Burned Out

 Just taking a break.  Burned out by Trump and his fascist Republican boot lickers.

Rush Limbaugh Dead - Good Riddance

The United States and, in fact, the entire world is a better place with today's death of right wing hate monger, Rush Limbaugh.  The former "top 40" radio DJ practically invented hate talk radio and spawned dozens of like minded right wing liars who pollute the airwaves with despicable lies and misinformation.

Using his sizable platform, Limbaugh advanced conservative ideas, though he often waded into conspiratorial waters and generated controversy for hateful commentary on gender and race. During the course of his career, Limbaugh started a number of fires with his commentary.

Limbaugh offered a conditional apology after he accused actor Michael J. Fox of exaggerating his Parkinson's disease and apologized when he insulted law school student Sandra Fluke. He relentlessly attacked President Barack Obama, going as far as to fan the flames of birtherism, the discredited idea that Obama was born outside the United States and therefore not eligible to be president. And, in the last few years, he peddled "deep state" conspiracy theories, providing cover for former President Donald Trump during his term, who he counted as a friend.

More recently, Limbaugh appeared to approve of some forms of political violence in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. He also drew backlash at the outset of the pandemic when he dismissed the coronavirus as the "common cold" and contended that it was being "weaponized" by members of the mainstream press to bludgeon Trump and harm his re-election chances.

Trump - Cultural Guardian

Trump has been labeled a "populist" by the media.  It was argued that much of Trump's appeal was to people with economic concerns.  The reality of Trump's appeal is far different.  Trump's MAGA mob see him as more than a politician.  They see him as a savior who appeals directly to their (and his) three main prejudices.

MAGA is “extremely politically organized and mobilized,” and so has an outsized influence on GOP elected officials even beyond its large numbers. His survey found they overwhelmingly believe voting should be made harder, not easier, and that they overwhelmingly support norm-breaking measures such as overturning the election and the idea of Trump serving as president beyond the constitutionally mandated two-term limit.

“They see Trump as the last thing standing between them and a fundamentally changed world,” Parker said. “They see him as more than a president, he’s a protector and guardian of a culture,” a fundamentally white, Christian culture.

“They want to go backward in time. This is one way they are very different than establishment conservatives.”

Prejudice #1 - Racism: 

Prejudice #2 - Misogynism:

Prejudice #3 - Immigrants 

Economic issues aren't as powerful as hate as motivators.

Losers, Fascists and Racists - Trump's Mob

So, did this mostly middle class, virtually all white mob attack the United States Capitol with the intent to disrupt a valid election because they felt affinity for a psychotic, inept megalomaniac or because they felt that Trump's continual flouting of the basic rules of commerce and society made them kindred spirits?  

I see Trumpism, in large part, as a cult of losers who see the rules and norms of a civil society as the cause of their failures.  Trump's entire career as a business and political failure was only possible because he and his father before him cheated, lied and stole their way to the point where they we accepted as something other than they really were and are.  Trump's mob appears to be made of failures who didn't have the financial cushion and snake oils salesman skill of their leader.

Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories.

The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.

The financial problems are revealing because they offer potential clues for understanding why so many Trump supporters — many with professional careers and few with violent criminal histories — were willing to participate in an attack egged on by the president’s rhetoric painting him and his supporters as undeserving victims.

The rest of the mob appear to be just garden variety racists and proto-fascists. 

Running Out of Water

 

California is remarkable vulnerable to the impact of climate change.  The state's agricultural economy depends on water that is accumulated during the winter rainy season.  The northern and central areas of the state are dependent on snowfall from winter storms that build a deep snow pack in the Sierra Nevada mountains.  The southern part of the state is nourished by some of that water, but also depends heavily on snow pack build up in the Rocky Mountains that feed into the Colorado River.  The forecast for both mountain ranges and the rivers their snow pack feeds is bleak. 

Climate change has shortened California's rainy season by a month since the 1960s.  

This year, the state saw a very delayed start to its annual rainy season, which is typically heaviest from January to March. Wildfires sparked as late as January. It’s a sign that the window of time where rainfall and snow can add to the state’s water reserves is shrinking, says John Abatzoglou, a climatology researcher at the University of California, Merced – and that window may be even narrower in the future.

Most of the state’s water comes from an astonishingly low number of precipitation events – just three to five winter storms do the work of building up the snowpack and filling reservoirs. That makes California uniquely vulnerable. “In years where you miss out on one or two of those, you’re probably going to struggle to get close to normal,” says Abatzoglou.

Without water California's Central Valley, the most prolific agricultural area in the nation will become a dust bowl. Agricultural interests in the valley have long since increased their water demands beyond what seasonal rains and even the state's extensive reservoir system can support.  Instead they have pumped so much water from underground aquifer that the entire central valley is sinking.

