A World Without U.S.

"The great battle is between science and capitalism, and science has to win."

Kim Stanley Robinson

 

After the latest tragic Supreme Court decision chipping away at effective constitutional democracy, I've taken a step back from the daily drone of so-called news.  The logic of what is happening leads to doom in a variety of flavors.  So I go again to someone whose professional purview is the future, for a different perspective.

Since about 2002, I've been reading Kim Stanley Robinson's novels as they've been published (beginning with The Years of Rice and Salt, an alternative history that remains among my favorites), after and while catching up with his earlier work--notably the Mars Trilogy (Red, Green and Blue Mars) that made his famous, at least within the science fiction community; the "Three Californias" visions of different near futures, and the Science in the Capital trilogy (2004-2007) about the climate crisis future.

So when The Ministry for the Future was published in 2020, I read it in the context of his past work.  I admired it, of course, and saw its importance.  Then President Obama included it in his list of his favorite books of the year, and that seemed to accelerate its entry into a wider world of readers and influential people. It has since become something of a global phenomenon.

I've recently begun re-reading it, having acquired the first paperback edition (with the cover I love, featuring an old clock face with no hands) so I can mark it up as I read more carefully. 

I met Stan (as he prefers to be called) in 2013, when he gave a talk and then a bookstore reading here in Arcata.  He talks well and fluidly, and responded generously to my questions.  Probably about then I began checking out his video interviews and talks, mostly on YouTube.

So I continued to check out new videos, which multiplied rapidly after 2020, as he became an international figure based on Ministry. He was invited to several UN climate meetings, first as an observer and then as a participant, though not a voting representative.  He's been sought after as a speaker and interviewed by principals of a number of organizations (think tanks in the broadest sense), as more and more people dug deep into his book. So during the six or so years since first publication, The Ministry for the Future became his full time job: his ministry (and he's said recently that he had something like that meaning in mind when he chose the book's title: advocating for those in the future as something like a religious commitment.)

Through the resulting videos I kept up on his thinking.  At first he seemed dazzled by what he was learning, including that several of the ideas he proposed in the book were already being considered by scientists and major banks.  Especially after President Biden's economic response to the pandemic and his signature legislation that jump-started American clean energy technology industries,  he seemed to become more optimistic about the chances of effectively addressing climate distortion.  

Then the second coming of Chaos, and the systematic attempts to dismantle everything that might help address the causes and effects of the climate crisis.  Including, quite recently, the final dismantling of the National Science Foundation.   

His Science in the Capital trilogy of about 20 years ago was about addressing the climate crisis, and the then- new danger of abrupt climate change. (He more recently edited these three into a single novel called Green Earth.  However my affection for the original trilogy remains unaffected.)  Notably, the protagonists include an American President and scientists centered at the National Science Foundation.

Like the more exaggerated feature film, The Day After Tomorrow, a concern in these books was disruption of the Atlantic current, which would severely alter climate in the Americas, Africa and Europe, and not for the good. Shortly after that in the real world, scientists began downplaying the possibility--until last month, when two studies suggested that the current's collapse is more likely than recently believed.

One of the books in his capital trilogy describes a climate-derived disaster, a storm that floods Washington and other places on the U.S. East Coast.  He named the storm Sandy--years before the hurricane of that same name ravaged the East Coast, including flooding New York City, as well as killing 254 people in eight countries. 

I asked him about this when he was in Arcata--did he think it would take an even bigger climate-related disaster to motivate and focus climate crisis efforts?  His answer seemed uncharacteristically vague to me.  But in his 2020 return to the theme, he begins Ministry with an horrific catastrophe, a heat wave so intense that millions of people in India die.  And that's when things start to happen.

But probably the major difference in the leadership that responds to climate distortion in this novel is that the Ministry is an international organization under the UN Paris Agreement, and the leading countries in the ensuing efforts are India, China and the European Union. Robinson wrote this novel at the ragged end of the first Chaos term, and so this time the United States is almost irrelevant, a weaker and hopelessly chaotic country, basically held in quiet contempt (except for California.) 

And so it is coming to pass for the United States.  In a recent interview, Robinson is scathing about the effects of the second Chaos terms so far, which he characterizes with the scientific term "stupid."  

He notes what is undisputed: Europe by and large is healthier than the U.S., with lower infant mortality and early death, while healthcare is cheaper.  Adequacy of income is more widespread, and people are happier. He cites a poll that suggests people seem even to be happier with their government in China than in the U.S.  He notes that these societies are much more science-based.  And they are moving more deliberately towards a green future.

So-called plug-in solar is widespread in Europe and elsewhere, though largely unknown in the U.S. due in part to heavy lobbying by recalcitrant power companies.  Cheap, portable and efficient (and most often made in China), it is rapidly changing these societies.  Robinson has been told that the collapse of the power grid that took out the air conditioning and allowed millions to be baked alive in extreme heat-and-humidity in his Ministry novel, is now much less likely in India because of widespread cheap solar.  

Things are hardly perfect in these countries, and fossil fuel pollution is still rampant, not reducing greenhouse gases fast enough.  But what Robinson calls the utopian vision of avoiding a mass extinction event, or even the collapse of human civilization, now has its centers of hope elsewhere, in societies that embrace a social ethic and especially science.

