As a people, we are suffering the twin insanities of our Chief Executive, Mr. Donald Trump, who has insisted on pursuing two separate paths that promise to destroy our planet and ourselves.
First, our “Commander in Chief”, and another mad world leader from Korea, improvised a bullying chest-beating duet of world-shattering war threats, from the slippery edge of an existential precipice, promising to hurl nuclear fire upon the world, and to kill countless innocents.
Second, our “Chief Executive,” Mr. Trump, belittled every other nation in the world and refused to honor a hard fought international agreement on climate change that the United States had signed. Mr. Trump also dismantled air and water safeguards and denied that humans have in any way caused the planet to heat from fossil fuel emissions.
Each of us is a furnace of life, warmed within a sheaf of skin, at 98 degrees Fahrenheit, with a strong will to survive.
But too many of us defer to leaders, trusting them to do what’s best for us and the world’s survival when we now know they are doing nothing of the sort.
Our leaders take the corporate contributions of fossil fuel predators and vote their way, insisting that we not trust our senses that that’s what they are doing, even as they do it at the cost of our health and safety and survival. In the bargain, they stall cleaner, safer renewable energy sources.
Robert Frost once wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice, from what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire.”
The “leader of the free world,” clutching himself tightly, promised “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
Given the erratic data points for this Chief Executive’s past questionable antics, it is not an unfair question to ask if this extraordinary nuclear threat was to misdirect our attention from the criminal investigation, whether Mr. Trump sold out the nation to become President.
In the category, of what “the world has never seen,” nothing is more devastating than what our nation did, when a B-29 dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing 80,000, and the “Fat Man” on Nagasaki, killing 40,000. What could be worse would be higher body counts and radiation long after a nuclear strike.
In and near Loudoun County, we have two not so “secret” underground bunkers, at Mount Weather and the Short Hill Mountain, where our government’s chosen elite will ‘copter out when the nuclear war fire is about to consume Washington, DC.
The rest of us shall remain unprotected, without a trace of our passing except perhaps a blast silhouette on a nearby wall if we don’t suffer a slow painful death from radiation.
We have a so-called democratic system paralyzed by the lowest common denominator of “understanding” of these dual and dire threats.
We have a so-called democratic system that tolerates small and great corruptions in our public officials who have and may yet again compromise our general welfare.
We no longer have to talk about melting ice caps and glaciers to understand the impending ecological disaster.
The disaster has come home. The number of hot days have increased. People are dying from the heat. Fires are becoming abundant. The seas are rising. Flooding is upon us.
We have flooding all around the several states, a veritable ring of submersion in the Gulf and along both coasts including Virginia from rising seas and storms. In Virginia, it’s obvious in Hampton Roads or Norfolk. Also, further South in the Outer Banks. Don’t ask where Miami and New Orleans are going to end up.
Our skies have warmed, and the air now holds “huge” quantities of water drawn up from our vast seas. The skies carry and dump the waters on our coasts and inland. The rising seas and storm waters overrun our sewers and water systems, flood our streets, float cars and homes, and are prompting migration from the water’s edge inland.
We made this possible. We can fight it. But we can’t waste any more time.
We must foster a flood of protest to make our leaders do what’s right while there is still hope.
Contribute only to candidates that believe in statecraft and negotiation and believe in the threat of global warming, and who refuse fossil fuel money.
Act now as if it’s already too late because – well, it may be.