Beyond the Weiner Roast

Apart from a graphic illustration of some of the psychological concepts reviewed here recently, the Anthony Weiner frenzy is significant mostly in what it evokes in both the media and the media audience, which is in effect--and I suspect, also a choice--a dangerous distraction from more pressing important matters.

I was going to say so early on Thursday but I found that E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post had more or less said it for me.  And he's used to the Beltway political circus, so his alarm is even more alarming than mine.

A distraction from the threat of GOPer obstructionism, especially on the debt ceiling, a disaster with fresh numbers attached to it.  A distraction from the ongoing perils of the U.S. economy, and especially the possibility that this is the beginning of the future--of escalating fossil fuel costs due to dwindling supply, declining food production due to climate disruptions which manifests first as rising costs.  The role of China and increasing demand for fossil fuel in the current spate of rising gas prices (now falling, though GOPer Gospel to the contrary is unaffected) is documented here.

President Obama is not responsible for high gas prices, but environmentalists are taking him and his administration to task for a number of recent questionable decisions.  These are questions that deserve answers.  As annoying as the environmental lobby can be at times (and I say this as a card carrying member of the Sierra Club), they are right to become louder on these issues, and on the needed leadership directly on the Climate Crisis.

But what everybody is hiding from the most is dramatized in the video above, using Bill McKibben's Washington Post oped words and some very powerful images and revealing graphs.