Science is hardly blameless or infallible, and scientists prone to arrogance and cupidity and denial of consequences of their researches have much to answer for.  But at its best science deals with reality, and ideally does not lie about it.  

"Sanity will prevail," Robinson said in a recent interview.  "Reality is reality because it bites.  It doesn't go away when you pretend [otherwise.]" Or on another occasion: "What can't go on, won't go on."

It's not pretty to watch the self-destruction of America as it has been developing since its inception, and as it became a haven and an example to the world.  It will take longer to reverse the destruction and rebuild than to destroy, especially when Supreme Court decisions collapse foundations while the Executive weakens and destroys institutions and the hapless Legislature paws the ground. 

 It's not good news for those who expect a future in this country.  Already, and for the first time in nearly a century, the U.S. is experiencing more out-migration than immigration (and U.S. birth rates are well below replacement level.)  People aren't even visiting--why would they? When they might wind up shackled on the floor of a bus on the way to an ICE concentration camp.

The implication of The Ministry for the Future is that while huge problems exist and will grow, the societies built on sanity will lead in addressing them. (Though the novel also posits a fair amount of violence.)

 Other nations in the real world, disgusted and no longer dazzled by the superpower United States, are already beginning this process on many fronts, including climate. In April, representatives of sixty nations met to strategize on reducing fossil fuel consumption and emissions feeding climate distortion.  For possibly the first time in international climate crisis meetings, the U.S. was not invited. 

This meeting was organized in frustration with the regular United Nations process, which these nations (meeting in Columbia) felt weren't getting the job done, at least not fast enough.  But while the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were singled out as unwanted obstructionists, other nations not invited included India, China and Russia.  It's very unlikely global climate disruption responses can be effective without China and India.  But without the U.S.?  Maybe that's the future. 

Every Day in America

 On her Monday report, Rachel Maddow again focused on the Chaos administration's efforts to build scores of new ICE prison camps by retrofitting empty warehouses all over the country, and the ongoing protests to stop them.  There were well over a hundred protests in just the past week, as well as lawsuits and other official efforts--as every one of these proposed sites is being opposed.

She noted again that the national media is by and large not covering this story, though local TV news and local newspapers are, as well as reports on specific efforts on social media and Substack. 

She is correct, of course that it is an important story, and worth covering not only for the threat that these concentration camps pose but for the effectiveness of the opposition, as not one of them has been completed and many have been abandoned.  

But another important story not being covered anywhere near its importance is what is happening to real people every day in ICE prisons that are open right now.  Individual stories make the news for a day or two, especially the more novel of the outrages.  Like the 85 year old French widow of an American army veteran with a valid application for a green card who was taken bodily from her bed, chained and otherwise restrained and imprisoned for more than two weeks.  Formerly a supporter of the Chaos immigration policy she saw the realities of these prisons where people were "treated like dogs."  Her own fragile health was worsened, and now suddenly deported back in France she is being treated for PTSD.

Other stories fly by.  The mother and five children who have been imprisoned without trial for almost a year in Texas, where all of them have experienced serious physical and psychological consequences, all because of something the divorced husband did... The family that escaped religious persecution in India and in the normal course of applying for asylum were suddenly forced into the Dilly concentration camp, where some 5200 parents and children have been imprisoned.

Other stories focus on the lack of proper nutrition and especially of medical care, and the consequences: such as the child that suffered lifelong hearing loss because of an untreated infection. Inmates at many of these prisons have died.   These stories are not about unusual cases: they are the norm.

From the slipshod and at times demonstrably corrupt selection of victims, to their initial treatment (worse than animals taken to the slaughter) to the death camp conditions and the reflexive lying and resistance to court orders of officials--there has been nothing like this on American soil in generations, if ever (perhaps only treatment of Native Americans in the 19th century.)   This is beyond cruelty and blatant injustice.  This is official sadism.

And it is for-profit sadism.  This is the apotheosis of turning over the mechanics of imprisonment to profit-making corporations, on the always dubious theory that they will do the same job more efficiently and yet still make a profit, which began in the Reagan administration and has grown to massive proportions since. 

We don't even have to wonder what future historians might say about this.  We can pretty much guess what past historians would say about it, once they got beyond speechless horror.  There is nothing so basic to American principles and practices, and nothing so despicably cruel except the withdrawal of lifesaving aid to millions of the world's most impoverished children engineered by the sadist racist Musk. 

Have even the worst of the worst ever been treated like this in America?  Thrown in prison and their locations kept secret, denied fundamental rights, and imprisoned without trial and without a sentence? And done so openly and intentionally?  Have people only accused of relatively mundane violations of immigration law ever before been terrorized, forced from their homes in bedclothes, manacled and thrown into trucks and buses with less care than if they were packages? All as regular practice?  Children who are the definition of innocence before the law, seized in fear, imprisoned for weeks and months, exposed to diseases, their lives shattered, with effects on their bodies and minds that will likely last the rest of their lives?

But it is not the worst of the worst that are being imprisoned by ICE.  It is ICE and the people doing the imprisoning who are the worst of the worst.  The soul of America is at risk because of this alone, and though there are many stories and many protests, this demands greater sustained attention.   

What We're Being Distracted From

 From mostly Political Wire over the past three days:

 A  new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll finds just 35% of U.S. adults approving of President Trump’s job performance, with 61% disapproving — a net approval rating of -26.

