It’s true that history’s “good guys” have never built concentration camps. Nor have they banned books, degraded public education, deliberately ruined the environment, removed human rights, or allowed their leaders to commit crimes.
When we say that this is a “great” country, we mean it in a very limited and unusual sense of the word.
We all understand that the Trump administration is working its hardest to punish the people who happen to live in states that voted against the president, but isn’t there a limit to the cruelty and dishonesty that we have shoved down our throats on a daily basis?
As this country approaches its 250th birthday, maybe it’s time to think about the moral cesspool that this nation has recently become.
Well, if you’re a full-on QAnon nut-job, the answer is obvious: everything you’re told by our scientists is a hoax designed to make you sick, destroy American capitalism, whatever.
Conversely, anything that comes from the Trump administration is necessarily the truth.
Tens of millions of people wholly reject the findings of science, and believe this crap with not one iota of critical thought.
It would be hard not to notice that the bigots and religious extremists align themselves with the Republican party.
This has probably always been the case, ever since the platforms of the Republicans and Democrats switched places about a century ago.
Yet today, it’s more pronounced, given that the GOP has squirted so far to the ultra-right in the last decade or so. Until quite recently, hate, ignorance and white nationalism wasn’t considered a valid political philosophy–any more than cannibalism or human sacrifice. Now it’s what drives an entire party.
It appears that Trump will always have some support, regardless of how poorly things go for him. Though it may seem surreal to you and me, as shown at left, there are still plenty of people who believe that the president is a tireless and honest servant of the American people.
The claim:
Japan has activated its first megawatt-scale underwater turbine, the AR1100, to harness the power of ocean currents for clean energy. Anchored to the seabed, this 1.1-megawatt machine is now generating electricity from the relentless force of the sea. That’s enough to power over 1,000 homes. It’s Japan’s first grid-connected tidal energy system, and it’s a big deal.
No, it’s not a big deal. In particular, it’s probably fake news.
The problem with ocean current energy, or hydrokinetics more generally, isn’t that it’s theoretically impossible, but rather that it no longer has the potential to compete economically with solar and wind.
FWIW, this wasn’t the case when 2GreenEnergy was launched in 2009, but over the last decade, the world saw a shocking drop in the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of solar and wind, meaning that hydro and the others, e.g., geothermal, biomass, solar thermal, ocean thermal, etc. have been relegated to history.
Obviously, I urge the civilized world not to adopt Kaitlyn’s idea here, but it did make me smile.
It’s understandable to want to know how much damage to human civilization will be done by Donald Trump and his supporters, and the pendulum starts to to swing back toward sanity and responsibility. One hopes the devastation won’t be irremediable, but there no real guarantee.
There are literally hundreds, probably thousands, of robotic solutions, a few of which will eventually replace human labor and save money for fast-food franchisees.
Is this one the best?
Do you think that must be true because they advertise on social media?
If so, jump right on in.
Upon reading the words at left, our first thoughts should be: OK, but watch out for the difference between causation and correlation. Yes, Americans have low life expectancies, and we’re also the only developed country that doesn’t offer universal healthcare. But mightn’t there be other causative factors that are killing us?
What about:
• Lousy education leading to low-paying, highly stressful jobs with short/no paid vacation?
• Rising costs of living driven largely by greedy corporations?
• The poisons in our diets and poor nutrition overall?
• Institutional racism and hate, things that are antipathetic to a calm and harmonious life?
• The knowledge that our country’s government is doing everything in its power to destroy the natural environment?
We lead complete arrays of toxic lifestyles. What precisely do we expect?
Here’s a disgusting reminder of how far we’ve fallen in the past few decades. Just 40 years ago, America was a completely different place than it is now.
