There are times when I have felt patriotic towards the United States, but there have also been times when I have felt ashamed of it, too. I felt ashamed when the country illegally invaded Iraq under false pretenses back in early 2003, and when George W. Bush won another term in office in late 2004. Frankly, I have felt considerable shame fairly consistently since that fateful day that Trump won the 2016 election, although there was some shame with the entire election that year, including when the Democrats essentially fixed it so that Hillary would win the nomination.
With Trump as the new man in charge, however, I felt unbelievable shame on a consistent basis. This was true when he took the oath of office and then gave that ridiculous excuse for an inaugural speech. It was true with almost every new tweet that he produces, betraying his pettiness and staggering immaturity for a man of his age. This was also true every time that he boasted about the size of his election victory, especially when he did it to the Australian Prime Minister. I felt ashamed when Trump met with Pope Francis, who came out of that meeting stone faced and clearly unhappy. I felt ashamed when Trump refused to shake hands with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and felt still more shame when she and other European leaders announced that they no longer felt that they could rely on Britain and the United States as reliable partners. I felt shame when Trump still fixated on that stupid wall of his, and when the notion of getting Mexico to pay for it kind of quietly went away, without his supporters so much as coming out with a peep or crying foul. I felt still greater shame when this president seemed unwilling or unable to call out and condemn white supremacists by name, and suggested that there were good people among the white supremacists who marched and gave fascist, straight-arm salutes in Virginia last month. I now feel that all-too familiar shame as President Trump (still can't believe we have to designate him with that title, frankly) aims to get rid of DACA.
Yet, undeniably, the most shame that I felt about these United States since Trump has been in charge was when he announced that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris Accord. First came his making it easier for streams and waterways to be polluted, and then came that withdrawal, which was immediately and thoroughly condemned by many world leaders all around the world, including from Canada, Japan, China, Australia, and numerous European nations.
This son of a bitch currently serving as the "President for all Americans," at least as he described it after winning the election, has been especially embarrassing when it comes to climate change denial. He has referred to it as a hoax invented by the Chinese, although he later denied it (apparently, he thinks that what he posts does not leave any kind of a paper trail, or cannot be tracked down by fact checkers). Then, he made it easier for corporations to pollute waters, and then, of course, the whole Paris Accord fiasco. This should be a huge source of embarrassment for all Americans.
Right now, there are significant fires in Utah, California, Montana, and Oregon. The west had a historically major drought earlier this year that finally ended, while much of Texas remains flooded from Hurricane Harvey. In the meantime, Hurricane Irma, which is now Category 5 in strength, is making landfall in some Caribbean islands, and is expected to hit Florida while still very strong. Oklahoma keeps getting some earthquakes, which seem to be more or less man-made, because of fracking (Oklahoma never had a problem with earthquakes before). There were record hot temperatures in the Mojave desert earlier this summer, and there were record hot temperatures established on the Arabian peninsula and Australia in the past two years. 2016 was the hottest year on record, replacing the previous record holder, which was 2015. And 2015 replaced the previous record holder, which was 2014. In fact, every year since 2009 is in the top nine hottest years of all time, with 2008 being the only exception.
It seems that every time that we have some kind of a natural disaster, we have some fire and brimstone, politically extreme preacher suggesting that this was God's way of punishing us for permitting homosexuality, or for embracing other behaviors that they view as decadent. But it seems to me that if God is punishing us for all of this extreme weather, then it would be for helping to create that weather in the first place. After all, it is because of greed and our tendency to gravitate towards excess, that we allow corporations to clear forests for development or to produce meat, or to produce gas guzzling, oversized SUV's for the American consumer, or to burn polluting fossil fuels while the technology is there to really develop alternative and clean sources for our energy needs. This is arrogance of the highest order, and it seems to me that if God is punishing us for anything, that would be it. After all, Donald Trump is the poster child for spoiled, excessive behavior by what Jello Biafra once referred to as "wealth addicts."
At what point will non-believers finally concede that the problem is real? Yes, the administrations of both George W. Bush and Donald Trump conceded that climate change is real (although they seem not to see any correlation between this and human activity), yet many of their staunch supporters still refuse to believe that climate change is anything but one big, elaborate hoax.