A new American Research Group poll finds just 32% of Americans say they approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president and 63% say they disapprove.

A new AP-NORC poll finds Donald Trump’s approval rating on the economy dropped to 30%, down from 38% in last month’s poll.

A new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll finds 55% of U.S. adults say the House should vote to impeach Trump. 37% oppose, and 8% are unsure. That net +18 verdict puts Trump in the neighborhood of the numbers Richard Nixon saw at the peak of the Watergate scandal in August 1974.

NBC News:Overall, 37% of adults approve of Trump’s performance as president, while 63% disapprove — including 50% who said they disapprove strongly — putting his job rating at the lowest point of his second term in NBC News Decision Desk polling. Two-thirds of respondents also disapproved of Trump’s handling of inflation and the Iran conflict.

Meanwhile, from Gallup:

“Americans’ approval of Congress has fallen to 10%, barely above its all-time low of 9%, while disapproval has climbed to 86%, tying the record high for the institution.”

And Dept. of Those Who Live By the Sword:

More Republican influencers, including former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), are doubting or outright denying aspects of the assassination attempt against President Trump, Wired reports.

Yet Another Possibly More Manic Monday

Despite repeated warnings

 From those who ought to know

 Well he's got his own agenda

 And so he'll go

 Those who shout the loudest

 May not always be the smartest 

But they have their proudest moments

 Right before they fall...

From "Despite Repeated Warnings," a song written and recorded by Paul McCartney in 2018, specifically about a President who was known around here as Homegrown Hitler, and now as Boss Chaos, King of the Psychotics and Sociopaths, who has again boxed himself into a corner and threatens mass murder.

Just Another Manic Monday

 

Crisis Relocated

 

Tuesday began with Boss Chaos threatening that "an entire civilization will die tonight."  At last this evoked the kind of widespread moral condemnation his threats have deserved for days, though with a notable lack of the eloquence, from U.S. political leaders (even a Republican or two), international leaders and leaders of perhaps former allies, and even some media. 

 In his immediate response, Pope Leo said that the threat was "totally unacceptable." "There are certainly issues of international law here, but even more, it is a moral question concerning the good of the people as a whole, in its entirety.”

Over 85 Democratic members of Congress--both Senate and House-- called for Boss Chaos to be impeached or removed from office via the 25th Amendment. 

Then a few hours later, both sides at war in Iran backed away from the brink. Eventually Iran confirmed that it had agreed to a two-week cease fire with the U.S. and Israel, and that it would permit safe passage through the straits, though they would remain under its control.  They all agreed to negotiations for a formal end to the current warfare.

Both sides claimed victory.  Oil prices dropped below $100 a barrel and the U.S. stock market rose.  Iran has control of the straits, which it did not have before.  It's expected they will charge fees for passage.  Even in the best case scenarios the economic consequences of the warfare and loss of safe passage through the straits will continue for months, if not longer. 

Yet even after the cease fire was announced, the chorus calling for the ouster of Boss Chaos continued.  MA Senator Markey is among those, and he accused Chaos of advocating genocide. More public figures were calling Boss Chaos "unhinged" and dangerous.  In an eloquent presentation, Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out that according to international treaty, the civilization-ending threats of Boss Chaos were themselves war crimes.  "Hitler never said that," nor had any other head of state in history.  

O'Donnell also highlighted recently ex-military officers speaking out on current military refusing to follow blatantly unlawful orders.  The general he interviewed also called the threat itself illegal, and a threat of genocide.  In a different venue former General McCaffrey agreed with those saying that the U.S. presidency itself is in crisis.

Meanwhile, Tuesday was also an election day.  Politico concluded:

 "Democrats just had one of their best election nights" since the 2024 elections. "Again. In Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, the Democratic-backed candidate sailed to a nearly 20-point landslide victory Tuesday in a battleground [the Republican presidential candidate] carried less than two years ago. Meanwhile, a Georgia Democrat slashed [the Chaos] margin of victory by two thirds in the state’s reddest district despite losing the election — the most significant overperformance the party has seen across all seven House special elections so far this cycle.

This Moment Continued

Paul Krugman ends his latest post:

"The horrible but undeniable fact right now is that America has a terrorist president. And the whole world knows it. But we still have a chance to show the world that he is an aberration, that we are not a terrorist nation. And we can do that by standing up for the values that have always defined us."

Those values are expressed or interpreted in specific areas, by law.  The cliche of the moment is war crimes which is a term of law.  These are rules agreed to in various pacts of nations--hence "international law"--but because of official US agreement, they also constitute US law.  That in turn qualifies them absolutely to be considered "high crimes" according to the Constitutional predicate for presidential impeachment and conviction.

 But long before legal or political-legal decisions are made, the world will witness the United States as criminal--and beyond legal terms--as immoral.  If these attacks result in widespread death, suffering, starvation and so on, they will be seen as crimes against humanity. This nation will be scorned and shunned, dishonored through whatever history is left, in a way the US has never experienced. 

  Beyond any technicalities of war crimes that Politico reports the Pentagon is currently painfully parsing (is it ok to destroy desalinations plants because Iranian soldiers drink water?), the intentions of any such presidential orders is crystal clear--in every statement made by Boss Chaos and Demented Crusader Hegseth.  Bombing Iran back to the stone age (repeated by both, and again by the WH press secretary)--in other words, utterly destroying beyond repair all the basic infrastructure of a civilization-- goes way beyond military objectives.  It could constitute the largest, most conspicuous criminal and immoral military action since Nixon's bombing in Southeast Asia, and as a crime against humanity possibly back even further to the Holocaust.

