Resistance And The Environment

If even a small percentage of Project 2025’s proposals–or Trump’s fever dreams– are implemented, Americans will suffer. Times will be very dark, and very unAmerican. So it may seem Panglossian to predict that we can and will emerge from those dark times, not unscathed, but essentially intact.

That said, however, there is one element of the coming assault on reason and evidence that poses a truly existential threat, and that is the denial of climate change– the likely withdrawal from global efforts to combat it, the resumption of reliance on fossil fuels, and the termination of federal green energy incentives. We humans can recover from bad governance. We can (and undoubtedly will) learn from the experience of being governed by corrupt and profoundly ignorant people.

But we are unlikely to survive a failure to take climate change seriously.

I find it hard to understand people who deny the reality of a warming planet–the captains of the fossil fuel industries who place a higher priority on their bottom lines than their grandchildren’s lives, the religious fundamentalists who are sure God will protect us (or perhaps is punishing us for our sins), the people who simply choose not to believe facts that might inconvenience them. In my own lifetime (and yes, I’m old) I’ve seen spring come earlier and earlier, and summer last far longer than it used to. As I write this, we are nearing the end of November, yet temperatures are in the 50s and 60s, flowers are still blooming and the leaves remain on most trees. When I was young, it was much colder at this time of year, and we’d typically already had snowstorms.

The rejection of science and evidence by Washington’s clown show is depressing, but those who have chosen climate as their resistance focus need to recognize how much impact is possible–and for that matter, necessary– at the local level, through actions both by local governments and the private sector.

Time Magazine recently had a story about the ways in which small business enterprises (SME’s) can fight climate change. The author reminded us that there are numerous ways to focus on “tackling climate change from the ground up—from cities cutting their own footprints to grassroots activists making changes in their backyards.”

Approximately 90% of the world’s businesses are SMEs; those firms are responsible for a significant share of global emissions. News headlines at the intersection of business and climate often focus on big companies with household names, but to achieve global climate ambitions, small firms need to be engaged….

For the small companies that engage, decarbonization can be rewarding. It helps them access new markets as Europe and many Asian markets have begun to impose sustainability requirements for imported products. Greener products appeal to consumers who are looking for sustainable products, too. And sustainability efforts make SMEs more resilient to climate risks like extreme weather.

The article noted a report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that identified emerging mechanisms—from green loans to supply chain finance—intended to facilitate green practices at small businesses.

Local governments also have a number of initiatives they can employ to combat climate change–everything from installing new technologies to improve their own energy efficiency, to encouraging the construction of energy efficient buildings (including rooftop solar and/or green roofs), moving public transportation systems to clean energy and promoting other kinds of low-carbon transportation, creating pedestrian and bicycle-only zones  and enhancing urban green spaces…the list goes on.

Many of these projects also enhance the quality of urban and suburban life. Planting trees and expanding public parks are environmentally important steps that also provide recreation for citizens, for example.

There is an argument to be made that –if sufficient numbers of local jurisdictions engage in these efforts–the impact would equal or exceed the mechanisms currently employed (and endangered) at the federal level. In any event, most of the actions available to local businesses and governments cannot be stymied by the know-nothings in Washington.

As a recent article from the University of California explained,

Local government can play a unique and critical role addressing the climate crisis. Local governments have immediate impact on the daily lives of community members and personal connections to constituents. We have a clear line of sight to understand how climate change is impacting people on a daily basis. If leveraged correctly, local governments have the power to bring people together across party lines to address local issues with creativity and agility.

The article listed a number of successful efforts already underway. Consider them a “road map” for resisting Project 2025’s prescription for planetary disaster.

Comments

Patriotism Betrayed

As Trump rolls out his loony-tunes Cabinet choices, we are beginning to see the irony of “America First.” Rather than even a skewed version of patriotism, Trump is threatening a wholesale retreat from America’s founding ideals and from America’s place in the world.

I won’t waste pixels on his desire to put a science-denying medical conspiracy theorist in charge of the nation’s health, although I will note that–should RFK, Jr. actually make it through the confirmation process–most of the people who will sicken and/or die will be the True Believers in the MAGA base, the same folks who refused to wear masks or get vaccinated against COVID.

RFK, Jr. and his brain worm aren’t the most unbelievable nominees. Others pose an immediate threat to America’s global dominance. A recent essay in the Bulwark addressed the consequences if those nominees’ should take office. With respect to Tulsi Gabbard, the author wrote:

In addition to the problems she will cause American intelligence, her appointment will also send shockwaves through allied intelligence groups.

Because absolutely no one is going to share intel with us once she’s at the top of the org chart.

Instead our allies will cobble together alternative working relationships that do not include America. Without a seat at those tables, decisions will start to be made without consideration of America’s interests.

