Epoch Fail

If there's anyone left to write it, history will show that the greatest crime committed by Fox "news", the RWS™, congressional Republicans, and the teabaggers who make them possible, is their climate change denial. With it, they have sealed the fate of our country, and of our planet. It's entirely at their feet. That the senate has abandoned attempts to craft meaningful legislation when the evidence is as clear as it is simply reflects the effects of the aforementioned idiocy. And it makes clear that our system of government is no longer capable of governing, and that the people it serves -- and who elected them -- have not enough collective wisdom to overcome being dragged down. It was a nice country, it was a nice planet, while it lasted.

What does it say about us when the formerly backward China gets it and we don't? What can be more dispiriting than this failure, given the evidence? It's as if a family decided not to leave its burning house because their favorite show was on. Or because someone told them that's not smoke anyway, that fear of flames is just a liberal plot to... to.... uh... something something.

See, the problem is that doing something would require people to think beyond their own personal gratification; and ever since Ronald Reagan they've been told they don't need to. Republicans give lip service to the idea of patriotism and sacrifice for the country they claim to love; but actually to save it, if doing so would require paying a little more in taxes, using a little less oil, thinking long-term, abandoning preferred (meaning "easy") beliefs to face facts, well, forget it. George Bush, after all, told us at the one moment we were together and maybe even shocked into willingness to do the hard stuff, that all we needed to do was go shopping. Go to Disneyland. And, of course, to pay less in taxes. That's when the idea of sacrifice, on life support since Ronald Reagan kissed Bonzo goodbye and placed his hand on the Bible, officially died.

I do understand, of course, that when a party has nothing to offer, tearing down the people with ideas is its only option. But it has always escaped me why certain things -- factual things -- should split along party lines. Climate change, evolution, age of the earth: shouldn't it just be, well, human, to be able to assimilate data, and not political? Evidently not, when one party deliberately and necessarily selects for uncritical thinkers. Non-thinkers. And praises them for it, while laughing at smart people.

How hard is the basic concept? Stop using fossil fuels. Or, to put it another way: STOP USING FOSSIL FUELS!!!!!

Yeah, well, actuation ain't as easy. But you don't even have to believe in anthropogenic climate change to see the need. 1) Sooner or later we'll run out of the stuff (unless you're among the lunatics who believe in abiogenic oil); 2) The faster we get off our need for imported oil, the safer we'll be; 3) NO ONE denies the effects of air pollution on our lungs (do they?), which, after all, are attached to our bodies even if we can't see them. So, you'd think, even as there is legitimate disagreement on how it should happen, everyone should be down with the idea that we have to get there. But no.

What kills me (all of us, actually) is the fact that our failure to do the right thing stems, as usual, not from having had a thorough debate and intelligent discussion of the issue and its solutions. It's because of stupid Senate rules and the way they allow complete idiots like James Inhofe to prevail. And it's because an entire network full of goons and morons legitimizes the idiocy in the eyes of the public. One can only imagine to what end.

I wish I'd live long enough to see those destructors live long enough to realize how wrong they were and how they killed our planet. On the other hand, these are clearly not people who'd ever muster that sort of introspection, extrovision, or self-criticism. But, corporatists that they are, they'll die after me, because they'll be the last to afford thousand dollar a gallon gas, the last to be able to pay for air conditioning, and a grand or two for a hamburger. The last to see what they did, even as they deny it.

One can hope.