Judging from reporting on social media, people seem to be taking these possibilities more seriously than anyone in Washington or most of the news media.  There is some assumption that Boss Chaos will once again pull back from the brink.  But the tone of the rhetoric over the weekend is deeply troubling, beyond suggesting that (as Marjorie Taylor Green posted) the president "has gone insane."  His later appearance on the White House lawn standing next to the Easter Bunny while lecturing assembled children on his warmongering certainly supports that conclusion--but then, so much already has, and for a long time.

What is new is the militaristic and rabid so-called Christian right rhetoric. The scattering of expletives in the Chaos post on Easter morning suggests Hegseth's influence--tough military guy kind of talk--but the tone also supports Hegseth's increasingly obvious far right Christian nationalism, which seems to have subverted the military itself in new appointments and promotions to replace the very many top military professionals he fired, especially women and men of color.  While promising to bring "hell" to 90 million people (hell being a Christian construct), the Chaos post also insulted the entire Muslim religion and all its adherents everywhere with one sarcastic and contemptuous reference to their deity.  

That kind of self-righteous religious fervor--especially when it is so basically twisted--is infectious, and does not lead to rational decisions.  Which it why this moment is truly dangerous.

Could hell be delivered even by nuclear bombs?  Garrett Graff asks the question and answers: “The simple fact that we can’t say ‘definitely no, absolutely not, for sure’ is an astounding commentary on how unhinged and dangerous his presidency has become and how far off the rails the war with Iran has gone... It sets the next 36 or so hours up as one of the weirdest and scariest moments in geopolitics of our lifetimes.”

The intention alone must be condemned in stronger terms.  So far I've seen it given that weight only in Taylor Green's post.  She called it Evil. 

This Moment

 After doing his crime boss glare at the Supreme Court, Chaos reportedly "discussed" with Attorney General Pam Bondi her imminent firing on the ride back.  It wouldn't be surprising if it was announced a little more quickly than planned--something had to take the next day headlines away from that evening's so-called presidential address and its disastrous effect on the major markets, that also sent oil prices straight up. 

That's not supposed to be the response or the purpose of such messages to the nation, the heirs of FDR's fireside chats on the radio and historic Oval Office television addresses, such as JFK's explanation of Soviet missiles discovered in Cuba, and the US policy response.  It's a rally round the flag moment of unity and seriousness if there ever is going to be one. 

 That's clearly not what happened as a result of Boss Chaos' desultory old news speech on the bombing of Iran, which continues.  And the polls on this horrible warfare in the Middle East are shouting that acceptance of it is likely never going to happen.

As for Bondi, one of her photo portraits at the department formerly known as Justice was quickly trashed by an employee.  Can't wait to see what happens to all the Boss Chaos statues.  I really can't wait.

Meanwhile, her replacement (supposedly temporary) is the Chaos lawyer who sweet talked Epstein partner and imprisoned sex offender G. Maxwell and broke incarceration rules to transfer her to a cushy new lockup. His brief will no doubt be to shield the public from any files incriminating Boss Chaos and his family, while trumping up charges for retribution--the crimes generally being defying Boss Chaos, and/or defending reality.    

But the obscene and obscenely wasteful and expensive fires from the skies continue in Iran and elsewhere in the region.  From the beginning this warfare has been indistinguishable from wanton destruction and intentional murder.  It will forever be a massive stain on the United States of America.  

A case can be made that what we're seeing now is partly a predictable result of 9-11 and the US response, by throwing out the ethical standards that at least somewhat distinguished us. To fight terrorism we started down the road of becoming terrorists.  Now we've reached an apotheosis. Iran may sponsor terrorism, but we are behaving as a terrorist state, though with extremely expensive missiles and bombs.  That partially describes the ongoing campaign of murder and destruction, with not even a strategic excuse.  

How far we've gone down the numbed road of thoughtless violence might be measured by the fact that the ongoing list of reasons being given for why this warfare is so destructive (and self-destructive) seldom includes that it is a moral catastrophe.

Of course it is also due to the particular stupidity, criminal greed, racism and viciousness of Boss Chaos and his minions.  But the world will no longer let us displace all the blame. Some reporter or pundit commented this week that in 2017 or so, Europeans and residents of other non-US countries expressed sympathy for the American public--they were the victims of a new president so much worse than most imagined.  But then American voters elected him again in 2024, and now there's no more sympathy out there.  We own him.  

A lot of us didn't vote for him and were horrified at the outcome, but collectively we're going to be held responsible. We own the casual statement that we're going to bomb them--an entire country-- back to the Stone Age because they deserve it.  We own the prayers for maximum death, and the kill them for Jesus of psycho Crusader Hegseth.  

With a new budget that vastly inflates military spending and cuts already severely weakened domestic services and safety nets, Boss Chaos is doubling down on becoming a Hitler wannabe on the international as well as national stage. Resisting this future now becomes another necessary task.

 While we work on surviving this moment, Americans will have to deal with the shame of it, for a long time to come.