For decades, farmers have relentlessly pumped groundwater to irrigate their crops, draining thick, water-bearing clay layers deep underground. As the clays compress, roads, bridges, and irrigation canals have cracked, causing extensive and expensive damage. In 2014, when NASA scientists flew radar equipment over the California Aqueduct, a critical piece of water infrastructure, they found that one section had dipped 20 centimeters over 4 months... Excessive pumping also jeopardizes water quality, as pollutants accumulate within groundwater and the clays release arsenic. Worst of all, the persistent pumping means that, one day, aquifers might run out of usable water. 

Southern California's dependence on the Colorado River watershed will once again create incredible stress on water resources in the most populous region of the state.  Population growth in the seven western states that depend on the Colorado River combined with the expansion of agricultural activity in regions of historical water scarcity are generating substantial demands on a system that depends on the same weather patters that have diminished Northern California's rainy seasons.   

A sobering forecast released this week by the Bureau of Reclamation shows the federally owned Lake Mead and Lake Powell — the nation’s two largest reservoirs and critical storage for Colorado River water and its 40 million users — dipping near-record-low levels. If those levels continue dropping as expected, long-negotiated agreements reached by the seven Colorado River Basin states in 2019 will go into effect, with water deliveries curtailed to prevent the federal government from stepping in and making hard water cuts.

The Bureau of Reclamation’s quarterly report was dire, showing Lake Powell at 42% of capacity and downriver’s Lake Mead at 40% capacity. And there’s not much water coming.

Climate change did not take 2020 off due to Covid-19.   

Also posted at Just Save One.

The Party Of Death

 
Today the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, published a commission study that concluded that Trump and, to a large extent, his fellow Republicans are responsible for as many as 188,000 unnecessary Covid-19 related deaths in the United States over the past 12 month.

The US could have averted 40% of the deaths from Covid-19, had the country’s death rates corresponded with the rates in other high-income G7 countries, according to a Lancet commission tasked with assessing Donald Trump’s health policy record.

Almost 470,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus so far, with the number widely expected to go above half a million in the next few weeks. At the same time some 27 million people in the US have been infected. Both figures are by far the highest in the world.

In seeking to respond to the pandemic, Trump has been widely condemned for not taking the pandemic seriously enough soon enough, spreading conspiracy theories, not encouraging mask wearing and undermining scientists and others seeking to combat the virus’s spread.

What the study is careful to point out that Trump's policies and behavior may have been responsible for the excessive death rate, but government policy at almost every level - local, state and federal - has, since 2002, reduced the resources available to address public health issues in the US.

The commission condemned Trump’s response to Covid, but emphasized that the country entered the pandemic with a degraded public health infrastructure. Between 2002 and 2019, US public health spending fell from 3.21% to 2.45% – approximately half the share of spending in Canada and the UK.

Tax cuts for the rich and corporation, attacks on government health programs such as the affordable care act and persistent racism which leaves minority communities with sadly deficient health care are all characteristics of not just Trumpism, but long term Republican Party policy.  

 

Trump's Fascist Fantasy

During his January 6 rally, prior to sending his red hatted MAGA mob to attack the United States Congress, Trump presented the insurrectionist mob with a well produced fascist video. A productions that included many of the familiar Nazi tropes - "the stab in the back," rampant anti-Semitism ("the International Jew) and, of course, the glorious, heroic leader.

On January 6, Trump supporters gathered at a rally at Washington DC’s Ellipse Park, regaled by various figures from Trump world, including Donald Trump Jr. and Rudy Giuliani. Directly following Giuliani’s speech, the organizers played a video. To a scholar of fascist propaganda, well-versed in the history of the National Socialist’s pioneering use of videos in political propaganda, it was clear, watching it, what dangers it portended. In it, we see themes and tactics that history warns pose a violent threat to liberal democracy. Given the aims of fascist propaganda – to incite and mobilize – the events that followed were predictable.

Change the words fascism and fascist with Trumpism and Trump and this indictment of Trump and his insurrection are shown in their true light - MAGA is a fascist cult of personality built around Trump. 

Fascism is a patriarchal cult of the leader, who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by a treacherous and power-hungry global elite, who have encouraged minorities to destabilize the social order as part of their plan to dominate the “true nation,” and fold them into a global world government. The fascist leader is the father of his nation, in a very real sense like the father in a traditional patriarchal family. He mobilizes the masses by reminding them of what they supposedly have lost, and who it is that is responsible for that loss – the figures who control democracy itself, the elite; Nazi ideology is a species of fascism in which this global elite are Jews.

I know it is hard to imagine Trump as the glorious leader of a great movement.  He is a lazy, cowardly bully, who exhorted the crowd by telling them he would "march with them" and then retreated to safety in the White House.  But, Hitler was an obscure Austrian, who prior to a stint in the German army in WW1, was a mostly homeless postcard illustrator.  So... there is no accounting for who will end up as the "glorious leader."