We have passed the 100 day mark of the Donald Trump presidency. A presidency based on "alternative facts," racist paranoia and political elitism masquerading as anti-establishment populism. Casualties?
Quite a few in the middle-east. But, the real war is the one at home: The war for America's heart and mind. It's been said truth is the first casualty of war. That's definitely the case here. Case in point, scientific truth, the one truth that is supposed to be absolute. The Trump regime has done its best, with Orwellian finesse, to systematically excise all data regarding the ever-present and ever-dangerous reality of pollution-induced climate change from the body of policy-making.
The Environmental Protection Agency -- now run by a self-declared climate change denier -- has removed all mention of global warming from its website. Donald Trump has secured his political position with the workers who elected him by standing on the false promise that the coal industry -- an industry that is inherently finite, given the fact that coal is a finite resource -- can be revived. No ecological regulations. Just all ahead full with coal mining, oil drilling and oil pipelines to poison our air, land and water. All based on the false and archaic belief in inexhaustible frontiers and the infallibility of American enterprise.
It's a backward-looking dream. Back to an imagined idyllic past. Make America great again. Prosper again. Strong again. Always "again." Always back to the past. It smacks of a romanticized longing for the days of old. Like those bright, wonderful 1950's, when a woman's place was in the kitchen, a black man's place was on the back of the bus, and a gay person's place was in prison or in the insane asylum. Or, dead. And, it was all ahead full then with production and capitalist expansion, future generations footing the bill for ecological degradation.
A hundred days and counting. Progressive and ecologically conscious populations, apathetic and uncaring during a lack-luster presidential campaign now seem revitalized and marching through the streets with a gusto unseen since the 1960's. Can a change be effected in current policy before irreparable damage is done to our planet's biosphere? Only time will tell.
Sadly, the epitaph of humanity may be that its bane was its own mortality. Our leaders, and those who elected them won't live long enough to see the final consequences of their actions. Get a job today, destroy the world for your descendants. Selfishness is the core of human motivation, after all. That's why capitalism works and socialism doesn't.
Here's a science fiction idea: Wouldn't it be nice if we had to check with our descendants a hundred years in the future before making a decision? Wouldn't it be nice if we had to see the world through their eyes, breathe the air they'll have to breathe, drink the water they'll have to drink, before laying the foundations for the word they'll have to live in? Time travel is theoretically possible, but, we haven't heard from our descendants on the issue. Hmmmm....does that mean we've already passed the point of no return?
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