Boots Up Yours

 As bad as things are right now, they may be about to get catastrophically worse and very quickly.  

The overwhelming winner for cliche of the moment is "boots on the ground."  That is apparently a military term adopted by pols pushing the Iraq war, as a heroic-sounding alternative to the term that became toxic during Vietnam: ground troops.  

However you say it, deploying soldiers and war machines onto foreign soil is a huge commitment, and a huge risk.  People understand this, if only because of the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's probably why the deploying of American ground troops in Iran has very little public support.  A Fox poll registers 12%, and a UMass poll out on Monday gives it an 8% approval.  That's eight per cent of those polled.  

A popular and trusted President might eventually overcome even that nearly impossibly low number, but we don't have one of those.  Approval for Boss Chaos in today's poll is 33%.  That's his MAGA minimum.  About two thirds of those polled disapprove, most of them strongly.

Nevertheless, some 50,000 US troops are in the Middle East, with reports of more to arrive.  Observers point out that while Boss Chaos is wildly inconsistent in his statements, he usually has used forces that he gathered.  Let's hope the numbers are deceptive--that a big deal has been made about those sent there, though the total number is not a lot more than are usually in the region.

But if this is a real preparing for deployment moment, a few statistics, courtesy of Lawrence O'Donnell, suggest what awaits:

Against a force of 50 to even 75 thousand US troops, Iran has 600,000 under arms.

The entire complement of the American armed forces currently numbers 450,000, including the mechanics, the cooks and the paper pushers.   

In World War II, it took a total commitment by the US, the Soviet Union, the UK and other Allies, with millions of soldiers for four years to defeat Nazi Germany.  Germany at the time had a population of about 70 million. Iran currently has a population of around 90 million.

Only an unhinged leader would take this fateful step.  And military leaders who surely know better would have to agree.  O'Donnell is one who doesn't believe it will happen.  And by Tuesday evening, signs were again pointing to a retreat, with Boss Chaos scheduling a national address on Wednesday evening--which is, of course, April Fool's Day.

A participant in Saturday's No Kings march in Manhattan was a 2024 Chaos voter and self-proclaimed MAGA guy from the Republican stronghold of Staten Island.  He described the current situation as "moving farther from peace and closer to catastrophe."  

The US has already set fire to hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money in one month of air attacks. Thanks to resulting huge spikes in oil prices and sudden disruptions of other vital resources, we're facing the distinct possibility of long-lasting global economic catastrophe and the certainty of economic pain for months if not years in the US--even without the devastating addition of a ground war in Iran.

Once begun, it conceivably could get so bad so quickly for this ignorant, incompetent and blustering executive that the exploitable worries about nuclear weapons could become reality.  But they won't be Iranian nuclear weapons exploding.

No Kings.3

 

Greenville, South Carolina.

NO KINGS 3 brought together protestors in at least 3300 places--large, small and in-between--and perhaps most importantly, in every congressional district in the US there was at least one protest.

Minneapolis

Initial estimates suggest that at least 8 million people participated.  It was the largest cumulative protest on one day in American history.

Seacoast, New Hampshire

The emphasis seemed to be on de-centralization: that is, more protests in more places, rather than epic gatherings in big places.  For instance, here on the North Coast, the previous No Kings demos have been in Eureka, CA.  This time there were also events in Trinidad (to the north, where there were more protestors than the town's population) and Garberville (to the south) and probably elsewhere between--though Eureka still gathered several thousand people, likely the largest so far. 

There were epic gatherings as well, and sometimes quite close together: Minneapolis and St. Paul, the largest protests in the state's history; Denver and Boulder, Colorado, just 30 miles apart; 200,000 in Boston, while there were more than 160 protests in other locations in the Commonwealth. 

According to reporting by Rachel Maddow, the trend this time was for more protests in red states in places they hadn't been before, and much larger protests even in dark red places than before.  Missoula, Montana had two to three times the numbers as the last No Kings.

Virginia

Again this time, mostly peaceful.  There were some arrests in Los Angeles, but in Eureka, the only police activity was finding a lost dog.  Mission accomplished.

Oklahoma

Pittsburgh, PA

2 from Eureka, CA

Saturday is No Kings.3

 

The Elephant Is The Room

 

The daily, the hourly assaults.  Remember back when Boss Chaos was threatening to invade Greenland?  That was all of eight weeks ago.  Now added to the barrage of corruption, callous cruelty, lawless authoritarianism, aggressively racist and sexist policies and actions, and all but unprecedented stupidity, destroying institutions and damaging institutional integrity for years to come, we're mired in profligate murder and international economic suicide.

While all along, the assault on the future of life as we know it on planet Earth accelerates.

The climate crisis as a focus of news and public attention has sunk almost out of sight.  Partly (one assumes) at the behest of tech bros anxious to power their AI bubble by any means necessary, previous federal efforts to lower carbon, support green energy and even to control pollution have been officially halted.  Climate denial has never been easier.

Despite extreme weather in increasingly long doses, somewhere in America, almost all the time.  Quite recently for instance: a record high temperature for March of any year in any place in the US was registered in Arizona: 110 F.  From the Pacific to the Rockies, the recent mid-March heat wave registered temps some 30 F degrees above the previous normal.  Some 140 cities were affected by that heat dome, which scientists said would be "virtually impossible" except for climate distortion. 

