If you are watching Fox News you are being lied to about the dangers of climate change by billionaires who are making a fortune off of your ignorance.
They will wantonly destroy this planet so they can keep selling you fossil fuels - to pour into your monster trucks, that make you feel like a patriot - while some orange, incontinent speed freak sells your children’s future off to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Vladimir Putin.
Nobody has ever been played harder that the modern Republican voter.
The kind of American that votes for the GOP and guys like Trump generally view themselves as tough guys/rugged individualists.
In reality, their every thought is being manipulated by pampered billionaires deciding their fate from penthouse suites on Park Avenue or megayachts in Palm Beach.
Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk have a giant, secure hold on so-called tough guys’ balls.
Keep dancing on their strings, you dunces, and there will be nothing left for future generations.
I think about every trip I take in a car now, as there is no need to recklessly burn up fossil fuels.
If I have to do errands I try and do them all at once. I don’t waste a drop of gas or hastily run back out to the store later because I forgot something minor.
Those days are gone.
We are a nation of ‘taking a drive to clear my head’.
It feels like part of the fabric of who we are - but that fabric is frayed and waterlogged and in need of an alteration if we ever hope to be the belle of the ball again.
We put highways through every mountain and meadow and plain in this vast land in the name of progress - and now those same interstates, a well-intentioned Eisenhower created, have the net effect of vast swaths of ugliness and an over-heating planet.
We need high-speed rails, better public transportation and bike-friendly cities if we are going to limit our consumption of the very finite resource that is killing our planet and creating record profits for the oil and gas industries.
Entire villages are being washed into the sea in Libya - cities are flooding across the globe - and the oil industry and its mega-conglomerates like Koch Industries are buying up politicians and Supreme Courts and issuing stock buybacks.
A nation taught to squeeze our souls into the pursuit of buying more stuff.
Many feel they have to believe in consumerism because they have no other choice.
The men who profit the most from capitalism and the tilted scales of economic justice will spend vast sums of treasure to make sure it stays that way.
No media acquisition is too mammoth to protect their rapacious way of life.
There was a time when events like the fires on Maui or the floods in Libya, Greece, Bulgaria, Shanghai and Hong Kong would be all you would hear about on the news for weeks.
That time was before Donald Trump - and the wall-to-wall distraction he provides on both sides of the political aisle for American media.
There’s probably no better example of how he has changed the media landscape than not only the endless punditry regarding his criminal indictments (which is certainly worthy of reporting and in-depth coverage) but when we get into hour five on prime time TV and its still zoom calls with legal experts - is the network serving its viewers or its bottom line?
The way they have latched on to the ‘Is Biden too old?’-GOP talking point, now becoming parroted on more progressive media outlets, is another example of the media troll-campaign-era that Trump ushered in.
It is no longer who has the facts and truth on their side, as much as it is who lies the loudest.
Anyone covering the complete sham of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden without mentioning that none of this is based in any sort of wrongdoing - just a figment of Donald Trump’s political strategy and his treason-weasel congressional cohorts like James Comer and the spineless Speaker McCarthy - is not telling the whole story.
The snark - and lack of empathy or regard for the truth - is a major disservice to the American voter and anyone who consumes the 24/7 barrage of reality TV-style politicking many have seemingly succumbed to these days.
The people who are teaching you not to care about others are short-changing you.
If you fall under their influence you risk being shortchanged on one of the most important aspects of being on this planet.
Caring for others - and that includes all life, not just people.
For the folks who are hoodwinking others into hardening their hearts have a goal in mind.
They know if they can get you to ignore the plight and civil rights of other human beings, it will be that much easier to get you to ignore their destruction of the natural world for profit.
This strategy started being implemented decades ago, finding its philosophical home in the Republican Party and the modern MAGA movement.
‘Patriotic Terrorism’ is a rhetorical device that has been around since the GOP first made fun of the environmental movement by turning conservation into a punchline for the Joe Lunch Box crowd, drawn in and then abused by Reaganomics.
It became a template for laughing off suffering and environmental concerns - and choosing industry over the irreplaceable.
This is always the wrong choice.
I see no difference between the Taliban destroying centuries-old antiquities and Heritage Foundation’s planned reinstatement of ‘Project 2025’.
As the conservative think tank has labelled their plan - that seeks to dismantle and destroy our federal government by enlisting thousands of citizens, with no experience or qualifications, other than blind allegiance to Donald Trump.
Trump seeks to replace the fifty thousand federal workers he promises to fire on day one with MAGA die-hards should he be re-elected.
The guts of the plan is to reinstate Trump’s ‘Schedule F executive order’ allowing him to fire federal workers that were unwilling to break the law to carry out his wishes.
He would do this, as he attempted to with limited success in his earlier (and hopefully only) term, so he can install loyalists willing to divert government resources to Trump-friendly businesses and benefactors.
This, of course, has the potential of turning the USA into an oligarchy overnight.
This is part of his ‘retribution agenda’ which will be catastrophic for our democracy should Trump retake the Oval Office.
President Biden rescinded this EO when he took office.
As Biden is a man who understands we need guardrails to protect against tyrants like Trump.
Public administration is no joke.
Our nation has invested vast sums over the course of our relatively brief history to build a government that (at times) functioned at a level that became a model for democracies around the world.
Bureaucracy doesn’t have to be a bad word; our federal government usually functions best when it is helmed by those who understand this fact.
You want the wonkish in charge of your agencies and administration; it takes a lifetime of dedication and hard work - much of it done in relative obscurity and modesty inside the beltway - to make these agencies run properly and become effective in their oversight and administration of duty.
Ask anyone who grew up inside the Capitol Beltway and they will know what I am talking about.
The unsung heroes that use their education and aptitude to serve the greater good would be cast aside because a greedy conservative group has manipulated a narcissistic madman and convinced a bunch of racist trolls that a properly functioning government is somehow a bad thing.
Of course this same group of mostly privileged Americans will be the first ones with their hands out and looking for the check in the mail the moment disaster strikes.
In the same week we remember 9/11 and mark the 22nd anniversary of that horrific day, we have branches of our military without generals and top brass; our Joint Chiefs Of Staff, Mark Milley has no replacement after he retires on October 1st - because a former college football coach with no history of service or holding office before he became Alabama’s Senator decides to curry favor with anti-abortion wingnuts.
As good an example as I can think of as to what we get when Trump loyalists without experience in government are put in charge.
Ignorance and craven politics - that weakens our nation - and is no way to honor those we lost or insure that it never happens again.
We should always be moving closer to peace and security; and we don’t have a second to lose in the fight against climate change.
When it comes the prospect of Trump’s return to office and the befouling of our congressional integrity by trolls such as MTG with her articles of Impeachment, we need to be as sober, clear-eyed and resolute as we were in the aftermath of 9/11.
The same forces swirling around then - who used such tragedy and violence to prosecute the agenda of Halliburton/KBR and the wishes of Vice President Cheney by enlisting and cultivating the anger of Americans to fight on behalf of oil interests (instead of actual facts) was a mistake that had the complete backing of the billionaires and conservative think tanks that Trump enjoys today.
The only difference between now and then is that the terrorist is wearing a blue Brioni suit and wants to burn it all down to stay out of jail, play golf and make his wealthy friends much richer by making you suffer.
We will not let this happen.
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