Let It All Burn Down
Last edited Tue Apr 5, 2016, 10:14 AM - Edit history (4)
“You want to see America, Louis? Come with me to Room 1013 at the hospital, and I’ll show you America – terminal, crazy and mean.” – Belize, Angels in America, Act 3, Scene 6Not that there was much doubt to begin with, but what doubt remains about America’s priorities, and America’s electorate after Tuesday night would fill no more than the cheek pouches of a brace of rib-shot chipmunks. Venal, Tribal, Crazy, Stupid and Cruel now make up five of the Seven Dwarfs. Of the original cast members, Dopey probably has a reasonably secure job for now (Hell, he found a home in 2014) and Grumpy has a shot, but Doc is just way too elitist. Fucking doctors – what do they know, anyhow? And how come mine looks at me funny when I ask about thimerosol and autism??
Yessiree Bob, there’s no time that I’ve seen in my adult life at which the Kool Kidz Karousel of Beltway Bullshit and the national media’s three-ring circus of Twerk, Rumor and Fear have been so close to melding into the same glittering, oleaginous machine – a vast auto-kraken by which the genetically and orthodontically elect hope to be lifted up by this or that tentacle so that they may someday be recrapped upon the world stage as journalism’s next generation of six-and seven figure Kathie Lee Giffords (but smarter, you see, so we’ll all still be in good hands, there, there now, don’t worry! Edward R. Who?).
May it ever be thus! May the conventional wisdom grow ever more universal, more wise, and more conventional! May none disturb the all-American consensus that has already been conceded by Wise People In Positions Of Power! May our faith that The Market ™ holds the secrets and true worth of all things of and beyond this Earth never falter! And let none ever doubt that stupidity is our strength, magical thinking our passion, and intolerance our aim!
Dear “Better Angels Of Our Nature” Crowd: feel free to tune out at this point, because it’s not going to get any cheerier or more optimistic from this point on out. In fact, it’s not going to get cheery or optimistic in any way. The cold fact, as frozen a slab as northern New Mexico road kill in January, is that America’s voters (yes, I know, only a tiny slice of eligible voters, blahblahblah, harrumph!) reelected ambulatory fetus Scott Walker, reelected moral and mental vacuum Rick Scott, reelected rabid asshole Paul LePage, reelected the fiscal circus clown of Christian Dominionism, Sam Brownback, reelected angry, empty suit Pat Roberts, and elected or reelected dozens more of their ilk.
James Inhofe will now almost certainly control Senate policy on the environment, Ted Cruz may well chair the Science and Technology Committee, and so on down the list, as credulous, venal and stupid at the bottom further elevate predatory, venal and stupid to the top. 26 years and counting since James Hansen came to Congress, with 82% of Arctic sea ice gone in a bit more than a generation, and the shape of our future "becoming clear" much like a skull emerging from a snowbank during a sudden spring thaw, and this is our political “direction”.
I have only one response left to this collective display of stupidity; I can have only one: Fine. Let it all burn down.
A society can survive many things – war, disease and natural disaster; economic collapse, invasion, even genocide. But one thing no society can survive is the willful, loving embrace of ignorance. And this is precisely what has been on display here for more than 30 years. What was predictable longing for an idealized past that never was has warped and mutated into something far worse. What a permanent subset of the American electorate now demands is a reality that bends to its emotional needs. Since it can’t quite have that, it will settle for a continuous magic-lantern show of sufficient dazzle and comfort such that reality is no longer necessary. And if there’s one thing that America still excels at, it’s the projection of illusion.
It is that illusion that needs to go away, and at this point, nothing but 190-proof reality, red in tooth and claw, is likely up to the job. So be it. However many Sandys or Katrinas; however many walls of flame through Colorado Springs or California counties gasping with drought; however many haboobs flaying Phoenix with dust; however many hundreds of millions of trees dead from drought: if these are the clubs that must be splintered again and again and again over the heads of the parliament of mules that this nation has become, so be it.
Nature’s methods of remedial instruction are crudely powerful, and those lessons are likely to accelerate in line with our own destabilization of climate. What is in doubt is whether the speed of nature’s curriculum can keep pace with the upgrade release schedule for the newest iPhone, or PlayStation, or online selfie-sharing killer app or next iteration of Duck Dynasty. Testing our capacities for self-distraction and self-delusion, at this point, appear to be the only truly limitless American endeavors remaining to us.
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And it was further dismantled under George W Bush with "no child left behind". The billionaires created this system, and they continue to get away with it. 
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we're doing pretty well over here
Not that there aren't things to do better, but overall I feel like we're the "sane coast". Its the rest of the country I just don't get sometimes.
In Complete Honesty, I see no other way out of this morass.... Wish I did .... but I don't. 
Party of craven compromisers (formerly known as the "Democratic Party"
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RIP, America.
Hello, Corporate Fascist States for the One Percent
little "hope" I had left. 
Can't happen too soon for my liking either.
but it was a fun read- glad it wasn't hidden 
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Not to cause any alarm, but the tipping point concept is a real one. The feedback effects are real.
The importance of methane as a greenhouse gas is that methane is several dozen times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Apophis is the Egyptian god of death and destruction. It is the name of a real asteroid that will first swing relatively close by the Earth in 2029. That encounter will perturb its orbit so that it will come even closer in 2036.
If you are a Reptilian and you wanted to heat up the Earth, wouldn't you want to do it in the most efficient way possible? After all, as long as there are constraints on resources, something like economics must apply even to extraterrestrials. Efficiency in this case means producing the biggest result with the smallest possible input. Setting human technological development down the path of burning coal and oil could be one such example.
Let's remember that about 100 years ago there were other alternatives. Some of the first cars in the 1890s were electric cars. Ferdinand Porsche built an actual hybrid electric car in the early 1900s. Henry Ford's first cars were designed to run on ethanol. Rudolph Diesel's original diesel engine was intended to run on vegetable oil. Note that vegetable oil is a biofuel that would have no net effect on CO2 levels. Did you know that Rudolf Diesel died a mysterious death while crossing the English Channel?
If you were a Reptilian and wanted to heat up the Earth, it would be beneficial to you to do it as quickly as possible before the humans caught on what was happening in my possibly be able to stop it. Here's a prediction: as climate change happens it will be observed to happen more rapidly than our computer models predict.
There is one technology that is uniquely well suited to both stopping climate change and enabling humanity to take the fight to the Reptilians. That technology is nuclear fusion power. As a nuclear technology, it would emit no carbon dioxide. Also since it relies on a nuclear reaction, the energy density of the fusion fuel is roughly 1,000,000 times as great as that of any chemical fuel could be. High energy density and high power are needed to produce massive spacecraft that can move around the solar system at high speed. If we had nuclear fusion powered battle cruisers we could take the fight directly to the Reptilians at their secret bases in the Kuiper belt.
Nuclear fusion power has a long history of being researched at a relatively low level of funding. Could this be a subtle form of suppressing this technology? See Stephen O. Dean's "fusion never" graph from 1976. At a low level of funding you can have a research program but you will never be able to do the engineering and build the hardware that you need to get to a power plant. This is well known within the fusion community but hardly known at all to the general public.
With the suitable use of adduction (the lesser-known cousin of "deduction" a world of explanatory possibilities opens up to those with just a little bit of imagination. I invite you to offer supporting evidence of the Reptilian explanation for planetary heating.
Why? Because: "If men perceive situations as real, they are real in their consequences."
Or as Isaac Asimov said, "Reasons are many, but actions are few."
this is serious stuff