As a consequence, mountain snowpacks in places like Colorado and California are low and likely to disappear early, leading to summer drought, and adding to wildfires (already ongoing in Colorado.)

Meanwhile, Hawaii is experiencing record rainfall and the worst flooding in 20 years, with one place worried about a major dam failure.

But just about all of the United States has been hit with extreme cold or heat (and some areas of the Southeast getting doses of both within 24 hours), snow or rainfall of greater intensity and longer duration, during unaccustomed seasons, for just the past year.  And there are doubtlessly effects as bad or worse elsewhere in the world, of which we are wearily and systematically ignorant. 

These are the markers of what climate scientists have been predicting, more and more precisely, over the past 35 years.  They are symptoms of the sickness enveloping the planet.  There's little point in rehashing all the research results announced over the past year--it's pretty much all bad.  As goals haven't been met and promises not kept, it's been clear for awhile that the world is going to crash past the global temperature red line of the Paris Accords. (And that's even before the obscene bombing and warfare in the Middle East is reportedly spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere faster than 84 countries combined.) Among the predicted effects, sea levels have risen and are rising higher than previously known, and ice near the poles is melting faster.

But the latest UN report came out this weekend, and it shows that greenhouse gases are now trapping so much heat on the planet that it's not cooling off as it has in the past.  In other words, the greenhouse effect is in effect.  Hothouse Earth is no longer a prediction.  It's the planet's present, and its future for potentially thousands of years--except of course it's likely to get worse. 

Climate distortion is no longer the elephant in the room.  That elephant is the room.  

Current US policies and actions are patently insane.  Other insane policies, like the destruction of public health and FEMA, will sooner or later contribute to the rippling effects of climate distortion.  But the failure is shared. It's not all the party with the elephant symbol, though mostly it is. 

 Democrats in power had opportunities to do much better.  But no Democratic candidate--not Clinton or Gore or Kerry or Obama or Biden or Harris--made climate a central issue in their campaigns.  No Democratic President--not Clinton or Obama or Biden--ever made an Oval Office address outlining the dimensions of the climate crisis, with a comprehensive program to address it.  

Obama (with the Paris Accords and environmental policies) and certainly Biden with his massive support for clean energy in the Inflation Reduction Act, made substantive changes to address aspects of the climate crisis.  But especially in Biden's case, it was done stealthily.  Obviously the judgment was made that calling for all-hands-on-deck efforts was politically dangerous, if not suicidal and therefore impossible to achieve.  They had to bet that the crisis could be successfully addressed incrementally. Some experts even agreed, for awhile, especially about green energy.  No one knows the future, but to me it so far appears to be a lost gamble.

For the first time, humanity faced a comprehensive global challenge to current civilization and current forms of life.  But also for the first time, humanity has the knowledge, the ideas, the potential and the power to meet that challenge.  Or so it once seemed.  If this is an evolutionary test, so far humanity is failing.

I've been reading about and writing about the climate crisis for 35 years. On this blog alone, I've written somewhere between 835 and a thousand posts on this subject and related subjects since 2005.  But I haven't written a word about it since Boss Chaos took power.  And it could be I won't write about it again.  

Younger generations will have no choice but to deal with its consequences.  Maybe some of them will find meaning and purpose in their lives in addressing the causes and effects of climate distortion, by concentrating on them in whatever field of endeavor best suits them.  For them, hope won't be most importantly an emotion.  It won't be what they feel.  Hope will be what they do. Real hope will not be felt or expressed so much as enacted.  

Most may well suffer the consequences of climate distortion without ever naming it, just as we almost never name it now.  An environment, McLuhan used to say, is invisible to its inhabitants, as water is to fish.  In a practical sense that's nonsense, but in terms of conceptualization, it's probably true.  Right now it's some mix of denial, fatalism and unconsciousness.  Nevertheless, the elephant is the room.

Joy Among the Ruins

"The last year has been one of the most depressing of my nearly 50 years as a journalist." So begins Thomas Friedman's latest New York Times column.  If you are deep into the grip of such a depression, you might want to skip, for example, catching up with Rachel Maddow's latest MSNOW hour.  But if you are looking for a little hope, even a little uplift, try the rest of Friedman's column. (Photo above also from NYT.)

After offering a brief summary of the contributors to that depression ( "It’s not just that I’ve had to watch the Trump administration destroy cherished alliances, like ours with Western Europe and Canada, that have upheld freedom, democracy and global trade since World War II. It’s also been the stunning cowardice and boundless greed with which leaders of big law firms and Big Tech have bent their knees to King Donald and indulged a cabinet of clowns — not one of whom they’d hire in their own businesses."), Friedman quickly continues:

 "But then I spent time in my native state, Minnesota, after something else that I’d never seen in nearly 50 years: a spontaneous uprising of civic activism propelled by a single idea — I am my neighbor’s keeper, whoever he or she is and however he or she got here...It was one of the most courageous battles ever fought by American men and women not in uniform."

I've read (and written) descriptions of the Minnesota Miracle, but this long column adds more information and clarity.  It is moving and inspiring.  It is even joyful.

