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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

At left is what Noam Chomsky said on this subject when he was a much younger man.

Note that this is the essence of what it means to be an existentialist.  First, we exist.  We make choices, and those choices define who we are.

There are people who believe they can get around this fundamental truth by saying, for example, “I’m a Christian, and I following the teachings of the bible.”  Yes, but you chose to follow those teachings.

This is what existentialists mean when they say that we’re “condemned to be free.”  There is no escaping our freedom.

To me, there is a certain beauty here.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Virtually all Americans, and plenty of people elsewhere around the world, can recite vast passages from the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.”

When the Scarecrow laments his condition, Dorothy responds that, if somehow a brain could be conferred on him, “With the thought’s you’d be thinkin’ you could be another Lincoln if you only had a brain.”

This should give us all pause.

In 1939, the United States was just about to enter the Second World War repel to fight European fascism.  Take a moment to think how Donald Trump and his hateful, stupid blathering would have been regarded at the time, and what an utter fool and asshole he’d be correctly regarded as.

Yes, these were simpler times, but they were dominated by people who could actually think.  There’s a lot to be said for that.

 

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Whatever your political stripes, if you’re an American, I urge you occasionally to take in a few minutes of Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, or perhaps some other source of far-right-wing programming that I may have missed.

A couple of points you’ll notice immediately:

1) Joe Biden comes up in a huge percentage of all news stories.  Yes, that’s the former president whose actual relevance in our world today ranks just under how we ought to keep our rain gutters free of fallen leaves.

2) Democrats are praying that Donald Trump is dead, hanging their hopes on the fact that he took a few days off.

In truth, many progressives actually do root for an untimely death of our 47th president, though most of us see Trump’s death, under any and all circumstances, as a missed opportunity for redemption.  We can either succeed in repudiating an authoritarian dictator in the United States or we can’t.

It’s that simple. We’re either a greater, smarter country than Trumpism, or we aren’t.  The premature death of Donald Trump won’t help us at all.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The answer to the question here is no. There are two solid reasons that tens of millions of American voters still stand behind Trump:

1) A great number of rich people who were tragically born without a moral compass understand that they are consistently getting wealthier due to Trump’s policies of looting the treasury and gutting the federal government, so as to pass the lucre onto the top 0.1%, most of whom are Trump top donors.

2) Working class racists are getting something of perhaps even greater value–the joy of watching non-Whites suffer incredible pain in their already miserable lives.  Their beliefs that all this is making America great again are re-enforced by the far-right “news” media.

If it weren’t for these two factors, Trump never would have gotten anywhere near the White House in 2016, and certainly not in 2024.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

When we look back on the opening of Trump’s second term as U.S. president and try to identify a pattern, something emerges that would have been unthinkable anytime earlier in American history.

Apparently without any real thought, and on any given day:

1) Trump does something outrageous.  If you think you can guess what form this will take tomorrow, I’ll bet you $10 against a dime you’ll be wrong.

This can take any of a variety of forms: threatening military actions against one or more allies, using the justice system to harass/neutralize a political enemy, exonerate him for his crimes, invading large Democrat-run cities with federal troops, appointing crackpots to important cabinet posts, or, as in the case at left, doing something apparently benign, albeit idiotic in the extreme, trying to rename a large body of water that has been internationally recognized for its name for hundreds of years.

2) He either runs with it, or not. He’s clearly not embarrassed by anything, however stupid, he does or says.  He favors whatever plays with the media at any given moment in time.

The “Gulf of America” story is a great example; it came into and went out of the news fairly quickly.  Trump’s extreme tariffs on countries he doesn’t like have shifted in the breeze.  What inane idea that’s gotten him in the news today may be around tomorrow.  Or it may not.

To almost half of Americans, Trump’s behavior sounds like a solid and sane basis on which to run the world’s most powerful nation; I disagree.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It’s unclear how/if the sign here is actually helping matters, but that’s not the point.

“Natural” disasters like massive floods are increasingly common and severe, and emergency management for events of this scale are impossible to implement effectively at the state level.  This is why Trump’s plan to dismantle FEMA can only increase Americans’ level of suffering.

It’s almost as if Trump is deliberately making it tougher to live in the United States than it’s ever been before. It’s true that people who are miserable are desperate for a forcible solution.  They’re increasingly likely to find ridiculous statements credible, like, “I alone can fix it.”

Could this be part of his plan?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Trusting any politician to tell the truth about his/her true motives is a foolish venture.  In reality, why is Joni Ernst hanging it up?

Anybody’s first guess would be that somehow she finds it morally unacceptable to continue to be a part of Trump’s driving march toward autocracy.

If that is indeed the case, good for you.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Yesterday I met one of the creators of the modern “Superman” movie series, and he asked me if I was going to see his latest piece of work.  I explained, “No, I don’t avail myself of this entire genre. I do, however, remember with great fondness the early television show featuring George Reeves, and its intro theme that included the line:

Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way.
It may come as a surprise to young people that there actually was such a thing as the “American way”; it was synonymous with decency and fairness for everyone.
Nowadays, I suppose, if there still is such a thing, it means getting rich via corruption and punishing those less fortunate, especially non-Whites.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Tristan Snell is a lawyer and legal commentator featured on MSNBC and NPR, and in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

There are bound to be a few sociopaths in any society, and, if that society is a democracy, these nut-jobs are likely to elect sociopathic leaders.

The problem with America right now is that these people are not even close to “few“; they’re everywhere.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Maybe I’m just cynical, but I’m uncompelled by start-ups’ claims that early investors are positioned to disrupt some huge industry. Take the people at left, “Miso Robotics,” for instance.

Is the use of robotics rapidly replacing human labor in fast-food?  Of course. Is Miso Robotics magically stationed to win a significant market share and make their investors rich?  Maybe, but I’m skeptical.

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