We can wring our hands about the corruption of the Department of Education, or the placement of ideologues on our federal courts, the encouragement of White nationalism, or the abandonment of democratic norms and the rule of law, but even those abominations pale next to the war being waged by Donald Trump and his GOP cult on science and the environment.
A sufficiently motivated populace can eject Trump from the Oval Office, and elect people who will begin the process of repairing our governing institutions and our civic culture. The rejection of science and denial of the existential threat posed by climate change, however, is imposing damage we may never be able to reverse.
It isn’t simply downplaying the extent of the threat, or failing to pursue measures to reverse the damage we now recognize. These troglodytes are actively encouraging behaviors harmful to the environment.
President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign store sells “Make America Great Again” hats, T-shirts, cups, towels and even dog leashes. But one of its newest items might be one of the campaign’s biggest attempt to troll the other side: Trump-branded plastic straws.
According to the campaign store, for $15, those interested can purchase a 10-pack of the red straws with Trump’s name “laser engraved” on them. The new campaign merchandise seems to come as a response to increasing concerned about plastic usage and waste. A video that went viral last year of a marine biologist removing a plastic strawfrom a sea turtle’s nose brought attention to the issue and many communities and businesses have begun to banthe use of plastic straws altogether.
The description of the Trump straws is not subtle about the message the merchandise is meant to send. “Liberal paper straws don’t work. Stand with President Trump and buy your pack of recyclable straws today,” it reads.
Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, tweeted about the new straws on Thursday, saying “Make Straws Great Again.”
Scientists tell us that humans dump eight million metric tons of plastic into our planet’s oceans each year. By 2050, they estimate that plastic will outweigh all of the ocean’s fish. Plastic in the ocean is eventually broken into smaller pieces — known as microplastic — by sun exposure and wave action, and that microplastic can find its way into the food chain.
When plastic does eventually degrade (a process which takes 400 years for most plastic), it releases chemicals that contaminate the sea.
Americans use millions of plastic straws a day. Those straws litter our streets, lands, shorelines, and oceans. Plastic drinking straws are among the top 10 contributors to marine debris pollution. They do not biodegrade but break down into smaller microplastics that have made their way into our food chain and the deepest trenches of our oceans. The research and statistics on the impacts of plastic straws across the globe are alarming. News articles are appearing regularly on what plastics do to our environment, our health, as well as efforts and innovations across the globe to eliminate and ban single-use plastics straws.
What about the Trump campaign’s assertion that their (very expensive) straws can be recycled? I know it will shock readers to discover that the claim is yet another lie. As the Washington Post (and a number of other media outlets) reported:
Recycling is very important: It keeps many of our plastic objects from spending hundreds of years causing trouble. Unfortunately, your straws always end up in a landfill.
“Plastic straws and other items smaller than two by two inches, such as plastic utensils, fall through the machinery that sorts our recycling,” says Jonathan Kuhl of the D.C. Department of Public Works. “Because of this, we ask District residents not to put these small items in their recycling bins.” The same is true in most recycling plants around the country.
Name calling and gleeful ignorance. They’ll sure show us dumb “libs” (defined as people who accept science). Their grandchildren don’t need a habitable planet anyway.
Canada has joined a G-7 pact with EU member states to ban single use plastics such as straws and cotton swabs. Trump arrived late and left early and the USA is not at the table. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/government-to-ban-single-use-plastics-as-early-as-2021-source-1.5168386
And how many years did we manage to exist and slurp sodas and milkshakes through paper straws before the plastic industry put them out of business. They worked and to me, plastic effects the taste of drinks, including water, just as beer from a can tastes different than from a bottle. Trump could do this country a service by selling Trump branded condoms…his father could have provided an even greater service if he had used condoms.
“Plastic in the ocean is eventually broken into smaller pieces — known as microplastic — by sun exposure and wave action, and that microplastic can find its way into the food chain.”
Plastics are hazardous waste products just as the dumping of hazardous waste and by-products by corporations into the ground and our waterways finds its way into the air and working its way into our food chain. Modern progress through the world of plastic domination of manufactured…everything…has now turned against humans, animals and plant growth and endangers our lives.
Sounds like an apt description of the Republican party to me. They are a plastic replacement for the original party and are unaware they are currently endangering their own lives along with we Liberals. The adage, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” somehow fits into the subject “Now Paper Straws Are Liberal”.
Maga fans are heartless idiots.
One catastrophe after another and his attack on hard science will likely be the biggest catastrophe of them all. The Mango Mussolini is always thinking though, aberrantly always, and will likely try to think of something to top this like his plan for winning a one week long war in Afghanistan to backwater even this, especially when he’s afraid which is likely all the time. Stay tuned.
Those lazy kids should build their own planet, just like we did!
Felix; your comment defies any intelligent response.