If you're in the mood for something clarifying and inspiring that is more metaphorical, you might check out the recently streamed concluding first season episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, in which the climax occurs when a powerful villain is exposed as "an angry child with his finger on the trigger, whose entire worldview is based on a lie."  Given that this series was castigated for its woke diversity  by psycho Steven Miller himself, it demonstrates reassuring bravery as well as a concise analysis. Plus the good guys win. It's Episode 10: "Rubincon."  (Another inspiring episode of this outstanding series was #8, "The Life of the Stars," which centers on the Thornton Wilder play, Our Town.)

I haven't seen it yet, but judging from Michelle Goldberg's column about this year's Oscar winner for Best Picture, One Battle After Another, it might be another such candidate. She writes about how it mirrors today's Chaotic America, even though it was made before the 2024 election.  She calls it "forthrightly anti-fascist."  

On the subject of the Oscars, I'd also recommend as a potential source of solace and uplift checking out clips of the winners' acceptance speeches.  They were almost unfailingly generous to the other nominees (there are so many awards shows in awards season and the same people tend to be nominated in all of them, so they've all been hanging out together for months) and instead of just thanking their agents, they acknowledged those who preceded them and paved the way for their achievement.  

This was true of the big awards but also especially of some others-- the first winner in the new category of casting, who called out the names of legendary casting directors who were never honored, and the first woman to win the cinematography award, who asked all the women in the audience to stand, because they made her award possible.  It all made the term "the film community" a little more real, even across time.

But if you'd like several jolts of pure joy untethered to the depressing political present, I wholeheartedly recommend checking out clips from performances through the past two decades of Paul McCartney.  Many can be easily found on YouTube.

Going back to around 2002, McCartney formed a new band that basically has backed him ever since, and their sets are heavy with meticulous renderings of Beatles tunes. Over the years they include some of the earliest songs recorded and performed by the Beatles, as well as later songs that the Beatles themselves never performed--partly because they gave up touring, and partly because these studio-made records couldn't be reproduced on stage, either economically or at all, due to limitations on the technologies of the time.  But now they can.

In the first decade or so of these concerts, McCartney's voice was strong and pure.  In more recent years his voice has thickened and developed a kind of vibrato that takes getting used to, but that happens pretty quickly, especially as the utter thrill of this music takes over.  These are joyful songs to begin with.  Seeing and hearing them performed now...well, you might be surprised how you feel.

The audience really accentuates that thrill.  Not just the miracle of McCartney playing songs that the Beatles played in the 1960s, or never played on stage, but what the songs meant and continue to mean to these listeners. 

These are multigenerational audiences, entire families hugging and dancing. Grandparents going wild next to their enthralled grandchildren. There are girls as young as the ones in the A Hard Day's Night concert scenes (often shown on a screen above and behind the stage) who know every word and every note in music created decades before they were born.  And there are men of various ages just stunned, and moved to tears.

After all the angst, Paul McCartney has lived long enough to be completely vindicated, now with fans in at least three generations. You see the same expression on the face of other superstar musicians he performs with as you see in these audiences--they can't quite believe what's happening. It's an out-of,  in-the-body experience.

 He made amazing music after the Beatles as well, as most recently demonstrated in an excellent new film (currently streaming) on his years with Linda McCartney and Wings.  McCartney has written and recorded so many great songs that among them are songs that have fallen into obscurity, simply because there are too many others.  Yet it is clear that the past and the Beatles live in him every day, and he brings that music to life again.   

Kurt Vonnegut used to say that the purpose of art is to make people happy.  He was asked if any artists actually achieved that.  "The Beatles did," he replied.  They still do. Paul McCartney brings it alive again.  Try it, it may work for you, too.

Singing It Now

 

Come on all of you big strong men

Uncle Sam needs your help again

He's got himself in a terrible jam

Way down yonder in I-ran

So put down your books, pick up a gun--

Gonna have a whole lot of fun!

Well it's one-two-three what are we fightin' for?

Don't ask me I don't give a damn

Next stop is I-ran

And it's 5-6-7-8 open up the pearly gates--

Ain't no time to wonder why, whoopee

we're all gonna die

Well come on generals, let's move fast

Your big chance has come at last

Gotta go out and get them ragheads

Cause the only good heathen is one that's dead

You know that end times have just begun

When we've blown them all to kingdom come!

Well come on Wall Street--don't move slow

This is war a go-go

There's plenty of money to be made

By supplying the army with the tools of the trade

Just hope and pray when they drop the bomb

They know who the hell they're droppin it on

So come on mothers throughout the land

Pack your kids off to I-ran

Come on fathers don't hesitate

Send them off before it's too late--

Be the first one on your block

To have your kid come home in a box!

Yes, it's 1-2-3-, what are we fightin for?

Don't ask me I don't give a damn--

Next stop is I-ran

Now it's 5-6-7-8 open up the pearly gates--

Ain't no time to wonder why--

Whoopee--we're all gonna die

R.I.P. Country Joe McDonald.  I altered your song but I did it from memory.

Keep Hope Alive

"We are living in a time when it can be hard to hope. Each day we wake up to some new assault on our democratic institutions, another setback to the idea of the rule of law. An offense to common decency. Every day you wake up to it, to things you just didn’t think were possible. Each day, we’re told by those in high office to fear each other and to turn on each other — and that some Americans count more than others, and that some don’t even count at all."