Eventually those informal working relationships will be codified. And America will be on the outside looking in. Hostage to events with a diminished ability to shape them….

It will also mean that the Pacific nations will have to come to their own arrangements with China. Because if the American public was not willing to shoulder the burden of merely shipping arms to Ukraine, then there is zero chance that we will be willing to go kinetic in the defense of Taiwan.

Tulsi Gabbard–one of Putin’s “useful idiots” and a woman so compromised she couldn’t get a security clearance– at the head of America’s intelligence agencies would be very bad for America, but as the essayist notes, it would be worse if our allies still believed there was a chance America would continue as a guarantor of the global order, only to find that they were mistaken when Putin and Xi acted.

If the Gabbard nomination wasn’t a sufficiently clear sign of America’s retreat from its global obligations and alliances, Trump’s choice for Defense Secretary “sealed the deal” as the saying goes.

Trump has always mistaken acting for reality, and his choice of Pete Hegseth–a television host–confirms his inability to distinguish manner from substance. As the Independent recently reported, not only is Hegseth, a Fox News pundit, massively unqualified, he wants to launch a “frontal assault” against top brass, kick women out of combat, and “implement Donald Trump’s sweeping agenda for the world’s third-largest standing fighting force.”

Hegseth’s nomination, which came as a shock to members of Congress who will ultimately be asked to vote to confirm him, reflects a broader trend among Trump’s Cabinet-level nominations and White House appointments — grievance-fueled loyalists whose disdain for a perceived establishment matches Trump’s wrecking-ball approach to governing and disregard for expertise and experience in a government that tens of millions of Americans depend on.

Since the announcement of Hegseth’s nomination, we have learned that he self-identifies as a Christian Nationalist, sports several White Nationalist tattoos, and has been credibly accused of sexual assault. If confirmed, he will enthusiastically implement Trump’s promises to reimpose a ban on transgender service members, end a policy that covered travel costs for service members seeking abortion care, and gut diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Hegseth is also an out and proud bigot, who spent his college years crusading against diversity and “the homosexual lifestyle,” and suggested in a 2024 book that General Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, and an Air Force fighter pilot with 130 combat flying hours and 40 years of service, only got the job because he is Black. (I’m sure that accusation endeared him to the African-Americans who comprise over 20% of America’s armed forces.)

There are very real issues with U.S. foreign policy. Critics–especially on the Left–point to multiple episodes where American interventions have been highly improper, to put it mildly. Others find fault with current Mideast policies. Americans of all political stripes routinely criticize aspects of the bloated Defense budget.

Correcting past blunders and “right-sizing” the budget, however, require competent leadership, and Trumpworld, from the top down, is thoroughly incompetent. (On the other hand, if the goal of America First is to make America the first country to surrender global influence and abandon its allies, they’ll be great…)

Putin and Xi are undoubtedly cheering….

Comments

Connecting The Dots…

So..how did we get to Never-Never Land?

As the increasingly surreal incoming administration rolls out its roster of incompetent-to-insane nominees, proposes to eliminate constitutional checks and balances and empower man-child Elon Musk to decimate the federal government, it may serve us well to take a step back and identify which elements of the American status quo brought us to this place.

I have posted a number of discrete analyses–some my own, some from others. Those separate observations, however useful or relevant, fail to point us to useful solutions, fail to suggest what we will need to do when the fever subsides.

The various elements that contributed to Trump’s receipt of (under) 50% of the vote (as the votes have been counted, the thinness of his margin has become more obvious) include the interaction of economic unfairness with the information/disinformation environment, and widespread civic ignorance.

Those elements, working together, fed the multiple bigotries still rampant in American society.

There really are no short-term fixes for the widespread lack of basic civic knowledge and engagement. Heather Cox Richardson recently noted a study showing that people who paid “a great deal” of attention to political news voted for Harris +6, while those who paid “none at all” went +19 for Trump. Many of those voters obtained what little news they did get from the right-wing propaganda network I’ve previously referenced.

It’s easy to sneer at people who make no effort to understand and engage with the world they live in, but those of us who are financially comfortable need to recognize how different life is for people struggling to put food on their tables. When every day is consumed by the effort to make an inadequate paycheck stretch, when a flat tire or sudden illness increases financial hardship, accessing the news–let alone trying to confirm its accuracy– becomes a luxury you can ill afford. That’s why the enormous gap between not just the rich but also the secure middle-class and the rest is at the very base of our other problems.

Stable democracies have large middle classes. Ours has continued to shrink.