Cree Indiana Prophecy: “Only when the last tree is cut down. Only when the last river has been poisoned. Only when the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”
It speaks volumes about 45 and his followers that they get more joy out of sticking it to the libs than they get out of doing even one simple thing to protect the environment. They are not just racists. They are also bullies.
Just as a complete side-bar-
President Donald Trump on Tuesday filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the House Ways and Means Committee from obtaining his state tax returns through a newly passed New York law.
The president’s lawyers said the state law was nothing more than an effort to get information about his personal finances to embarrass him politically.
The suit referred to an NBC News article on Monday that said Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., was under pressure from fellow Democrats to make use of the new law.
The bill, signed into law this month, was written broadly and makes it easier for New York to turn over the state tax returns of certain public officials to Congress.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-sues-block-new-york-law-allowing-congress-get-his-n1033056?fbclid=IwAR3bCp5S2ilerw9pEpNRBMGYdmKkK_7hwnRwrKlmxRY86B8A_5L31sWFbWw
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This is important information so why is Neal foot dragging???
Monotonous, it’s as if we were all watching a ten level chess game being played by Nancy Pilosi and Mitch McConnell’s puppet, and there is no one to enforce the rules.
Great question, ML.
The Green Energy Deal was also snuffed by many corporate democrats on Big Oil’s payroll so don’t just refer to Trump and the Gop as “on the take Neanderthals.”
We have to hold the Democratic Party accountable as well. How about we refer to the problem as our “Political Class” and then give kudos to those politicians who refuse corporate monies.
This would be more accurate/truthful.
Look for the Red Hats to now be publicly wearing plastic straws in their noses.
Ignorance comes in two varieties, voluntary and involuntary. We are all born suffering from the latter and many spend their lifetimes working to rise above it.
Some however wallow in the former because it’s easier and more comfortable and they get convinced that they are entitled to take and never give. They subtract from the human race by their existence because they are unmotivated if not incapable, both by what they were born with and into.
Life is the process of choosing to learn and defending knowledge from those without it by choice or chance.
Well, since Trump has hired a bunch of lobbyists – something he pledged not to do during the campaign – to run these important, environmentally sensitive areas of our government, it’s clear that the intention to keep dismantling the “administrative state”, whatever that is in his tortured, inadequate mind, is proceeding forthwith.
The question really is: Will we have a country worth saving when this monster is either dead or gone? Rick Wilson’s book, “Everything Trump Touches Dies” says it all.
“Trump could do this country a service by selling Trump branded condoms…his father could have provided an even greater service if he had used condoms.”
Thanks for the laugh, Joanne! Lol!
I’m adding straws to the list.
I say again Trump’s tactics are intuitively brilliant for those who elected him:
1. Militarize the 4th and put the President at the center. As he told one aide, are they going to attack me for being too patriotic?
2. Immigration. If I can’t build the wall because of the Dems and liberal judges, I can round and lock them up while treating them like the criminals they are. Let’s identify them by making them answer the question on the census. If they don’t, we don’t want them counted anyway.
3. The Quad Squad is the perfect foil for his racist, sexist, anti-Muslim and nationalism tropes.
4. Branding. MAGA hats and now straws.
While we have Nadler and Schiff. How inspiring!
JoAnne – thanks for the Native American truth. Waiting for them to call out “Go back where you came from” as we destroy their sacred place.
I did encounter one these Face Book slams at paper straws. It showed a picture of clear cut logging with caption to the effect – You Libs know where paper comes from Right??
Of course if we recycled paper we would have no or little need to cut down more trees. I suppose in the minds of the GOP recycling is a Socialist-Communist plot. For the evangelical bible thumper’s – The End is Near- so why bother saving the planet, or god will provide – we humans do not have to do anything, except thoughts and prayers.
Years ago I took my grandson to a restaurant – they had paper straws. He was a mystified by them. I told him when I was boy all or most straws were paper.
They are bullies and toadies: authoritarians.
Mueller testimony. OMG!
One side speaks slowly and deliberately, getting at issues. The other speaks rapidly and harshly, getting at the former special counsel on a personal level. Disgusting! OMG is right!
I don’t know you, Felix (Those lazy kids should build their own planet, just like we did!), but that sounded like a tongue-in-cheek response. I laughed when I read it.
Lighten up a bit, people. Things are bad enough as it is without seeing the humor in things!!
Many would risk everyone’s freedom for their power.
Felix – thanks for the laugh – I hope you meant it that way
ML – of course recycling is a hippie-dippie-liberal-commie-pinko plot (There – I think I have channeled a half century of reactionary memes)
Plastic Trump straws – do you get [a] coke with that?
I treat Trump and his MAGA (MAWA) crew like Internet trolls – they love to goad you, but my motto has long been “don’t feed the trolls”