Conservatives like this metaphor, because they don’t have a problem ignoring U.S. history and the unprecedentedly high standard of living that Americans had after World War II, when the tax rates for corporations and wealthy individuals were 90%.
Until Reagan changed all this in 1980, we had great schools, and a powerfully affluent middle class that enjoyed pleasant vacations. Now, three out of five Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
Conservative forces in the United States have always sought to separate Americans as a people from those living in the rest of the world.
As we entered the nuclear age, many of our brightest minds pointed out that this was a terribly dangerous and stupid position to take.
Here we are, 75 years later, coming to terms with the fact that nuclear annihilation is no longer the only mass tragedy that can beset humankind; we are faced with a climate emergency that will, if left untreated, render vast regions of the planet uninhabitable.
Dealing with both these challenges require recognizing our common humanity, not “making America great again,” whatever that means.
My mom, a life-long Republican, asked me what I thought of the midterm election results, to which I replied, “My take is that the GOP is in an awkward transition period as it expels Trump and tries to re-establish itself as a sane and honest voice for traditional conservative values.”
That’s about the very nicest and most optimistic thing that can be said on the subject. It’s not untrue, but it’s wishful thinking in that it doesn’t take into account that:
• GOP leadership, though it is clearly turning against Trump, is insanely far to the right, and shows no signs of relenting. Anything that is remotely good for the common American gets 0.0% backing from congressional Republicans.
• Trump is having a tough time, but he’s far from gone. He enjoys immense levels of support in deeply red states, which means that the cowards these morons elect continue to be forced to back the traitor and pretend to believe the Big Lie. The cartoon above makes this like a fait accompli, but there are others that depict this in a different light altogether. My favorite: Siamese twins, Trump and an elephant, with a surgeon delivering the bad news, “It’s too late for separation. You’re going down together.” I expect the truth is somewhere in the middle.
• Of course it’s speculation, but is seems that Trump’s legal woes aren’t going to simply evaporate. The utter chaos that is going to accompany a bushel basket of criminal indictments is a wildcard the size of Alaska.
We’ll have to wait and see.
The meme here expresses exactly what more and more Republicans are realizing to their horror.
It was never about “America first”; it was about the well-being of one man, who’s now walking through a land of disgrace, on his way to what lies on the other side: criminal prosecution and incarceration.
FWIW, I was hoping that all this would happen over a very short period of time, in a brilliant epiphany, like the luminous explosion of a star. As it turns out, it’s happening over a period of years.
But better late than never. This disgusting phase of American history will soon be behind us.
Lots of gratifying and actually amusing things in the news, none the least of which is the utter mess Elon Musk is making of Twitter.
I have to say that essentially everything I’ve predicted about Musk has been wrong. Make a commercial success out of carrying cargo into space? Can’t happen.
In fact, it was the success of SpaceX that led me to say I’d never bet against the man again.
So paying $44 billion for Twitter didn’t seem like something that would set the news cycle on fire–until it did.
I’ve been wondering why discussion about politics have gotten so toxic, so unapproachable. Doesn’t it seem that, even while Trump was president, civil people could have some sort of peaceful conversation about him? Why is everyone so tense about this now?
My current theory:
Until very recently, most Americans were in one of two polar opposite places: progressive or pro-Trump. Now, in a period of just a few months, the “pro-Trump” crowd has fractured into dozens of different pieces: (more…)
These people claim to have a workable solution in small wind, on the basis that its unique design gets around the problems that the industry has traditionally encountered.
The main challenge in small wind, and the reason that the entire enterprise has all but completely disappeared over the last 5 – 10 years, is that, because it generates very little electricity, the devices themselves have to be cheap, and cheap stuff breaks down rapidly in real-world conditions.
As a message on Veterans’ Day, Yusuf / Cat Stevens, apparently standing by his Peace Train, writes: I always stood for the elimination of conflict and wars, and any of those causes that ignite them.
This is perhaps the most compelling reason to address climate change, i.e., because the growing scarcities of resources, including food, potable water, and inhabitable land, will make conflicts fiercer and more numerous.
Jair Bolsonaro’s loss in Brazil and various aspects of the 2022 midterms here in the U.S. stand out as bright spots in terms of dealing with the trend to fascism/nationalism around the world.
On a related matter, it’s gratifying that the people involved in overturning the dreadful U.S. Supreme Court decision Citizens United, which empowers corporations to commandeer our elections, have not given up.
It’s no secret that the American business community and the government entities that support it distrusts the Chinese when it comes to things like IP theft.
I’m not saying that this is unwarranted, but it’s certainly regrettable. That’s because it stands in the way of cooperation, and lack of cooperation means lack of synergy, thus impeding progress in various technological disciplines. Now, if by “technological disciplines” we were referring exclusive to 5G or Big Data, I’m not sure most people would care.
The problem is that this impasse includes the decarbonization of energy and transportation. The COP 27 meeting in Egypt shines a spotlight on precisely why this is so catastrophic. Midway through the conference we find ourselves facing a reprise of so many earlier events, in which everyone paying attention despairs that the 200+ sovereign countries on this planet continue to a) point fingers at one another or b) make promises they have no intention of keeping.
The gentleman I interviewed for a chapter on climate change in my first book, Renewable Energy–Facts and Fantasies, Veerabhadran Ramanathan said, “We had to stay at COP 15 an extra day, because not one of us was able to write down a single declarative statement in the English language that stated what we had accomplished in the previous two weeks.
