"Gazing out at the future from the promontory of the present, with the planet having warmed one degree, the world of two degrees seems nightmarish -- and the worlds of three degrees, and four, and five yet more grotesque. But one way we might manage to navigate that path without crumbling collectively in despair is, perversely, to normalize climate suffering at the same pace we accelerate it, as we have so much human pain over centuries, so that we are always coming to terms with what is just ahead of us, decrying what lies beyond that, and forgetting all that we had ever said about the absolute moral unacceptability of the conditions of the world we are passing through in the present tense, and blithely."
- David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth
Friday, April 10, 2020
Climate Suffering Normalization
Unfortunately this strikes me as all too believable:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Trump and his minions continue the process of seizing medical materiel from "blue" states and handing out as spoils to his friends and supporters.
The state of Colorado had placed an order with a private company for 500 ventilators. The Trump Administration intervened to divert the ventilators to a Federal agency (FEMA). Trump then publicly "gave" 100 of the commandeered ventilators back to Colorado, as a "present" to Republican Senator Cory Gardner, omitting to mention that the 500 ventilators had actually been purchased by the state's Democratic governor Jared Polis.
IOW, the Feds stole 80% of the ventilators ordered by Colorado, and falsely gave credit to the endangered Republican senator Gardner for the remaining 20% that the state was allowed to keep.
This behavior -- treating medical supplies in a pandemic as a tool to punish Trump's enemies and reward his supporters -- is absolutely abominable. Any president who plays these kinds of self-serving games in a national crisis ought to be immediately impeached and removed from office.
Unfortunately, there is literally nothing that Trump could do that would be outrageous enough to convince Republican senators to remove him.
In other words, Trump is now killing people on 5th Avenue in order to send precious supplies as "prizes" to his supporters ... and no Republican will bat an eyebrow.
Denver Post editorial: Trump is playing a disgusting political game with our lives
Vox: How Trump turned ventilators into a form of patronage
The Chinese Emperors had a solution to famine. If two neighbouring provinces suffered a famine, all the food was transferred from the rebellious one to the loyal one.
One province became even more fanatically loyal; the other lot were all dead, so rebellion was no longer a problem.
Nothing changes.
Post a Comment