There is a mountain of research confirming the importance of economic justice to political life (and another mountain confirming that economic justice produces more robust economies). Inadequate and underinclusive social safety nets exacerbate social tensions. Studies tell us that people in impoverished households experience cognitive stresses that affect IQ, and that children from impoverished families in poor neighborhoods lack access to nutrition and good schools.

Economic deprivation accounts for much civic and political disengagement, while America’s current corporatist economic system is deeply implicated in the proliferation of disinformation. The plutocrats who benefit from a rigged economy don’t just deploy lobbyists and buy influence with political donations. The business model of Fox News and its progeny is based upon delivering the propaganda that reinforces the plutocrats’ dominance by assuring their audience that poverty (especially of Black people) is the result of laziness and/or moral deficit and wealth is evidence of brilliance, hard work and God’s approval.

I am a huge proponent of market capitalism, but a working capitalism requires a level playing field, and a level playing field requires adequate regulation. A working market economy also requires an accurate assessment of the nature of the public goods that markets cannot provide. Properly regulated markets are marvelous mechanisms for producing all manner of consumer goods, but (as I have argued repeatedly) health care and education are not consumer goods.

We are about to experience extreme social and governmental upheavals. Much–indeed, most–of what Trump, Vance, Musk et al want to accomplish is immensely unpopular. In the linked Richardson Letter, she notes that one of the largest programs that would be cut by Trump’s new (and illegitimate) “Efficiency Department” proposal would be veterans’ medical care.

The arrogance of his ridiculous cabinet choices and his evident belief that he can ram those choices down the throats of the  spineless Republicans in the Senate may prove to be a miscalculation. (Some of them might actually grow a pair, although I’ll be the first to admit that the jury on that is out.)

All of this points to an important task of the resistance. While we are working to delay or stymie the most damaging goals of this administration–the intended concessions to Putin and other autocrats, the decimation of social programs, the assaults on immigrants, education and public health, the further enrichment of the already-rich–we need to forge a working consensus on what should come next. What systemic changes will be necessary to restore and advance the American Idea?

In coming posts, I intend to address that incredibly important question.

Comments

Active Resistance–One Good Idea

I recently received an email from a reader who suggested one very concrete step we individuals can take to resist a threatened action of the Trump administration–in this case, the determination to deport millions of immigrants and the likelihood that those carrying out that mission will be unconcerned with distinguishing between undocumented folks and people here legally.
My correspondent noted that Thom Hartman and Heather Cox Richardson had recently made him aware of some “dark American history” that he had not previously known. (I had been equally unaware of these details.) Apparently, during the deportations of Mexican immigrants that occurred under Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower, a large percentage of those deported were American citizens who were unable to instantly prove their citizenship, and– once deported– were unable to obtain the documentation of their citizenship that would have allowed them to return.
According to my correspondent, Trump’s announced choice for the head of ICE, Tom Homan, who had been the initiator of the “family separation” policy in Trump’s first term, was asked how he would prevent those atrocities from recurring. His horrifying response was that “we will just deport the entire families.” Problem solved…
In the wake of that response, my correspondent’s proposal made all kinds of sense.
Many of us know, and are friends of potential targets of this deportation campaign.  My suggestion is that we start spreading the word with these friends that they actively acquire their proof of citizenship and make multiple copies of such which they entrust to those of us who don’t share names that put us on the deportation list.
Then, if the worst happens and they are deported, they can contact us to get their documents sent to them, or brought to them before they get deported.
I think this is an excellent suggestion. It has the benefit of simplicity–it’s an action that doesn’t require special skills or knowledge, and it has the further merit of being something concrete, an act that can help overcome the feelings of helplessness so many of us have been experiencing.
Those of us who don’t have friends in these communities can help by spreading the word–posting the suggestion to social media platforms and telling our coworkers, friends and families.
This is precisely the sort of suggestion we need–not tears, not undirected angst, not pontification and finger-pointing. We need to identify direct actions–like the one my reader suggested– that individuals can take to resist the coming unAmerican deluge.
As we emerge from the despair and disbelief of the election–as we face the probability that at least some of the clowns, know-nothings, Russian “useful idiots” and Christian Nationalists being proposed for high-level government posts will actually be confirmed–we need to gather. We need to meet in the civic forums we already patronize, and in the many grass-roots organizations that were created in the wake of Trump’s first election. When we gather, we need to focus on concrete steps we can take to blunt the effects of what will inevitably be an immensely ugly time.
A friend who is a Quaker pastor tells me that his congregation met and decided to raise funds for women needing to travel for abortions. Groups of lawyers–including but not limited to those in the ACLU–are planning strategic legal actions. Governors of Blue states are conferring about state-level protections for their citizens, and grassroots groups are meeting to map out actions they can take.
Those dedicated groups that generated some 80 million postcards to voters might turn their efforts toward producing a continuing avalanche of letters to Senators of both parties (but especially Republicans) to send–and reinforce– a message: we’re watching and keeping score, and we’ll be ready when you run for re-election.
Most people who regularly comment on this blog are demonstrably bright and thoughtful. So are a number of the “lurkers” that I know. If any of you have concrete suggestions like the one my reader shared–actions that each of us can take to protect the vulnerable, to educate and inform the public, and above all, to throw sand in the gears of the Kakistocracy…please send those suggestions this way. Demonstrations and petitions and posts to social media may make us feel better, may help with morale, but they  aren’t a substitute for active resistance.
Think. And share. And maybe, if enough of us do enough, throw enough sand, thwart enough abject stupidity, we can help America emerge from the coming Dark Age relatively intact.
Comments

