The California town of Paradise was wiped out by climate change this week. Now even network weather forecasters are saying that these wild fires that have now claimed 59 lives and counting are fueled in large measure by global warming. When I see the images of this catastrophe on television, it makes me wonder what the national response would be if these homes had been destroyed by a terror bombing or a hijacked plane. No doubt we would move heaven and earth to hold the perpetrators accountable (along with anyone even tangentially associated with them) and to prevent future attacks. What has the federal response been to these fires? Initially, blame the victim. Trump was in an election-related snit and so resorted to parroting his Interior Secretary on the matter. Classy, as always.
Thousand Oaks, California – located in one of the wild fire zones – had to deal with three national policy failures in the same week. One was the lack of national gun control legislation and strong enough restrictions on gun ownership at the state level. The second was foreign policy – the shooter was a veteran of the Afghan war, though it’s not entirely clear that this was a factor (he had mental issues before going into the service). Then, of course, Thousand Oak residents had barely begun to grieve for their lost loved ones when these fires descended on them. Just an astonishing confluence of hardships, all representing the abject failure of our government to take meaningful steps on any of these issues.
Meanwhile, the president is busy spinning out nonsensical lies about voter fraud, making as much noise as possible in order to distract and deflect from the collapse of his one-party rule that took place over the last week. About the only value there is in listening to the man’s spew is that it offers some rough insight into their electoral strategy moving forward. The losses hurt a great deal, but the close races in formerly red states are what really worry the Republicans. Their shrinking advantage can only be preserved through the usual methods of voter suppression and intimidation, some of which we are seeing right now.
How do we fight back? Like we did last Tuesday, except harder. It’s the only chance we have to stop this toxic regime that’s so dedicated to making our most difficult problems worse.
luv u,
jp
The most effective way of distracting the media is by attacking them head-on, which we saw last weekend when Sean Spicer marched into the White House press room and delivered a stern lecture to the fourth estate, mostly based on outright lies and falsehoods. It was a remarkable performance, worthy of a pre-teenager, and pure Trumpist arrogance/ignorance. All presidential administrations lie; the Trump cadre, however, is distinctive in that they tell painfully obvious lies – lies that require no research to disprove. Many of their transparent lies are rooted in Trump’s overheated ego: the whining about the relative size of his inaugural crowd, the fable about millions of fraudulent votes in California, and so on. The press should just slap the “lie” label on this trash and soldier on.