" Everywhere we see greed and bigotry being celebrated, and bullying and mockery masquerading as strength; we see science and expertise denigrated while ignorance and dishonesty, and cruelty and corruption, are reaping untold rewards. Every single day we see that. And it’s hard to hope in those moments. So it may be tempting to get discouraged, to give in to cynicism. It may be tempting for some to compromise with power and grab what you can, or even for good people, to maybe just put your head down and wait for the storm to pass. 

"But this man — Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson — inspires us to take the harder path. His voice calls on each of us to be heralds of change, to be messengers of hope; to step forward and say “Send me” wherever we have a chance to make an impact — whether it’s in our schools, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods and our cities. Not for fame, not for glory, or because success is guaranteed, but because it gives our life purpose, because it aligns with what our faith tells us God demands, and because if we don’t step up, no one else will."

President Barack Obama

at the Memorial for Rev. Jesse Jackson on March 6, 2026.

"Each day we wake up to some new assault on our democratic institutions, another setback to the idea of the rule of law. An offense to common decency. Every day you wake up to it, to things you just didn’t think were possible."

On Saturday we woke up to a social media post from Boss Chaos, currently the commander in chief and fomenter of an illegal and unconstitutional war, which in its earliest days managed to kill more than a hundred school girls in Iran.  With language that no President has ever used, that borders on a promise of genocide, he announces another day of intense bombing:  “Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran’s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time.” 

We woke up to a stories about the continuing savagery of the implacable cruel and lawless federal thugs known as ICE: kidnapping a woman and her two young boys from a legal hearing, lying to her lawyers and sending them to detention in a place unknown to them in order that they could not file habeas corpus, and then quickly deporting them.  One of the boys, six years old, is deaf, and was hustled away without his hearing device.  The trauma inflicted is unspeakable.

This story appears in the Guardian, along with two related stories: of a man in California who died in ICE custody after he was refused medical care, and the death of an ICE prisoner in Arizona who was also denied medical care.

Jesse Jackson was a model of hope in dark times. His "Keep hope alive" came long before Obama.  He was a voice and a force I knew about throughout my adult life.  

He had an astute political mind, and his 1988 platform when he ran for the Democratic nomination for President remains a model for candidates today.  (I had press credentials to cover live his debate with Dukakis in western Pennsylvania when they were the last two candidates standing, but I wound up consigned to the secondary press room watching it on closed circuit TV.)

He went on campaigns for immediate changes but he also played a long game (and so he earned his tears at the moment that Barack Obama was elected President.  Martin Luther King didn't "get there" for this moment, but Jackson, who was with King in his last moments, did.) 

But Jesse Jackson also knew that people live in the present, every moment, and they need ways of getting through such very dark times as these, when official evil is relentless and overwhelming.  

For young people, "You are somebody" made a difference. At the memorial, Isiah Thomas, NBA Hall of Fame player, told how he heard those words directly from Jackson when Thomas was a boy in a soup line in Chicago with his mother.  

And for young people today, Obama highlighted the idea that life doesn't have to be focused on money values but on the value of finding something "that gives our life purpose."  Dedication to that purpose is going to be the story of the next several generations.

For the not young especially, finding and living in moments of beauty and empathy--for instance, moments in that Memorial itself--is vital and vitalizing.  And it, too, is an expression of resistance, as well as the renewal of hope.

Help Wanted: Loyal Morons

 

If you wondered why the Chaos Injustice Department is so inept, this may offer a clue: a quote from Talking Points Memo and Political Wire, originally published in Above the Law.  Liberty University is a far right religious school and favorite recruiting grounds for unholy Chaos:

An email sent to Liberty University School of Law students over the weekend lays out, in refreshingly unvarnished terms, what the administration’s hiring pipeline actually looks like. And it’s exactly as bad as everyone suspected:

“The two most important requirements are you MUST be aligned politically with President Trump and his administration and you must be willing to work hard. Don’t be scared off by the transcript requirement. GPA is not a strong factor. If you meet those two requirements, you have a shot.”

Fortunately, there are still quite a few old school judges who know the law and why the laws are there. Check out this excerpt Judge Gary R. Brown, which includes a word I haven't read in awhile: villainy. Not to mention "human decency."  Again from Talking Points Memo:

In a new ruling, U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York ripped ICE’s conduct in detaining a man — who was lawfully admitted to the United States under a special program for abused minors and then later graduated from college and was legally working in theatrical lighting design — “simply because he looked like someone else for whom the agents were purportedly searching”:

Unquestionably, the laws of human decency condemn such villainy. Equally, the laws of this nation, including the Constitution, statutory law and regulations, proscribe the illegal arrest and detention of the petitioner as well as the retaliatory termination, without notice, of the privileges associated with his SIJ status. While the Executive Branch retains the right – as it has done – to set policy regarding immigration matters, it is forbidden from trampling our system of laws – a system which has safeguarded this nation for close to 250 years.

 And if you wondered what the actual priorities of the Chaos Administration are--from Political Wire:

ProPublica published “a trove of nearly 3,200 disclosure records that detail the finances of more than 1,500 federal officials appointed by President Donald Trump.”“

The documents reveal a web of financial ties between senior government officials and the industries they help regulate — relationships that have drawn scrutiny as Trump has dismantled ethics safeguards designed to prevent conflicts of interest.”

To be fair, being ostentatiously corrupt does not guarantee lifetime access to the goodies, though it may allow continued employment.  Witness the fall of Kristi.