The Crusades Of 2024

We Americans talk about theology, philosophy and ideology as if they are discrete mental categories, but of course, they aren’t. The other day, as I was mourning the political reality I inhabit, as I tried to comfort myself with reflections about the “fits and starts” of progress, I suddenly realized what I have missed about America’s current cold civil war: at its base, it’s our contemporary version of religious war.

I actually owe this insight to Micah Beckwith, who recently took to X/Twitter to declare that college students who criticised his medieval worldview are impermissibly “woke” and to threaten the existence of the Indiana Daily Student, which had published the critique.

I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that the hysteria against “wokism” is terminology for the war between religious fundamentalism and liberalism–especially religious liberalism.

Religious beliefs began as an effort to explain mysterious phenomena: why the tides go in and out, why people become diseased, why some folks prosper and others don’t.  What we call secularism is really the steady expansion of human knowledge  that erodes the role of supernatural beliefs. We no longer ask the priest to pray over a broken leg, we call the doctor. We no longer use prayer (or rain dances) to counteract droughts. Most of us (unfortunately, not all) reject the Calvinist belief that equates poverty with moral deficit and wealth with superior merit.

Many denominations have responded to the growth of science and empiricism by revisiting their approach to theology. Rather than seeing religious adherence as a simple issue of obedience to orders from “on high”–orders interpreted differently by the theologians of each specific denomination– many Christian, Jewish, and Islamic congregations have reinvisioned religion’s role.  Rather than issuing fundamentalist decrees, these more mature theologies help parishioners wrestle with the nature of goodness and the ethical and moral obligations of humanity. Their churches, synagogues and mosques offer congregants the comfort of loving and supportive communities. My friends in the Christian clergy tend to focus on the Sermon on Mount (could anything be more woke?).

But that lack of an authoritative “bright line” drives fundamentalists crazy. Horrified religious literalists (abetted by those whose personal prospects are enhanced by biblical notions of patriarchy and America’s cultural Calvinism) fight back. Today, they are the bulk of the MAGA people supporting Trump.

One example is Pete Hegseth–the Fox News pundit who is Trump’s ridiculous and unqualified choice for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is a self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist who has tattoos that he claims are “religious symbols.” Those symbols date back to the Crusades–the effort by the Christian west to “liberate” Jerusalem from Muslim control. One of the tattoos says, “Deus Vult.” Hegseth explained in 2020, “I’ve got Deus Vult – God Wills It – which was the cry of the Crusaders, on my bicep.”

Like Micah Beckwith and other fundamentalists, Hegseth is confident that he knows precisely what God wills. I need not spell out the dangers of putting such people in positions of power.

People like me, who tend to be critical of organized religion, have missed a central point: it isn’t “religion” that is the problem–just as it isn’t philosophy or ideology. It’s regressive religion, philosophy and ideology. It’s a primitive world-view used in the service of Othering–a religion, philosophy or ideology that is at base a rationale for the dominance of some people over others.

The danger arises from “righteous” folks who are certain they possess exclusive knowledge of “God’s will.” That isn’t just the Beckwith version of Christianity. Every religion has its contingent of fundamentalists who know exactly what their God demands and are prepared to impose that understanding on the rest of us.

In the U.S., because Christians have been in the majority, the religious fundamentalism that animates Christian Nationalism  threatens not just our religious and civic liberties but allso–as my Christian friends insist — authentic Christianity.

Those of us who have rejected organized religion cannot lead the charge against this theocratic Crusade. That leadership must come from within the Christian community. There are signs that such leadership is emerging, that Christians who base their understanding on Jesus’ “wokeness” are waking up to the fact that the fundamentalists pushing for theocracy are endangering the very values and beliefs that animate their more loving and inclusive versions of their faith traditions.

I now understand the battle over “wokeness.” It’s a modern version of the Crusades–a battle of fundamentalist True Believers against contemporary religious and philosophical beliefs.

Comments