. Check your voter registration today. Vote as early and safely as possible. Tell your friends your plan to vote and urge them to set their plans. Volunteer to be a poll worker or with an election protection team.
It’s a long game to restore capable, ethical national leadership dedicated to the aspirations our founders expressed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. With intent and effort, we - the American majority - can do this.
Of course, the profound irony of trump’s desire to “restore” the ‘gilded age’ is the bleak reality of that period of teetering wealth during that period built on the backs of the poor. Not even “trickle down” aided those who didn’t benefit from the giant funds that rained on the already very wealthy… not the child laborers (some as young as 5) toiling in dangerous factories IF they could find a job “better” than begging on a street corner. Or the women crammed into rooms full of sewing machines and closed windows & locked exit doors (ie triangle shirt factory). Men working brutal hours in unsafe factories… but with trump’s current vision I imagine he & his billionaire buds would be very happy with the restoration of these inequities so long as they are assured that their trillionaire status is clearly on the horizon.
I seem to remember a story of an Amazon warehouse worker who collapsed from heat prostration.
A word about methane, from the EPA: "Methane is the second most abundant anthropogenic GHG after carbon dioxide (CO2), accounting for about 11 percent of global emissions. Methane is more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere." By some calculations, mostly depending on the time scale of the analysis, methane is rated at 80 times the potency of CO2.
I don't know how anyone can trust voting by mail at this stage. The USPS management is Trump-owned, and even with the court's decision who can trust them not to delay delivery, lose mail bags, or otherwise make mischief? And when the votes don't arrive, or arrive late, they won't be counted. Can you reverse that with a law suit? Doubt it.
While critics cite concerns about air pollution, climate change, and global economic competitiveness, administration officials insist such worries are “hyperbolic bullshit propagated by woke coastal elites and so-called meteorologists”
The Trump administration is basically like...
“ We don’t hate the environment. We just love our kickbacks more”
Meanwhile, China is moving forward to OWN the 21st century by investing $50 billion in solar and EV infrastructure, citing A Livable Planet as a national priority.
Omigod. Your essay is outstanding and so exactly true and right.
"Economists have a perfectly respectable word for that: externalities."
Well, that's the term economists use, but whether it is respectable is another matter. 'Externality' really means 'external to the market' (the economists' playground) but not, of course, external to anything else.
An 'externality' is usually a social or ecological cost that is not included in the price of a marketed product but which is dumped on innocent bystanders (inlcuding, as you put it, folks at "home"). This means much of what we purchase in 'the market' is underpriced and therefore over-consumed.
In effect, 'externality' assumes there is an 'environment' that exists separate from, and independent of, human society. This 'environment' is where worn-out or nasty stuff is supposed to go when we throw it 'away'. These beliefs are the pleasant, if delusional, fictions we use to excuse all the sorts of potentially harmful polluting/desecrating activities you describe and that the EPA was set up to prevent.
The concepts of 'externality' and 'environment' are made-up social constructs. They conspire to separate people psychologically from reality; they facilitate human destruction of the ecosphere that sustains us. The increasing ravages of climate change/global heating are but one symptom of the growing toll of non-market 'externalities' on real world life-support functions (methane 'super-emitters, anyone?).
Never underestimate the capacity of self-delusion to trash an entire 'civilization'.
I suppose--with a close reading of history, and taking into account the basic Hegelian principle--thesis, antithesis, synthesis--life was, and will always be--a struggle.
There may be a moral arc to history (sometimes hard to see just because of power plant pollution) but that's often a poetic hope rather than a hard fact of life.
This most recent instance of the Supreme Court doing the right--the fair, the just--thing for a change and rejecting the Trump gang's attempted extermination of the vote is heartening--but Trump and this gang of obsessive vengeheads never stop finding "reasons" (rationales) for their piratical behavior. ..Even as we speak, they're trying to get their way by having bills passed by their Congressional stooges, jamming the calendars of various courts and--when they can--just committing home invasions into our Constitution.
These people need to be stopped--either with care, as you would stop a tantrum-throwing child, or with a necessary imposition of parental imposition of authority.
This current crew ARE like out of control children who, in their short-sighted, egocentric greediness, will burn down the house unless they are stopped... It's a complicated society and political system we live in, but with all its checks and balances, it can sometimes (like right now) be easily tipped out of balance. It's survival as living, breathing democracy rests on the good faith understanding that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us-- Why is that so hard for some people to understand?
That fundamental bit of fundamental human wisdom seems to be incomprehensible to the current crop if babies in charge right now. ...Not that it should be seen that way, but The Supremes just gave us a gift--the trick will be to keep fighting the horde of MAGA Zombies until we once again reach--even if it's temporary, a state of political equilibrium.