Dismantling A Defeated America

AN ACADEMICIAN, whoe name, precise area of expertise and job title I cennot reember, made an interesting observation, in the form of ametaphor. The Trump administration, he offered, is governing as if the United States had been defeated in a war, and was now being controlled and governed by the conquering, occupying enemy. The purpose of the new rulers is to destroy democracy, and replace the traditional American democratic republic with a fascist dictatorship. The authoritarian dictator seeks not to enhance the strength, prosperity, and health of the United States, but rather, to reduce it to impotent, weak, submmission to its conqueror. The more I think about it, the more I tend to agree, the more I can see that the scholar indeed has a point. The federal government is being dismantled, from the bottom up. The Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, are all, effectively, gone. Tens of thousnds of governmental employees are being fired daily. Eventually whoever the dictator is after Trump will have no huge bureaucracy lurking, possibly harboring resistance to authoritarian rule and seeking to bring back democracy. Farewell to the "deep state". The United States, economically and diplomatically, is being systematically cut off from the world. We Americans have now started a world wide trade war, and have plainly indicated to the world that it intends to engage in aggressive territorial expansionism, just like it did in the nineteenth century, and has, for all intents and purposes, since its beginning. Perhaps Trump and Putin have made a nefarious, secret personal alliance, according to which the U.S. is being governed by and from Moscow, with Trump a willing participant. Probably not though. Its difficult to imagine why Putin and the Russians would want the United States to acquire Greenand, Canada, and the Panama Canal, all of which the Trump administration plainly wants to do. So far not much has been said about what percentage of MAGA nation favors these vast territorial acquisitions; one might presume that it is substantial. Obviously, America's hidden oppressive rulers want the country to be governed by an authoritarian dictatorship, with virtually no political power remaining for the people. Perhaps Putin has helped install Trump for his own fascist reasons, just like, in the nineteen thirties, Hitler installed Franco in Spain, a fellow fascist. Observers of geo-politics and international relations have observed that the nation of israel seems to have a great deal of control over the United States government, and thus the United States. The U.S. almost with fail does israels's bidding. But it may be that Putin and Russia have a even deeper type of control, by virtue of having twice helped Trump become president, and by virtue of Trump owing Putina and Russia..something. You might almost expect Trump to issue an executive order any day now, declaring that henceforth the president of the United states may serve as many as three terms, or as many as he or she desires. This would be no more outlandish than many of the executive orders already issued by Trump. If the Supreme Court fails to rule that the Trump agenda is illegal, America is in trouble, and the only recourse will be a massive nationwide progressive protest, in the media, and in the streets.

Heat Increasing, Life Diminishing

SCIENTISTS PREDICT that this year there will be a seventy percent decrease in the honey bee population in the United States. To make such predictions, scientists, biologists of all kinds but especially entymologists, utilize a fascinating mix of empirical factors, having to do with weather patterns, and growth patterns of insect habitat, among other factors. In each of the past few years, they have predicted various amounts of honey bee decrease, forty percent, fifty percent, and so forth, and most of the time, their predictions have proven accurate. It is verified that the decrease in the number of all species of insects, world wide, has, over the past few years, been alarmingly precipitous. The insect population of Europe, including all species, has declined by at least fifty percent in the past two decades. A roughly similar situation is ongoing in the United States. This year's predicted seventy percent decrease in honey bees in North America is particularly alarming; at this rate, honey bees will be extinct within a few years. Honeybees, like all other pollinating insects, are, of course, absolutely vital to the existence not only of humankind, but of every species of life on the planet. The usual suspects are to blame; habitat loss, environmental pollution, climate change, and pesticides. As the wind howls like a hurricane outside my window, and so howls with increasing frequency every month and year, I reflect that the amount of heat in the atmosphere has increased drastically in recent years, as has the amount of carbon, which of course absorbs the extra heat from sunlight. Its as simple as that. Any grade schooler is capable of understanding the basic cause of climate cahnge. By pretending not to, American conservatives, a majority of whom still deny climate change, reveal only their deliberate if unintentional ignorance of fundamental reality. The delusion of climate change denial is as delusional as, say, pretending that a presidential election was stolen, or that your God is going to return to Earth any day now. All these delusions tend, it seems, to be embraced by the same people, your basic white conservative Christian MAGA type. They tend, in general, to be not only climate change denniers, but also, environmental destruction deniers, and on those rare occasions when they do contemplate actual threats to life on earth, they immediately couch it in religious temrs, and they get right back to talking about their Lord Jesus Christ returning to Earth soon soon enough to render all climate and environmental threats irrelevant. Its hard to argue with that kind of stuff. I have acquired the habit of suggesting that it would be a nice way to honor and show respect for Jesus, by showing him a clean, healthy planet, human species, and environment when he arrives. Why not start now? I still like this approach, even though it doesn't seem to work, or, at least, they rarely have much to say in response. So the honeybee population will continue to plummet, glaciers will keep melting, and every year will keep getting hotter than the previous, as long as we humans don't start changing our ways and repairing the damage we have done, and are doing. The wind will blow ever harder, more storms, stronger storms will sweep across most areas, and weather related disasters will proliferate, the expense becoming enormous. It may be too late to save the planet, but it aint too late to try.