Here’s a good example of how Trump can say anything he wants, regardless of how patently false, and his supporters accept it uncritically.
Wind accounts for about 15% of all electricity generation in the United States, which, because it largely offsets the consumption of coal, is making our country healthier while contributing to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
I just caught a TV news segment on the Trump administration’s attempt to eliminate wind energy from our grid mix. It’s possible that the reason behind this is more complicated than it appears, but we all need to take the obvious into consideration: Trump is on the receiving end of uncountable fortunes in gifts from the fossil fuel industry, perhaps in exchange for his destroying the competition.
From this segment, he appears to have convinced tens of millions of his supporters that wind turbines “don’t work,” that they are a blight on our landscape, and they have no place in replacing coal. They appear not to understand that:
Wind energy runs about 15% of the overall grid-mix in the United States, and in some of the plains states, this figure is frequently north of 70%.
Wind largely offsets the burning of coal, which emits huge amounts of greenhouse gases, heavy metals like mercury, arsenic, cadmium, and selenium, as well as dozens of different highly toxic radioactive isotopes.
Of course, we’re talking to an audience that largely believes that climate change is a hoax, and God only knows what they believe about human health. Maybe mercury is kind of like a vitamin? No one knows. Let’s ask RFK Jr.
What public intellectual and science fiction giant Isaac Asimov said here has been the subject of a great deal of discussion over the years. It’s what virtually everyone who’s seen the Earth from space says, i.e., “There are no borders.”
Yet, as our planet’s capacity to support life continues to slip away from us, we seem to be no closer to realizing this aim.
We wouldn’t have had Donald Trump in the first place if McConnell hadn’t treated Democrats with gross unfairness.
Over the years, I’ve read the works of many of the top atheists in the English-speaking world: mainly Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. I’ve noticed that, to a person, they have a fairly well-sharpened wit.
The guy at left has taken this one step further, IMO.
Sam Harris makes a serious point about this, however, when he says, “We actually don’t need the word ‘atheist’ any more than we need a word for the collection of people who disbelieve that Zeus is the King of the Gods.”
Childhood disease deaths have seen a substantial global and U.S. decline over the past century, with rates falling from over 1 in 3 children dying before age five in the early 1900s to roughly 1 in 27 by 2023 globally. This is largely a result of the development and implementation of vaccines that, over this period of time, have essentially eradicated deaths from diphtheria, tetanus, poliomyelitis, smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, and type b meningitis.
Was installing RFK Jr. as the secretary of health and human services and the resultant attack on vaccinations just a random, ill-conceived act, or was it a deliberate act of violence against our nation’s (especially our children’s) well-being?
There is widespread speculation that Trump wants a world that is as stressed out as he can possibly make it, so as to maximize his chances of remaining in power post 2028. I have no proof, but this makes sense to me.
We’ve been discussing the problems that arise–not so much out of ignorance per se, but through ignorance when it’s empowered to make public policy.
If there is one common ingredient to American life under Trump’s second term, it’s the rejection of science. I guess we’re about to see how this works out for public health and safety.
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.
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.
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.
