Geographically: Now that the world’s ocean levels have started rising much faster than predicted, America’s coastal cities may become submerged far sooner than we thought. And, sooner rather than later, Manhattan stands a very good chance of becoming the next lost Atlantis.
Here’s a cute little video from NASA that describes what’s been happening to our planet’s climate over the last 131 years. Check it out: http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/131-years-of-global-warming-in-26-seconds/ In this video animation, blue represents minus-two degrees Celsius and red represents plus-two degrees Celsius. That’s only a four-degree variation — but what a variation it is! At the blue point, ice all over the planet used to be still intact. At the red point, however, it has melted. At this rate, San Francisco will soon join Manhattan in its race to become the first lost Atlantis.
But enough said about that. I just hope that you don’t own a condo down in SoHo or beach-front property in Honolulu. You do? You’re screwed.
And then there’s Burning Man. This year Black Rock City was completely engulfed in air-born dust particles and white-out sand storms almost 24/7. If this drought doesn’t let up, perhaps they ought to change its name to Dust Bowl City.
And also, for the first time in memory, we have gotten a hecka lot of Canada geese hanging around Berkeley this summer instead of just passing by in the spring and the fall. Guess they don’t have to fly so far south to get warm any more. No winter vacation in Cancun for them! And we humans don’t need to fly south to Puerto Vallarta during the winter months any more either. Last year was the warmest winter in NorCal that I can remember (but I still love Puerto Vallarta).
Morally: The Republican party (and the huge corporations that now own it) are completely using and abusing their only staunch allies — the older white American males and blind-faith Christians who support them — in order to enact laws and make policies that not only undermine these staunch allies’ beliefs but also their very existence.
Jobs, Social Security, homes, families, medical care, infrastructure, water supplies, energy sources, the very teachings of Christ Himself, you name it — all have been put in grave danger by the very corporate interests that naive older white Americans and gullible Christians have blindly trusted and supported all these years. It’s just sad to watch these trusting staunch allies of the GOP constantly getting knifed in the back.
Then there are the famous Fetus Wars. Jesus is being called upon to testify against Planned Parenthood — and yet Jesus isn’t even allowed on the premises when multiple brutal vicious and bloody wars have been declared against millions of innocent children all around the world. You wanna call yourself a Christian? Then you gotta act Christ-like! Duh.
And Repubs are now actually saying that Ted Kennedy originated the War on Women. Chappaquiddick was a tragic accident. That’s not the same thing. But a true war on women appears to be the GOP’s latest favorite game plan — as Repubs happily head down the same path that other “Christians” took back in the European Middle Ages when an estimated nine million women who dared to speak up for themselves, tried to get an education or attempted to practice medicine were burned alive at the stake.
Economically: Since outsourcing and deregulation has hit America like a category-5 hurricane, our economy has become a disaster area — literally. So many jobs have fled overseas and so much wealth has fled to the Caymans that many parts of the USA look almost like New Orleans after Katrina.
All the things that we used to make here? We don’t even know how to make them any more. And all that knowledge of how to make them has been lost too.
Sometimes I wish that the UN or NATO or whoever — perhaps the war-criminal-trial folks over at the Hague — would sanction America like they are now sanctioning Iran. Then we would be FORCED to become economically independent again.
Republicans have deliberately created a vast pool of unemployed Americans so that they won’t have to pay us high wages. Hence the GOP’s refusal to endorse a job program. Why would they want to do that!
In their haste to make more and more money, large corporations are polluting our water and air and elevating our risk of cancer of course. But they are also killing off billions of bees. Good luck with getting our crops in when there is no pollination. And bye-bye flowers too. We don’t even have to wait until water drowns out the new American Atlantis to miss our fruit trees and flowers. Monsanto has already taken care of that.
Politically: Anyone can buy a seat in Congress these days — or even buy the White House itself or the Supreme Court (especially the Supreme Court). Who would have ever thought that it would be that way here in the former Land of the Free. Not since Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall have our public offices been so “For Sale”. Shame on us for letting this happen.
And remember back in 1999 when we all thought that YK2 was going to be an international disaster? Well all the computers didn’t crash, but YK2 turned out to be an incredible disaster anyway — when George W. Bush stole the 2000 election and almost NOBODY in America objected or even noticed. Then Bush allowed 9-11 to happen, followed by the disastrous Afghanistan invasion, the incredibly expensive Iraq invasion and the 2008 economic crash.
Yes, YK2 really was a disaster.
More political immorality: Who has been a very important ally of corporate-owned Washington in places like Afghanistan, Syria and Libya? Wait for it. “Al Qaeda!” Arming and encouraging the people behind 9-11? Isn’t that about as politically immoral as you can get? But Americans seem to accept this hypocrisy without batting an eye. Go figure.
And what can our bought-and-paid-for politicians possibly be thinking when they systematically alienate huge countries like Russia and China while kissing the booties of their corporate neo-con counterparts in teeny-tiny Israel. Israel? The size of New Jersey? Israel’s neo-con corporatists are gonna save us from the wrath of Russia, China, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and all the other places and countries that our corporate-owned government has thoroughly screwed over the years? Huh?
And then there’s that cruel joke that used to be America’s legendary and heroic Supreme Court. No justice at all to be had there these days — if you are merely working class. Those guys in black robes take their reverse-Robin-Hood roles very seriously.
“Take from the worker bees and give to the drones” should be carved in marble over our corporate-owned government buildings in Washington — just before America, the next lost Atlantis, slowly sinks into the sea.
But you had better get to carving it soon — because there is something in the air in America these days, a sense that nasty undercurrents are moving stealthily toward us from somewhere very deep, somewhere that the average voter isn’t in touch with — except in our guts.
And our guts seem to be telling us that America is now sinking fast. And that “We the People” have absolutely no life jackets — but that the billionaires who now own our government are already provisioning their yachts http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/45275.
To paraphrase Plato, “…once upon a time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot” — and then their city of Atlantis got all drowned out.
And to paraphrase Ray Bradbury, “Something wicked is definitely coming our way”.