No more excuses. It is 2017, and we have the benefit of technology, which was created by scientists working on technology, experimenting and slowly but surely improving technology to create the incredible stuff that we are blessed with now.
There are no complaints from climate change deniers about all of that wonderful technology. No complaints or disbelief about major weather forecasts, other than those relatively few times when weather forecasts are wrong.
So why do they so quickly assume that they know better than expert scientists when it comes to climate change? Is it really sane to assume that almost all scientists the world over are in on some giant conspiracy, and that somehow, the temperatures of the Earth are rising simultaneously? After all, critics of climate change, or global warming, were literally laughing at the very notion of global warming just a couple decades ago, and dismissed it with a wave of their hands. Some still do, such as Senator Jim Inhofe and John Boehner. At some point, GOP Congressmen would preface their dismissal of climate change by stating outright that they themselves were not scientists, and they got away with it!
I don't know about you, but to me, when they said that, it was basically a concession that they do not know what they are talking about.
Yet, Americans did not hold them to task, and they were not voted out of office en masse, as they should have been.
Now, I understand that many are fearful about the divisions in this country right now. And as much as I would like to be open-minded and accessible, it is hard to get past this tendency - this arrogant presumptuousness on the part of all too many millions of Americans - to think that they know better than the scientists, and to believe in what truly amounts to a conspiracy theory that the scientific community is propagating climate change merely to undermine the United States and it's economic potential. It is a ridiculous stance to hold, and it feels impossible to reconcile that, or even to take this, or the people that believe in it, seriously.
Why? Because there is no debate. After all, these were the people who were literally laughing at global warming and mocking environmentalists who believed in and warned us all about it, dismissing them as "wackos." Granted, they are no longer laughing, but they are still holding onto their dismissive stance and their frankly preposterous beliefs, or rather, their denial. Either it really is not a big deal, according to them, or it is not human made. Any way you look at their stance, we humans should do absolutely nothing to lessen pollution or be more responsible custodians of our planet. It almost seems as if they are suggesting that to do so is to be unpatriotic, to hate America.
That is what I cannot stand, and can never accept, about Trump or his legions of supporters, period On top of his wavering condemnation and then praises of white supremacists, and his frankly irrational and immature behavior that has embarrassed as a country, we have to listen to this idiot lecturing us about how the rest of the world was laughing at the country because we signed the Paris Accord, and in the process, the rest of the world laughed at us because we became the only country in the world to reject it on the premise that we do not believe in climate change.
Sorry, but that is not rational or well thought out. Frankly, it is not a serious position to have in 2017, when we are wealthy and have quick, ready and easy access to information like no people ever have before. When people have tried to extend the olive branch and give these people a platform, they ignore facts, and cynically use the opportunity to forward their agenda still more, like Ken Hamm did with his debate with Bill Nye, "the Science Guy." Nye said that he felt sick about it afterward, and we just cannot afford them to get away with that kind of nonsense again.
They were wrong before, when they laughed and dismissed global warming as a hoax. Now, more or less, they acknowledge that climate change is real, but have shifted their arguments to make it seem like we can or should do nothing, and that human activity had nothing to do with all of this. But they were wrong then, and they are wrong now. We cannot give their silly and immature arguments oxygen to breathe, because it seems that they are intent on setting the world on fire, and that fire needs oxygen. We cannot indulge this nonsense anymore, because they have no real basis for debate. By their own admission, they are not scientists, so why give a chance to debate science? How can we take them seriously when they talk about scientific matters? Facts matter, despite the all too easy dismissal of facts by Trump and his supporters.
I, for one, am done trying to engage in any kind of debate with these people. They were wrong decades ago, and they are still wrong. They had to change their arguments, to adjust, while scientists have remained remarkably consistent. This is not a political issue, even though neocons like Bush and immature and self-indulgent elitists like Trump would have you believe that it is.
There is no debate. The debate is over, and climate change is real, and greatly accelerated by human activity. We now need to focus on curtailing the damage that we have historically been responsible for, and we simply are not going to do that by debating morons who do not know what they are talking about, and are either too arrogant or too stupid, or both, to realize it.
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