There’s an asinine trend in America today that should alarm anyone with half a brain. I have always enjoyed the expression, “half a brain.” If I took away half of your brain, my common sense, pent-ultimate wisdom, and overall charm would still appeal to the half of the brain that’s well…left! So…the trend? Ready?
Political parties have taken over and we have stopped being Americans!
I’m not going to blather on, pitching how we should all be “good to one another” or even more tolerant. Like that’s ever going to happen? We have fallen into such a sad, partisan state that even something like Global Warming (because I refuse to use the term Climate Change) is called into a “debate” or as I like to call it, treating stupid like a theory.
Back in the day, Big Tobacco had “experts” and “research doctors” decrying the Surgeon General’s report on smoking and actually had paid big name celebrities to endorse Lucky Strike saying stuff like “Lucky Strike - they give you vim, vigor and vitality in the morning!” This was done through the 1950s and 60s along with the Marlboro Man who died of cancer…oh the irony.
Even as late as 2000, now VP Mike Pence was in a congressional debate claiming that “the jury was still out on smoking.” No lobby to see, here. Keep moving.
To clarify, I’ll use something I like to call the Hibachi Method as an example. When I was in junior high, there was this Korean kid whose whole family died because his dad lit a Hibachi, with coals, in the living room to heat the house. Supposedly, he was “off the boat” and didn’t know any better; so the local paper said. As I got older, I developed my own darker theories, but the fact is that they died…all of them.
Figuratively speaking, we’re lighting a Hibachi into our atmosphere; you can’t displace space and not expect a result (hence the Displacement Theory). This is what we are doing to Earth and it is showing up in massive ways; torrential downpours (Harvey and Maria), floods, droughts, dying livestock, less fertile soil, etc. A couple years back, a trillion ton iceberg, the size of Delaware broke off in Antarctica.
Today, Global Warming deniers are hacks paid by some of the country’s biggest polluters. That’s a fact so please drop the media “objectivity” of paid corporate/think tank stooges and talking heads on the right. It’s a 97 to 3 consensus confirming the grim reality. By my math, it’s easier to buy off 3 out of 100 “scientists,” than the other way around.
Even the salvo of the corporatist/Democratic left, natural gas, is flawed; it’s expensive unless we frack. Fracking has become the cheapest way to get it and the results are earthquakes in Texas and Oklahoma and polluted drinking water because the water tables are contaminated. As of this writing, 2,000 cities have water worse than Flint, MI. Biomass is another euphemism. We are burning trees instead of coal for electricity. 63% of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuels and trees, which involve clear cutting.
By the way, all the stuff that we’re now being warned (and arguing) about is the exact same stuff we learned in my 8th grade science class! Even way back in the 1970s our science teacher was warning us about Global Warming. Mr. Keimi said that right about, let’s see, my watch says, NOW, we should be seeing what we have been seeing for the last ten years. This was a junior high science teacher in South Los Angeles, not Nostradamus.
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” – Bob Dylan
Why has this become a partisan issue? Does one side enjoy drought more or less than the other? Does the so called right like to see their kids explode into blood puddles at the beach? Did CO2 suddenly lose the ability to eat oxygen while heating up the planet, burning only Nancy Pelosi to a crisp? Is this knowledge a market of truth cornered solely by environmentalists because the right doesn’t breathe our air or drink the water that is piling up with crap? Sit in your garage with the motor running and breathe deep…refreshing!
Richard Nixon signed the EPA Act into law. He would not get the GOP nomination today…
If it’s about Big Business trying to save money, I get that. Some regulations can be costly, if not outright criminal, but when regulations are called protections, we don’t seem to mind that much. We may even be more objective. That’s like saying the victim of a gunshot wound died from lead poisoning and it’s not really the shooter’s fault because he was over-regulated anyway!
Sometimes, the messenger is just a putz and, in most cases, it’s obvious. Sometimes, it’s some over indulged movie star who read the paper for the first time ever...or Al Gore. However, it doesn’t mean the message is flawed. Who cares where the guy stands on welfare or taxes, or even has a corrupt motive (Gore)? If he has a cure for cancer are we really going to scream, “Screw you, I don’t like your tie!?!?!?!!!”
And to you nitwits, on the so-called left, who love to point out how much fuel costs in Europe; “Its $10 a liter over there, we should be glad we only pay what we do here.” You’re the corporatist, pseudo liberal tools of Big Oil. These knotheads love to point out how much whining we do here. Really? Is that the logic? We’re cheaper than France, so Big Oil ain’t that bad? That’s like the old Chris Rock joke about the uncle who put you through college but molested you…
Here’s a plan; I will gladly support ending corporate tax breaks to the leech/vampires collectively known as Big Oil and pay $10 per gallon in the U.S. so long as everyone with a Social Security number gets free medical and goes to college for free. Yes, free! It was free when I went, and I graduated in 1987!
When did clean air, food or water become a debate? Don’t certain areas fall into common sense or what’s best for the common good? Is there even a decent answer? Meet the new boss, man…
President Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican who was miles ahead of the curve where conservation was concerned. This was in 1901, when being a Conservative meant you liked to, oh… conserve and leave the government out of the rest of our lives. Of course, this was before the 1970s and the hijack of the GOP by Jerry Falwell and the “Christian Right.” That movement was dedicated to shooting common sense squarely in the ass. Constitution be damned! Hallelujah!
We separate “church and state” and that’s why I like living here. Doubt me? Try the Mid-East, or any other region the U.S. has ruined. By the way, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower would not get the GOP nomination today, and Ike loved him some covert operations.
Roosevelt believed in preserving our natural resources and our forests and helped to create national parks and yet the issue of alternative energy has been labeled a “tool of the left” for over 40 years. Assholes are insisting on getting into Hummers again and mock the use of hybrids as something that limits their freedom, as if driving a gas guzzling penis enhancer is a God given right. Since when has being smart and telling the Arabs to screw themselves become partisan? And why would telling the Arabs to go to hell be a bad thing? Maybe because they buy our weapons and hold a ton of our Treasury Bonds? Incidentally, we kiss Saudi ass for the benefit of our allies. Under the Obama administration, U.S. fracking and drilling went up 88% and we are self-sufficient. Obama also approved Arctic drilling twice just because Shell said so. Good times.
The Amazon is having a football field per day cleared for development and livestock.
And folks wonder why I hate political parties. We must be concerned with the good of the country ahead of pithy theories that sound pleasing at our respective righty/lefty cocktail happy hours and limo rides to same. And please, if you think I’m wrong, light a Hibachi before you go to bed tonight and let me know how that works out for you. I’ll pay for the coroner report…Sleep tight.
Abe Abdelhadi hosts the Bitter Truth with Abe Abdelhadi on Texas Free Press and all the usual outlets.
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